Best Books of 2021: Fiction and Poetry
I’ve chosen my 15 fiction and 15 nonfiction favourites (coming up tomorrow) from 2021, along with a few poetry selections at the end of this post. Two of my picks are graphic novels!
Under the Blue by Oana Aristide: Fans of Station Eleven, this one’s for you: the best dystopian novel I’ve read since Mandel’s. Aristide started writing in 2017, and unknowingly predicted a much worse pandemic than Covid-19. In July 2020, Harry and sisters Ash and Jessie are among mere thousands of survivors worldwide. Their plan is to flee England for Uganda, out of range of Europe’s at-risk nuclear reactors. An epic road trip ensues. A propulsive cautionary tale that also reminded me of work by Louisa Hall and Maja Lunde.
The Push by Ashley Audrain: Blythe Connor, living alone with her memories, ponders what went wrong with her seemingly perfect family: a handsome architect husband, Fox, and their daughter Violet and baby son Sam. How much of what happened was because of Violet’s nature, and how much was Blythe’s fault for failing to be the mother the girl needed? The fact that her experience with Sam was completely different makes her feel ambivalent about motherhood. A cracking psychological thriller with an unreliable narrator.
Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles: A love for their Colorado homeland inspires women’s environmental activism in a linked short story collection. Hope and perseverance are watchwords for Boyles’s characters, many of whom are single mothers or unmarried women. Nearly half of the stories center on a trio of feisty sisters. This reminded me most of Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich, as well as Barbara Kingsolver’s early fiction set in the Southwest. It got me eagerly awaiting whatever Boyles writes next.
A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies: Davies’ minimalist approach – short sections skating over the months and years, wryly pulling out representative moment – crystallizes fatherhood, illuminating its daily heartaches and joys. The tone is just right in this novella, showing both sides of parenthood and voicing things you aren’t allowed to think, or at least not to admit to, starting with abortion, which would-be fathers aren’t expected to have strong feelings about. I loved the rumination on the role that chance plays in a life.
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan: Extinction, personal and global, is at the heart of this timely and enchanting story. It starts off as a family drama. Francie, the 86-year-old matriarch, is in a Tasmanian hospital after a brain bleed. Her three middle-aged children can’t bear to let her go. In an Australia blighted by bushfires, species loss mirrors Francie’s physical and mental crumbling. Smartphone addiction threatens meaningful connection. And then characters start to literally disappear, part by part…
Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden: Grief Is the Thing with Feathers meets Girl, Woman, Other would be my marketing shorthand for this one. Poet Salena Godden’s debut novel is a fresh and fizzing work, passionate about exposing injustice but also about celebrating simple joys, and in the end it’s wholly life-affirming despite a narrative stuffed full of deaths real and imagined. The novel balances the cosmic and the personal through Wolf’s family story. Unusual, musical, and a real pleasure to read.
Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny: This tickled my funny bone. A cross between Kitchens of the Great Midwest and Olive Kitteridge, it’s built of five extended episodes, crossing nearly two decades in the lives of Jane and Duncan and lovingly portraying the hangers-on who compose their unusual family constellation in Boyne City, Michigan. All the characters are incorrigible but wonderful. Bad things happen, but there’s a core of love as Heiny explores marriage and parenting. A good-natured book that feels wise and bittersweet.
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood: This starts as a flippant skewering of modern life. A woman who became a social media star by tweeting quips like “Can a dog be twins?” reflects on life on “the portal” and under “the dictator.” Midway through the book, she gets a wake-up call when her mother summons her back to the Midwest for a family emergency. It’s the about-face that makes this novel, forcing readers to question the value of a digital existence based on glib pretence. Funny, but with an ache behind it.
When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain: I almost never pick up a thriller, but my love for McLain’s earlier fiction attracted me and I ended up loving this. Really, I can’t imagine a better take on the genre. Anna Hart is a detective who, fleeing tragedies from her past, throws herself into the linked mystery of three missing girls in California. The book is rich in atmosphere: McLain’s love of the coast and forests is clear, and the fact that the book is set in 1993 means that Anna has to rely on old-fashioned policework rather than technology.
In by Will McPhail: Alternately laugh-out-loud funny and gentle. This debut graphic novel is a spot-on picture of modern life in a generic city. Nick never knows the right thing to say. The bachelor artist’s well-intentioned thoughts remain unvoiced; all he can manage is small talk. That starts to change when he meets Wren, a Black doctor who sees past his pretence. If only he can find the magic words that elicit honesty, he might make real connections with other human beings. A good old-fashioned story, with a wide emotional range.
Heartstopper, Volume 4 by Alice Oseman: This super-cute series was my summer crush. I liked this best of the first four. I admired how Oseman works in serious issues teens might face but has still created something so full of queer joy. While Charlie has been figuring out when to tell Nick he loves him, Nick has been working out how to confront Charlie about his anorexia. They learn that love doesn’t solve everything, but that a friend or boyfriend can be there to listen. Oseman really brings out the supporting cast in this volume, too.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters: A sparkling, sexy comedy with a tender heart beneath the zingers. Peters has set herself up as the Jane Austen of the trans community, tracing the ins and outs of relationships with verve and nuance. For me this was a valuable book simply for normalizing trans sexuality. The themes are universal, after all: figuring out who you are and what the shape of your life will be. I admire when authors don’t pander to readers by making things easy for those who are unfamiliar with a culture. Great lines abound.
Brood by Jackie Polzin: Polzin’s debut is a quietly touching story of a woman in the Midwest raising chickens and coming to terms with the shape of her life. The unnamed narrator is Everywoman and no one at the same time. At one point she reveals, with no fanfare, that she miscarried four months into pregnancy in the bathroom of one of the houses she cleans. There is a bittersweet tone to this short work. It’s a low-key, genuine portrait of life in the in-between stages and how it can be affected by fate or by other people’s decisions.
Bewilderment by Richard Powers: As environmentally aware as The Overstory, but with a more intimate scope, focusing on a father and son who journey together in memory and imagination as well as in real life. Neurodivergent Robin is a scientific marvel and an environmental activist. Theo studies other planets that rival an ailing Earth, and another state allows Robin to reconnect with his late mother. When I came to the end, I felt despondent and overwhelmed. But as time has passed, the book’s feral beauty has stuck with me.
In the Company of Men: The Ebola Tales by Véronique Tadjo: This creative and compassionate work takes on various personae to plot the course of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014–16. The suffering is immense, and there are ironic situations that only compound the tragedy. Tadjo flows freely between all the first-person voices, even including non-human narrators such as baobab trees and a fruit bat. Local legends and songs, along with a few of her own poems, also enter into the text.
If I had to pick my novel of the year, it would be The Living Sea of Waking Dreams.
Books not pictured were from the library or read electronically.
Poetry
Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar: An Iranian American poet imparts the experience of being torn between cultures and languages, as well as between religion and doubt, in this gorgeous collection of confessional verse. Food, plants, animals, and the body supply the book’s imagery. Wordplay and startling juxtapositions lend lightness to a wistful, intimate collection that seeks belonging and belief. (Reviewed for Shelf Awareness.)
Field Requiem by Sheri Benning: Benning employs religious language to structure her solemn meditations on the degraded landscape of Saskatchewan, a place where old ways have been replaced by impersonal, industrial-scale farming. You can hear the rhythms of psalms and the echoes of the requiem mass. Alliteration pops out from lists of crops and the prairie species their cultivation has pushed to the edge of extinction. This is deeply place based writing. With its ecological conscience and liturgical sound, it’s just my kind of poetry.
Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefick: In this audacious debut collection, the body is presented as a battleground: for the brain cancer that takes the poet’s father; for disordered eating that entwines with mummy issues; for the restructuring of pregnancy. Families break apart and fuse into new formations. Cannibalism and famine metaphors dredge up emotional states and religious doctrines. There’s a pleasingly morbid cast to the book, but it also has its lighter moments. Rich with imagery and alliteration, this is also just my kind of poetry.
What are some of the best books you’ve read so far this year?
What 2021 releases do I need to catch up on right away?
The Ones that Got Away: 2021’s DNFs, Most Anticipated Reads & More
I’ve not been great about keeping track of my abandoned books this year, nor have I been consistent about writing justifications. I’m particularly wary about casting aspersions on books that I know others have loved (such as the latest novels by Jonathan Franzen, Lauren Groff and Elizabeth Strout). I don’t like to belabour the matter, but every time I list my DNFs I do find that the posts are absurdly popular, so if this is the permission you need to drop that book you’ve been struggling with for months, take it! If for any reason a book isn’t connecting with you, move onto something else; you can always try it again another time.
For most I’ve given the usual (horribly reductive and unfair) two-word summaries, with longer reactions then given to the DNFs that were on my “most anticipated” list. In rough chronological order:
The Dickens Boy by Thomas Keneally: Too dull.
A Fire in My Head: Poems for the Dawn by Ben Okri: Too unsubtle.
Nobody Told Me: Poetry and Parenthood by Hollie McNish: Too long.
A Burning by Megha Majumdar: Too amateurish.
A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion: Too 1980s.
The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex: Too suspense-less.
The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin: Too slow.
Escape Routes by Naomi Ishiguro: Too undistinctive.
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat: Too Creative-Writing-MA-alum.
The Last Migration by Charlotte McConaghy: Too overwrought.
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia: Too dispersed.
Bewilderness by Karen Tucker: Too Marlena-wannabe.
Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz: Too early-2000s-Oprah’s-book-club.
Will This House Last Forever? by Xanthi Barker: Too Featherhood-lite.
The Union of Synchronised Swimmers by Cristina Sandu: Too vague.
The Cape Doctor by E. J. Levy: Too plodding.
Fathoms by Rebecca Giggs: Too dense.
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen: Too wordy.
Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine Raven: Too lyrical.
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout: Too scatter-brained.
Dark Tourist: Essays by Hasanthika Sirisena: Too unfocused.
Darwin’s Dragons by Lindsay Galvin: Too non-Darwin.
Something Out of Place: Women and Disgust by Eimear McBride: Too researched.
The Art of Reassembly by Peg Conway: Too homespun.
Coming Clean: A true story of love, addiction and recovery by Liz Fraser: Too soon.
Beautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang: Too child-POV.
Deadheading and Other Stories by Beth Gilstrap: Too drifting-to-nowhere.
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid: Too soapy.
Philomath: Poems by Devon Walker-Figueroa: Too weird.
Taste: My Life through Food by Stanley Tucci: Too celebrity-rather-than-author.
Somewhere between 30 and 40 DNFs is not too bad for me, representing around 10% of the books I started this year, rather than my standard 15%.
In January, I highlighted the 20 releases that I was most looking forward to reading in 2021. Here’s how I did:
Read and loved: 7 (4 will be on my Best-of lists for the year)
Read and found disappointing (i.e., rated 3.5 stars or below): 4
Still have a review copy to read: 1
Haven’t managed to find yet: 3
DNFs: 5 (oh so poor! – is my “most anticipated” designation actually a kiss of death?)
These were:
Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge – I was a big fan of Greenidge’s debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, but this Reconstruction-era story of an African American doctor and her daughter/protégée bored me stiff. After two attempts I could barely get past page 30.
Matrix by Lauren Groff – It’s as if Groff set herself the challenge of applying the most modern style possible (present tense, no speech marks, pared-back prose, sexual frankness) to a medieval setting. The result is readable, which is more than I can say for most of what’s set in that time period, but I waited 75 pages for something to happen. All we’d had thus far was people commenting on how unsuitable ungainly six-foot Marie is to be an abbess and lots of detail about the privations of life at that time unless you have money as a cushion.
Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley – I read the first 110 pages and felt a bit puzzled by Mozley’s change in direction: This is the sort of state-of-the-nation (via London) novel that male authors were writing a decade ago, in the Dickensian mode of broad characterization and coincidental connection. The omniscient, present-tense narration does too much skating over the surface and not enough digging into characters’ individuality and motivation.
An Ordinary Wonder by Buki Papillon – I read 25 pages or so. Adebayo/Adichie vibes but not the writing chops or the interesting story. Too bad, as I was interested in another intersex narrative to compare with Middlesex et al.
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead – I tried this twice and found it bloated and slow; such a disappointment. Perhaps I’ll find the right moment in the future. In the meantime, I look forward to reading Shipstead’s first short story collection next year instead. Here’s hoping that her short-form storytelling will work out better for me!
Not a great showing, then, but I can’t seem to resist getting my hopes up each year. (My Most Anticipated Books of 2022 post will be coming up early in January!)
I regret running out of time in 2021 to finish The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton or read my review copy of Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith. The other 2021 releases I’m most keen to get hold of are Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed, The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel, Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow, The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish, What Doesn’t Kill You by Tessa Miller, On Freedom by Maggie Nelson, Names of the Women by Jeet Thayil and O Beautiful by Jung Yun.
What are some of the ‘ones that got away’ from you this year?
Seasons’ Greetings: Winter (Part I) & Christmas Reading
My first few wintry reads for the season included a modern children’s classic, a wonderful poetry collection, and a so-so Advent-set novella. For my pre-Christmas reads, I have a couple of story-length classics and two recent novellas.
Winter Story by Jill Barklem (1980)
My favourite of the series so far (just Spring still to go) for how nostalgic it is for winter traditions.
“Tobogganing tomorrow,” said Wilfred.
“Snow pancakes for tea,” said Clover.
“We’ll make a snow mouse,” said Catkin.
The mice host a Snow Ball at the Ice Hall, with outfits and dances out of Austen and victuals out of Dickens. As always, the tree-trunk interiors are lit up like doll’s house tableaux with cosy rooms and well-stocked larders. Nothing much happens in this one, but that was fine with me: no need for a conflict and its resolution when you’ve got such a lovely, lucky life. (Public library) 
The Winter Orchards by Nina Bogin (2001)
After enjoying Thousandfold in 2019, I was keen to catch up on Bogin’s previous poetry. Themes I’d noted in her latest work, nature and family, are key here, too. There is an overall wistful tone to the book, as in the passages below:
I didn’t like lungwort at first,
its spotted leaves, its furred
flowers, and I didn’t like its name.
But now I want to gather lungwort again,
now that I can’t return
to the brook meadow I picked it in (from “Lungwort”)
I’ll love the fallow and forgotten fields
because I have no choice, and woods
whose paths have been erased. (from “Landscape”)
The losses responded to are sometimes personal – saying Kaddish for her father – and sometimes more broadly representative, as when she writes about a dead bird found on the road or conflicts like the Gulf War and former Yugoslavia. Alongside beautiful nature poetry featuring birds and plants are vignettes from travels in France, Sweden, and upstate New York. (New purchase) 
An Advent Calendar by Shena Mackay (1978)
I smugly started this on the first day of Advent, and initially enjoyed Mackay’s macabre habit of taking elements of the Nativity scene or a traditional Christmas and giving them a seedy North London twist. So we open on a butcher’s shop and a young man wearing “bloody swabbing cloths” rather than swaddling clothes, having lost a finger to the meat mincer (and later we see “a misty Christmas postman with his billowy sack come out of the abattoir’s gates”). In this way, John Wood becomes an unwitting cannibal after taking a parcel home from the butcher’s that day, and can’t forget about it as he moves his temporarily homeless family into his old uncle’s house and continues halfheartedly in his job as a cleaner. His wife has an affair; so does a teenage girl at the school where his sister works. No one is happy and everything is sordid. “Scouring powder snowed” and the animal at this perverse manger scene is the uncle’s neglected goat. This novella is soon read, but soon forgotten. (Secondhand purchase) 
And so to Christmas…
“The Christmas Dinner” by Washington Irving (1820)
An evocative portrait of an English Christmas meal, hosted by a squire in the great hall of his manor, originally published in Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. A boar’s head, a mummers’ play, the Lord of Misrule: you couldn’t get much more traditional. “Master Simon covered himself with glory by the stateliness with which, as Ancient Christmas, he walked a minuet with the peerless, though giggling, Dame Mince Pie.” Irving’s narrator knows this little tale isn’t profound or intellectually satisfying, but hopes it will raise a smile. He also has a sense that he is recording something that might soon pass away:
I felt also an interest in the scene, from the consideration that these fleeting customs were posting fast into oblivion. … There was a quaintness, too, mingled with all this revelry, that gave it a peculiar zest; it was suited to the time and place; and as the old Manor House almost reeled with mirth and wassail, it seemed echoing back the joviality of long-departed years.
A pleasant one-sitting read; so much better than a Christmas card! 
This Renard Press pamphlet is in support of Three Peas, a charity providing food and medical care to refugees in Europe. Thanks to Annabel for my gifted copy!
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2021)
Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people.
This was our second most popular read during last month’s Novellas in November challenge. I’d read a lot about it in fellow bloggers’ posts and newspaper reviews so knew to expect a meticulously chiselled and heartwarming story about a coal merchant in 1980s Ireland who comes to value his quiet family life all the more when he sees how difficult existence is for the teen mothers sent to work in the local convent’s laundry service. Born out of wedlock himself nearly 40 years ago, he is grateful that his mother received kindness and wishes he could do more to help the desperate girls he meets when he makes deliveries to the convent.
I found this a fairly predictable narrative, and the nuns are cartoonishly villainous. So I wasn’t as enthusiastic as many others have been, but still enjoyed having this as one of my reads on my travel day to the USA. I was familiar with the Magdalene Laundries from the movie The Magdalene Sisters and found this a touching reminder to be grateful for what you have while helping those less fortunate. A perfect message for Christmas. (NetGalley) 
Miss Marley by Vanessa Lafaye (2018)
Lafaye was a local-ish author to me, an American expat living in Marlborough. When she died of breast cancer in 2018, she left this A Christmas Carol prequel unfinished, and fellow historical novelist Rebecca Mascull completed it for her. Clara and Jacob Marley come from money but end up on the streets, stealing from the rich to get by. Jacob sets himself up as a moneylender to the poor and then, after serving an apprenticeship alongside Ebenezer Scrooge, goes into business with him. They are a bad influence on each other, reinforcing each other’s greed and hard hearts. Jacob is determined never to be poor again. Because he’s forgotten what it’s like, he has no compassion when Clara falls in love with a luckless Scottish tea merchant. Like Scrooge, Jacob is offered one final chance to mend his ways. This was easy and pleasant reading, but I did wonder if there was a point to reading this when one could just reread Dickens’s original. (Secondhand purchase) 
A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas (1952)
(Illus. Edward Ardizzone, 1978)
It’s a wonder I’d never managed to read this short story before. I was prepared for something slightly twee; instead, it is sprightly and imaginative, full of unexpected images and wordplay. In the Wales of his childhood, there were wolves and bears and hippos. Young boys could get up to all sorts of mischief, but knew that a warm house packed with relatives and a cosy bed awaited at the end of a momentous day. Reflective and magical in equal measure; a lovely wee volume that I am sure to reread year after year. (Little Free Library) 
A favourite passage:
Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.
If there’s been one adjective linking most of these books, it’s been “nostalgic.” There’s something about winter in general, and the holiday season in particular, that lends itself to thinking back to the past and trying to preserve traditions, isn’t there?
What’s on your holiday reading pile this year?
Cover Love: My Favourite Book Covers of 2021
As I did in 2019 and again last year, I’ve picked out some favourite book covers from the year’s new releases. In general, slap some flora and/or fauna on and I’m going to be drawn to a book. A lot of these covers are colourful and busy; on some later ones the layout is more stark.
Here are my favourite covers from books I’ve actually read:
Plus a couple I’ve read whose covers aren’t quite like the others (I like swirly lines):
I prefer the U.S. cover (left) to the U.K. cover in these three cases:
And I’ve noticed these particular fonts seem popular nowadays:
Here are some covers that caught my eye even though I’ve not read the books themselves (or maybe don’t plan to):
A few even buck the flora/fauna trend, employing interesting lines, shapes or perspective instead.
And I think these would be my absolute favourites:
What cover trends have you noticed this year?
Which ones tend to grab your attention?
Three on a Theme: Novels of Female Friendship
Friendship is a fairly common theme in my reading and, like sisterhood, it’s an element I can rarely resist. When I picked up a secondhand copy of Female Friends (below) in a charity shop in Hexham over the summer, I spied a chance for another thematic roundup. I limited myself to novels I’d read recently and to groups of women friends.
Before Everything by Victoria Redel (2017)
I found out about this one from Susan’s review at A life in books (and she included it in her own thematic roundup of novels on friendship). “The Old Friends” have known each other for decades, since elementary school. Anna, Caroline, Helen, Ming and Molly. Their lives have gone in different directions – painter, psychiatrist, singer in a rock band and so on – but in March 2013 they’re huddling together because Anna is terminally ill. Over the years she’s had four remissions, but it’s clear the lymphoma won’t go away this time. Some of Anna’s friends and family want her to keep fighting, but the core group of pals is going to have to learn to let her die on her own terms. Before that, though, they aim for one more adventure.
Through the short, titled sections, some of them pages in length but others only a sentence or two, you piece together the friends’ history and separate struggles. Here’s an example of one such fragment, striking for the frankness and intimacy; how coyly those bald numbers conceal such joyful and wrenching moments:
Actually, for What It’s Worth
Between them there were twelve delivered babies. Three six- to eight-week abortions. Three miscarriages. One post-amniocentesis selective abortion. That’s just for the record.
While I didn’t like this quite as much as Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg, which is similar in setup, it’s a must-read on the theme. It’s sweet and sombre by turns, and has bite. I also appreciated how Redel contrasts the love between old friends with marital love and the companionship of new neighbourly friends. I hadn’t heard of Redel before, but she’s published another four novels and three poetry collections. It’d be worth finding more by her. The cover image is inspired by a moment late in a book when they find a photograph of the five of them doing handstands in a sprinkler the summer before seventh grade. (Public library)
Female Friends by Fay Weldon (1974)
Like a cross between The Orchard on Fire by Shena Mackay and The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer; this is the darkly funny story of Marjorie, Chloe and Grace: three Londoners who have stayed friends ever since their turbulent childhood during the Second World War, when Marjorie was sent to live with Grace and her mother. They have a nebulous brood of children between them, some fathered by a shared lover (a slovenly painter named Patrick). Chloe’s husband is trying to make her jealous with his sexual attentions to their French nanny. Marjorie, who works for the BBC, is the only one without children; she has a gynaecological condition and is engaged in a desultory search for her father.
The book is mostly in the third person, but some chapters are voiced by Chloe and occasional dialogues are set out like a film script. I enjoyed the glimpses I got into women’s lives in the mid-20th century via the three protagonists and their mothers. All are more beholden to men than they’d like to be. But there’s an overall grimness to this short novel that left me wincing. I’d expected more nostalgia (“they are nostalgic, all the same, for those days of innocence and growth and noise. The post-war world is drab and grey and middle-aged. No excitement, only shortages and work”) and warmth, but this friendship trio is characterized by jealousy and resentment. (Secondhand copy) 
The Weekend by Charlotte Wood (2019)
“It was exhausting, being friends. Had they ever been able to tell each other the truth?”
It’s the day before Christmas Eve as seventysomethings Jude, Wendy and Adele gather to clear out their late friend’s Sylvie’s house in a fictional coastal town in New South Wales. This being Australia, that means blazing hot weather and a beach barbecue rather than a cosy winter scene. Jude is a bristly former restaurateur who has been the mistress of a married man for many years. Wendy is a widowed academic who brings her decrepit dog, Finn, along with her. Adele is a washed-up actress who carefully maintains her appearance but still can’t find meaningful work.
They know each other so well, faults and all. Things they think they’ve hidden are beyond obvious to the others. And for as much as they miss Sylvie, they are angry at her, too. But there is also a fierce affection in the mix that I didn’t sense in the Weldon: “[Adele] remembered them from long ago, two girls alive with purpose and beauty. Her love for them was inexplicable. It was almost bodily.” Yet Wendy compares their tenuous friendship to the Great Barrier Reef coral, at risk of being bleached.
It’s rare to see so concerted a look at women in later life, as the characters think back and wonder if they’ve made the right choices. There are plenty of secrets and self-esteem struggles, but it’s all encased in an acerbic wit that reminded me of Emma Straub and Elizabeth Strout. Terrific stuff. (Twitter giveaway win)
Some favourite lines:
“The past was striated through you, through your body, leaching into the present and the future.”
“Was this what getting old was made of? Routines and evasions, boring yourself to death with your own rigid judgements?”
On this theme, I have also read: The Other’s Gold by Elizabeth Ames, Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić, The Group by Lara Feigel (and Mary McCarthy), My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, Expectation by Anna Hope, Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, and The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker.
If you read just one … The Weekend was the best of this bunch for me.
Have you read much on this topic?
Reading Across the Seasons: England in All Weathers
Recently, I toured multiple seasons via these three pleasantly meandering books for Anglophiles. All:
Orchard by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates (2020)
Bristol friends and BBC colleagues Ben Macdonald and Nick Gates set out to chronicle a year in the life of a traditional Herefordshire orchard that has been managed differently from the industrial norm. Operations are designed to maximize wildlife as well as production, so the orchard has become a bastion for birds and insects. After a brief history of apple cultivation and orchard design, it’s straight into a month-by-month rundown of what can be seen and heard on this particular patch. For the most part, the co-authors trade off chapters. They observe and describe the kinds of behaviours that most of us never get to see. A central section of remarkable photographs, some of them by the authors, illustrates the year as vividly as the passionate prose. (See my full review at Shiny New Books.)
With thanks to William Collins for the free copy for review.
Light Rains Sometimes Fall by Lev Parikian (2021)
It was only 2018 that I read Why Do Birds Suddenly Disappear? but since then we’ve had another three books from Lev Parikian. It’s now hard to imagine a year without one of his genial nature books. Here he adapts Japan’s famous 72 microseasons to an English year, with every five days or so taking on a slightly different character and welcoming in the subtle changes that add up to big ones. Given the Japanese inspiration, it’s appropriate that his entries sometimes read like haikus. Here’s one from the start of 2–7 September: “The streets. Rumble of traffic. Gentle wind in trees. Soft chrrr of blue tit. Furious cawing, stage left.”
Parikian’s patch is South London, specifically his local cemetery – which, since the book starts in February 2020, was closed off to him for a short time a month later when the first UK lockdown hit. This only served to increase his appreciation for the place when it reopened. (Cemeteries are amazing places for wildlife in general, especially the more park-like ones: I can remember seeing muntjac at Cemetery Junction in Reading, and red-tailed hawks perched in the trees in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.) Here, his star sighting was an occasional peregrine on the church tower.
The idea behind this book of mini nature essays is to try to see things again as if for the first time. In the pandemic year, he finds that time is elastic: it seems both fast and slow, and paying close attention is a way of valuing nature and experience. After all, as Parikian quotes from Confucius, “Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see it.” This reminded me particularly of Birdsong in a Time of Silence, but the tone is refreshingly light, as readers will have come to expect of Parikian.
Controversially, because I picked this up in September, I started reading it from the first September chapter, carried on to the end and then began again at the beginning and caught myself up, a strategy I have only ever taken with Mark Cocker’s Claxton (another month-by-month nature diary-type narrative) before. Initially, it was a nice way of following along with the seasons. I kept this as a bedside book and would read a chapter before bed. Most of us live in cities or suburbs, so I particularly appreciated the enthusiastic advocacy for the value of urban spaces for nature. I recommend this one for reading your way slowly and attentively through the seasons.
With thanks to Elliott & Thompson for the proof copy for review.
England for All Seasons by Susan Allen Toth (1997)
A reread. As I was getting ready to go overseas for the first time in the summer of 2003, Toth’s trilogy of memoirs whetted my appetite for travel in Britain. (They’re on my Landmark Books in My Life, Part II list.) I loved how warmly she invites readers to join her itineraries and shares tips for lesser-known destinations.
This was her third set of England essays, prompted by a question she frequently got from friends and readers: when is the best time to go? Her answer would be to go whenever you can, as often as you can, because rain can be delightful and in the off season you’ll have special places to yourself. I can see that I have this book to thank for the memorable Cornwall vacation I had with my mom and sister in April 2004, midway through my study abroad year: two of the sites she highlights here, St. Ives and the seal sanctuary at Gweek (part of the “Touring England’s Ark” chapter) were among our chosen stops.
Toth is a particular fan of gardens and literary sites, but loves London museums and theatres as much as windswept coastal and island scenery. When in England she lets herself sample multiple desserts from the sweet trolley, fill her suitcase with secondhand books, and pepper her speech with exclamations of “Lovely!” and “Brilliant!” I was relieved to be reminded of her suggested one-hour time limit for any museum – “depart without guilt, as soon as your eyes droop or your feet hurt or your heavy shoulder bag sinks to the floor. When you begin wondering if it is too early for lunch, head for the door.” (I poop out at museums very quickly.) The practical information she includes at the end of each chapter is probably entirely out of date, but her ideas are solid, and a quick web search will update any details.
The final essay, “Travel Time,” perfectly captures the holiday spirit: “Because our travel time is so densely filled, with intense if often quiet experiences, I am always astonished at what has happened—or rather, what has not happened—when we return home. After two weeks of living so vividly, newness in each hour, I feel as if I must have changed in significant ways.” (Free from The Book Thing of Baltimore)
The Barbellion Prize 2021 Longlist
This is the second year that the Barbellion Prize will be awarded “to an author whose work has best represented the experience of chronic illness and/or disability.” It was a joy to read the entire shortlist for the inaugural prize this past February and support the well-deserved win of Riva Lehrer for Golem Girl. I’ll be following the 2021–22 race with interest again, not least because one of the three judges is a long-time blogger friend of mine, Eleanor Franzen.
This year’s longlist looks fascinating: it contains fiction, poetry and memoir, and includes two works in translation. I happen to have already read the three nonfiction selections, but hadn’t heard of the other nominees.
Click on any title below for more information from the publisher website.
Ultimatum Orangutan by Khairani Barokka (Nine Arches Press)
From the synopsis: “Barokka’s second poetry collection is an intricate exploration of colonialism and environmental injustice … Through these defiant, potent verses, the body—particularly the disabled body—is centred as an ecosystem in its own right.”
What Willow Says by Lynn Buckle (Époque Press)
From the synopsis: “Sharing stories of myths, legends and ancient bogs, a deaf child and her grandmother experiment with the lyrical beauty of sign language. A poignant tale of family bonding and the quiet acceptance of change.”
A Still Life: A Memoir by Josie George (Bloomsbury)
Excerpt from my TLS review: Chronic illness long ago reduced George’s territory to her home and garden. The magic of A Still Life is in how she finds joy and purpose despite extreme limitations. Opening on New Year’s Day and travelling from one winter to the next, the book is a window onto her quiet existence as well as the turning of the seasons. (One of my favourites of the year.)
I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir by Jan Grue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Pushkin Press). Translated by B. L. Crook
Excerpt from my Shelf Awareness review: The University of Oslo professor was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at age three and relies on an electric wheelchair. In his powerful, matter-of-fact memoir, he alternates between his own story and others’, doctors’ reports and theorists’ quotations, mingling the academic and the intimate. 
Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Excerpt from my blog review: Hattrick and their mother share a ME/CFS diagnosis. The book searches desultorily for medical answers but ultimately rests in mystery. Into a family story, Hattrick weaves the lives and writings of chronically ill women such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alice James and Virginia Woolf.
The Coward by Jarred McGinnis (Canongate)
From the synopsis: “After a car accident Jarred discovers he’ll never walk again. … Add in a shoplifting habit, an addiction to painkillers and the fact that total strangers now treat him like he’s an idiot, it’s a recipe for self-destruction. How can he stop himself careering out of control?”
Duck Feet by Ely Percy (Monstrous Regiment)
From the synopsis: “A coming-of-age novel, set in the mid-noughties in Renfrew and Paisley, Scotland. … This book is a celebration of youth in an ever-changing world. It uses humour to tackle hard-hitting subjects such as drugs, bullying, sexuality, and teenage pregnancy.”
Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (Charco Press). Translated by Frances Riddle
From the synopsis: “After Rita is found dead in the bell tower of the church she used to attend, the official investigation into the incident is quickly closed. Her sickly mother is the only person still determined to find the culprit.”
I’m most keen to read Ultimatum Orangutan (that title!), but would gladly read any of the new-to-me titles. The shortlist will be announced in January 2022.
Do any of the nominees appeal to you?
Surviving Home by Katerina Canyon & B: A Year in Plagues and Pencils by Edward Carey
Catching up on two recent review books today: a hard-hitting volume of poems about family dysfunction and racism; and the pandemic year as captured in black-and-white illustrations and short autobiographical essays.
Surviving Home by Katerina Canyon
Katerina Canyon is from Los Angeles and now lives in Seattle. This is her second collection. As the poem “Involuntary Endurance” makes clear, you survive an upbringing like hers only because you have to. This autobiographical collection is designed to earn the epithet “unflinching,” with topics including domestic violence, parental drug abuse, and homelessness. When you hear that her father once handcuffed and whipped her autistic brother, you understand why “No More Poems about My Father” ends up breaking its title’s New Year’s resolution!
Threatening forces are everywhere: bears and sharks recur, and beet juice mimics blood. (Though there’s a nice cornbread metaphor, it, too, holds menace: “I have no trust in humanity / I lost that when I was 3 / It was baked in a pan of / Cornbread and eaten by // Demons.”)
Canyon also has anti-Trump material, and the poems about the ongoing effects of racism reminded me of some of Natasha Trethewey’s work. I particularly liked a poem structured around words and phrases coined in the year of the poet’s birth. There’s plenty of noteworthy language and images here, but the tough subject matter may limit the audience.
With thanks to Kelsay Books and the publicist for the free e-copy for review.
B: A Year in Plagues and Pencils by Edward Carey
I was a huge fan of Edward Carey’s Little. His black-and-white sketches kept turning up on my Twitter timeline throughout 2020. He sent the first, “A determined young man,” into the world on March 19, 2020, vowing to make a drawing a day until the pandemic was over. Perhaps a rash thing to agree to, and at times he regretted it, but he kept his promise for 500 days and wore out many a B pencil in the process.
This book covers the first 365 days of the project and also provides a rough recap of the turbulent year that was 2020. Carey’s subjects include politicians (his leanings are clear from his unflattering caricatures of Trump and other Republicans), writers, actors, birds and family members. Some were by request; others marked a public figure’s death. You can track the vaccine’s progress and outrage over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other victims of institutional racism. As an Englishman in Texas, Carey feels he doesn’t understand the country he lives in (though he loves its wildlife) and finds himself missing London.
Carey’s style veers towards the grotesque, so is best suited to fictional characters and those with distinctive features. I particularly liked a drawing of Rudy Guiliani dripping hair dye, the two-part spread of Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve versus Christmas Day, and a farewell to 2020 as a wizened ogre opposite a hello to 2021 as a cheerful baby.
I was also delighted to see a drawing of W.N.P. Barbellion to mark the inaugural Barbellion Prize. In general, though, I doubt the value of simple reproductions of well-known paintings and photographs. If the goal was lifelike versions of real people, some of these miss the mark; the features are simply off. And Carey is not always great at rendering non-white people.
The pleasure of this collection is in seeing the variety from one page to the next: a laughing Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, a capybara, and so on. There are one to four of the drawings printed per page, with short reflections from Carey interspersed between sections. In these mini-essays he talks about his process, where he got his ideas, and lockdown life with his family (his wife is author Elizabeth McCracken; they have two children and a cat).
One day noses will be permissible again. And then there will be mouths, too. And chins, likewise, shall be popular. … I’m forgetting faces. I miss people, of course, terribly. Yet every day out of the window there are still people there. I see these individuals walking up and down the street. Can’t see their faces. Only their eyes and the top of their heads. Like a new breed of human, with no nose, no mouth, no chin. Who are they? Don’t get too close. Everyone’s keeping their distance.
The drawings were a way of marking time, so the book serves as a time capsule of sorts. The text is perhaps an afterthought, and yet the random assemblage of illustrations couldn’t stand without it (I tried to imagine them filling an exhibit, but extensive captioning would be required). I feel a bit uncharitable for criticizing the artwork, given the constraints and the fact that I couldn’t produce even one sketch of nearly this quality. This was a perfectly pleasant and quick read, just not one that will stay with me. I think the same is true of a number of the other Covid diaries I’ve read: they feel ephemeral. However, it’s an attractive small-format hardback that should make it into many a Christmas stocking this year.
With thanks to Gallic Books for the free copy for review.
P.S. This is my 1,000th post!
The Book of Difficult Fruit by Kate Lebo
I have a soft spot for uncategorizable nonfiction like this. My expectation was for a food memoir, but while the essays incorporate shards of autobiography and, yes, recipes, they also dive into everything from botany and cultural history to medicinal uses. Kate Lebo has a finger in many pies – a figure of speech I use deliberately, as she is primarily a baker (but also a poet) and her three previous books are about pie.
You won’t find any ordinary apples or oranges here. Difficult fruit – “the Tart, Tender, and Unruly,” as the subtitle elaborates – is different: rarer to find, more challenging to process, perhaps harder to love. Instead of bananas and pears, then, you’ll read about the niche (aronia and thimbleberries), the rotten and malodorous (medlars and durian fruit), and the downright inedible (just one: the Osage orange, only suitable for repelling spiders or turning into decorations). These fruits might be foraged on hikes, sent by friends and relatives in other parts of the USA, or sold at Lebo’s local Spokane, Washington farmer’s market. Occasionally the ‘recipes’ are for non-food items, such as a pomegranate face mask or yuzu body oil.
The A-to-Z format required some creativity and occasions great trivia but also poignant stories. J is for juniper berry, a traditional abortifacient, and brings to mind for Lebo the time she went to Denver to accompany a friend to an abortion appointment. N is for the Norton grape, an American variety whose wine is looked down upon compared to European cultivars. Q is for quince, what Eve likely ate in the Garden of Eden; like the first humans in the biblical account, Lebo’s pair of adopted aunts were cast out for their badness. W is for wheat, a reminder of her doomed relationship with a man who strictly avoided gluten; X is for xylitol, whose structure links to her stepdaughter’s belief in the power of crystals.
Health is a recurring element that intersects with eating habits: Lebo has ulcerative colitis, depression and allergies; her grandfather was a pharmacist and her mother is a physical therapist who suffers from migraines and is always trying out different diets. The extent to which a fruit can genuinely promote wellness is a question that is pondered more than once. Whether the main focus is on the foodstuff or the family experience, each piece is carefully researched so as to be authoritative yet conversational. The author is particularly good at describing smells and tastes, which can be so difficult to translate into words:
My first taste of durian was as candy, a beige lozenge with a slight pink blush that my boss at the time dared me to try. … It tasted of strawberries and old garlic. I had to will myself to finish. … My second taste of durian was at dim sum in New York City, visiting a man who would never love me. The durian was stewed, sweetened, and crenellated with flaky dough. … [It] was like peaches laced with onions, and had a richness that made my chest tight. Each bite was a dare. Could I keep going?
A single medlar that has been bletted outdoors through early December can be eaten in three bites. The first taste will be of spiced applesauce. … The second taste, because the medlar has spent long cold weeks on the branch, is sparkling wine. Not a good sparkling wine, but pleasant enough. Slightly explosive-tasting, like certain manufactured candies. Ugly, but what a personality. The third taste is a cold mildew one usually only smells, and generally interprets as a warning not to eat any more. You have now finished the medlar.
Two essays in a row best exemplified the book’s approach for me. The chapter on gooseberries, the cover stars, captures everything I love about them (we have two bushes; this year we turned our haul into a couple of Nigel Slater’s crumble cakes and a batch of gingery jam) and gives tips on preparation plus recipes I could see myself making. “Gooseberries are sour like you’ve arrived before they were ready for company, like they wanted you to see them in a better dress,” Lebo writes. The piece on huckleberries then shares Indigenous (Salish) wisdom about the fruit and notes that in a Spokane McDonald’s you can buy a huckleberry shake.
Over the eight months I spent with this collection – picking it up once in a while to read an essay, or a portion of one – I absorbed a lot of information, as well as some ideas for dishes I might actually try. Most of all, I admired how this book manages to be about everything, which makes sense because food is not just central to our continued survival but also bound up with collective and personal identity, memory, and traditions. Though it started off slightly scattershot for me, it’s ended up being one of my favorite reading experiences of the year.
With thanks to Picador for the free copy for review.
Six Degrees: Ethan Frome to A Mother’s Reckoning
This month we began with Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, which was our buddy read for the short classics week of Novellas in November. I reread and reviewed it recently. (See Kate’s opening post.)
#1 When I posted an excerpt of my Ethan Frome review on Instagram, I got a comment from the publicist who was involved with the recent UK release of The Smash-Up by Ali Benjamin, a modern update of Wharton’s plot. Here’s part of the blurb: “Life for Ethan and Zo used to be simple. Ethan co-founded a lucrative media start-up, and Zo was well on her way to becoming a successful filmmaker. Then they moved to a rural community for a little more tranquility—or so they thought. … Enter a houseguest who is young, fun, and not at all concerned with the real world, and Ethan is abruptly forced to question everything: his past, his future, his marriage, and what he values most.” I’m going to try to get hold of a review copy when the paperback comes out in February.
#2 One of my all-time favourite debut novels is The Innocents by Francesca Segal, which won the Costa First Novel Award in 2012. It is also a contemporary reworking of an Edith Wharton novel, this time The Age of Innocence. Segal’s love triangle, set in a world I know very little about (the tight-knit Jewish community of northwest London), stays true to the emotional content of the original: the interplay of love and desire, jealousy and frustration. Adam Newman has been happily paired with Rachel Gilbert for nearly 12 years. Now engaged, Adam and Rachel seem set to become pillars of the community. Suddenly, their future is threatened by the return of Rachel’s bad-girl American cousin, Ellie Schneider.
#3 Also set in north London’s Jewish community is The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013. Chani is the fifth of eight daughters in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in Golders Green. The story begins and closes with Chani and Baruch’s wedding ceremony, and in between it loops back to detail their six-month courtship and highlight a few events from their family past. It’s a light-hearted, gossipy tale of interclass matchmaking in the Jane Austen vein.
#4 I learned more about Jewish beliefs and rituals via several memoirs, including Between Gods by Alison Pick. Her paternal grandparents escaped Czechoslovakia just before the Holocaust; she only found out that her father was Jewish through eavesdropping. In 2008 the author (a Toronto-based novelist and poet) decided to convert to Judaism. The book vividly depicts a time of tremendous change, covering a lot of other issues Pick was dealing with simultaneously, such as depression, preparation for marriage, pregnancy, and so on.
#5 One small element of Pick’s story was her decision to be tested for the BRCA gene because it’s common among Ashkenazi Jews. Tay-Sachs disease is usually found among Ashkenazi Jews, but because only her husband was Jewish, Emily Rapp never thought to be tested before she became pregnant with her son Ronan. Had she known she was also a carrier, things might have gone differently. The Still Point of the Turning World was written while her young son was still alive, but terminally ill.
#6 Another wrenching memoir of losing a son: A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold, whose son Dylan was one of the Columbine school shooters. I was in high school myself at the time, and the event made a deep impression on me. Perhaps the most striking thing about this book is Klebold’s determination to reclaim Columbine as a murder–suicide and encourage mental health awareness; all author proceeds were donated to suicide prevention and mental health charities. There’s no real redemptive arc, though, no easy answers; just regrets. If something similar could happen to any family, no one is immune. And Columbine was only one of many major shootings. I finished this feeling spent, even desolate. Yet this is a vital book everyone should read.
So, I’ve gone from one unremittingly bleak book to another, via sex, religion and death. Nothing for cheerful holiday reading – or a polite dinner party conversation – here! All my selections were by women this month.
Where will your chain take you? Join us for #6Degrees of Separation! (Hosted on the first Saturday of each month by Kate W. of Books Are My Favourite and Best.)
Next month’s starting point is Rules of Civility by Amor Towles; I have a copy on the shelf and this would be a good excuse to read it!
Have you read any of my selections? Are you tempted by any you didn’t know before?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
