Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain (Blog Tour)
I’m a sucker for “dirty realism,” a term coined in the 1980s to encompass gritty stories of blue-collar Americana: Ron Rash, David Vann, Daniel Woodrell et al. (I wrote a whole article about it in 2013). It’s less common, certainly, to find women writing in this subgenre, and that feminine touch is part of what makes Sidle Creek unique. In this debut collection of 22 short stories, loosely linked by their location in the Appalachian hills in western Pennsylvania and a couple of recurring minor characters, Jolene McIlwain softens the harsh realities of addiction, poverty and violence with the tender bruises of infertility and lost love.
The title story, which opens the book, has a shifting first-person point-of-view, first telling us about and then putting us into the mind of Esme Andersen, who’s 20 in 1975. Various diagnoses have plagued her family, medical words that repeat as chants: hemorrhage, endometriosis. Superstitions around the creek cast it alternately as a potential site of harm or healing as her single father tries to help her deal with her severe periods. The cover image comes from “Shell,” in which Tiller Shanty reads signs in the markings on red-winged blackbird eggs. He learned his skill of divination from his Vietnamese wife, but conceals from her a portent about her future. It turns out there’s more than one way to lose a beloved.
Grief is a resonant theme in so many of the stories. “The Fractal Geometry of Grief” is a shining example. Hubert Ashe, a widowed mathematician, becomes obsessed with a doe and sets up trail cams and a feeding station to watch her. It’s not clear whether he believes the animal is a reincarnation of his wife or not, but it’s unwise to get so attached in a hunting area. In “Seeds,” a man finds a photograph of his dying wife as a girl and revisits the sadness of her life. “Steer,” one of the most affecting stories, has a middle-aged man hit by anxiety, unable to forget the death of one of their cattle back when he was 16. As horrific as the experience was, it made him receptive to both beauty and pain.
Animal suffering is indeed frequent – something that seems important to mention, as I know a lot of readers who avoid scenes of it whenever possible. In “Eminent Domain,” the electricity shed where teenagers used to go drinking is found to be full of slaughtered cats. It’s the prompt the protagonist needs to escape this dead-end town. “Loosed” is a masterpiece in the vein of Demon Copperhead (though much more violent) about a man who makes money on increasingly cruel sport: cock fighting, then dog fighting, then dirty fights between his own four sons. The flash forward that ends this one is devastating. I, too, am sensitive to reading about animal deaths, but the animal suffering only matches the human here. The nastiness of “The Less Said” makes that plain.
Pregnancy or infant loss is a recurring element. In just three pages, “Seed to Full” expresses a world of sorrow as a woodworker crafts a coffin for his infant son. Even where it is not a central subject, infertility is mentioned in a number of stories. In “You Four Are the One,” four adolescent neighbor girls help Cinta Johns out around the house, hoping with her that this fifth pregnancy will be the one that lasts. “The Steep Side,” a memorable closer that shifts between past and future, has a teen coming across a crashed van, a heavily pregnant woman, and an older woman claiming to be a nurse. What he sees haunts him into adulthood.
There’s an air of mystery to that one, and particularly in “Those Red Boots,” about the disappearance of a waitress who worked at a Hooters-style joint where all the comely staff wear the same uniforms and perform titillating dances. My preference was for longer stories like this where you get greater depth of characterization and more scenes and dialogue. I might have considered cutting a handful of the flash-length stories. However, even in these micro-fictions, there are still interesting setups. My favorite among them was “The Fourth,” in which Independence Day fireworks are triggering for shell-shocked Uncle Ron.
At times harrowing, always clear-eyed, these stories are true to life and compassionate about human foibles and animal pain. I would highly recommend them to readers of Kent Haruf and Jayne Anne Phillips. McIlwain has such an established voice that this hardly seems like a first book. I can’t wait to read whatever she writes next.
With thanks to Melville House for the proof copy for review.
Buy Sidle Creek from Bookshop.org [affiliate link]
I was delighted to be invited to participate in the blog tour for Sidle Creek. See below for details of where other reviews have appeared or will be appearing soon.
April Releases: Frida Kahlo, Games and Rituals, Romantic Comedy
It’s been a big month for new releases and I have loads more April books on the go or waiting in the wings to be reviewed in catch-up posts in the future. For now, I have a biographical graphic novel about a celebrated painter whose medical struggles coloured her art, a set of witty short stories about modern preoccupations and relationships, and a guilty pleasure of a novel from one of my favourite contemporary authors.
Frida Kahlo: Her Life, Her Work, Her Home by Francisco de la Mora
[Translated from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel]
The latest in SelfMadeHero’s Art Masters series (I’ve also reviewed their books on Munch, Van Gogh, Gauguin and O’Keeffe). De la Mora imagines Kahlo (1907–1954) hosting a party at her famous blue house in Coyoacán, Mexico in her final summer – unknown to everyone there, it’s exactly one week before her death. “Hola, come in, welcome. I’m so glad you’re all here. Today is my birthday, and I want to tell all of you the story of my life…” she invites her guests, and thereby the reader. It’s a handy conceit that justifies a chronological approach.
I was reminded of traumatic events from Kahlo’s life that I’d already encountered in various places (such as Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson and Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg by Emily Rapp Black): childhood polio and the Mexican Revolution, the hideous bus accident that reshaped her body, and two miscarriages. Periods of confinement alternate with travels. We see her devotion to traditional dress and the development of her frank self-portraiture style. I’d forgotten, or never knew, that she married Diego Rivera twice and divorced in between. They hosted many cultural giants of the time (e.g., Trotsky’s stay with them forms part of Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna), and both had their infidelities. I loved the use of vibrant colours, but learned little. This is really only an introduction for those new to her.
With thanks to Paul Smith and SelfMadeHero for the free copy for review.
Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny
Early Morning Riser was one of my favourite books of 2021, and I caught up earlier this year with Heiny’s only previous novel, Standard Deviation. Both are hilarious takes on the quirks of relationships, exploring a specific dynamic that recurs in a couple of these stories: the uncomfortable triangle between a man, his second (invariably younger) wife, and the very different, generally formidable, woman he was formerly married to and who continues to play a role in his life. One of the strongest stories is “561,” which was first published as a stand-alone e-book in 2018. Charlie stole Forrest away from Barbara and now the two women have a frosty relationship. It might seem like poetic justice that Charlie later has to load all of Barbara’s possessions into a moving van, but the notion of penance gets murkier when we learn what happened when they worked together on a suicide prevention hotline.
Eight of the 11 stories are in the third person and most protagonists are young or middle-aged women navigating marriage/divorce and motherhood. A driving examiner finds herself in the same situation as her teenage test-taker; a wife finds evidence of her actor husband’s adultery. In “Damascus,” Mia worries her son might be on drugs, but doesn’t question her own self-destructive habits. Inspired by Marie Kondo, Rachel tries to pare her life back to the basics in “CobRa.” In “King Midas,” Oscar learns that all is not golden with his mistress. “Sky Bar” has Fawn stuck in her hometown airport during a blizzard. I particularly liked the ridiculous situations Florida housemates get themselves into in “Pandemic Behavior,” and the second-person “Twist and Shout,” about loving an elderly father even though he’s infuriating.
Heiny mixes humour with bitter truths in engaging stories about characters whose mistakes and futile attempts to escape the past only make them the more relatable. Her first and last lines are particularly strong; who could resist a piece that opens with “Your elderly father has mistaken his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eaten it”?
With thanks to 4th Estate for the proof copy for review.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld is one of my favourite contemporary authors (I’ve also reviewed You Think It, I’ll Say It and Rodham) and I’ve read everything she’s published. Her work might seem lighter than my usual fare, but I’ve always maintained that she, like Maggie O’Farrell, perfectly treads the line between literary fiction and women’s fiction. This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year and it met my expectations.
Sally Milz is a mid-thirties writer for The Night Owls, a long-running sketch comedy show modelled on Saturday Night Live. Sittenfeld clearly did a lot of research into women in comedy, and Chapter 1 is a convincing blow-by-blow of a typical TNO schedule of pitches, edits, rehearsals, all-nighters and afterparties. This particular week in 2018, the host and musical guest are the same person: Noah Brewster, a pop star with surfer-boy good looks who rose to fame in the early 2000s with radio singles like “Making Love in July” and has maintained steady popularity since then. (I imagined him as a cross between Robbie Williams and Chris Hemsworth.) Sally had been expecting a self-absorbed ignoramus so, when she helps Noah edit a sketch he’s written, is pleasantly surprised to discover he’s actually smart, funny and humble. Sparks seem to fly between them, too, though the week ends all too soon.
Plain Jane getting the hot guy … that never happens, right? In fact, Sally has a theory about this very dilemma, named after her schlubby TNO office-mate: The Danny Horst Rule states that ordinary men may date and even marry actresses or supermodels, but reverse the genders and it never works. A fundamental lack of confidence means that, whenever she feels too vulnerable, Sally resorts to snarky comedy and sabotages her chances at happiness. But when, midway through the summer of 2020, she gets an out-of-the-blue e-mail from Noah, she wonders if this relationship has potential in the real world. (This, for me, is the peak: when you find out that interest is requited; that the person you’ve been thinking about for years has also been thinking about you. Whatever comes next pales in comparison to this moment.)
The correspondence section was my favourite element. “I do still wonder whether a person’s writing self is their realest self, their fakest self, or just a different self than their in-the-world self?” Sally writes to Noah. As always, Sittenfeld’s inhabiting of a first-person narrator is flawless, and Sally’s backstory and Covid-lockdown, Kansas City existence with her octogenarian stepfather and his beagle endeared her to me. I also appreciated that a woman in her mid- to late thirties could be a romantic lead, and that the question of whether she wants children simply never comes up. Of Sittenfeld’s books, I’d call this closest in tone and content to Eligible, and some familiarity with SNL would probably be of benefit.
Could this be called a predictable story? Well, what does one expect or want from a romcom (watching or reading)? There may be a feminist leaning in places, but this is conventional wish fulfilment, which, I assume, is what keeps romance readers hooked. I enjoyed every sentence and, when it was over, wished I could stay in Sally’s world. (See also Susan’s review.)
With thanks to Doubleday for the proof copy for review.
Would you be interested in reading one or more of these?
Women’s Prize Longlist Reviews (Croft, Grudova, O’Farrell) & Shortlist Predictions
The Women’s Prize shortlist will be announced on Wednesday the 26th. I’ve managed to read a few more novels from the longlist and started another (Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks), which would take me up to 6 read out of 16. I have a couple of others on order from the library (Kennedy and Patel), but will only bother to read them if they are shortlisted.
Homesick by Jennifer Croft
I was intrigued by the publication history of this one: Croft first wrote it in Spanish, then produced an English-language version which, in the USA, was marketed as a memoir illustrated with her own photographs. Here in the UK, though, Charco Press published it as part of their new range of untranslated fiction – with no photos, alas. So, it’s clear that this is thinly veiled autobiography; literally all that may have been changed is the character names.
The protagonist is ‘Amy’, who lives in a tornado-ridden Oklahoma and whose sister, ‘Zoe’ – a handy A to Z of growing up there – has a mysterious series of illnesses that land her in hospital. The third person limited perspective reveals Amy to be a protective big sister who shoulders responsibility: “There is nothing in the world worse than Zoe having her blood drawn. Amy tries to show her the pictures [she’s taken of Zoe’s dog] at just the right moment, just right before the nurse puts the needle in”.
The girls are home-schooled and Amy, especially, develops a genius for languages, receiving private tutoring in Russian from Sasha, a Ukrainian former student of their father’s. Both sister are more than a little in love with Sasha. They alternate between competing for attention and indulging their joint passions – such as for the young Russian figure-skating couple who sweep the Winter Olympics. Amy starts college at 15, which earns her unwanted attention among her classmates, and struggles with her mental health before deciding to see the world. Despite periods of estrangement, her relationship with Zoe is what grounds her.
In a sense this is a simple chronological story, told in a matter-of-fact way. Yet each of its vignettes – some just a paragraph long – is perfectly chosen to reveal the family dynamic and the moment in American history. Detailed chapter headings continue the narrative and sometimes contain a shocking truth. What Croft does so brilliantly is to chart the accretion of ordinary and landmark events that form a life; Amy realizes this as she looks back at a packet of her photographs: “laid out step by step like this, more or less in order, the pictures also form a kind of path.”
Initially, I had my doubts as to whether this should have been eligible for the Women’s Prize. In the end it didn’t matter whether it was presented as memoir or autofiction, so true was it to the experience of 1990s girlhood, as well as to sisterhood and coming of age at any time in history. It reminded me strongly of Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso, but felt that little bit more universal in how it portrays family ties, ambition, and life’s winding path. (See also Annabel’s review for Shiny New Books.) 
With thanks to Charco Press for the free copy for review.
Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova
In 2017 I reviewed Grudova’s surreal story collection, The Doll’s Alphabet, describing its tales as “perverted fairytales or fragmentary nightmares.” Okay then, let’s continue in that perverted, nightmarish vein. Holly, new to the country/city, finds a room in a shared flat and a job as an usher at the Paradise Cinema, which shows a random assortment of art films and cult classics. The building is so low-rent it’s almost half derelict, and the staff take full advantage of the negligent management to get up to all sorts of sexual shenanigans, as well as drinking and drug-taking, while on duty. Holly and her co-workers are truly obsessed with the cinema, watching every showing at work but also hosting all-night movie marathons in their apartments. “The outside world, all of its news, faded away, and the movies became my main mirror of the world,” she confesses. “They were a necessary evil, customers, so that we, the true devotees, could have access to the screen, our giant godlike monument.”
The title is simultaneously ironic and an homage to Les Enfants du Paradis (1945), and the chapters are named after particular films. A change of ownership forces the Paradise to become more mainstream – hello, Marvel flicks and hipster snacks – but a series of horrific accidents and deliberate acts makes it seem like a cursed place. Aping movie genres, perhaps, Children of Paradise starts off as an offbeat stoner comedy and by the end approaches horror to an extent I didn’t expect. The content becomes increasingly sordid, visceral, with no opportunity missed to mention bodily fluids and excretions. I’m not notably opposed to gross-out humour, but the whole thing felt quite distasteful as well as miserable. (Public library e-book) 
My general feeling about these first two books, and probably a few others from the longlist (Crooks, McKenzie, Paull, et al.), is that the judges are trying to showcase the breadth of women’s writing: ‘Hey, guys, women can write autofiction and horror and humour and patois and speculative fiction and everything in between!’ But I don’t think these more niche or genre fiction representatives will make it any further in the race, especially because each may have been championed by a different judge.
Where the judges will find common ground will be on the standard stuff that always gets shortlisted: fairly run-of-the-mill character- and issue-driven contemporary or historical fiction. That makes it sound like I’m being dismissive, but in fact I do generally like much of the fiction that gets shortlisted for the WP: it’s readable book club fodder. It’s just maybe not inventive in the way that certain longlist titles can be. On which note, er, see the below!
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
What a relief it was to wholeheartedly enjoy this sumptuous work of historical fiction, after the disappointment that was Hamnet (though perhaps I’ll feel more kindly towards the latter when I reread it for Literary Wives in November).
Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici is a historical figure who died at age 16, having been married off from her father’s Tuscan palazzo as a teenager to Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. She was reported to have died of a “putrid fever” but the suspicion has persisted that her husband actually murdered her, a story perhaps best known via Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess.”
The focus is on the final year of Lucrezia’s life, but in flashbacks we meet her as a rebellious girl with a talent for drawing and a fascination with animals. At first it appears that Alfonso esteems her for her spiritedness – he gives her a painting of a stone marten as a betrothal gift, after all, and has her depicted with paintbrush in hand – but as the gradual storyline meets up with the 1561 spotlight, it becomes clear that she is only valued for her ability to produce an heir. However spacious and opulent they are, it is impossible to forget that Lucrezia, as a noblewoman, is confined to the edifices owned by her father or her husband.
O’Farrell’s usual present-tense narration is engaging throughout, and the two long chapters either side of the midpoint, one concerning her wedding day and the other the preparation for her portrait, are particularly absorbing. I was convinced I knew how this story would end, yet the author pulls off a delicious surprise. This is ripe for the miniseries treatment, not least because it is so attentive to visuals: the architecture of the main buildings, the lavish clothing, the colours, and the eye for what makes a good painting. Scenes are even described in terms of a spatial arrangement appreciated from afar: how three figures form a triangle in the centre of a room; how two people on a balcony bisect the view from a window.
Despite the length, this was thoroughly engrossing and one I’d recommend to readers of Geraldine Brooks and Tracy Chevalier. (See also Laura’s review.) (Public library) 
The other nominees I’ve read are:
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris
My ideal shortlist (a wish list based on my reading and what I still want to read):
Homesick by Jennifer Croft
Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow
vs.
My predicted shortlist:
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
An overall winner? Perhaps Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, or an unprecedented repeat win from Barbara Kingsolver or Maggie O’Farrell.
(See also Laura’s predictions post.)
What have you read from the longlist so far? Which of these books are calling to you?
Eighth Blog Anniversary! & Thoughts on the Women’s Prize Longlist
Last year, in the manic busyness that preceded moving into our house, I completely forgot to mark my blog anniversary. This time (8 years!) I wanted to be sure to remember it. Why have I not noted before that it coincides with International Women’s Day?! I’m pleased with that.
By Հայկ Ափրիկյան, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Yesterday evening the Women’s Prize longlist was announced.** Of my predictions, 4 were correct, which is pretty good going for me. I got none of my personal wishes, however. Of course, I would have preferred for us to have one of my lists. Still, overall, it’s a fairly interesting mix of new and established authors, with a full half of the list being debut work. Seven of the authors are BIPOC. I’ve read 2 of the nominees and would be amenable to reading up to 7 more. My library always buys the entire longlist, so I’ll eventually get the chance to read them, but not soon enough to add to the conversation.
Read:
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (CORRECT PREDICTION): Follows the contours of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, transplanting the plot to 1990s southwest Virginia to uncover the perils of opiate addiction. Ten-year-old Damon Fields lives in a trailer home with his addict mother, who works at Walmart, and his new stepfather, a mean trucker. Tragedy strikes and Damon moves between several foster homes before running away. His irrepressible, sassy voice is reminiscent of Holden Caulfield’s in this Appalachian cousin to Shuggie Bain.
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris: Drawing on her own family history, Morris has crafted an absorbing story set in Sarajevo in 1992, the first year of the Bosnian War. Zora, a middle-aged painter, has sent her husband, Franjo, and elderly mother off to England to stay with her daughter, Dubravka, confident that she’ll see out the fighting in the safety of their flat and welcome them home in no time. But things rapidly get much worse than she is prepared for. It was especially poignant to be reading this during the war in Ukraine.
Requested from the library:
Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks – Sounds good, if too much like this year’s Opal & Nev.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (CORRECT PREDICTION) – I was going to skip this because I wasn’t keen on Hamnet, but I do love O’Farrell in general, so I guess I’ll give it a try.
Interested in reading (but can’t find):
Homesick by Jennifer Croft – N.B. This was subtitled “A Memoir” at its U.S. release.
Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow
I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel (CORRECT PREDICTION)
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
Not interested in reading:
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo – Like I said when it was nominated for the Booker, I have to wonder why we needed an extended Animal Farm remake…
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes – I really should have predicted this one. It’s a hard pass on the Greek myth retellings for me.
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (CORRECT PREDICTION) – I avoid anything set during The Troubles. (Sorry!)
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh – The Water Cure was awful.
The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie – The Portable Veblen was trying too hard.
Pod by Laline Paull – Her novels always sound so formulaic.
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff – Nah.
See also the reactions posts from Cathy, Clare, Eric and Laura.
**The announcement has traditionally been on International Women’s Day, but I’m guessing that this year they brought it forward to pre-empt news of the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction longlist. This prize is open to novels, short stories and graphic novels by women, published in calendar year 2022, with parameters otherwise quite similar to those of the WP except that it’s only for U.S. and Canadian residents. {EDITED} To be honest, I was not convinced that the literary world needed an additional prize for women’s fiction, especially as North Americans tend to do well in the WP race. However, at first glance, its longlist is a lot less obvious and more interesting, with 11/15 BIPOC and some short story collections as well as a graphic novel in the running. It remains to be seen if I’ll follow both prizes or switch allegiance. Some of the CSP books may prove difficult to access in the UK. So far I have read Brown Girls and can get The Furrows from the library. Of note: the Carol Shields Prize is worth a lot more ($150,000 U.S. vs. £30,000).
What have you read, or might you read, from the longlist?
Women’s Prize 2023: Longlist Predictions vs. Wishes
I’ve been working on a list of novels eligible for this year’s Women’s Prize since … this time last year. Unusual for me to be so prepared! It shows how invested I’ve become in this prize over the years. For instance, last year my book club was part of an official shadowing scheme, which was great fun.
We’re now less than a month out from the longlist, which will be announced on 7 March. Like last year, I’ve separated my predictions from a wish list; two titles overlap. Here’s a reminder of the parameters, taken from the website:
“Any woman writing in English – whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter – is eligible. Novels must be published in the United Kingdom between 1 April in the year the Prize calls for entries, and 31 March the following year, when the Prize is announced. … The Prize only accepts novels entered by publishers, who may each submit a maximum of two titles per imprint, depending on size, and one title for imprints with a list of ten fiction titles or fewer published in a year. Previously shortlisted and winning authors are given a ‘free pass’.”
This year I dutifully kept tabs on publisher quotas as I compiled my lists. I also attempted to bear in mind the interests of this year’s judges (also from the website): “Chair of Judges, author and journalist Louise Minchin, is joined by award-winning novelist Rachel Joyce; author, journalist and podcaster Irenosen Okojie; bestselling author and journalist Bella Mackie and MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq.”
Predictions
A Spell of Good Things, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton
Joan, Katherine J. Chen
Maame, Jessica George
Really Good, Actually, Monica Heisey
Trespasses, Louise Kennedy
The Night Ship, Jess Kidd (my review)
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (my review)
Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng (my review)
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell
I’m a Fan, Sheena Patel
Elektra, Jennifer Saint
Best of Friends, Kamila Shamsie
River Sing Me Home, Eleanor Shearer
Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout – currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (my review)
Wish List
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz
The Weather Woman, Sally Gardner (my review)
Maame, Jessica George
The Great Reclamation, Rachel Heng
Bad Cree, Jessica Johns
I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai – currently reading
Sea of Tranquillity, Emily St. John Mandel (my review)
The Hero of This Book, Elizabeth McCracken (my review)
Nightcrawling, Leila Mottley (my review)
We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman – currently reading
Everything the Light Touches, Janice Pariat (my review)
Camp Zero, Michelle Min Sterling – review pending for Shelf Awareness
Briefly, A Delicious Life, Nell Stevens (my review)
This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub (my review)
Fight Night, Miriam Toews – currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (my review)
Of course, even if I’m lucky, I’ll still only get a few right across these two lists, and I’ll be kicking myself over the ones I considered but didn’t include, and marvelling at all the ones I’ve never heard of…
What would you like to see on the longlist?
~BREAKING NEWS: There are plans afoot to start a Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Now seeking funding to start in 2024. More details here.~
Appendix
(A further 99 eligible novels that were on my radar but didn’t make the cut:)
Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese
Rose and the Burma Sky, Rosanna Amaka
Milk Teeth, Jessica Andrews
Clara & Olivia, Lucy Ashe
Wet Paint, Chloë Ashby
Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson
Honey & Spice, Bolu Babalola
Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo
Either/Or, Elif Batuman
Girls They Write Songs About, Carlene Bauer
seven steeples, Sara Baume
The Witches of Vardo, Anya Bergman
Shadow Girls, Carol Birch
Permission, Jo Bloom
Horse, Geraldine Brooks
Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo
Mother’s Day, Abigail Burdess
Instructions for the Working Day, Joanna Campbell
People Person, Candice Carty-Williams
Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou
The Book of Eve, Meg Clothier
Cult Classic, Sloane Crosley
The Things We Do to Our Friends, Heather Darwent
The Bewitching, Jill Dawson
Common Decency, Susannah Dickey
Theatre of Marvels, L.M. Dillsworth
Haven, Emma Donoghue
History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Christy Edwall
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
Dazzling, Chikodili Emelumadu
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, Akwaeke Emezi
there are more things, Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Factory Girls, Michelle Gallen
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
The Illuminated, Anindita Ghose
Your Driver Is Waiting, Priya Guns
The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty
The Dance Tree, Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Weyward, Emilia Hart
Other People Manage, Ellen Hawley
Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
The Cloisters, Katy Hays
Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth
The Unfolding, A.M. Homes
The White Rock, Anna Hope
They’re Going to Love You, Meg Howrey
Housebreaking, Colleen Hubbard
Vladimir, Julia May Jonas
This Is Gonna End in Tears, Liza Klaussmann
The Applicant, Nazli Koca
Babel, R.F. Kuang
Yerba Buena, Nina Lacour
The Swimmers, Chloe Lane
The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li
Amazing Grace Adams, Fran Littlewood
All the Little Bird Hearts, Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Now She Is Witch, Kirsty Logan
The Chosen, Elizabeth Lowry
The Home Scar, Kathleen MacMahon
Very Cold People, Sarah Manguso
All This Could Be Different, Sarah Thankam Mathews
Becky, Sarah May
The Dog of the North, Elizabeth McKenzie
Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet
Young Women, Jessica Moor
The Garnett Girls, Georgina Moore
Black Butterflies, Priscilla Morris
Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh
Someone Else’s Shoes, Jojo Moyes
The Men, Sandra Newman
True Biz, Sara Nović
Babysitter, Joyce Carol Oates
Tomorrow I Become a Woman, Aiwanose Odafen
Things They Lost, Okwiri Oduor
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, Soraya Palmer
The Things that We Lost, Jyoti Patel
Still Water, Rebecca Pert
Stargazer, Laurie Petrou
Ruth & Pen, Emilie Pine
Delphi, Clare Pollard
The Whalebone Theatre, Joanna Quinn
The Poet, Louisa Reid
Carrie Soto Is Back, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan
Blue Hour, Sarah Schmidt
After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz
Signal Fires, Dani Shapiro
A Dangerous Business, Jane Smiley
Companion Piece, Ali Smith
Memphis, Tara M. Stringfellow
Flight, Lynn Steger Strong
Brutes, Dizz Tate
Madwoman, Louisa Treger
I Laugh Me Broken, Bridget van der Zijpp
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, Rebecca Wait
The Schoolhouse, Sophie Ward
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, Laura Warrell
The Odyssey, Lara Williams
A Complicated Matter, Anne Youngson
Avalon, Nell Zink
Some 2022 Reading Superlatives
Longest book read this year: To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (720 pages)
Shortest book read this year: Everything’s Changing by Chelsea Stickle (37 pages)
Authors I read the most by this year: Nicola Colton (4), Jakob Wegelius (3), Tove Jansson and Sarah Ruhl (2)
Publishers I read the most from: (Besides the ubiquitous Penguin and its many imprints) Canongate, Carcanet and Picador – which is part of the Pan Macmillan group.
An author I ‘discovered’ and now want to read everything by: Matthew Vollmer
My overall top discovery of the year: The Murderer’s Ape by Jakob Wegelius
My proudest non-bookish achievement: Giving a eulogy at my mom’s funeral (and even getting some laughs).
The books that made me laugh the most: Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld, Undoctored by Adam Kay, Forget Me Not by Sophie Pavelle, Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder
The books that made me cry the most: Foster by Claire Keegan, The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken
Most useful fact gleaned from a book: To convert a Celsius temperature to Fahrenheit, double it and add 30. It’s a rough estimate, but it generally works! I learned this from, of all places, The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken.
Best book club selections: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Best first line encountered this year: “First, I got myself born.” (Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver)
Best last lines encountered this year:
- “Darling, that’s what life’s for – to take risks.” (Up at the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham)
- “The defiant soul of the city doesn’t die. It stays alive, right below the surface, pressing up against the boot heels, crouched like the life inside an egg, the force that drives the flower, forever reaching for its next breath.” (Feral City, Jeremiah Moss)
“Until the future, whatever it was going to be.” (This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub)
A book that put a song in my head every time I picked it up: Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk
Shortest book title encountered: O (a poetry collection by Zeina Hashem Beck), followed by XO (a memoir by Sara Rauch)
Best 2022 book title: I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee (No, I haven’t read it and I’m unlikely to, not having had great luck with recent translations of work by Japanese and Korean women.)
Favourite title and cover combo of the year: Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
Most fun cover serendipity: Two books I read in 2022 featured Matisse cut-outs.
Biggest disappointment: The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki ( for me)
Two 2022 books that everyone was in raptures about but me: Trust by Hernan Diaz and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (both for me)
A 2022 book that everyone was reading but I decided not to: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell – since I thought Hamnet her weakest work, I’m not eager to try more historical fiction by her.
A 2022 book I can’t read: (No matter how good the reviews might be, because of the title) I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
The worst books I read this year: The Reactor by Nick Blackburn, Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, Anthropology by Dan Rhodes, Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra (1-star ratings are extremely rare from me; these were this year’s four)
The downright strangest book I read this year: The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay
Recent Writing for Bookmarks, Foreword and Shelf Awareness
I’ve been writing for U.S. print magazine Bookmarks for an astonishing 9.5 years now, and have the title of associate editor. The upcoming November/December issue is their first to be released in digital format as well, and as a promo it’s available to read for free here. My contributions to the issue are an article on fiction and nonfiction about women in STEM (starts on p. 23), and various of the anonymous synopses/critical summaries in the New Books Guide. Each issue has one or more author profiles, one or more thematic features, reader recommendations, a book group bio, and news on prizes and upcoming releases.
Here are excerpts from a few recent or upcoming reviews of October releases that I’ve contributed elsewhere. I link to the full text where available.
Foreword Reviews
Without Saints: Essays by Christopher Locke: Fifteen flash essays present shards of a life story. Growing up in New Hampshire, Locke encountered abusive schoolteachers and Pentecostal church elders who attributed his stuttering to demon possession and performed an exorcism. By age 16, small acts of rebellion had ceded to self-harm, and his addictions persisted into adulthood. Later, teaching poetry to prisoners, he realized that he might have been in their situation had he been caught with drugs. The complexity of the essays advances alongside the chronology. Weakness of body and will is a recurrent element.
Shelf Awareness
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver: Her bighearted ninth novel follows the contours of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, transplanting the plot to 1990s southwest Virginia to uncover the perils of opiate addiction. Ten-year-old Damon Fields lives in a trailer home with his addict mother, who is employed at Walmart, and his new stepfather, Stoner, a mean trucker. Tragedy strikes and Damon moves between several foster homes before running away. “A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing,” he remarks, looking back. His irrepressible, sassy voice is reminiscent of Holden Caulfield’s in this Appalachian cousin to Shuggie Bain.
Bad Vibes Only by Nora McInerny: McInerny’s fifth book is a witty, insightful set of essays about self-worth and parenting in the social media era. Those familiar with the author’s previous autobiographical works will remember that within a few weeks in 2014, her father and first husband, Aaron, both died of cancer. After several years as a single mother, she married Matthew and they blended their families. Even when dealing with serious topics like anxiety and narrow escapes, McInerny has a light touch. She is endearingly honest, aware of her privilege and open about her contradictions. The then-and-now focus compares pre-Internet childhood with the challenges of raising kids with a constant online presence.
Which Side Are You On by Ryan Lee Wong: In Wong’s dynamite debut novel – set in Los Angeles, with its history of race riots – an Asian American college student committed to social justice rethinks how best to live out his ideals in the real world. Wong probes the generational gap between Reed and his parents through snappy dialogue and enjoyable scenes that constitute an incidental tour of multi-ethnic L.A. Full of vibrant characters, this punchy story offers no simple answers to ongoing racial conflicts. The portrait of a sanctimonious young man who wakes up to the reality of generational trauma and well-meaning failure is spot-on. Truly, a book for the contemporary moment. 
It’s always a thrill to see my words quoted as authoritative: excerpts from my Bad Vibes Only review appear on Bookshop.org and on Lit Hub’s Bookmarks page (see below), and there’s an unattributed quote from my Which Side Are You On review on the book’s Amazon page.
Do any of these books interest you?
Book Serendipity, Mid-August to Mid-October 2022
It’s my birthday today and we’re off to Kelmscott Manor, where William Morris once lived, so I’ll start with a Morris-related anecdote even if it’s not a proper book coincidence. One of his most famous designs, the Strawberry Thief, is mentioned in Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, and I happen to be using a William Morris wall calendar this year. I will plan to report back tomorrow on our visit plus any book hauls that occur.
I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every few months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. The following are in roughly chronological order.
There’s a character named Verena in What Concerns Us by Laura Vogt and Summer by Edith Wharton. Add on another called Verona from Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana.
- Two novels with a female protagonist who’s given up a singing career: Brief Lives by Anita Brookner and What Concerns Us by Laura Vogt.
- Two books featuring Black characters, written in African American Vernacular English, and with elements of drug use and jail time plus rent rises driving people out of their apartments and/or to crime (I’ve basically never felt so white): Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana and Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley.
- Two books on my stack with the protagonist an African American woman from Oakland, California: Red Island House by Andrea Lee and Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
- A middle-aged woman’s hair is described as colourless and an officious hotel staff member won’t give the protagonist a cup of coffee/glass of wine in Brief Lives by Anita Brookner and Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout.
- There’s a central Switzerland setting in Mountain Song by Lucy Fuggle and What Concerns Us by Laura Vogt.
- On the same day, I encountered two references to Mary Oliver’s famous poem “The Summer Day” (“what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”): in Mountain Song by Lucy Fuggle and This Beauty by Nick Riggle. (Fuggle and Riggle – that makes me laugh!)
- In the same evening I found mentions of copperhead snakes in Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (no surprise there), but also on the very first page of Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew-Bergman.
- Crop circles are important to What Remains? by Rupert Callender and The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers.
- I was reading two books with provocative peaches on the cover at the same time: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw and Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke.
- A main character is pregnant but refuses medical attention in The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh and What Concerns Us by Laura Vogt.
- An Australian setting and the slang “Carn” or “C’arn” for “come on” in Cloudstreet by Tim Winton and one story (“Halflead Bay”) from The Boat by Nam Le.
- Grape nuts cereal is mentioned in Leap Year by Helen Russell and This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub.
- A character wagers their hair in a short story from Bratwurst Haven by Rachel King and one from Anthropology by Dan Rhodes.
- Just after I started reading a Jackie Kay poetry collection (Other Lovers), I turned to The Horizontal Oak by Polly Pullar and found a puff from Kay on the front cover. And then one from Jim Crumley, whose The Nature of Spring I was also reading, on the back cover! (All Scottish authors, you see.)
- Reading two memoirs that include a father’s suicide – Sinkhole by Juliet Patterson and The Horizontal Oak by Polly Pullar – at the same time.
- Middle school students reading Of Mice and Men in Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum and Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana.
- A second novel in two months in which Los Angeles’s K-Town (Korean neighbourhood) is an important location: after Which Side Are You On by Ryan Lee Wong, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
- The main character inherits his roommate’s coat in one story of The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
- The Groucho Marx quote “Whatever it is, I’m against it” turns up in What Remains? by Rupert Callender and Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder (where it’s adapted to “we’re” as the motto of 3:AM Magazine).
In Remainders of the Day by Shaun Bythell, Polly Pullar is mentioned as one of the writers at that year’s Wigtown Book Festival; I was reading her The Horizontal Oak at the same time.
- Marilyn Monroe’s death is mentioned in Sinkhole by Juliet Patterson and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
- The types of standard plots that there are, and the fact that children’s books get the parents out of the way as soon as possible, are mentioned in And Finally by Henry Marsh and Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder.
- Two books in quick succession with a leaping hare (and another leaping mammal, deer vs. dog) on the cover: Awayland by Ramona Ausubel, followed by Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe.
- Three fingers held up to test someone’s mental state after a head injury in The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland and The Fear Index by Robert Harris.
- A scene where a teenage girl has to help with a breech livestock delivery (goat vs. sheep) in Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer and The Truants by Kate Weinberg.
- Two memoirs by a doctor/comedian that open with a scene commenting on the genitals of a cadaver being studied in medical school: Catch Your Breath by Ed Patrick wasn’t funny in the least, so I ditched it within the first 10 pages or so, whereas Undoctored by Adam Kay has been great so far.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Women’s Prize Shadowing & Men Reading Books by Women
Back in April I announced that my book club was one of six selected to shadow this year’s Women’s Prize shortlist by reading and discussing one of the finalists. Our assigned title was one I’d already read, but I skimmed back through it before our meet-up and enjoyed getting reacquainted with Martha Friel. Here’s our group’s review:
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
Readability: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
Storyline: 4/5
Can’t Put It Down: 4.5/5
Total = 18.5/20
Our joint highest rating, and one of our best discussions – taking in mental illness and its diagnosis and treatment, marriage, childlessness, alcoholism, sisterhood, creativity, neglect, unreliable narrators and loneliness. For several of us, these issues hit close to home due to personal or family experience. We particularly noted the way that Mason sets up parallels between pairs of characters, accurately reflecting how family dynamics can be replicated in later generations.
Even the minor characters are fully rounded, and although Martha is not always pleasant to spend time with, her voice is impressively rendered. The picture of mental illness from the inside feels authentic, including the fact that Martha uses it as an excuse for her bad behaviour, becoming self-absorbed and not seeing how she is affecting others around her. Our main point of disagreement was about Mason’s decision not to name the mental illness Martha is suffering from. It seemed clear to several of us that it was meant to be bipolar disorder, so we wondered if it was a copout not to identify it as such.
We also thought about the meaning of the term “literary fiction”, and whether this has the qualities of a prize winner and will stand the test of time.
We had to fill out a feedback questionnaire about our experience of shadowing, and most of us sent in individual blurbs in response to the book. Some ended up in the final Reading Agency article. Here was mine:
“This deceptively light novel was a perfect book club selection, eliciting deep discussion about mental illness, family relationships and parenthood. Martha’s (unreliable) narration is a delight, wry and deadpan but also with moments of wrenching emotion. Mason masterfully controls the tone to create something that is witty and poignant all at once.”
Probably the main reason we were chosen for this opportunity is that we have a man – my husband, that is! – who attends regularly. This year the prize has been particularly keen to get more men reading books by women (see more below). So, he was responsible for giving The Male Response to the novel. No pressure, right? Luckily, he enjoyed it just as much as the rest of us. From the cover and blurb, it didn’t necessarily seem like the sort of book that he would pick up to read for himself, but he was fully engaged with the themes of mental illness, family relationships, and the question of whether or not to have children, and was so compelled that he read over half of it in a day.
I’m not sure who I expect to be awarded the Women’s Prize tomorrow. We of West Fields Readers would be delighted if it went to Meg Mason for Sorrow and Bliss, but I’d also be happy with a win for Louise Erdrich or Ruth Ozeki – though I wasn’t taken with their latest works compared with earlier ones I’ve read, they are excellent authors who deserve recognition. I don’t think The Bread the Devil Knead has a chance; I’d be disappointed in a win by Elif Shafak in that I would feel obligated to try her novel – the kind that gives magic realism a bad name – again; and, while I’m a Maggie Shipstead fan in general and admire the ambition of Great Circle, it would be galling for a book I DNFed twice to take the title!
Who are you rooting for/predicting?
I’d like to mock you with that thought,
jeer at the man
who won’t read novels
written by women –
at least not if they’re still alive
~from The Poet by Louisa Reid
Maybe you’ve seen on social media that the Women’s Prize has been canvassing opinion on the books by women that all men should read. This was prompted by some shocking statistics suggesting that even bestselling female authors can only attract a 20% male readership, whereas the best-known male authors are almost equally popular with men and women. They solicited 60 nominations from big names and ran a public poll. I voted for these 10:
Half of a Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
Possession (A.S. Byatt)
Homegoing (Yaa Gyasi)
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
The Sea, The Sea (Iris Murdoch)
The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
We Need to Talk about Kevin (Lionel Shriver)
Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout)
The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt)
Orlando (Virginia Woolf)
*If I could have added to that list, though, my top recommendations for all men to read would be Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (and probably a different Octavia E. Butler novel from the one nominated).
Three of my selections were among the 10 essential reads announced on the WP website. Their list was headed by Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, though of her works I’d be more likely to direct men to Oryx and Crake.
I’ve seen discussions on Twitter about why men don’t read novels (at all, prioritizing nonfiction), or specifically not ones by women. Do you have any theories?
What one book by a woman do you think all men should read?
Readings for the 20th Anniversary of 9/11
Like the assassination of John F. Kennedy for a previous generation, September 11, 2001 was a landmark day in our shared history. I was two weeks into my freshman year of college and getting ready to head out to a 9:30 seminar when my roommate returned early from her first class. “All these planes flying into buildings – I’m freaking out!” she cried, and turned our tiny desktop TV set to a news station.
At that point it was unclear what was going on, so I dutifully trudged out across the quad linking the residence halls to the academic buildings, anticipating a normal day of classes. On the way I encountered small groups of somber students, and was alarmed to see my friend and “Big Sister” from the junior class weeping onto her boyfriend’s shoulder – her dad worked at the Pentagon, and she hadn’t yet heard that he was okay. When I entered the lecture hall it was clear no regular work was going to happen that day; I was one of only a handful of students who’d shown up, and our English professor, too, was engrossed by the rippling montage of rubble and smoke being projected onto a screen behind him.
As the anniversary approached this year, I picked up a coffee table book of photos, Reuters’ September 11: A Testimony from the library and was struck by how dated everything appeared. For an event so fresh in my memory, it actually looks like something that happened a long time ago thanks to everything from the fashions and car designs to the photographic quality. You also get the sense that, even in the early Internet age, things like missing person posters and public tributes to the dead were primarily paper-based then. The photos barely capture the scope of the devastation. One image of firefighters among the wreckage looks like a film set or architect’s model, the human figures like ants among the dusty girders. This was published in late 2001, so it was put together quickly. Photographs tell the story, with extremely brief captions on facing pages. Nearly half of the length is devoted to documenting the three crash sites, with the rest chronicling memorial services, national and international commemorations, and New York City gradually returning to business as usual.
On the way back from our mother’s wedding this summer, my sister and brother-in-law and I passed the entrance to the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania so drove in for a look. The 1,000-acre site is administered by the National Park Service. On the airless June day we were there, the Tower of Voices was not making its eerie music, but it was still a peaceful spot for reflection. You can listen to a recording of the windchimes on the website. There is also a visitor center with a permanent exhibition that we will have to go back and see another time.
I also recently reread Rowan Williams’s superb book-length essay Writing in the Dust (2002), which I’d read twice before. Williams, then Archbishop of Wales and soon to become Archbishop of Canterbury, was in New York City on 9/11. He was, in fact, just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, at Trinity Church, Wall Street, where he was part of a group recording theological conversations to be used for educational purposes. When the planes hit and the air filled with dust and smoke, he did the same as everyone else: he quickly evacuated, ensured everyone was safe, and then watched, listened, and prayed. And in the months that followed he thought about what he’d seen that day, and what his experience had taught him about suffering, peacemaking, and the ways of God.
Writing well before military action against Iraq began, Williams cautioned against labeling the Other as Evil and responding in a simple spirit of retribution. Prophets’ words are never welcome, of course, and time has shown that Western policies have only made things worse. I must have read this from a university library; I then did a peculiar (and probably illegal, in copyright terms) thing and typed out every single word of it into a Word file so I could keep it forever.
Here are some of Williams’s words of wisdom:
“The hardest thing in the world is to know how to act so as to make the difference that can be made; to know how and why that differs from the act that only releases or expresses the basic impotence of resentment.”
My original rating (2013):
My rating now:
Other 9/11-themed reading I have done:
The Second Plane by Martin Amis (2008)
A famously bad-tempered English novelist who now lives in New York, Amis here presents a collection of 14 fictional and factual responses to 9/11. The essays are much stronger than the stories (a tale about Saddam Hussein’s son’s body double is downright weird), although it might be argued that Amis’s general understanding of Islam is fatally skewed. Opinionated, bold, and polarizing, these pieces ponder the symbolism and ideology of a day that changed the world.
The wonderful Annie Dillard’s post-9/11 essay “This is the Life,” available to read here, is another perceptive look at our response to tragedy, asking whether we are going to accept what “everyone” thinks about us vs. them and the value of human lives: “Everyone knows…the enemies are barbarians [but] our lives and our deaths count equally.”
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005)
Oskar Schell is a tremendously precocious nine-year-old who’s trying to come to terms with his father’s death in the World Trade Center on 9/11. He sets off on a quest to find the lock that takes the key he found in his dad’s closet. This light-hearted search takes him all over New York’s five boroughs, but in the end Oskar is little closer to discovering who his dad really was or how exactly he died. All he has left of him is that same panicked message on the answering machine, left sometime during the morning of September 11th. By denying neat narrative closure, Foer avoids sentimentality at the same time as he affirms the tragedy’s effect on a nation and on individuals.
Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver (2002)
On September 12th, 2001, Kingsolver sat down at her computer to write up some thoughts about the previous day’s tragedy. A newspaper had asked her for a short response, but as she sat and typed she found that the words kept coming, in essay after essay. The title piece in this collection, and several others like it, might make for occasionally uncomfortable reading, as Kingsolver questions automatic all-American responses like indiscriminate flag-waving and “we’ll hunt those terrorists down” vigilante justice. She asks how someone who loves her country can criticize its tenets and actions without being branded a traitor. “My country, right or wrong,” the saying goes – fair enough, but the truest patriot is one who loves her country enough to hold it to the highest moral standards, demanding it live up to its democratic ideals.
The Submission by Amy Waldman (2011)
Waldman’s debut imagines what would have happened had New Yorkers chosen a 9/11 memorial design as soon as 2003 and – crucially – had the anonymous selection turned out to be by a Muslim architect named Mohammad Khan. His memorial garden is rich in possible meanings and influences. When a member of the memorial selection jury leaks the information about the designer’s name to the press, however, all hell breaks loose, and perfectly nice, reasonable people start to display some ugly bigotry. As the clever double meaning of the title suggests, Waldman has educated herself about Islam’s doctrines. She includes an impressive range of characters and opinions in this canny psychological exploration.
(Most of the above text is recycled from an article I wrote for Bookkaholic web magazine (now defunct) in 2013.)
I can think of at least six more novels I’ve read that would be appropriate for this list, yet even including them here would be a spoiler. Generally, if you’re reading a novel set in New York City in 2000 or so, you should be prepared…
This year I meant to read Mitchell Zuckoff’s comprehensive journalistic study, Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11, but ran out of time. Eleanor highly recommends the audiobook of the oral history The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M. Graff. This Kirkus list has two additional nonfiction suggestions.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 