Book Serendipity, Mid-November–Early January
This is a short set but I’ll post it now to keep things ticking over. I’ve lost nearly a week to the upper respiratory virus from hell, and haven’t felt up to sitting at my computer for any extended periods of time. I had to request extensions on a few of my work deadlines; I’ll hope to be back to normal blogging next week, too.
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 couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away! Feel free to join in with your own.
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- Ayot St Lawrence as a setting in Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff and Flesh by David Szalay.
- A man who has panic attacks in Pan by Michael Clune and All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun.
- Two of my Shelf Awareness PRO (early) reviews in a row were of 2026 novels set on a celebrity/reunion cruise: All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun, followed by American Fantasy by Emma Straub. In both, the narrative alternates between three main characters, the cruise is to celebrate a milestone birthday for a passenger’s relative, and there’s a celebrity who’s in AA.
- A teacher–student relationship develops into a friendship in The Irish Goodbye by Beth Ann Fennelly (with Molly McCully Brown, whose Places I’ve Taken My Body I’ve reviewed) and Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl (with Max Ritvo, about whom she wrote a whole book).
Someone becomes addicted to benzodiazepines in The Pass by Katriona Chapman and All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun (both 2026 releases).
- A New York City event scheduled to occur on September 15 or 16, 2001 is postponed because of 9/11 in Joyride by Susan Orlean (her wedding) and All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun (a cruise departure – it’s moved to Boston).
- A 1960s attempted suicide by putting one’s head in a gas oven in The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson and The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor.
- A plan to eat cheese to induce dreams in The Reservation by Rebecca Kauffman and Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth.
- An author is (at least initially) aghast at the liberties taken with an adaptation of her book in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Joyride by Susan Orlean (the film Adaptation, one of my favourites, bears little relation to her nonfiction work The Orchid Thief, which I also love).
- A North American author meets her British publishers, André Deutsch and Diana Athill, in Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood and Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff. (Atwood also mentions Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, the title reference in the Hanff.)
- An older white woman feels compelled to add, as an aside after a memory of slightly dodgy behaviour observed, that cultural appropriation was not a thing in those days in Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood and Winter by Val McDermid.
- I read two books in 2025 with a title taken from a Christian Wiman poem: A Truce that Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews, then Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer.
- A special trip undertaken for a younger sister’s milestone birthday: a road trip through Scotland in a campervan in Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth for a 40th; and a boy band reunion cruise to the Bahamas for a 45th in American Fantasy by Emma Straub.
- A reference to Sartre’s “hell is other people” line (paraphrased) in Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo and The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas.
- The clock-drawing test as a shorthand for assessing a loved one’s dementia in Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood (her partner Graeme) and Joyride by Susan Orlean (her mother).
A sexual encounter between two men is presaged by them relieving themselves side by side at urinals in A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland and The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas.
- An older man who knows he’s having a stroke just wants to sit quietly in a chair and not be taken to hospital in Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood (her partner Graeme) and The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr.
- A man who’s gone through Alcoholics Anonymous gets dangerously close to falling off the wagon: picks up a bottle of gin in a shop in The Names by Florence Knapp / buys a drink at a bar in All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun.
- I was reading two nonfiction books with built-in red ribbon bookmarks at the same time: Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood and Robin by Stephen Moss.
- Homoeopathy is an element in The Names by Florence Knapp and The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas.
- A character named Sparrow in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Songs of No Provenance by Lydi Conklin.
- A mention of special celebrations for a Korean mother’s 70 birthday in Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo and All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun.
- Some kinky practices in Songs of No Provenance by Lydi Conklin and Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood.
- A girl from an immigrant family reads Greek mythology for escape in Visitations by Julia Alvarez and The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson.
- “View halloo” (originally a fox-hunting term) is used as a greeting in Talking It Over by Julian Barnes and Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Best Backlist Reads of the Year
I consistently find that many of my most memorable reads are older rather than current-year releases. Four of these are from 2023–4; the other nine are from 2012 or earlier, with the oldest from 1939. My selections are alphabetical within genre but in no particular rank order. Repeated themes included health, ageing, death, fascism, regret and a search for home and purpose. Reading more from these authors would probably help to ensure a great reading year in 2026!
Some trivia:
- 4 were read for 20 Books of Summer (Hadfield, King, Verghese and Walter)
- 3 were rereads for book club (Ishiguro, O’Farrell and Williams) – just like last year!
- 1 was part of my McKitterick Prize judge reading (Elkin)
- 1 was read for 1952 Club (Highsmith)
- 1 was a review catch-up book (Parker)
- 1 was a book I’d been ‘reading’ since 2021 (The Bell Jar)
- The title of one (O’Farrell) was taken from another (The Bell Jar)
Fiction & Poetry
Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin: Psychoanalysis, motherhood, and violence against women are resounding themes in this intellectual tour de force. As history repeats itself during one sweltering Paris summer, the personal and political structures undergirding the protagonists’ parallel lives come into question. This fearless, sophisticated work ponders what to salvage from the past—and what to tear down. This was our collective runner-up for the 2025 McKitterick Prize, but would have been my overall winner.
Carol by Patricia Highsmith: Widely considered the first lesbian novel with a happy ending. Therese, a 19-year-old aspiring stage designer, meets a wealthy housewife – “Mrs. H. F. Aird” (Carol) – in a New York City department store one Christmas. When the women set off on a road trip, they’re trailed by a private detective looking for evidence against Carol in a custody battle. It’s a beautiful and subtle romance that unfolds despite the odds and shares the psychological intensity of Highsmith’s mysteries.
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood: Isherwood intended for these autofiction stories to contribute to a “huge episodic novel of pre-Hitler Berlin.” Two “Berlin Diary” segments from 1930 and 1933 reveal a change in tenor accompanying the rise of Nazism. Even in lighter pieces, menace creeps in through characters’ offhand remarks about “dirty Jews” ruining the country. Famously, the longest story introduces club singer Sally Bowles. I later read Mr Norris Changes Trains as well. Witty and humane, restrained but vigilant.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro: I first read this pre-blog, back when I dutifully read Booker winners whether or not I expected to like them. I was too young then for its theme of regret over things done and left undone; I didn’t yet know that sometimes in life, it really is too late. When I reread it for February book club, it hit me hard. I wrote no review at the time (more fool me), but focused less on the political message than on the refined depiction of upper-crust English society and the brilliance of Stevens the unreliable, repressed narrator.
Pet Sematary by Stephen King: A dread-laced novel about how we deal with the reality of death. Is bringing the dead back a cure for grief or a horrible mistake? A sleepy Maine town harbours many cautionary tales, and the Creeds have more than their fair share of sorrow. Louis is a likable protagonist whose vortex of obsession and mental health is gripping. In the last quarter, which I read on a long train ride, I couldn’t turn the pages any faster. Sterling entertainment, but also surprisingly poignant. (And not gruesome until right towards the end.)
The Bell Jar & Ariel by Sylvia Plath: Given my love of mental hospital accounts, it’s a wonder I’d not read this classic work of women’s autofiction before. Esther Greenwood is the stand-in for Plath: a talented college student who, after working in New York City during the remarkable summer of 1953, plunges into mental ill health. An enduringly relevant and absorbing read. / Ariel takes no prisoners. The images and vocabulary are razor-sharp and the first and last lines or stanzas are particularly memorable.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: Wider events play out in the background (wars, partition, the fall of the caste system), but this saga sticks with one Kerala family in every generation of which someone drowns. I enjoyed the window onto St. Thomas Christianity, felt fond of all the characters, and appreciated how Verghese makes the Condition a cross between mystical curse and a diagnosable ailment. An intelligent soap opera that makes you think about storytelling, purpose and inheritance, this is extraordinary.
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter: I was captivated by the shabby glamour of Pasquale’s hotel in Porto Vergogna on the coast of northern Italy. A myriad of threads and formats – a movie pitch, a would-be Hemingway’s first chapter of a never-finished wartime opus, an excerpt from a producer’s autobiography and a play transcript – coalesce to flesh out what happened in the summer of 1962 and how the last half-century has treated all the supporting players. Warm, timeless and with great scenes, one of which had me in stitches. Fantastic.
Stoner by John Williams: What a quiet masterpiece. A whole life, birth to death, with all its sadness and failure and tragedy; but also joy and resistance and dignity. One doesn’t have to do amazing things that earn the world’s accolades to find vocation and meaning. Just as powerful a second time (I first read it in 2013). I was especially struck by the power plays in Stoner’s marriage and university department, and how well Williams dissects them. It’s more about atmosphere than plot – and that melancholy tone will stay with you.
Nonfiction
Storm Pegs by Jen Hadfield: Not a straightforward memoir but a set of atmospheric vignettes. Hadfield, a British Canadian poet, moved to Shetland in 2006 and soon found her niche. It’s a life of wild swimming, beachcombing, fresh fish, folk music, seabirds, kind neighbours, and good cheer that warms the long winter nights. After the isolation of the pandemic comes the unexpected joy of a partner and pregnancy in her mid-forties. I savoured this for its language and sense of place; it made me hanker to return to Shetland.
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell: (The final book club reread.) The memoir-in-essays is a highly effective form because it focuses on themes or moments of intensity and doesn’t worry about accounting for boring intermediate material. These pieces form a vibrant picture of a life and also inspire awe at what the human body can withstand. The present tense and a smattering of second person make the work immediate and invite readers to feel their way into her situations. The last two essays are the pinnacle.
Understorey: A Year among Weeds by Anna Chapman Parker: I owe this a full review in the new year. Parker set out to study and sketch weeds as a way of cultivating attention and stillness as well as celebrating the everyday and overlooked. Daily drawings and entries bear witness to seasons changing but also to the minute alterations she observes in herself and her children. For me, this was all the more special because I’ve holidayed in Berwick-on-Tweed and could picture a lot of the ‘overgrown’ spaces she honours by making them her subjects.
What were some of your best backlist reads this year?
Some 2025 Reading Superlatives
Longest book read this year: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (724 pages)
Shortest book read this year: Sky Tongued Back with Light by Sébastien Luc Butler (a 38-page poetry chapbook coming out in 2026)
Authors I read the most by this year: Paul Auster and Emma Donoghue (3) [followed by Margaret Atwood, Chloe Caldwell, Michael Cunningham, Mairi Hedderwick, Christopher Isherwood, Rebecca Kauffman, Stephen King, Elaine Kraf, Maggie O’Farrell, Sylvia Plath and Jess Walter (2 each)]
Publishers I read the most from: (Besides the ubiquitous Penguin Random House and its myriad imprints) Faber (14), Canongate (12), Bloomsbury (11), Fourth Estate (7); Carcanet, Picador/Pan Macmillan and Virago (6)
My top author ‘discoveries’ of the year (I’m very late to the party on some of these!): poet Amy Gerstler, Christopher Isherwood, Stephen King, Elaine Kraf, Sylvia Plath, Chloe Savage’s children’s picture books (women + NB characters, science, adventure, dogs), Robin Stevens’s middle-grade mysteries, Jess Walter
Proudest book-related achievement: Clearing 90–100 books from my shelves as part of our hallway redecoration. Some I resold, some I gave to friends, some I put in the Little Free Library, and some I donated to charity shops.
Most pinching-myself bookish moment: Miriam Toews’ U.S. publicist e-mailing me about my Shelf Awareness review of A Truce That Is Not Peace to say, “saw your amazing review! Thank you so much for it – Miriam loved it!”
Books that made me laugh: LOTS, including Spent by Alison Bechdel (which I read twice), The Wedding People by Alison Espach, Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, Is This My Final Form? by Amy Gerstler, The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith, The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Aged 37 ¾, and Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth
A book that made me cry: Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry
Best book club selections: Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam; The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell and Stoner by John Williams (these three were all rereads)
Best first line encountered this year:
- From Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones: “Hard, ugly, summer-vacation-spoiling rain fell for three straight months in 1979.”
Best last lines encountered this year:
- Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane: “Death and love and life, all mingled in the flow.”
(Two quite similar rhetorical questions:)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam: “If they didn’t know how it would end—with night, with more terrible noise from the top of Olympus, with bombs, with disease, with blood, with happiness, with deer or something else watching them from the darkened woods—well, wasn’t that true of every day?”
&
- Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter: “And even if they don’t find what they’re looking for, isn’t it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?”
- Wreck by Catherine Newman: “You are still breathing.”
The Irish Goodbye by Beth Ann Fennelly: “Dear viewer of my naked body, Enjoy the bunions.”
- A Certain Smile by Françoise Sagan: “It was a simple story; there was nothing to make a fuss about.”
- Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood: “We scribes and scribblers are time travellers: via the magic page we throw our voices, not only from here to elsewhere, but also from now to a possible future. I’ll see you there.”
Book that put a song in my head every time I picked it up: The Harvest Gypsies by John Steinbeck (see Kris Drever’s song of the same name). Also, one story of Book of Exemplary Women by Diana Xin mentioned lyrics from “Wild World” by Cat Stevens (“Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world. And I’ll always remember you like a child, girl”).
Shortest book titles encountered: Pan (Michael Clune), followed by Gold (Elaine Feinstein) & Girl (Ruth Padel); followed by an 8-way tie! Spent (Alison Bechdel), Billy (Albert French), Carol (Patricia Highsmith), Pluck (Adam Hughes), Sleep (Honor Jones), Wreck (Catherine Newman), Ariel (Sylvia Plath) & Flesh (David Szalay)
Best 2025 book titles: Chopping Onions on My Heart by Samantha Ellis [retitled, probably sensibly, Always Carry Salt for its U.S. release], A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews [named after a line from a Christian Wiman poem – top taste there] & Calls May Be Recorded for Training and Monitoring Purposes by Katharina Volckmer.
Best book titles from other years: Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags by Shena Mackay
Biggest disappointments: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – so not worth waiting 12 years for – and Heart the Lover by Lily King, which kind of retrospectively ruined her brilliant Writers & Lovers for me.
The 2025 books that it seemed like everyone was reading but I decided not to: Helm by Sarah Hall, The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (I’m 0 for 2 on his 2020s releases)
The downright strangest books I read this year: Both by Elaine Kraf: I Am Clarence and Find Him! (links to my Shelf Awareness reviews) are confusing, disturbing, experimental in language and form, but also ahead of their time in terms of their feminist content and insight into compromised mental states. The former is more accessible and less claustrophobic.
Book Serendipity, September through Mid-November
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 couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away.
Thanks to Emma and Kay for posting their own Book Serendipity moments! (Liz is always good about mentioning them as she goes along, in the text of her reviews.)
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- An obsession with Judy Garland in My Judy Garland Life by Susie Boyt (no surprise there), which I read back in January, and then again in Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage by Kelly Foster Lundquist.
- Leaving a suicide note hinting at drowning oneself before disappearing in World War II Berlin; and pretending to be Jewish to gain better treatment in Aimée and Jaguar by Erica Fischer and The Lilac People by Milo Todd.
- Leaving one’s clothes on a bank to suggest drowning in The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, read over the summer, and then Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet.
- A man expecting his wife to ‘save’ him in Amanda by H.S. Cross and Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage by Kelly Foster Lundquist.
- A man tells his story of being bullied as a child in Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood and Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist.
- References to Vincent Minnelli and Walt Whitman in a story from Touchy Subjects by Emma Donoghue and Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist.
- The prospect of having one’s grandparents’ dining table in a tiny city apartment in Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist and Wreck by Catherine Newman.
- Ezra Pound’s dodgy ideology was an element in The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld, which I reviewed over the summer, and recurs in Swann by Carol Shields.
- A character has heart palpitations in Andrew Miller’s story from The BBC National Short Story Award 2025 anthology and Endling by Maria Reva.
- A (semi-)nude man sees a worker outside the window and closes the curtains in one story of Cathedral by Raymond Carver and one from Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin.
- The call of the cuckoo is mentioned in The Edge of Silence by Neil Ansell and Of All that Ends by Günter Grass.
A couple in Italy who have a Fiat in Of All that Ends by Günter Grass and Caoilinn Hughes’s story from The BBC National Short Story Award 2025 anthology.
- Balzac’s excessive coffee consumption was mentioned in Au Revoir, Tristesse by Viv Groskop, one of my 20 Books of Summer, and then again in The Writer’s Table by Valerie Stivers.
- The main character is rescued from her suicide plan by a madcap idea in The Wedding People by Alison Espach and Endling by Maria Reva.
- The protagonist is taking methotrexate in Sea, Poison by Caren Beilin and Wreck by Catherine Newman.
- A man wears a top hat in Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet and one story of Cathedral by Raymond Carver.
- A man named Angus is the murderer in Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet and Swann by Carol Shields.
The thing most noticed about a woman is a hair on her chin in the story “Pluck” in Touchy Subjects by Emma Donoghue and Swann by Carol Shields.
- The female main character makes a point of saying she doesn’t wear a bra in Sea, Poison by Caren Beilin and Find Him! by Elaine Kraf.
- A home hairdressing business in one story of Cathedral by Raymond Carver and Emil & the Detectives by Erich Kästner.
- Painting a bathroom fixture red: a bathtub in The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith, one of my 20 Books of Summer; and a toilet in Find Him! by Elaine Kraf.
- A teenager who loses a leg in a road accident in individual stories from A Wild Swan by Michael Cunningham and the Racket anthology (ed. Lisa Moore).
- Digging up the casket of a loved one in the wee hours features in Pet Sematary by Stephen King, one of my 20 Books of Summer; and one story of Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link.
- A character named Dani in the story “The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea” by Sheila Heti and The Silver Book by Olivia Laing; later, author Dani Netherclift (Vessel).
Obsessive cultivation of potatoes in Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet and The Martian by Andy Weir.
- The story of Dante Gabriel Rossetti digging up the poems he buried with his love is recounted in Sharon Bala’s story in the Racket anthology (ed. Lisa Moore) and one of the stories in Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link.
- Putting French word labels on objects in Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay and Find Him! by Elaine Kraf.
A man with part of his finger missing in Find Him! by Elaine Kraf and Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl.
- In Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor, I came across a mention of the Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who is a character in The Silver Book by Olivia Laing.
- A character who works in an Ohio hardware store in Flashlight by Susan Choi and Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (two one-word-titled doorstoppers I skimmed from the library). There’s also a family-owned hardware store in Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay.
- A drowned father – I feel like drownings in general happen much more often in fiction than they do in real life – in The Homecoming by Zoë Apostolides, Flashlight by Susan Choi, and Vessel by Dani Netherclift (as well as multiple drownings in The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, one of my 20 Books of Summer).
- A memoir by a British man who’s hard of hearing but has resisted wearing hearing aids in the past: first The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus over the summer, then The Edge of Silence by Neil Ansell.
A loved one is given a six-month cancer prognosis but lives another (nearly) two years in All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert and Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl.
- A man’s brain tumour is diagnosed by accident while he’s in hospital after an unrelated accident in Flashlight by Susan Choi and Saltwash by Andrew Michael Hurley.
- Famous lost poems in What We Can Know by Ian McEwan and Swann by Carol Shields.
- A description of the anatomy of the ear and how sound vibrates against tiny bones in The Edge of Silence by Neil Ansell and What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher.
- Notes on how to make decadent mashed potatoes in Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist, Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry, and Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl.
- Transplant surgery on a dog in Russia and trepanning appear in The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov and the poetry collection Common Disaster by M. Cynthia Cheung.
- Audre Lorde, whose Sister Outsider I was reading at the time, is mentioned in Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl. Lorde’s line about the master’s tools never dismantling the master’s house is also paraphrased in Spent by Alison Bechdel.
- An adult appears as if fully formed in a man’s apartment but needs to be taught everything, including language and toilet training, in The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov and Find Him! by Elaine Kraf.
Two sisters who each wrote a memoir about their upbringing in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Vessel by Dani Netherclift.
- The fact that ragwort is bad for horses if it gets mixed up into their feed was mentioned in Ghosts of the Farm by Nicola Chester and Understorey by Anna Chapman Parker.
- The Sylvia Plath line “the O-gape of complete despair” was mentioned in Vessel by Dani Netherclift, then I read it in its original place in Ariel later the same day.
- A mention of the Baba Yaga folk tale (an old woman who lives in the forest in a hut on chicken legs) in Common Disaster by M. Cynthia Cheung and Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda. [There was a copy of Sophie Anderson’s children’s book The House with Chicken Legs in the Little Free Library around that time, too.]
- Coming across a bird that seems to have simply dropped dead in Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, Vessel by Dani Netherclift, and Rainforest by Michelle Paver.
- Contemplating a mound of hair in Vessel by Dani Netherclift (at Auschwitz) and Year of the Water Horse by Janice Page (at a hairdresser’s).
- Family members are warned that they should not see the body of their loved one in Vessel by Dani Netherclift and Rainforest by Michelle Paver.
- A father(-in-law)’s swift death from oesophageal cancer in Year of the Water Horse by Janice Page and Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry.
- I saw John Keats’s concept of negative capability discussed first in My Little Donkey by Martha Cooley and then in Understorey by Anna Chapman Parker.
- I started two books with an Anne Sexton epigraph on the same day: A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan and Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth.
- Mentions of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff and Sister Outsider for Audre Lorde, both of which I was reading for Novellas in November.
- Mentions of specific incidents from Samuel Pepys’s diary in Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff and Gin by Shonna Milliken Humphrey, both of which I was reading for Nonfiction November/Novellas in November.
- Starseed (aliens living on earth in human form) in Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino and The Conspiracists by Noelle Cook.
- Reading nonfiction by two long-time New Yorker writers at the same time: Life on a Little-Known Planet by Elizabeth Kolbert and Joyride by Susan Orlean.
- The breaking of a mirror seems like a bad omen in The Spare Room by Helen Garner and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
The author’s husband (who has a name beginning with P) is having an affair with a lawyer in Catching Sight by Deni Elliott and Joyride by Susan Orlean.
- Mentions of Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift in Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl and The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer; I promptly ordered the Hyde secondhand!
- The protagonist fears being/is accused of trying to steal someone else’s cat in Minka and Curdy by Antonia White and Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen by P.G. Wodehouse, both of which I was reading for Novellas in November.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Nine Days in Germany and What I Read, II: Lübeck
(Part I covered Berlin.) Three works of short fiction embodied the rest of our journeying, from Berlin to Lübeck to home. We were sad to say goodbye to Lemmy and Roxanne, the affectionate, fluffy cats who came with our Berlin flat, but there were further adventures to be had. The hosts of our Lübeck Airbnb apartment also owned two cats we briefly met, but it wasn’t the same as having surrogate pets around.
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (1939)
Isherwood intended for these six autofiction stories to contribute to a “huge episodic novel of pre-Hitler Berlin” titled The Lost. Two “Berlin Diary” segments from 1930 and 1933 bear witness to a change in tenor accompanying the rise of Nazism. Even in lighter pieces about a holiday at the Baltic coast and his friendship with a family who run a department store, menace creeps in through characters’ offhand remarks about “dirty Jews” ruining the country. The narrator, Christopher Isherwood, is a private English tutor staying in squalid boarding houses or spare rooms. His living conditions are mostly played for laughs – his landlady, Fraulein Schroeder, calls him “Herr Issyvoo” – but I was also reminded of George Orwell’s didactic realism. I had it in mind that Isherwood was homosexual; the only evidence of that here is his observation of the homoerotic tension between two young men, Otto and Peter, whom he meets on the Ruegen Island vacation, so he was still being coy in print. Famously, the longest story introduces Sally Bowles (played by Liza Minnelli in Cabaret), the lovable club singer who flits from man to man and feigns a carefree joy she doesn’t always feel. This is the second of two Berlin books; I will have to find the other and explore the rest of Isherwood’s work as I found this witty and humane, restrained but vigilant. (Little Free Library) 
On balance, we planned the division well: busy city days first, followed by a more restful long weekend; reliable English-speaking opportunities while we built up our confidence, then a more provincial setting where we could try out a bit of German. Friends were curious why we chose Lübeck. Two charitably assumed that I went for the Thomas Mann connections, but that was an incidental side benefit. (I quailed at the prospect of reading the 700+-page debut novel based on his family history, Buddenbrooks; instead, I intended to reread Death in Venice, but my Project Gutenberg download didn’t work, so I’ve earmarked it for Novellas in November instead.)
Nope, I was in it for the marzipan. Lübeck has been known for its marzipan since 1795. In 1926, there were 36 marzipan manufacturers in this northern city; three remain today and of course we visited both cafes and all three shops. Niederegger has a small museum above the Bettys-like café. You would not believe the scale or number of tableaux made entirely of almond paste! Nor the variety of flavours and packaging in the shop downstairs. We enjoyed marzipan hot chocolate, cappuccino and cakes, and came away with a modest supply of treats. We also dropped into a trendy restaurant where I had a “Lübecker martini” combining rum, marzipan liqueur and espresso.
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- Marzipan hot chocolate and traditional nusstorte at the Niederegger cafe.
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- Marzipanland was better! I had Othello Torte and a marzipan cappuccino.
In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield (1911)
Mansfield was 19 when she composed this slim debut collection of arch sketches set in and around a Bavarian guesthouse. The narrator is a young Englishwoman traveling to take the waters for her health. A quiet but opinionated outsider (“I felt a little crushed … at the tone – placing me outside the pale – branding me as a foreigner”), she crafts pen portraits of a gluttonous baron, the fawning Herr Professor, and various meddling or air-headed fraus and frauleins. There are funny lines that rest on stereotypes (“you English … are always exposing your legs on cricket fields, and breeding dogs in your back gardens”; “a tired, pale youth … was recovering from a nervous breakdown due to much philosophy and little nourishment”) but also some alarming scenarios. One servant girl narrowly escapes being violated, while “The-Child-Who-Was-Tired” takes drastic action when another baby is added to her workload. Most of the stories are unmemorable, however. Mansfield renounced this early work as juvenile and inferior – her first publisher went bankrupt and when war broke out in Europe, sparking renewed interest in a book that pokes fun at Germans, she refused republishing rights. (Secondhand – Well-Read Books, Wigtown) 
On our travels, I also read…
- portions of various e-books for paid Shelf Awareness reviews: Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet, Beard by Kelly Foster Lundquist, Wreck by Catherine Newman;
- part of Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, which I’ll finish for Novellas in November;
- and portions of e-books for fun: Startlement by Ada Limón and An Oral History of Atlantis by Ed Park (more short story catch-up reviews to come).
Aside from marzipan, Lübeck has a lot going for it: lovely medieval Brick Gothic architecture – the iconic Holstentor gate once featured on the 50-mark note; proximity to the Baltic Sea; and connections with three Nobel Prize winners, two for literature – the other being Günter Grass. On the Saturday morning, we took a bus to Travemünde, a popular seaside resort town, for a walk along the cliffs. The path was busy with cyclists but the dog beach was nearly deserted. We watched a ferry setting off for Sweden. (Had we had a few more days to play with, we would have liked to tack on trips to Denmark from here and into Poland from Berlin.)
Buddenbrookhaus, the home of Mann’s grandparents, is undergoing a several-year renovation and expansion project. I wasn’t too upset about missing out on it, and there was a Mann exhibit in the tourist information centre. Instead, I went to the Günter Grass House museum, which opened in 2002. Grass spent his last 20 years living 15 miles south of Lübeck and kept an office in this building. For future reference, there’s a good-value day-ticket one can buy that covers all the museums in Lübeck. My husband went to the natural history museum while I learned about Grass, whom I’d never read before, and about Else Lasker-Schüler, whose works were on display in the rotating upstairs exhibit featuring figures who, like Grass, were writers and visual artists.
Grass grew up in what is now Danzig, Poland and was drafted into the Waffen-SS at age 17. He was lucky in that he soon received a minor injury that landed him in American custody. The Tin Drum, his well-known debut novel, drew on his military background, which he otherwise rarely discussed. Formally trained in art, he illustrated his works with the same motifs that appear in words. Flora and fauna run all through: fruit, onions; birds, snails, the flounder, cats and dogs. A multitalented writer, he also produced plays, poetry and political commentary. He won the Nobel Prize in 1999 and died in 2015. I found the material on his life and work unexpectedly diverting. I read the short volume below as soon as we got back.
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- Some of Grass’s grotesque hybrid animal drawings
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- Replica of the Grass family’s store in Danzig
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- Else Lasker-Schüler exhibit, including her death mask
Of All that Ends by Günter Grass (2015)
[Translated from German by Breon Mitchell]
This posthumous prosimetric collection contains miniature essays, stories and poems, many of which seem autobiographical. By turns nostalgic and morbid, the pieces are very much concerned with senescence and last things. The black-and-white sketches, precise like Dürer’s but looser and more impressionistic, obsessively feature dead birds, fallen leaves, bent nails and shorn-off fingers. The speaker and his wife order wooden boxes in which their corpses will lie and store them in the cellar. One winter night they’re stolen, only to be returned the following summer. He has lost so many friends, so many teeth; there are few remaining pleasures of the flesh that can lift him out of his naturally melancholy state. Though, in Lübeck for the Christmas Fair, almonds might just help? The poetry happened to speak to me more than the prose in this volume. I’ll read longer works by Grass for future German Literature Months. My library has his first memoir, Peeling the Onion, as well as The Tin Drum, both doorstoppers. (Public library) 
Of all that ends: books, holidays, seasons. It was a trip that, like so many we take these days, was sometimes irksome and exhausting, and could be overwhelming (Berlin) or boring (Lübeck) by turns – yet was still far preferable to the humdrum of home life. And – isn’t it always the way? – just as we’d gotten comfortable with greetings, farewells and other everyday phrases in a new language, it was time to leave. We were more comfortable with French when ordering a vegan supper at a café and drinks in a bustling Art Deco bar during our quick overnight stay in Brussels, then it was onto the Eurostar to come back home. Somewhere on those many train rides back, I caught this monster cold that will not die after 10 days and counting. And the very day we arrived back in the UK, we felt a sudden shift to late autumn weather.
November will be here before we know it.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 