Book Serendipity, August to September
From Jennifer Croft’s superb Notes on Postcards (forthcoming in November):
I’d heard that story of Horace Walpole and the etymology of “serendipity” before. Tying together dangling threads is a good description of what I try to do with these posts, which arise from my reading.
I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I have 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!
The more accurate keyword would probably be “synchronicity,” which according to Carl Jung, who “believed in a universe of mysterious connections,” is “a meaningful coincidence in which an internal mental state somehow attracts a real-world parallel” (quotes from The Spirituality Gap by Ali Millar). An intriguing idea, that: somehow, by thinking about these ideas or details, I might be … luring repeat incidents to me?!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
What’s in a name?
- Girlfriends named Maddie (in Year of the Drought by Roland Buti) and Mattie (Tom’s in Pardon Our French by Alex Durand and Tom Carles); plus a granddaughter (in The Typing Lady and Other Fictions by Ruth Ozeki) and niece (in The Land and Its People by David Sedaris) named Maddy.
- A character named Hattie in Leaving the Yellow House by Saul Bellow and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
- A character named India in Leaving the Yellow House by Saul Bellow and Family Family by Laurie Frankel (our second The Marriage Plot/Literary Wives club read this year in which the protagonist was named India, after Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell).
A daughter named Rebecca in Switzy by Emma Cline and Family Family by Laurie Frankel (where she’s known as Bex); and sisters named Rebecca (known as Becks) in one story of The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales by Kirsty Logan and The Long Road to Holy Island by Austin Suggs. Those are both nicknames I’ve had, by the way. The one nickname I detest is Becky.- A mother named Monica in The Summerhouse Trilogy by Alice Thomas Ellis and Apt Pupil by Stephen King.
- A Hilda in The Given World by Melissa Harrison and one story of Self-Help by Lorrie Moore.
- A Clare in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin, The Leveret by Anna Goldreich and The Given World by Melissa Harrison.
- A Sergio in Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong and a Serge in So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak.
- A son named Silas in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin and So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak.
- Compensation for run-over chickens in Year of the Drought by Roland Buti and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller.
- “Enough is enough” is a slogan in The Land and Its People by David Sedaris (where it’s also an essay title) and Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins.
Telluride, Colorado features as a setting in Almost Animal by Amy Irvine and in one essay of The Land and Its People by David Sedaris.
- A trip from Paris to see Chartres Cathedral in The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham and Shadow of a Man by May Sarton.
- Fleeting references to the Donner Party in Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins and The Nightingales by Emil Wilson.
- An essay about an Icelandic sheep ram, and the idea that one should ride geldings because they’re calmer and more reliable than mares, in Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston and The Land and Its People by David Sedaris.
- The protagonist’s work performance declining due to dementia, and a tweed jacket, in Switzy by Emma Cline and Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer. (There’s also a tweed jacket mentioned in Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami.)
- German artist Käthe Kollwitz is mentioned in Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground (the title is from one of her works) by Pat Browne and The Book of Mating by Laksmi Pamuntjak.
- Child brides and incestuous rape are mentioned/feature in Almost Animal by Amy Irvine and The Book of Mating by Laksmi Pamuntjak, both of which I was reading early for Foreword Reviews.
- The keeping of goats in Almost Animal by Amy Irvine and American Daughter by Era Bell Thompson, both of which I was reading early for Foreword Reviews.
- In August I unwittingly started rereading two books that I’d first read in April 2013 (is 13+ years the ideal interval?!): I Feel Bad about My Neck by Nora Ephron and Flush by Virginia Woolf.
- Men by the name of Christmas: the narrator’s parents wanted to name him Noel (but the German state didn’t allow it?!) in Botany of Madness by Leon Engler; and a main character is named Joe Christmas in Light in August by William Faulkner.
- To the narrator’s question of whether something awful has happened / they’ve done something wrong, a reply of “it very likely had but she hadn’t heard about it yet” in Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns and “Most likely. You know that better than I do” in Botany of Madness by Leon Engler.
- The idea that human–animal communication/connection is deeper than that between humans because it is beyond language plays a major role in three books I read around the same time: Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston, Mitz by Sigrid Nunez, and Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer. (The Houston and Orringer both publish on 13 October and I was reviewing them early for Shelf Awareness.)
- The fact that children of alcoholics feel they have to make everything perfect to avoid conflict appears in Botany of Madness by Leon Engler and Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston.
I encountered lines from the song “Closing Time” by Semisonic in Here We Are at the End by Sara Barnard (a specific reference to the pop song accompanied “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end” – which I was amused to learn is actually a quote from Seneca!) and Family Family by Laurie Frankel (“You don’t have to go home. But you can’t stay here.” – not attributed, but I can’t but think she had the song in mind.)
- The stereotype of overachieving Asian Americans is mentioned or discussed in Family Family by Laurie Frankel, Miracle Creek by Angie Kim, and To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time by Matthew Salesses. There are Korean Americans in all three, and Korean children adopted into a white family in the Frankel and Salesses.
- A young woman is aghast at her mother getting rid of loved pet(s) in Nightjar by Emily Ruskovich and The Nightingales by Emil Wilson (both titled after birds!)
- A mention of the practice of buying single cigarettes from a city corner shop for 50 cents in Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad and Miracle Creek by Angie Kim.
- Saving turtles from the road in Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins and then a mention of someone else doing so in To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time by Matthew Salesses.
The lines “Leave as soon as you think to yourself, ‘This is a great party. I’m having a wonderful time’” from Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck are echoed in Emma Cline’s Switzy.
- A holy well is mentioned in The Given World by Melissa Harrison and Shiver by Brigid Lowe.
- A sexy pastor’s wife features in one story of Hail Mary by Funmi Fetto and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw.
- A flawed pearl is mentioned in Apt Pupil by Stephen King and A Desert between Two Seas by A. Muia.
- A mention of hara-kiri (literal) in Death in Midsummer by Yukio Mishima and A Better Death by Jonathan Romain; and as a metaphor in What I Don’t Know about Animals by Jenny Diski.
- Camel cigarettes appear in Miracle Creek by Angie Kim and Apt Pupil by Stephen King.
- A woman remembers being nicknamed an “ice queen” in one story of Everest by Ashani Lewis and Plum by Hollie McNish.
- A woman has to have a bowel movement in the labour ward in Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong and Natural Disaster by Lisa Owens.
- The challenge of being a mother in the film industry is discussed in Family Family by Laurie Frankel and So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak.
A three-year-old gets their own cereal breakfast in Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong and So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak.
- A woman feels guilty of neglect due to her eight-year-old son’s death in a lake in Under Story by Cloe Benjamin and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
- A viral scandal where photographs/video footage are misconstrued to make a woman look bad in Hum by Helen Phillips and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw.
- A misunderstanding causes a mother to be investigated for child neglect in one story of Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong and Hum by Helen Phillips.
Shirley Temples (the non-alcoholic cocktail) are mentioned in Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw.
- A woman impulsively takes a dishwashing job in Under Story by Cloe Benjamin and Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
- A scene of putting out sandbags in Rattlebone by Maxine Clair and The Long Road to Holy Island by Austin Suggs.
An unwanted mince pie in Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford and I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron.
- A child in hospital with acute appendicitis in one story of Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark by Celia Fremlin and Natural Disaster by Lisa Owens (and with suspected appendicitis in Shiver by Brigid Lowe).
- The Tennyson poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is mentioned in Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford and Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus.
- Having to get off an elevator at the previous floor because it doesn’t go up to the destination in Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel and Blood Is Dripping onto the Courtyard by Elvira Navarro.
- Realizing one’s bed is unmade in one story of Everest by Ashani Lewis and A Very British Midlife Crisis by Rob Temple.
- Confusion over the name of a possibly abused dog (with special powers!) adopted from a shelter in Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus and Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer.
- I encountered the phrase “She’s not worth it” in both Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw within 10 minutes!
Someone being pulled back into the womb in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin and Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020 by Mirko Ilić.
- An apple orchard as a setting in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin and one story of Apple and Palm by Patricia Henley.
- “Little Nemo in Slumberland” as an image and metaphor in Switzy by Emma Cline and Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020 by Mirko Ilić.
- A lost twin sibling – lost at birth in Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus and H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald; lost later on in one story of The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales by Kirsty Logan.
- A portal to another timeline, and characters who are doubles of each other, in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin and Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
- A lesbian couple moves to a new house and the one woman feels isolated and sad because she’s recently had a miscarriage in the debut novels The New People by Andrea Uptmor (reviewed for BookBrowse) and then The Leveret by Anna Goldreich.
- Nagging a woman to use lotion on her hands as they’re the first place to show signs of ageing in Hum by Helen Phillips and one story of Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams.
A couple of visual ones:
- I was reading The Land and Its People by David Sedaris at the same time as Country People by Daniel Mason, one of whose blurbs happens to borrow Sedaris’s title phrase.
- I was reading Botany of Madness by Leon Engler and encountered this passage on the day of the solar eclipse in Europe (12 August):
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
September Releases by Ilić, Lowe, McCallum, Philyaw & Temple
Dreamlike pandemic-era comics, cold-water swimming in Scottish lochs, poetry about art and a mixed-race heritage, a cheeky novel about beauty queens and Black church politics, and a laugh-out-loud guide to how (not) to traverse a midlife crisis: some great books came my way last month!
Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020 by Mirko Ilić
“A.C.” stands for “After Covid.” In 2020, the Bosnian-born, New York City-based artist started drawing comics again after many years. These wordless, one-page, greyscale pieces explore the emotions of the pandemic era, with entrapment, surrealism and startling violence as recurring elements. Ilić plays with scale, scope and time. There are Escher-like optical illusions and mise-en-abîme effects. People meld with each other, metamorphose or disappear. A multi-lane city street splits open to reveal a chasm that swallows the cars and pedestrians and then closes back up as if nothing ever happened. The artist himself seems to appear in a number of scenes, looking out windows, sleeping in a coffin-like box or watching porn on his computer. There are a number of images that verge on the pornographic, in fact, with naked women and a dominatrix. (Shara McCallum (below) voices my reaction to these in “The Nude”: “Don’t offer me a neatly trimmed or, God forbid, / shaved, depilated, waxed, exfoliated c**t.) Disappointingly, Ilić lists his inspirations in a “Visual reference index” at the end, which rather spoils the mystery. I knew without consulting it that spread 29, in which a bedbound old man reaches out his arm and clenches his fist in front of a portrait of Dylan Thomas, was an allusion to “Do not go gentle into that good night.” That was one of my favourites in an inventive and striking but sometimes vulgar work.
With thanks to SelfMadeHero for the free copy for review.
Shiver: The Lessons of the Lochs by Brigid Lowe
When Brigid Lowe’s marriage broke down, she moved with her three children from northern England to an Edinburgh flat. Feeling simultaneously unmoored and free in her early forties, she undertook an ongoing challenge-to-self to swim in 1,000 of Scotland’s lochs (there are 30,000 in total). “I am a fanatic. I swim outside now most days,” she confesses. For her, cold-water swimming means “taking in, and being taken in, by each loch and each moment on its own terms. There is no template.” Although she argues for the uniqueness of each loch, I found that the story quickly grew repetitive. Lowe is so sparing with personal details that I didn’t feel as engaged as I might have been with the overlaid narrative of her transformation from a traumatised wanderer to a strong, rooted matriarch. A prime example is her rape, which she refuses to name as such and recounts, in vague terms, in two pages. I’ve read a spate of swimming memoirs now, among them Freya Bromley’s The Tidal Year, Ruth Fitzmaurice’s I Found My Tribe and Jessica J. Lee’s superlative Turning, and it takes a lot for a book to hold its head up above that flood. I thought the setting of Scotland – her zeal for which I share (“Sometimes you fall in love with a place, and it’s as mysterious as any falling in love”) – would be that point of difference. While the prose is sumptuous and I enjoyed the glimpses of Scottish landscapes and wildlife across the seasons, they weren’t enough to hold my interest. The frequent references to Celtic legends, with a feminist slant, means that, in addition to swimming enthusiasts, I’d be more likely to recommend this to readers of works such as Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted than to memoir junkies or tourists.
With thanks to Elliott & Thompson for the free copy for review.
Behold by Shara McCallum
McCallum’s seventh book is a lush collection of ekphrastic poems (responses to artworks) and reflections on Jamaican American ancestry. In “Self-Portrait” – the first in a series with that heading – those major themes blend beautifully with a hefty dollop of assonance and sibilance: “At this point, I don’t know what in me is Jamaican / versus American. … since / we’re on the topic of the singular, about this subject: / she’s awfully tired of being parsed to see if she’s a fraud.” She applies art terms to the self: “Chiaroscuro” for a mixed-race identity and “Craquelure” for the wrinkles that provide “evidence of my ravishment” by time. Passion for art history (especially art by women and people of colour) meets fervour for social justice as McCallum exposes “the casual violence of misseeing” – who would look twice at the photograph of her Jamaican grandmother sweeping in midlife? I was unfamiliar with most of the artists and works featured, but that was fine; I almost didn’t want to look them up lest I spoil the magic of both by comparing the image with the poem.
With thanks to Alice James Books for the advanced e-copy for review.
The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw
Philyaw’s 2020 short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a surprise hit and set the bar high for her debut novel. Luckily, this lives up to the promise of her first book, which I called “bold and sexy,” and is all the more provocative for being set in the rarefied world of Southern U.S. Black megachurch pastors and their wives. Scharisse Freeman came from poverty, born to a single teenage mother who died of breast cancer when Scharisse was an adolescent. When she married David, 15 years her senior, it wasn’t unlike ascending to royalty. Together, they’ve raised a daughter, built a thousands-strong congregation, and lent their brand to everything from relationship books to salad dressing. At home they have a personal chef (David’s cousin Marcus) and an ice cream parlor. Schar seems like a shoo-in to win the annual First Lady pageant, but that’s before a scandal breaks linking her to her nemesis Daphne Lancaster’s husband, Jeddah, a mayoral candidate and inveterate adulterer also based in their town of Belleton, Georgia. Deciding how to refute the false allegations opens Schar’s eyes to her husband’s and the church’s priorities and uncovers a shocking secret about her father’s identity and the real cause of her mother’s death. Along the way, she tries to fix her relationship with her estranged bestie Petra, who is Black British and lesbian.
Fun fact you probably didn’t know about me: I grew up attending a Black megachurch in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. I recognised so much here: the opulence, the scripture quoting, the high fashion. A few names of public figures are real (Creflo Dollar and his yacht!); most other details are made up but totally believable if you’re at all familiar with this world. The novel is a little overlong (400+ pages) and soapy, but Schar’s voice is so fun and sassy that it carries the whole thing. Her footnotes and comebacks are hilarious, and you’ll want to cheer as she defies convention and blazes a trail for herself. (Read via NetGalley)
A Very British Midlife Crisis: A Survival Guide to the Best Years of Your Life by Rob Temple
I started reading the Very British Problems series (which arose from a Twitter account of the same name) from the beginning, with the launch of Temple’s first book in 2013. Though I’ve missed some of the sequels, I’m delighted that this one unexpectedly dropped through my letterbox. I laughed and grimaced my way from start to finish; I could recognize pretty much every nonsensical decision, pathetic impulse, odd habit, and crotchety opinion. Not all of them are applicable to me, I hasten to add, but might be quirks I’ve observed in others of my generation or above. Temple proceeds thematically, considering health and work challenges, fashion, exercise, relationship and parenting issues, and so on. He translates dating profile phrases and rates hobbies by their potential regret value. Occasionally, his wife offers a female perspective. I probably guffawed the most at the section where he goes to a student house party as research (“I felt a TREMENDOUS urge to clean the bathroom”) and the glossary at the end (sample entries: “Being Knackered: Your permanent energy level,” “Cancelled Plans: Your favourite thing in the whole wide world”). This is silly, sure, but also warm and relatable. I think any reader of a certain age would get a kick out of it. I plan to pass my copy on to my brother-in-law, who turns 40 next month.
With thanks to Allen & Unwin for the free copy for review.
More to come: A sci-fi pairing as Under Story by Chloe Benjamin goes head to head with Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
Which of these September releases have you read, or will you seek out now? What am I missing out on?
(More) Most Anticipated Books for the Second Half of 2026
Yesterday, I reported back on how I’ve done with the 25 Most Anticipated books I chose at the beginning of the year. I have another dozen to add to the list today. These are in release date order by genre, with the UK publication info given first if available. The blurbs are adapted from Goodreads and I’ve taken the liberty of using whichever cover I prefer.
Fiction
Heartstopper: Volume 6 by Alice Oseman [2 July, Hodder Children’s Books – out now! / July 7, Graphix]: I have simply adored this YA graphic novel series, so much I read it twice. Oseman seems to be having trouble figuring out how to end it, which isn’t surprising given how long it’s been a part of her life and how popular it’s become. “The final installment in the bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel series about life, love, and everything that happens in between. Everyone in school knows Nick and Charlie. Everyone knows they’re going to be together forever. But Charlie’s busy with his bid to become head boy. And while Nick is preparing to leave for college, he’s starting to wonder who he’ll be… without Charlie.”
Astronaut! by Oana Aristide [July 14, W. W. Norton & Company; out in the UK from Headline since March, but I missed it!]: I really enjoyed Aristide’s McKitterick Prize-shortlisted debut, Under the Blue, and I wondered if this might be similar to Spaceman of Bohemia. (Nothing to do with astronauts, actually?) “Romania, 1989, the twilight of Ceausescu’s dictatorship: A time when every neighbor, every friend, every family member may be an informant for the regime. When news emerges of a man-eating bear terrorizing the country, two bright lives collide. Constantin, an idealistic police detective [… and] Lia, a rebellious, inquisitive schoolgirl … unwittingly drawn into an elderly neighbor’s secret plot against the regime.” (Edelweiss download)
The New People by Andrea Uptmor [July 21, Little, Brown]: “A searing and strikingly intimate debut set in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, about a newly married lesbian couple who move into a flipped foreclosure, unaware that the former homeowners are still living in the attic. … As Rachel immerses herself in her new role as a tenure-track professor and bestselling novelist, adjunct Emma struggles in the shadow of her wife’s success. Desperate to build something of her own, Emma secretly pursues IVF, even as Rachel insists they wait to have children.” This sounds like a fun blend of Leave the World Behind, The Underground Railroad, and Detransition, Baby. (For BookBrowse review)
Under Story by Chloe Benjamin [1 Sept., Tinder Press /G.P. Putnam’s Sons]: I loved Benjamin’s previous novel, The Immortalists, which had some speculative/magic realist elements. It looks like she’s now really leaning into the (literary end of) science fiction. This should be a good one to sink into this summer. “Biologist Laurel Salter … works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. … But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t outrun her past. … Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. … Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole, and into a world, they can barely imagine. … A breathless page-turner and a love letter to our planet.” (Review copy from publisher)
Stations by Louise Kennedy [24 Sept., Bloomsbury Circus / Nov. 3, Riverhead]: I admired Kennedy’s McKitterick Prize-winning debut, Trespasses, very much. “In 1982, Róisín and Red meet as teenagers in their hometown in Ireland. Red’s reputation for trouble might precede him, but Róisín finds in him an intelligent and funny – if unlikely – friend. … As the years pass, they grow up and apart. [… A] devastating story of love and friendship, and the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives.” (Edelweiss download)
Dodge City by Patrick deWitt [29 Sept., Fourth Estate / Ecco]: DeWitt is reliable for his deadpan humour and quirky plots. “It’s 1967 in Los Angeles and Lee Clarke has received his draft notice, calling him up to fight in the Vietnam War. … He signs up at a drive-away car-delivery service, chancing into a showroom-new Jaguar bound for the East Coast. … In four different towns strung out along the northern United States, Lee visits each member of his immediate family. … An arresting portrait of a country in flux and a family in disarray.” (Edelweiss download)
The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw [29 Sept., Transworld / Mariner Books]: Philyaw’s short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was terrific, and her debut novel sounds like more of the same: (religious) Black women behaving ‘badly’ (make that sexually). “From the moment Scharisse Freeman ditched her humble roots and married a megachurch pastor fifteen years her senior, she’s been labeled too brash and too ‘of the world’ by church folks. … On the eve of her 40th birthday, Schar gets the final bit of validation she’s always dreamt a coveted invitation to participate in the First Lady USA pageant.”
Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus [13 Oct., Manila Press / Scribner]: It feels like it’s been a long time (but only four years, actually) since Lessons in Chemistry, which everybody and their aunt’s book club read. “Batter Gray is … in his early twenties, living in New York City, and he wants something different; something that alienates some readers and bores most. Poetry. And yet—to him and exactly thirty-nine editors at a company called Peck & Peck—poetry not only represents the power of humanity but holds the key to its survival. Batter is named after his mother’s heroic dog. An identical twin who lost his brother at birth, he finds himself confronted by the everyday dualities that make up life.” (Edelweiss download)
Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer [Oct. 13, Knopf]: Orringer is one of my favourite authors, especially after the brilliance of The Invisible Bridge and The Flight Portfolio. This sounds very different (more like Elizabeth Strout, maybe) but equally good. “Dava and Barr Pennington, professors at a Midwestern university, both harbor potent secrets. [… Dava is] secretly in love with a colleague, Svetlana White; [… and] tests reveal that she’s suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s. … Soon afterward, her husband, alone in the house at night, discovers her hidden manuscript. … [A] tale of artistic and marital betrayal in a chorus of voices.” (Edelweiss download for Shelf Awareness review)
The Brightness by Chad Harbach [27 Oct., Fourth Estate / Little, Brown]: Fifteen years between novels must be some kind of record. Will it be worth the wait?! I read his debut, The Art of Fielding, when it was newly out in 2011, but I reckon I’ll need to reread it before deciding whether to embark on this doorstopper of a sequel. “At 27, Pella’s life looks settled: she’s a recent college graduate, engaged to Mike, her longtime boyfriend, and helping her friend Owen pull off his own destination wedding on Block Island. But over that wild wedding weekend, Pella’s past and present collide spectacularly, blowing up her plans and sending her spiralling toward an unplanned future in New York City.”
Nonfiction
Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston [Oct. 13, Torrey House Press]: Houston is fab in any genre, but I do especially appreciate her writing about nature and her dogs. “From Icelandic mares and Irish wolfhounds to elephants, leopards, hyenas, and a desert-adapted lioness named Charlie, Pam Houston has learned life’s most important lessons from animals. How to play. How to rest. How to love. How to die. How to be present with the dying. How to be present with the living and with the Earth. How to find joy in the least likely places. How to find joy, literally, everywhere. With playful sincerity, Houston finds power and promise in the teachings of our fellow creatures and reminds us that animals are here for us, every day and everywhere.” (Edelweiss download for Shelf Awareness review)
Frost Will Come: Essays from the Bardo by Mary Cappello [Oct. 27, University of Wisconsin Press]: An illness/grief-themed memoir-in-essays = right up my street. “When her octogenarian poet mother was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer, Mary Cappello and her wife moved into the living room of Rosemary’s one-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia to help fulfill her wish to live out her life at home. A memoir in the form of lyric essays—with her mother’s own writing interspersed—Frost Will Come is a daughter’s tribute to her mother’s months-long transition from a deeply lived life to a difficult, beautiful, and uneasy death.” (PDF review copy for Shelf Awareness review)
Are any of these calling to you as well?
20 Books of Summer, 1: Company by Shannon Sanders
I started the summer’s reading right with Company. Shannon Sanders’s energetic debut novel-in-stories traces several generations of the Collins clan, whose experiences at once exemplify African American gentrification and evoke timeless patterns of parental legacy and sibling jealousy. Sisters Cassandra, Fay, Lee and Suzette grew up at their parents’ Atlantic City jazz club before going their separate ways: Cassandra to a PhD and provost position at a college, Fay to painting and the role of family spirit-keeper, Lee to her own brood of four and a no-good jazz musician husband, and Suzette to music and a too-early death. With roots in Mississippi, they have dispersed to Atlanta, New York City and Washington, DC.
We revisit relatives at different points in their lives, mostly between the 1990s and the present day. There are 13 linked stories here, 10 in the third person and three with a first-person narrator. Each focuses on a different individual or set of characters. Celebration scenes make for memorable moments. “Bird of Paradise” is set at the party to commemorate Cassandra’s new position. There’s a Black president at the time and people can’t stop comparing her dress to Michelle Obama’s inaugural ball attire, while she can’t stop fretting that she and her nieces will live up to stereotypes of Black women’s bodies. Later, “La Belle Hottentote” revisits this evening from the nieces’ perspective as they ponder where the family’s money came from. In “Rioja,” Cassandra’s daughter Cecilia, visiting her boyfriend Cole’s family for Thanksgiving, tries not to embarrass him with any pretentious or avant-garde behavior.
The title story, which is among the stand-outs, is the only one to feature the grandparent generation – though Opal and Centennial are but ghosts commenting on the begrudging welcome Fay offers when her niece Aubrey turns up on her doorstep in New Jersey. Fay is the sole sister without partner or children, but she got the family home as a sort of consolation prize and fills its walls with symbolism-heavy portraits of four sisters. My other favorite, alongside this and “Bird of Paradise,” was “The Opal Cleft,” in which Lee’s son Theo hosts his cousin Cyrus (Cassandra’s son) while the latter performs his drag queen act in the area.
I was reminded by turns of Danielle Evans, Kim Coleman Foote and Deesha Philyaw, while final story “The Everest Society,” about Lee’s daughter Mariolive’s desperation to impress the social worker who has to okay her and Dante adopting, recalls Sidik Fofana with its composite picture of their apartment building’s residents. In a few cases I felt that Sanders might have extended the sphere too wide by moving outside the family: “The Gatekeepers” I assume is about a co-worker or neighbor of Cassandra’s; “Mote” is about Cole’s cousin and his partner (and makes the one white woman in the book evil…); and “Dragonflies” features that cousin’s colleague. It’s not to say that these aren’t good stories, but I wondered why they couldn’t have starred extended family members instead.
Trying to get pregnant and the early days of motherhood are recurring concerns, as is the distribution of talent and wealth around the family and beyond. As these characters reach toward the upper middle class, they keep in mind the struggles they came from. Although the family legends morph over the years, shared habits and heirlooms make connections across the generations. Sanders is strong on characterization, scene-setting and social observation; I would happily have spent even longer with the Collins family. I’ll be keen to follow her career in the years to come. 
With thanks to Pushkin Press for the free copy for review.
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?
Short Stories in September, Part I: Nam Le, Deesha Philyaw, Dan Rhodes
Part of my annual project to read as many short story collections as possible in September. Here’s the first three.
The Boat by Nam Le (2008)
Le, who was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia, won the Dylan Thomas Prize for this collection of seven stories. The opener, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” – the title being William Faulkner’s advice for what authors should write about – knocked my socks off. It’s a crisp slice of autofiction about his father coming to visit him while he is a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Nam (the character) is ambivalent about whether to write about his family’s history of escaping Vietnam by boat, but as a deadline looms he decides to go for it, no matter what his father might think. There’s a coy remark here from one of his friends: “you could just write about Vietnamese boat people all the time. … You could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing. But instead, you choose to write about lesbian vampires [not in this collection!] and Colombian assassins, and Hiroshima orphans—and New York painters with hemorrhoids.”
So there you have four of the story plots in a nutshell. “Cartagena” is an interesting enough inside look at a Colombian gang, but Le’s strategy for revealing that these characters would be operating in a foreign language is to repeatedly use the construction “X has Y years” for giving ages, which I found annoying. “Meeting Elise” is the painter-with-hemorrhoids one (though I would have titled it “A Big Deal”) and has Henry nervously awaiting his reunion with his teenage daughter, a cello prodigy. There’s a Philip Roth air to that one. “Hiroshima” is brief and dreamy, and works because of the dramatic irony between what readers know and the narrator does not. “The Boat,” the final story, is the promised Vietnam adventure, but took forever to get to. I skimmed/skipped two stories of 50+ pages, “Halflead Bay,” set among Australian teens, and “Tehran Calling.”
It’s a shame that the rest of the book didn’t live up to the first story. The settings and styles felt too disparate overall, with no linking theme. I know that authors are supposed to be able to write about whatever they want, rather than just sticking to their own heritage – a provincial attitude the above quote is mocking, surely – but I had to wonder why these stories mattered to the author, and thus why they should matter to me. As far as I can tell, this is all Le has published. He won another five awards for it, and landed on the National Book Foundation’s 5 under 35 list in 2008. What happened after that?? (Public library) 
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw (2020)
I’d heard such good things about this collection after its U.S. release (it was a National Book Award finalist and won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, PEN/Faulkner Award and more), so was delighted to learn that it was coming to the UK earlier this year. These nine stories, mostly set among Black women in the Southern USA, are bold and sexy. The opening pair is a particularly provocative one-two punch. In “Eula,” two friends with benefits meet up in a hotel on New Year’s Eve 2000, as they do every year; narrator Caroletta is committed to this relationship, while Eula is only killing time until she can marry a man as everyone expects. In “Not-Daniel,” a man and woman have sex in a car parked behind a hospice to try to forget that their mothers are dying inside.
“How to Make Love to a Physicist,” told in the second person, is about an art teacher scared to embark on a relationship with a seemingly perfect man she meets at a conference. “Dear Sister,” in the form of a long, gossipy letter, is about a tangled set of half-siblings. “Jael” alternates a young teen’s diary entries and her great-grandmother’s fretting over what to do with her wild ward. (The biblical title takes on delicious significance later on.) Multiple characters clash with authority figures about church attendance, with the decision to leave the fold coinciding with claiming autonomy or rejecting hypocrisy.
“Peach Cobbler” and “Snowfall” were my two favourites. In the former, reminiscent of Tayari Jones’s Silver Sparrow, Olivia’s mother has been having a long-term affair with the pastor, for whom she bakes a special dessert she denies her own daughter (“I’m not going to raise [my child] to go through life expecting it to be sweet, when for her, it ain’t going to be”). The latter has Arletha and Rhonda suffering through a Midwest winter and dreaming of a Southern crab boil, but fearing they can never go home to mothers who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge their bond as anything other than friendship (“like a beautiful quilt in summertime, my mother’s love was the suffocating kind”).
The insight into familial and romantic relationships, the frank bisexuality, the allusions to scripture and churchgoing traditions, and the folksy foods and metaphors all made this stand out for me. The collection tails off with two unmemorable stories, but the previous seven are more than compelling enough for me to recommend this to your attention. 
With thanks to Pushkin Press (the ONE imprint) for the proof copy for review.
Anthropology: and a Hundred Other Stories by Dan Rhodes (2000)
I should have known, after reading When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow (an obvious satire on Richard Dawkins’s atheism) in 2017, that Dan Rhodes’s humour wasn’t for me. However, I generally love flash fiction so thought I might as well give these 101 stories – all about 100 words, or one paragraph, long – a go when I found a copy in a giveaway box across the street. Each has a one-word title, proceeding alphabetically from A to W, and many begin “My girlfriend…” as an unnamed bloke reflects on a relationship. Most of the setups are absurd; the girlfriends’ names (Foxglove, Miracle, Nightjar) tell you so, if nothing else.
There’s a kind of ‘nothing sacred’ approach here, with death, disability, race and gender the fodder for any number of gags. For example, in the title story the ex-girlfriend “went to Mongolia to study the gays. … It breaks my heart to think of her herding those yaks in the freezing hills, … nothing but a handlebar moustache to keep her top lip warm.” Or “Taxidermy”: “Columbine broke her neck by mistake. I took her to the taxidermist, and they delivered to my house a fortnight later. When I unwrapped the package I found the wrong girl.” I marked out a couple that I liked, “Beauty” and “Eggs,” but 2/101 is a poor return. Flippant, repetitive and ridiculous; best avoided. (Free from a neighbour) 
Currently reading: The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris, Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff, Hearts & Bones by Niamh Mulvey
Up next: The Quarry by Ben Halls, The High Places by Fiona McFarlane, Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
