Tag Archives: Douglas Stuart

Booker Prize Shortlist Reads by Kennard and Perry & A Prediction

By Rebecca Foster on October 30, 2026 | 9 Comments

I’ve now read all but one of the novels on the Booker Prize shortlist (is it any surprise that it’s the longest one, The Disappearers by Marlon James, that I’ve been too daunted to attempt?). Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry are both poets, which tends to indicate that particular care will be taken over the prose. Apart from that and having unnamed first-person narrators, I see no similarities between the two books, which are wildly different in tone. I have a preference, and I bet it’s not what you expect. Both: Public library

Black Bag by Luke Kennard

This was uproarious entertainment from the meta first line onward: “If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and egocentric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable.” An out-of-work actor in his late thirties who survives from one murder mystery dinner theatre gig to the next sees an ad for an unusual job. All he has to do is sit silently at the back of a university lecture hall each week, wearing a black leather bag with eyeholes. The professor is repeating a famous psychology experiment about attitudes changing through repeated exposure. For the narrator, being black bag is about freedom from his identity and inhibitions; maybe, also, finding solidarity. For his friend Claudio, who streams footage of himself gaming for a living, it’s a potential investment opportunity. For Justine, a married academic the narrator meets on campus, it’s a chance for kinky anonymous sex. I laughed out loud at the narrator’s habits of imagining his life in a 19th-century Swedish village and voicing his parents’ dog’s thoughts, and at so many random lines:

Is it not the case that for most of my life I have felt like I have just put a large crisp in my mouth during what turns out to be a quiet and pivotal scene in a play?

In the kingdom of dumb f*cks the guy with the English major is king.

Think of the moment, following the 2008 subprime crisis, when cupcakes proliferated like a cancer.

Ridiculous the plot may be, but it’s as hilarious as the novel is at the sentence level. For all that, it is still a cogent critique of modern masculinity, hypercapitalism and artificial intelligence (the scene where he and Justine go to see an AI-produced film, The Orb of Homuncules, is side-splitting). My criticism would be, as I’ve heard from various others, that the novel is overlong and slightly aimless in the second half; it could easily lose the 80 pages covering Claudio’s temporary absence. Still, when’s the last time a Booker nominee was this much pure fun?

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry

An unnamed curator arrives at a historic palace to stage its rooms with scenes of historical accuracy, tenderly rendered in the sort of detail only the most attentive visitors will register. Among other things, she’s an aficionado of high-quality, lifelike (expensive) fake food. She throws herself into the work as a way of distracting herself from the emptiness of her personal life since her partner left. We figure this out by reading between the lines, because she’s quite cagey: “At this point, certain things had happened in my life. I was ready to immerse myself.” She also finds herself unexpectedly drawn to the archivist, referred to by they/them pronouns. Her sections are in one- to two-page fragments, titled in a way that can obfuscate or signal an interpretation, such as “Peeking through a Crack in the Curtain and Seeing Another Curtain.” My favourite passage came from “All Work Is Holy”:

The rule is this: it must appear as if the person or people have just left the room. The viewer must feel as if the air is alive with their energy, that they only just missed them, that they will be back in any moment. If this isn’t the case, the scene is no more than an arrangement of objects. The scene is dead.

Indeed, the French phrase for “still life” is nature morte or dead nature. To try to bring history back to life, Perry devotes all but the first 55 and last 26 pages to a recreation of an unwilling medieval king’s court. He’s only on the throne because his two brothers died. There are rumours of infidelity concerning both him and his wife, and talk of removing him for incompetence. Soon they will all pass from life into legend.

I loved the late scene when the curator is introducing the exhibit to visitors and hears their ideas about how we know what happened in history – this is like a transcript of absolutely the best uni lecture or event Q&A ever. What gets preserved and passed down, and why? To what extent is there meaning in physical artefacts? These questions are compelling, yet I only really engaged with the contemporary storyline, while the historical pastiche felt like sub-Hilary Mantel, occasionally evocative but often edging towards pretension.

I’d already read:

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison: A “dull, watery postapocalyptic slog [that] sheds no real light on the past, present, or future”.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: About “a likeable Everyman with the same …secrets and struggles we all have.” It’s “the most engaged Strout has been with the present day, and the most specific she’s gotten about political outrages.”

John of John by Douglas Stuart: One of my books of the year. “Cal seeks to reconcile his sexuality and artistic goals with his family’s expectations and his devout upbringing. The characters’ power plays and acts of desperation are heartrending, but mischief and love of colour and crafts lend lightness.”

Here’s my thinking…

Masculinity is a/the theme in four of this year’s shortlisted novels (from the Kennard: “men are mostly frightened and crazy and very easily misled”) – and in last year’s winner, Flesh by David Szalay, too.

I’ve felt sure that The Disappearers or John of John would win: previous winners whose works normalize homosexuality. I would want the latter to win for its beauty and emotional power, but I think the former more likely as the judges (including Raymond Antrobus, who is British Jamaican) may have an eye on the whiteness of recent winners.

Elizabeth Strout may be doomed to be a Booker bridesmaid. I don’t think this is her best book, but I wouldn’t mind if it won.

I would actually be delighted if the Prize went to the wildcard, Black Bag. But I can’t see that happening. The same goes for the Harrison (please oh please).

Let’s say, though, that the judges want something completely different. Then perhaps May We Feed the King is it. Mary Beard (chair) and Patricia Lockwood, in particular, came across as huge fans during the shortlist announcement event.

I’m torn, so I’ll just go with the novel I loved the most: John of John by Douglas Stuart.

What’s your prediction for the winner?

Posted in: Fiction Reviews | Tagged: Booker Prize, David Szalay, Douglas Stuart, Hilary Mantel, historical fiction, Luke Kennard, masculinity, predictions, psychology, Rebecca Perry

Booker Prize Longlist Reads (Switzy, The End of Everything) & Shortlist Predictions

By Rebecca Foster on September 22, 2026 | 30 Comments

In an hour or so, the Booker Prize shortlist will be announced. I’ve now read four of the longlisted novels; I’m still awaiting a library hold of May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, which is the only other I’m particularly keen to read. This is the first time in four years that I’ve made much of an effort to read from the longlist, i.e., besides what I happen to have already read. I think this year’s judging panel may have something to do with it: I have read (almost) everything by Raymond Antrobus and Patricia Lockwood, and I admire Mary Beard even if I don’t know her work so well.

This pair contains unavoidably bleak stuff – dementia and preparing for an assisted death at Dignitas; weird goings-on in postapocalyptic London and Kent – but with some glints of humour. I could see the first being shortlisted but not the second.

Switzy by Emma Cline

Like many, I read Cline’s debut, The Girls, but lost track of her career afterwards. I was taken aback at the subject matter of her fourth book, which sounded like fodder for a different author – an older male. I also worried that her portrait of a privileged businessman trying to make meagre amends for the wrongs from his past would be too similar to George Saunders’s subpar Vigil. But in the end she won me over with her close-third-person portrait of the last few days of an Everyman defying the inexorable course of dementia.

David Hastings, 70, is en route to Zurich, headed to the never-named Dignitas. He’s on a private plane borrowed from a longtime associate, and has with him a personal assistant, Cody. Their first stop is London so he can see his daughter, Rebecca, and his musical prodigy grandson, Rainer, and say a sort of goodbye – although his relatives have no idea it’s the last time they’ll see him. He has one more stop to make, just over the Swiss border, to see Tom, a boarding school chum who endured hazing that David didn’t intervene to stop. Beyond the guilt, we sense that he longs to see Tom because he has always been half in love with him – a recurring homoerotic impulse never consummated. (An interesting parallel is that Rebecca is having clandestine meet-ups with a female friend. Is same-sex attraction inherited?)

Depicting the mental turmoil of a character sinking into dementia is not that ground-breaking; I’ve read a number of novels that do so with aplomb (Still Alice, Elizabeth Is Missing, Turn of Mind, The Night Guest, The Swimmers). However, Cline convincingly traces David’s bewilderment at everyday traveller experiences of hotels, restaurants and taxis. It’s no mawkish tour through disability; instead, his outsider’s view skewers the ridiculousness of modern life. I was most impressed by the way David’s internal monologue skirts lost language and gets stuck on arbitrary phrases: sayings, song lyrics, liturgy. “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”; “The hills are alive…”; “Now and at the hour of our death…”; his ex-wife’s exhortation to their little girl to “brush away the sugar bugs”; and the story of Little Nemo in Slumberland (which lends the anomalous cover image).

“Unflinching” is a reviewing cliché, but this is what people have in mind when they say it. Cline follows David right up to his last moment, taking us into the room at the clinic with him. There’s nothing special, or even very likable, about this man, but as we follow along on his final physical experiences we get a sense of the weight of any life – which can still have value even if there are no longer any words for what’s happening. I found this much more affecting than I expected to, reaching the final pages with tear-soaked cheeks. (Read via NetGalley)

Also recently reviewed by Cathy and Susan.

I’ve read and thought a lot about the topic of assisted dying, including with In Love by Amy Bloom, Intervals by Marianne Brooker, That One Patient by Ellen de Visser, The Inevitable by Katie Engelhart, and One Last Thing by Wendy Mitchell. Switzy would make a particularly good fictional counterpart to the Bloom, for those who wish to read further.

A bonus review:

A Better Death: The case for assisted dying by Jonathan Romain

Romain is a rabbi and former chair of Dignity in Dying. In this short work, he gives a valuable history of relevant legislation in the UK and internationally, and a rundown (with rebuttals) of potential ethical objections to assisted dying. The party line of the major religions is to uphold the sanctity of life and thus oppose assisted suicide, but there are notable exceptions. Romain mentions a former archbishop of Canterbury who attends my church. George Carey changed his mind after the high-profile case of Tony Nicklinson, who was paralysed after a stroke and lost his appeal over the right to die. Pious supporters of the Campaign for Dignity in Dying emphasise the duty to be merciful to the suffering. Romain puts it this way: “From a religious perspective[,] it makes much more sense to say that we honour God most by healing someone when we can, comforting them when we cannot do so and helping them let go of life gently when desired.” Most medical bodies, too, have now reversed their official positions, with the majority voting to remain neutral on the matter. Romain characterises the campaign as a sign of humanitarian progress – like universal suffrage or the abolition of slavery – that future generations will look back on as overdue. He hopes that charismatic campaigners will arise from among the dying and their relatives. (The foreword is by TV presenter Esther Rantzen, who appealed after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Just days ago, she announced she’s too fragile to travel to Dignitas.)

For me, this book offered little new because I was familiar with arguments around the issue, pro and con. However, it would be a good primer for those coming to such questions for the first time. What I did find helpful was a discussion of rituals we might develop to accompany an assisted death – a new sort of funeral that may one day be routine. Music, readings, a toast; a candle snuffed out or lit at the moment of death, and so on. Imagine a whole new category of human rite, one that should no longer be clouded in secrecy or available only to the wealthy. Alas, the latest version of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was voted down by the House of Commons on 11 September, but no doubt it will be back in a new form soon.

With thanks to Reaktion Books for the free copy for review.

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

I was willing to give this a try for several reasons: it was readily available from my library (someone donated it), Harrison is lauded yet I’ve never approached his large back catalogue, and it’s novella length. Alas, those were insufficient to overcome my antipathy for vague dystopian scenarios in which characters’ actions have no clear motivations. Years post-crisis and -invasion, some people are still trying to flee Britain, but most seem content muddling along. “What were the iGhetti and where had they come from?” That’s a good question, and one to which we never get a straightforward answer, but the main hint is that they are jelly-like and arrived from elsewhere. Phillip Tennent engages in mudlarking – except some of the artefacts he discovers are amorphously humanoid and evolve human traits.

Initially it seems as if Phillip is the protagonist, but his 70-year-old painter aunt, Marnie, has more enduring importance. When she’s hounded out of her falling-down home, she shelters in an abandoned art gallery. She’s a surprising and almost admirable broad, handy with a weapon whenever she senses her way of life being threatened. There are some darkly comic outrageous happenings, and gruesome set pieces that blur the line between living and dead, human and non-. I had to wonder if there is also a Brexit allegory, given Marnie’s signs reading “HOW CAN YOU MISPLACE A CONTINENT?” Harrison’s prose is smooth and the pages turn quickly, but when I look back at the gnomic dictums I marked out, they don’t seem to mean anything:

Are we watching a film the universe is showing itself?

The world’s over. But that doesn’t matter. Because another one will be along soon enough.

Rather, significance is located in the expressions of uncertainty:

the apocalypse seemed to withhold itself, quickly becoming just another historical continuity.

There was a vigorous ambiguity to everything.

Believe all you like that at some level unavailable to you an organising principle exists. You will never have any evidence of that.

I suspect Harrison’s aim was to show how one can get used to anything, even random violence and purposeless wandering. But this watery postapocalyptic meander sheds no real light on the past, present, or future, and feels as if it should have been published more like a decade ago (at the time of The Wall by John Lanchester et al.). A couple of great scenes, such as children playing with fallen ash as if it were snow, aren’t enough to take the bitter edge off even such a short novel. I’m not tempted to try more by Harrison. (Public library)

Also recently reviewed by Annabel.

Longlisted novels that I’d already read:

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: Artie Dam is a likeable Everyman with the same sorts of secrets and struggles we all have. Sometimes he thinks his marriage is going well and he’s touching his high school history students’ lives; other times he feels fatalistic about his relationships and the US’s trajectory. Along with Lucy by the Sea, this is the most engaged Strout has been with the present day, and the most specific she’s gotten about political outrages. I liked how the flash-forwards prove Artie right in his predictions (occasionally based on premonitory dreams) or confirm what he couldn’t have known about the difference he made for two particular students. In his small way, Artie is a new Stoner.

John of John by Douglas Stuart: One of my books of the year for sure. (I reviewed it for Shelf Awareness.) Stuart’s superb third novel is set on the Isle of Harris in the 1990s. Cal seeks to reconcile his sexuality and artistic goals with his family’s expectations and his devout upbringing. An absorbing, deliciously melodramatic story is built around the contrast between modernity and the old ways. The characters’ power plays and acts of desperation are heartrending, but mischief and love of colour and crafts lend lightness. Stuart’s every observation is profound; the simplest phrase is memorable for its beauty.

Here’s my thinking about the shortlist:

Lockwood may be to thank/blame for the weirder and more niche selections (i.e. previously unknown young Americans’ second books), whereas the judges are likely to come to a consensus on more straightforward, reader-friendly material. I imagine we’ll see a shortlist dominated by women and repeat nominees.

The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis – Especially with Antrobus and critic Rebecca Liu on the panel, we can expect at least two non-Anglo authors to make it through. Djamel White’s subject matter sounds neither appealing nor fresh. [Kenan Orhan is apparently Turkish American, though he looks white.] Though I’m personally not eager to read Aridjis again (after a DNF of Sea Monsters), I’m taking a gamble on this one being the second.

Switzy by Emma Cline – Edgy and powerful enough to deserve a place.

The Disappearers by Marlon James – A previous winner and a writer’s writer, though I’ve never particularly gotten on with his work.

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry – I’ve heard almost exclusively good things.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout – She’s getting to be a Booker bridesmaid and has been nominated for poorer books, so I hope she’ll get another shot.

John of John by Douglas Stuart – How could you not?! I’ll throw a tantrum if it doesn’t make it through.

But, of course, the judges could surprise me with a wildcard such as Black Bag by Luke Kennard; Gwendoline Riley is inexplicably popular with judging panels, too.

What have you read from the longlist? Which book(s) do you most want to read, or see on the shortlist?

Posted in: Fiction Reviews, Literary Prizes | Tagged: assisted dying, assisted suicide, Booker Prize, Campaign for Dignity in Dying, Chloe Aridjis, dementia, Dignitas, Douglas Stuart, dystopian, Elizabeth Strout, Emma Cline, Esther Rantzen, George Carey, Jonathan Romain, Kent, London, Marlon James, Mary Beard, mudlarking, Patricia Lockwood, post-apocalyptic, predictions, Raymond Antrobus, Reaktion Books, Rebecca Perry, Shelf Awareness, Switzerland

The Best Books from the First Half of 2026

By Rebecca Foster on June 30, 2026 | 20 Comments

Hard to believe it, but it’s that time of year already. For a decade now, I’ve been making a first-half superlatives list. It remains to be seen how many of these will make it onto my overall best-of year rundown, but for now, these are my 15 favourite current-year releases that I’ve read so far (representing the top 23% of the 2026 releases I’ve read this year; or the top 10% of my overall reading so far). It’s been a brilliant year for fiction! Links are to my full reviews where available.

Fiction

Daffodil Days by Helen Bain: Bain’s remarkable debut novel builds a slantwise biographical portrait of Sylvia Plath through her interactions with friends and acquaintances in the last years of her life. It’s everyone from her midwife to her brother to a washing machine salesman. The vignettes proceed backward through the book’s 17-month span: a determined metaphorical move from resignation to optimism. The focus is therefore not on the end of Plath’s life but on the full flow of her genius.

The Half Life by Rachel Beanland: In Beanland’s enchanting third novel, a young Navy wife has a sexual awakening and discovers her scientific vocation while stationed on an Italian island. The title cleverly suggests both nuclear fallout and how secrets constrain people. Beanland adeptly depicts grief, homesickness, and culture shock, and illuminates American and Italian politics. Sensual and intriguing, this belated-coming-of-age story reminiscent of Beautiful Ruins and The Atomic Weight of Love is an absorbing summer read. [Forthcoming from Simon & Schuster on July 14.]

Brawler by Lauren Groff: The nine short stories in Groff’s exceptional eighth book profile women in states of desperation and probe legacies of loss and violence. Themes of midlife reinvention and latent queerness recur. There’s also a startling Jamesian fable; a 1950s Southern gothic black comedy that would do Flannery O’Connor proud; and the masterful novella-length examination of privilege and obsession. The prose is stellar and the endings breathtaking. Groff is a first-rate novelist, but her short stories are truly peerless.

Mare by Emily Haworth-Booth: This work of autofiction circles the question of becoming a mother and posits the writing life and other relationships as partial substitutes for parenthood. The narrator spends three days a week riding at a local stable and tending to a black and white mare. Haworth-Booth makes caring for an animal analogous with motherhood, but doesn’t stop at easy symbolism. Cultivating bodily bonds with other creatures is part of how we find purpose when life is threatened by chronic illness and climate breakdown.

Whistler by Ann Patchett: Patchett is a master on the subject of family dysfunction, and her 10th novel, a stepdaughter-stepfather love story, is as wise as ever on secrets, traumatic memories, and storytelling. The bittersweet tone is perfectly judged. Daphne’s banter with her loved ones is a delight. The plot whisks along, its satisfying full circle returning to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she saw Eddie Triplett for the first time in 40 years, and incorporates a clever metanarrative twist. Quiet but surprising, witty yet heartrending.

Nonesuch by Francis Spufford: A grown-up fantasy book for those of us who were Narnia-obsessed children. It’s a rollicking blend of realistic WWII-set fiction and alternative history, with some magical and time travel elements. I was impressed that Spufford voices a young woman as protagonist and takes her ambitions and sexual desire seriously. There are witty turns of phrase throughout yet never an inappropriate levity. This parallel world is cleverly imagined and carefully reasoned, and the whole is shot through with a clear love of London.

John of John by Douglas Stuart: In Stuart’s superb third novel, set on the Isle of Harris in the 1990s, Cal seeks to reconcile his sexuality and artistic goals with his family’s expectations and his devout upbringing. An absorbing, deliciously melodramatic story is built around the contrast between modernity and the old ways. The characters’ power plays and acts of desperation are heartrending, but mischief and love of colour and crafts lend lightness. Stuart’s every observation is profound; the simplest phrase is memorable for its beauty.

Nonfiction

The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly: Fennelly takes the same approach as in flash fiction: some of these 45 pieces are as short as one sentence, remarking on life’s irony, poignancy or brevity. Again and again, she loops back to her sister’s untimely death; other topics are her mother’s worsening dementia, her happy marriage, her continuing 28-year friendships with her college roommates, the pandemic, and her ageing body. One of the most in-depth pieces revisits a lonely stint teaching in Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s.

Leaving Home by Mark Haddon: Eighty-seven nonchronological vignettes range across Haddon’s life and his parents’. Most are awful: his cold, invalid mother; his father’s adultery; cruel treatment at boarding school; medical crises. Impressive that he’s a functional person given the lack of love and empathy in his early life, and that he’s so honest about mental health. Haddon is also an artist and there’s a wealth of comics, portraits and family photographs here (plus cynical captions on stock photos to puncture any potential nostalgia).

Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt: Paul Auster died of non-small cell lung cancer on April 30, 2024. “I’m living in a haunted house,” his widow writes. This isn’t a straightforward bereavement memoir but moves back and forth between past and present and incorporates various documents, such as e-mail updates she sent to friends and family during Paul’s illness. It’s particularly interesting to learn about their mutual influence on each other’s work. Recommended to fans of either or both authors, as well as those interested in grief stories.

Vessel: The Shape of Absent Bodies by Dani Netherclift: One scorching afternoon in 1993, the author’s father and brother drowned while swimming in an irrigation channel near their Australia home. A joint closed-casket funeral took place six days later. Eighteen at the time, Netherclift witnessed her relatives’ disappearance but didn’t see their bodies. Must one see the corpse to have closure? she wonders. “The presence of absence” is an overarching paradox. The contradictions and ironies of the situation defy resolution.

Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory by Barbara Yelin: An illustrated biography of a child Holocaust survivor based on interviews. Survival is not a one-time event because trauma is complex and ongoing. In Emmie’s case, her foster father (himself a Holocaust survivor) molested her for years. The colour palette is appropriately sombre. And yet there is vibrant colour in the depiction of Emmie’s home and garden in Israel. This is a work of real courage, of speaking out in spite of a suspicion that all is bleak and meaningless.

Poetry

Visitations by Julia Alvarez: Like a miniature autobiography in verse, Alvarez’s radiant fifth collection offers snapshots from her life: a childhood in the Dominican Republic, immigration to 1960s New York City, the vicissitudes of adulthood, and the bittersweetness of later-life love. In a prose afterword, she calls the poems “visitations from selves of the past and present.” With its vivid scenes and alliterative phrasing, this gorgeous collection presents food and family, memory and companionship, as talismans to hold against the darkness.

Scrap Book by Nick Martino: Martino’s debut poetry collection draws on his mother’s journals and 1980s Polaroids to capture a family dynamic overshadowed by divorce and his father’s incarceration. The imagery spotlights Midwest farm country. Love and meaning are salvaged from family wreckage in the same way one might “look/ for fugitive beauty in the bulldozed” orchard. Free verse alternates with forms: an unrhymed sonnet, an aubade, and a “duplex.” Alliteration and assonance sparkle, and two poems employ anaphoric rhetoric.

The Way the Water Held Me by Catherine Redford: Redford was 35 with a young child when her wife died of cancer. We don’t hear so much about being widowed early, or in a same-sex partnership. Redford interrogates the expectations of widowhood through biographical poems about Mary Shelley. I loved the archival vocabulary of “Obituary” and how belongings left behind take on outsize significance. The alliteration and nature imagery are just right. From the hardest of circumstances came something tender and lovely.

Have you read any of these, or might you now based on my recommendation? What other 2026 releases should I catch up on?

Posted in: Book lists, Fiction Reviews, Nonfiction Reviews, Poetry Reviews | Tagged: alternative history, Ann Patchett, Barbara Yelin, bereavement memoirs, Beth Ann Fennelly, cancer, Catherine Redford, Dani Netherclift, Dominican Republic, Douglas Stuart, drowning, Emily Haworth-Booth, fantasy, flash fiction, Francis Spufford, graphic novels, Helen Bain, historical fiction, Holocaust, horses, Isle of Harris, Italy, Julia Alvarez, Lauren Groff, Mark Haddon, Nick Martino, poetry, prison, Rachel Beanland, short stories, Siri Hustvedt, superlatives, Sylvia Plath

Book Serendipity, March to May

By Rebecca Foster on June 5, 2026 | 29 Comments

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.

A sister named Fiona in The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright and Leaving Home by Mark Haddon.

A parent burns a dirty magazine in Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell and The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman.

Sabbath chains, Gaelic sermons, and psalm singing on the very pious Isle of Lewis in John of John by Douglas Stuart (set in the 1990s), then Findings by Kathleen Jamie (essay from the early 2000s). I doubt any of the above can still be found there, though we did note “Respect the Sabbath” signs on playground equipment on our 2022 trip.

A single mother who won’t answer the phone because she’s afraid of who/what it might be in Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates and The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker.

An orphaned narrator named (Eva) Luna in Eva Luna by Isabel Allende and Fountainville by Tishani Doshi. Then I came across a dog named Luna in Transcription by Ben Lerner! And the main character in one story of Baby in a Box by Sarah Braunstein starts going by her nickname, Luna.

There’s a Muriel Rukeyser poem in the anthology Night Feeds and Morning Songs (ed. Ana Sampson) and Rukeyser is a character in Sophie Ward’s Our Better Natures, which I was also reading at the time.

Eating boiled ham in Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (and boiled turkey in The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker).

Checking a hotel room for bedbugs in Transcription by Ben Lerner and Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy.

A young person writing in shorthand in I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and First Class Murder by Robin Stevens.

A character named Emmie in Transcription by Ben Lerner and (no surprise here) Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory by Barbara Yelin.

Noting that roses are not suited to a particular climate in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson and Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl.

A Welsh character named Owain in Fountainville by Tishani Doshi and Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd.

The Secret Garden is discussed/mentioned in Reading My Mother Back by Timothy C. Baker and Mare by Emily Haworth-Booth, and mentioned in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson.

The protagonist is emotionless at their mother’s deathbed in Like Mother by Jenny Diski and Leaving Home by Mark Haddon.

(Apologies: this one is grim.) A young woman is sexually assaulted with a bottle in The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine and The Truth about Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent (both Irish novelists).

A husband is involved in a deliberate (suicidal) crash in Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson and one story of I Am the Ghost Here by Kim Samek.

Ali Baba’s cave is used as a metaphor in The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King.

A brother- and sister-in-law have an affair in the two Portuguese novels I read on my Portugal holiday, The Migrant Painter of Birds by Lídia Jorge and The Piano Cemetery by José Luís Peixoto.

A woman describes her discovery of orgasm in The Half Life by Rachel Beanland and The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel.

‘There are two kinds of people…’ thinking in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and one story of It Will Come Back to You by Sigrid Nunez.

Money is hidden behind a boiler in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and The Murderer’s Ape by Jakob Wegelius.

The surname Callaway in The Half Life by Rachel Beanland and Calloway in The Watersmith by Yance Wyatt.

Louise Erdrich, whose The Mighty Red I was reading at the time, is mentioned in The Madman’s Guide to Stamp Collecting by Robert Irwin.

A minor character named Genevieve appears in Our Numbered Bones by Katya Balen and The Watersmith by Yance Wyatt.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich is the second novel I’ve read within eight months (after The Wedding People by Alison Espach) in which a reluctant bride is saddled with a groom named Gary.

A mountain lion sighting in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer.

A character has a love of Agatha Christie novels in The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel and Buckeye by Patrick Ryan.

A character with the nickname Kitten in Nonesuch by Francis Spufford (particularly funny because it’s for a thug) and Kitten by Stacey Yu.

Reading two queer novels with an academic writing course setting at the same time: Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.

A remark about the rare beauty of black hair with blue eyes in Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly and My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy.

An STD is evidence of a husband’s infidelity in The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain and A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello.

Bottles being used to hold picnic meals / foraged blackberries (noted because these days it would be plastic pots for everything) in Zami by Audre Lorde (the 1940s) and The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain (the 1960s).

Kismet is a character name in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich, so I was primed to notice the word being used in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (it’s a synonym for fate).

A writer who faces the wall to work in The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain (Ted Hughes, that is) and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein (referring to Alice B. Toklas!).

A painting of an Arctic tern features in The Migrant Painter of Birds by Lídia Jorge (on the cover) and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.

Hot milk is drunk in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson, Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly (with Ovaltine), Nonesuch by Francis Spufford, and Kitten by Stacey Yu.

William James is mentioned in My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy and Wise by Frank Tallis.

Algerian Muslim men appear in A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello and Moveable Feasts by Chris Newens.

A pet cat was found on the shore in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson and Kitten by Stacey Yu.

Bringing cherries to an invalid in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.

Sex with a woman who has a mastectomy scar in Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly and Zami by Audre Lorde.

A sighting of a kingfisher as auspicious in Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly and Transcription by Ben Lerner.

The idea that former lovers leave a mark on people in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Zami by Audre Lorde.

Pet cat(s) do themselves a mischief by getting into paint supplies in Zami by Audre Lorde and Kitten by Stacey Yu.

A Sandymount, Dublin setting in A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello and Hood by Emma Donoghue.

An Irish family where the mother and one daughter move to the USA and the father and other daughter stay behind in Hood by Emma Donoghue and The Truth about Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent (both Irish novelists).

The concept of a “funeral cake” in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.

A character regrets wearing eye makeup on an emotional occasion in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.

My second Irish novel of the year that takes place over one week: Hood by Emma Donoghue (after One by One in the Dark by Deirdre Madden).

A cat of confusing gender: Grace is male in Hood by Emma Donoghue and Bob is always referred to as “it” in My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy.

The idea that it’s rare for a woman to a) be a good storyteller (in The Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev) or b) tell a punchline with a straight face (in The Correspondent by Virginia Evans – at least the man gets called out on his sexist opinion in this case). I also noticed the use of the word “caprice” in both books (and also in Turgenev’s First Love) because it’s unusual and I like it.

Another grim, grim one: reading two books at the same time in which a woman is / women are drugged and raped while unconscious (A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot and Women Talking by Miriam Toews).

I read two short stories in quick succession about a peasant porter who carries a broom: “A Real Durwan” by Jhumpa Lahiri (from Interpreter of Maladies) followed by “Mumu” by Ivan Turgenev.

An older woman insists that she still is/has a little girl inside in The Correspondent by Virginia Evans and A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot.

The number 7 has magical significance for the author in Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt and A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot.

A couple meets when they see each other reading the same book in an outdoor location: A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; and The Great Gatsby in Sunset Park by Paul Auster.

Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For is mentioned in Hood by Emma Donoghue; I was reading a Bechdel book, The Secret of Superhuman Strength, at the same time.

Gnats are irksome in Sunset Park by Paul Auster and Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash.

What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?

Posted in: book serendipity | Tagged: Agatha Christie, Alice B. Toklas, Alison Bechdel, Anne Enright, Audre Lorde, Barbara Yelin, Ben Lerner, book serendipity, breast cancer, Camilla Barnes, Chris Newens, Claire Gleeson, Deborah Levy, Deirdre Madden, Dodie Smith, Douglas Stuart, Dublin, Emily Haworth-Booth, Emma Donoghue, Evan S. Connell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Francis Spufford, Frank Tallis, G.G. Silverman, Gaelic, Gertrude Stein, Gisèle Pelicot, Helen Bain, hotels, insects, Irish literature, Irish-American, Isabel Allende, Islam, Isle of Lewis, Ivan Turgenev, Jakob Wegelius, Jennette McCurdy, Jenny Diski, Jhumpa Lahiri, José Luís Peixoto, Joyce Carol Oates, Kathleen Jamie, Katya Balen, Kim Samek, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Lídia Jorge, Liz Nugent, Louise Erdrich, Madeline Cash, Margaret Renkl, Mark Haddon, Mary Costello, Meg Anderson, Muriel Rukeyser, Nancy Tucker, Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin, orphans, Patrick Ryan, Paul Auster, Pico Iyer, Portuguese literature, Rachel Beanland, rape, Robert Irwin, Robin Stevens, Roland Barthes, Rozie Kelly, single parenting, Siobhan Dowd, Siri Hustvedt, Sophie Ward, Stacey Yu, Stephen King, suicide, Ted Hughes, Timothy C. Baker, Tishani Doshi, Virginia Evans, wedding, Wendy Erskine, William James, Yance Wyatt, Yann Martel

May Releases by Siri Hustvedt, Will Maclean & More

By Rebecca Foster on May 29, 2026 | 34 Comments

This month’s overarching theme is creepy and/or haunted houses! My main reviews are of a collage-style bereavement memoir and a slice of English horror. I also excerpt my reviews of four more May releases read in advance for Shelf Awareness, including one that’s in the running for my Book of the Year.

Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt

Paul Auster died of non-small cell lung cancer on April 30, 2024. His widow, Siri Hustvedt, wears his old clothes and still occasionally smells his cigar smoke in their Brooklyn home. “I’m living in a haunted house,” she writes, one “inhabited by a ghost Paul and I made together, a ‘we’ that doesn’t exist anymore.” This isn’t a straightforward bereavement memoir recounting the relationship followed by the loved one’s decline and death. Instead, it moves back and forth between past and present and incorporates various documents. There are glimpses of her state of mind as she keeps up with routines to get through the days but still experiences life as unreal and outside of time.

One section reprints 12 e-mail updates she sent to friends and family during Paul’s illness. She weaves through fragments of his shocking family history (familiar from The Invention of Solitude), certain events that have been memorialized in his books (such as the car accident he wrote about in Winter Journal), and brief tales of his work and its reception. There’s also Paul’s incomplete series of letters to his newborn grandson, Miles, in which he tells the boy the stories he thinks he should know about his ancestors. A notable one was about 9/11, which happened to be the day their daughter Sophie started at a new high school; she passed under the World Trade Center on the subway half an hour before the first attack.

For those of us who have read both Auster and Hustvedt, it’s particularly interesting to read about how their work intersects. “We both liked the idea of our fictional worlds kissing, as it were,” she notes. She describes their connection as “intellectual-erotic” and predicts that, given another 100 years together, they would have merged into one person. Their influence on each other’s work was mutual, she insists, rather than one-sided from Paul to her as misogynistic detractors have assumed. She’s always been more the intellectual anyway, with a literature PhD and amateur interests in neurology and philosophy; and he ‘borrowed’ her character Iris Vegan (from The Blindfold) for one of his later novels, Leviathan.

The book grows increasingly political towards its close. Paul didn’t live to see “45” re-elected as 47. Hustvedt decries the rise of anti-intellectualism and, at Paul’s memorial service nearly 10 months after his death, quoted her father’s prescient words: “when fascism comes to America, they’ll call it Americanism.” It doesn’t seem like alarmism to ask what the current regime in the US and elsewhere portends for writers committed to humanism, nuance, and more or less overt voicing of outrage (as in one of Paul’s late books, a short text accompanying his son-in-law’s photographic series on gun violence in America).

This whetted my appetite to read more by Auster and fulfils her stated goal “to bring something of the man back on the page.” I can thoroughly recommend it to fans of either or both authors, as well as those interested in grief stories and the current literary scene. (Read via Edelweiss)

Solace House by Will Maclean

I hadn’t heard of Maclean’s first novel, The Apparition Phase, which was on the McKitterick Prize shortlist (before my involvement with the Prize), but I was drawn to the descriptions of his second. The cover puff from Nicholas Binge – “The Secret History meets The Haunting of Hill House” – can’t be topped, and the promotional materials’ references to Piranesi and Possession are equally accurate. In the summer of 1993, Alex Lane is 19, broke and wondering what to do with himself. He seems to be the only student left at The Ridge. Except for that pale young man he’s seen screaming at a window opposite his room…

The Student Welfare Office offers him a job on a team clearing out two Victorian properties the university has acquired or is hoping to acquire. One is Marshlands, a former mental hospital, while Solace House was the private residence of the Flaynes, the last of whom recently died at age 101. Alex finds “a lifeboat of easy camaraderie” with his seven co-workers: Clive, a loud, confident stoner; Malcolm, who’s beautiful and gay; Helen, who’s super-religious; Ruth, a Goth; Leo, a mystical researcher; Adam, a weird (traumatized rich kid; and Ella, who’s clever and alluring. But none of them is prepared for what they find at Solace House. Edwin Flayne was a hoarder and the rooms are so full that they can’t move. One is completely covered in mirrors; another has creepy effigies around a table; the hall is plastered with strange paintings; and a series of ledgers with the ravings of a madman. Alex and Ella save from the burn pile one that contains an epic poem of utopian visions and musings on the disappearance of Flayne’s mother.

Flayne’s interest in the esoteric is only matched by Leo’s; add on some magic mushrooms and it’s a heady combination of the surreal as the team explores a cave on the property that the Flaynes considered a Thin Place. While high, Leo issues what seems to be a prophecy of the order in which they’ll all die. All along, we’re kept wondering how Alex’s parents both died on “The Last Day” at the hands of “The Annihilator.” He regurgitates fictional orphan plots to try to get Ella off his case, but she (and we) know he’s holding something back.

Although I wearied of the pastiche poetry that heads each chapter and at some point stopped reading it, it does have ultimate significance. (And bully to Maclean for adding “all written by me, rather than AI, before anyone asks” to his Acknowledgements.) Midway through, I was thinking to myself this should have been in the third person to legitimize the horror, as it can otherwise shade into silliness. Part IV jumps ahead in time and subverts what’s gone before, making Alex question not just the last four years of his life but the entire course of it. And now I knew why it had to be in the first person, so reliant is it on individual experience. Time, identity and memory all come into question.

At first I was disappointed, thinking that with this section Maclean had undermined the eerie power of what went before, but there’s another switchback still to come. The book is a little overlong at just under 500 pages, and sags a bit in the final 100, but it kept surprising me and it comes to a satisfying conclusion. I also got the sense of an author having fun with the 1990s nostalgia and student behaviour. I would certainly seek out his debut.

With thanks to Atlantic Books for the free copy for review.

Reviewed for Shelf Awareness:

Memory House by Elaine Kraf: In this posthumous fifth novel, a novelist enters a commune for failed artists. Magic realism and metafiction coalesce in another of this unsung genius’ typically weird explorations of memory, creativity, and sexuality. It all appears to add up to a metaphorical journey, with a symbolic death and rebirth for those re-entering Society.

Mother Tongue by Sara Nović: Nović’s fourth book is a defiant memoir of parenthood achieved in spite of the troubled histories of deaf education, religious indoctrination, and international adoption. This is a fierce defense of deafness as a culture rather than a disability to be eradicated, and a beautiful exploration of the legacies of language and love.

Wellwater by Karen Solie: The Canadian poet Karen Solie’s intricate sixth collection (which won the T. S. Eliot Prize), gilds the natural and human worlds with religious imagery and an environmentalist conscience. The work toggles between the material and the abstract; quotidian experiences fuel meditations on concepts such as intuition, kindness, and fate.

John of John by Douglas Stuart: In Douglas Stuart’s superb third novel set on the Isle of Harris (Outer Hebrides), a young man seeks to reconcile his sexuality and artistic goals with his family’s expectations and devout upbringing. Intriguing in its particularities but timeless in wisdom, it offers hope that relinquishing shame creates freedom to be true to oneself. (I also got to interview Douglas Stuart! This is one of my top three books of 2026 so far, along with Brawler and Whistler – forthcoming in June.)

Posted in: Doorstopper of the Month, Fiction Reviews, Nonfiction Reviews, Poetry Reviews | Tagged: 1990s, 9/11, adoption, Atlantic Books, bereavement memoirs, Canadian literature, cancer, deafness, doorstoppers, Douglas Stuart, Elaine Kraf, epistolary, grief, homosexuality, horror, Isle of Harris, Karen Solie, magic realism, memory, mental hospital, metafiction, Outer Hebrides, Paul Auster, poetry, Sara Nović, Shelf Awareness, Siri Hustvedt, Will Maclean

Book Serendipity, January to February

By Rebecca Foster on February 24, 2026 | 25 Comments

The following are in roughly chronological order.

An old woman with purple feet (due to illness or injury) in one story of Brawler by Lauren Groff and John of John by Douglas Stuart.

Someone is pushed backward and dies of the head injury in Zofia Nowak’s Book of Superior Detecting by Piotr Cieplak and one story of Brawler by Lauren Groff.

The Hindenburg disaster is mentioned in A Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken and Evensong by Stewart O’Nan.

Reluctance to cut into a corpse during medical school and the dictum ‘see one, do one, teach one’ in the graphic novel See One, Do One, Teach One: The Art of Becoming a Doctor by Grace Farris and Separate by C. Boyhan Irvine.

A remote Scottish island setting and a harsh father in Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen [Shetland] and John of John by Douglas Stuart [Harris]. (And another Scottish island setting in A Calendar of Love by George Mackay Brown [Orkney].)

A mention of genuine Harris tweed in Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay and John of John by Douglas Stuart.

The Katharine Hepburn film The Philadelphia Story is mentioned in The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank and Woman House by Lauren W. Westerfield.

A mention of Icelandic poppies in Nighthawks by Lisa Martin and Boundless by Kathleen Winter.

Vita Sackville-West is mentioned in the Orlando graphic novel adaptation by Susanne Kuhlendahl and Boundless by Kathleen Winter.

Fear of bear attacks in Black Bear by Trina Moyles and Boundless by Kathleen Winter. Bears also feature in A Rough Guide to the Heart by Pam Houston and No Paradise with Wolves by Katie Stacey. [Looking through children’s picture books at the library the other week, I was struck by how many have bears in the title. Dozens!]

I was reading books called Memory House (by Elaine Kraf) and Woman House (by Lauren W. Westerfield) at the same time, both of them pre-release books for Shelf Awareness reviews.

An adolescent girl is completely ignorant of the facts of menstruation in I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman and Carrie by Stephen King.

Camembert is eaten in The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier and Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin.

A herbal tonic is sought to induce a miscarriage in The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley and Bog Queen by Anna North.

Vicks VapoRub is mentioned in Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom, Kin by Tayari Jones, and Dirt Rich by Graeme Richardson.

An adolescent girl only admits to her distant mother that she’s gotten her first period because she needs help dealing with a stain (on her bedding / school uniform) in Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom, An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel, and Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin. (I had to laugh at the mother asking the narrator of the Mantel: “Have you got jam on your underskirt?”) Basically, first periods occurred a lot in this set! They are also mentioned in A Little Feral by Maria Giesbrecht and one story of The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman. [I also had three abortion scenes in this cycle, but I think it would constitute spoilers to say which novels they appeared in.)

A casual job cleaning pub/bar toilets in Kin by Tayari Jones and John of John by Douglas Stuart.

Kansas City is a location mentioned in Strangers by Belle Burden, Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, and Dreams in Which I’m Almost Human by Hannah Soyer. (Not actually sure if that refers to Kansas or Missouri in two of them.)

The notion of “flirting with God” is mentioned in Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom and A Little Feral by Maria Giesbrecht.

A signature New Orleans cocktail, the Sazerac (a variation on the whisky old-fashioned containing absinthe), appears in Kin by Tayari Jones and Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater.

An older person’s smell brings back childhood memories in Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

The fact that complaining of chest pain will get you seen right away in an emergency room is mentioned in Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom and The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley.

Thickly buttered toast is a favoured snack in The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier and An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel.

A scene of trying on fur coats in Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom and An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel.

Lime and soda is drunk in Our Numbered Bones by Katya Balen, Kin by Tayari Jones, and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

A husband 17 years older than his wife in Kin by Tayari Jones and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

The protagonist seems to hold a special attraction for old men in Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

A tattoo of a pottery shard (her ex-husband’s) in Strangers by Belle Burden and one of an arrowhead (her own) in Dreams in Which I’m Almost Human by Hannah Soyer.

A relationship with an older editor at a publishing house: The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank (romantic) and Whistler by Ann Patchett (stepfather–stepdaughter).

Repeated vomiting and a fever of 103–104°F leads to a diagnosis of appendicitis in My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

Multiple pet pugs in Strangers by Belle Burden and My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt.

Palm crosses are mentioned in My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt and Kin by Tayari Jones.

A Miss Jemison in Kin by Tayari Jones and a Miss Jamieson in Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael.

Pasley as a surname in Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael and a place name (Pasley Bay) in Boundless by Kathleen Winter.

A remark on a character’s unwashed hair in My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt and Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater.

A mention of a monkey’s paw in Museum Visits by Éric Chevillard and Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater.

A character gets 26 (22) stitches in her face (head) after a car accident, a young person who’s vehemently anti-smoking, and a mention of being dusted orange from eating Cheetos, in Whistler by Ann Patchett and Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater.

Pre-eclampsia occurs in Strangers by Belle Burden and The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley.

There’s a chapter on searching for corncrakes on the Isle of Coll (the Inner Hebrides of Scotland) in The Edge of Silence by Neil Ansell, which I read last year; this year I reread the essay on the same topic in Findings by Kathleen Jamie.

Worry over women with long hair being accidentally scalped – if a horse steps on her ponytail in Mare by Emily Haworth-Booth; if trapped in a London Underground escalator in Leaving Home by Mark Haddon.

A pet ferret in My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt and Shooting Up by Jonathan Tepper.

A dodgy doctor who molests a young female patient in Leaving Home by Mark Haddon and Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael.

A high school girl’s inappropriate relationship with her English teacher is the basis for Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom, and then Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy, which I started soon after.

College roommates who become same-sex lovers, one of whom goes on to have a heterosexual marriage, in Kin by Tayari Jones and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

A mention of Sephora (the cosmetics shop) in Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

A discussion of the Greek mythology character Leda in Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell and Whistler by Ann Patchett (where it’s also a character name).

A workaholic husband who rarely sees his children and leaves their care to his wife in Strangers by Belle Burden and Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell.

An apparently wealthy man who yet steals food in Strangers by Belle Burden and Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater.

Characters named Lulubelle in Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell and Lulabelle in Kin by Tayari Jones.

Characters named Ruth in Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, Kin by Tayari Jones, and Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael.

A mention of Mary McLeod Bethune in Negroland by Margo Jefferson and Kin by Tayari Jones.

Doing laundry at a whorehouse in Kin by Tayari Jones and Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael.

A male character nicknamed Doll in John of John by Douglas Stuart and then Elizabeth and Ruth by Livi Michael.

A mention of tuberculosis of the stomach in Findings by Kathleen Jamie and Shooting Up by Jonathan Tepper. I was also reading a whole book on tuberculosis, Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green, at the same time.

Mention of Doberman dogs in Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell and one story of The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman.

Extreme fear of flying in Leaving Home by Mark Haddon and Whistler by Ann Patchett.

What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?

Posted in: book serendipity | Tagged: abortion, Alice Slater, Amy Bloom, Ann Patchett, Anna North, Éric Chevillard, bears, Belle Burden, car accident, cocktails, corncrakes, Diana Holman-Hunt, Douglas Stuart, Elaine Kraf, Elizabeth Hay, Elizabeth McCracken, Emily Haworth-Booth, Evan S. Connell, G.G. Silverman, George Mackay Brown, Grace Farris, Graeme Richardson, Greek mythology, Hannah Soyer, Hilary Mantel, Inner Hebrides, islands, Isle of Coll, Isle of Harris, Jacqueline Harpman, Jennette McCurdy, John Green, Jonathan Tepper, Kathleen Jamie, Kathleen Winter, Katie Stacey, Katya Balen, Lauren Groff, Lauren W. Westerfield, Leila Mottley, Lisa Martin, Livi Michael, Lucy Brazier, Margo Jefferson, Maria Giesbrecht, Mark Haddon, Mary McLeod Bethune, Melissa Bank, menstruation, Neil Ansell, New Orleans, Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin, Orkney Islands, Pam Houston, pregnancy, Scotland, Shelf Awareness, Shetland, Stephen King, Stewart O’Nan, Susanne Kuhlendahl, Tayari Jones, Trina Moyles, tuberculosis, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West

Most Anticipated Books of 2026

By Rebecca Foster on January 10, 2026 | 40 Comments

Later than intended, but here we are. I’ve narrowed it down to the 25 books I’m most looking forward to in January–September, though no doubt I’ll have heard of many more unmissable titles before that time is up. My list is dominated by fiction, which I tend to find out about earlier. Also on my radar are novels by Sharon Bala, Freya Bromley, Mary Costello, Louise Kennedy, Ben Lerner, Paula McLain, Liz Nugent and Tom Perrotta; short stories by Jess Gibson (Margaret Atwood’s daughter); and nonfiction from Margaret Drabble, Cal Flyn, Siri Hustvedt and Anne Lamott.

In release date order, with UK publication info given first if available. The blurbs are adapted from Goodreads. I’ve taken the liberty of using whichever cover I prefer.

Fiction

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes [20 Jan., Vintage (Penguin) / Knopf]: (Currently reading) I get more out of rereading Barnes’s classics than reading his latest stuff, but I’ll still attempt anything he publishes. He’s 80 and calls this his last book. So far, it’s heavily about memory. “Julian played matchmaker to Stephen and Jean, friends he met at university in the 1960s; as the third wheel, he was deeply invested in the success of their love”. Sounds way too similar to 1991’s Talking It Over, and the early pages have been tedious. (Review copy from publisher)

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy [20 Jan., Fourth Estate / Ballantine]: McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, was stranger than fiction. I was so impressed by her recreation of her childhood perspective on her dysfunctional Mormon/hoarding/child-actor/cancer survivor family that I have no doubt she’ll do justice to this reverse-Lolita scenario about a 17-year-old who’s in love with her schlubby creative writing teacher. (Library copy on order)

Our Better Natures by Sophie Ward [5 Feb., Corsair]: I loved Ward’s Booker-longlisted Love and Other Thought Experiments (though the follow-up, The Schoolhouse, was a letdown). “Amid the chaos and political upheaval of 1970s America, three very different women must accept the world as it is, or act to change it. Phyllis Patterson is a housewife in White Plains, Illinois. … Andrea Dworkin is an activist in Amsterdam. … Muriel Rukeyser is a poet in New York.” (Library copy on order)

Brawler: Stories by Lauren Groff [Riverhead, Feb. 24]: (Currently reading) Controversial opinion: Short stories are where Groff really shines. Three-quarters in, this collection is just as impressive as Delicate Edible Birds or Florida. “Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region (New England to Florida to California) these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.” (For Shelf Awareness review) (Edelweiss download)

Kin by Tayari Jones [24 Feb., Oneworld / Knopf]: I’m a big fan of Leaving Atlanta and An American Marriage. This sounds like Brit Bennett meets Toni Morrison. “Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. … A novel about mothers and daughters, about friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South”. (Edelweiss download)

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave [12 March, Picador / March 24, S&S/Summit Books]: There have often been queer undertones in Hargrave’s work, but this David Nicholls-esque plot sounds like her most overt. “Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur in Paris, 1978. … The moment the two women meet the spark is undeniable. But their encounter turns into far more than a summer of love. It is the beginning of a relationship that will define their lives and every decision they have yet to make.” (Edelweiss download)

Patient, Female: Stories by Julie Schumacher [May 5, Milkweed Editions]: I found out about this via a webinar with Milkweed and a couple of other U.S. indie publishers. I loved Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members. “[T]his irreverent collection … balances sorrow against laughter. … Each protagonist—ranging from girlhood to senescence—receives her own indelible voice as she navigates social blunders, generational misunderstandings, and the absurdity of the human experience.” The publicist likened the tone to Meg Wolitzer.

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout [7 May, Viking (Penguin) / May 5, Random House]: Hurrah for moving on from Lucy Barton at last! “Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders … and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. … [O]ne day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. … [This] takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal.”

Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller [7 May, Penguin / June 2, Tin House]: I’ve read everything of Fuller’s and hope this will reverse the worsening trend of her novels, though true crime is overdone. “1987: After a childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula … is invited to join a squat at The Underwood. … Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned, reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by true-crime documentary-maker.” (Edelweiss download)

Little Vanities by Sarah Gilmartin [21 May, ONE (Pushkin)]: Gilmartin’s Service was great. “Dylan, Stevie and Ben have been inseparable since their days at Trinity, when everything seemed possible. … Two decades on, … Dylan, once a rugby star, is stranded on the sofa, cared for by his wife Rachel. Across town, Stevie and Ben’s relationship has settled into weary routine. Then, after countless auditions, Ben lands a role in Pinter’s Betrayal. As rehearsals unfold, the play’s shifting allegiances seep into reality, reviving old jealousies and awakening sudden longings.”

Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa [21 May, Faber / Sept. 22, Farrar, Straus and Giroux]: A Ghost in the Throat was brilliant and this sounds right up my street. “In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she too might have lived within those walls. Now, … she finds herself drawn into an irresistible river of forgotten voices”.

John of John by Douglas Stuart [21 May, Picador / May 5, Grove Press]: I DNFed Shuggie Bain and haven’t tried Stuart since, but the Outer Hebrides setting piqued my attention. “[W]ith little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the island of Harris [and] begrudgingly resumes his old life, stuck between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian”. (For early Shelf Awareness review) (Edelweiss download)

Land by Maggie O’Farrell [2 June, Tinder Press / Knopf]: I haven’t fully loved O’Farrell’s shift into historical fiction, but I’m still willing to give this a go. “On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam [age 10], are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one.” (Edelweiss download)

Whistler by Ann Patchett [2 June, Bloomsbury / Harper]: Patchett is hella reliable. “When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. … Meeting again, time falls away; … [in a story of] adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them.” (Edelweiss download)

Returns and Exchanges by Kayla Rae Whitaker [2 June, Scribe / May 19, Random House]: Whitaker’s The Animators is one of my favourite novels that hardly anyone else has ever heard of. “A sweeping novel of one [discount department store-owning] Kentucky family’s rise and fall throughout the 1980s—a tragicomic tour de force about love and marriage, parents and [their four] children, and the perils of mixing family with business”. (Edelweiss download)

The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders [9 July, Viking (Penguin) / July 7, Henry Holt]: Sanders’s linked story collection Company left me keen to follow her career. Aubrey Lamb, 32, is “grieving the recent loss of her father and the end of a relationship.” She leaves Washington, DC for her Black family’s ancestral Tennessee farm. “But the land proves to be a burdensome inheritance … [and] the ghosts of her ancestors interject with their own exasperated, gossipy commentary on the flaws and foibles of relatives living and dead”. (Edelweiss download)

Country People by Daniel Mason [14 July, John Murray / July 7, Random House]: It doesn’t seem long enough since North Woods for there to be another Mason novel, but never mind. “Miles Krzelewski is … twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales … [W]hen his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be his year to finally move forward with his life. … [A] luminous exploration of marriage and parenthood, the nature of belief and the power of stories, and the ways in which we find connection in an increasingly fragmented world.”

It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories by Sigrid Nunez [14 July, Virago / Riverhead]: Nunez is one of my favourite authors but I never knew she’d written short stories. The blurb reveals very little about them! “Carefully selected from three decades of work … Moving from the momentous to the mundane, Nunez maintains her irrepressible humor, bite, and insight, her expert balance between intimacy and universality, gravity and levity, all while entertainingly probing the philosophical questions we have come to expect, such as: How can we withstand the passage of time? Is memory the greatest fiction?” (Edelweiss download)

Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel [17 Sept., Picador / Sept. 15, Knopf]: The synopsis sounds a bit meh, but in my eyes Mandel can do no wrong. “2031. America is at war with itself, but for the first time in weeks there is some good news: the Republic of California has been declared, the curfew in Los Angeles is lifted, and everyone in the city is going to a party. Ari, newly released from prison, arrives with her friend Gloria … Years later, living a different life in Paris, Ari remains haunted by that night.”

The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain [17 Sept., Vintage (Penguin)]: “Set in 1930s England and fictionalises the inspiration behind Daphne du Maurier’s famous novel, Rebecca.” Strangely, this started life as a short story (in The American Lover), then become a screenplay authored by Tremain (the film is in production and stars Uma Thurman and Anthony Hopkins), and is now being expanded into a novel. Tremain is 82 and a survivor of major cancer; I do wonder if this is the last book we can expect from her.

Nonfiction

Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival by Trina Moyles [Jan. 6, Pegasus Books]: Out now! “When Trina Moyles was five years old, her father … brought home an orphaned black bear cub for a night before sending it to the Calgary Zoo. … After years of working for human rights organizations, Trina returned to northern Alberta for a job as a fire tower lookout, while [her brother] Brendan worked in the oil sands … Over four summers, Trina begins to move beyond fear and observe the extraordinary essence of the maligned black bear”. (For BookBrowse review) (Review e-copy)

Moveable Feasts: A Story of Paris in Twenty Meals by Chris Newens [Feb. 3, Pegasus Books; came out in the UK in July 2025 but somehow I missed it!]: I’m a sucker for foodie books and Paris books. A “long-time resident of the historic slaughterhouse quartier Villette takes us on a delightful gastronomic journey around Paris … From Congolese catfish in the 18th to Middle Eastern falafels in the 4th, to the charcuterie served at the libertine nightclubs of Pigalle in the 9th, Newens lifts the lid on the city’s ever-changing, defining, and irresistible food culture.” (Edelweiss download)

Frog: And Other Essays by Anne Fadiman [Feb. 10, Farrar, Straus and Giroux]: Fadiman publishes rarely, and it can be difficult to get hold of her books, but they are always worth it. “Ranging in subject matter from her deceased frog, to archaic printer technology, to the fraught relationship between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his son Hartley, these essays unlock a whole world—one overflowing with mundanity and oddity—through sly observation and brilliant wit.”

The Beginning Comes after the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit [March 3, Haymarket Books]: A sequel to Hope in the Dark. Hope is a critically endangered species these days, but Solnit has her eyes open. “While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.” (Edelweiss download)

Jan Morris: A Life by Sara Wheeler [7 April, Faber / April 14, Harper]: I didn’t get on with the mammoth biography Paul Clements published in 2022 – it was dry and conventional; entirely unfitting for Morris – but hope for better things from a fellow female travel writer. “Wheeler uncovers the complexity of this twentieth-century icon … Drawing on unprecedented access to Morris’s papers as well as interviews with family, friends and colleagues, Wheeler assembles a captivating … story of longing, traveling and never reaching home.” (Edelweiss download)

Others’ lists whence a few of my ideas came!

What catches your eye here? What other 2026 titles do I need to know about?

Posted in: Book lists | Tagged: 2026 releases, Ann Patchett, Anne Fadiman, autofiction, bears, biography, Canada, Chris Newens, Claire Fuller, Daniel Mason, Daphne du Maurier, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Douglas Stuart, Elizabeth Strout, Emily St. John Mandel, essays, foodie, historical fiction, Ireland, Isle of Harris, Jan Morris, Jennette McCurdy, Julian Barnes, Julie Schumacher, Kayla Rae Whitaker, Kentucky, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Lauren Groff, Louisiana, Maggie O’Farrell, Paris, Rebecca Solnit, Rose Tremain, Sara Wheeler, Sarah Gilmartin, Shannon Sanders, short stories, Sigrid Nunez, Sophie Ward, Tayari Jones, Tennessee, travel books, Trina Moyles, Vermont

Six Degrees of Separation: From Shuggie Bain to Girl, Woman, Other

By Rebecca Foster on April 3, 2021 | 19 Comments

This month we begin with Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (2020), last year’s Booker Prize winner. (See Kate’s opening post.) I tried it a couple of times and couldn’t get past page 100, but I’ve kept my proof copy on the shelf to try some other time.

#1 The main character’s sweet nickname takes me to Sugar and Other Stories by A.S. Byatt. Byatt is my favourite author. Rereading her The Matisse Stories last year was rewarding, and I’d eventually like to go back to the rest of her short fiction. I read Sugar and Other Stories in Bath in 2006. (As my MA year in Leeds came to a close, I interviewed at several libraries, hoping to get onto a graduate trainee scheme so I could stay in the UK for another year. It didn’t work out, but I got to tour many wonderful libraries.) I picnicked on the grass on a May day on the University of Bath campus before my interview at the library.

I can’t claim to remember the book well overall, but I do recall the story “The July Ghost,” in which a man at a party tells a story about his landlady and the silent boy he’s seen in her garden. This turns out to be the ghost of her son, who died when he was hit by a car two summers earlier. I’ve never forgotten it because that’s exactly what happened to Byatt’s 12-year-old son.

#2 The title of that memorable story takes me to The First Bad Man by Miranda July. This review from the early days of my blog is still inexplicably popular in terms of number of views. The novel is full of unlikable characters and quirkiness for the sake of it; I doubt I would have read it had I not been sent an unsolicited review copy by the U.S. publisher.

#3 According to a search of my Goodreads library, the only other book I’ve ever read by a Miranda is A Girl Walks into a Book by Miranda K. Pennington, a charming bibliomemoir about the lives and works of the Brontës. I especially enjoyed the cynical dissection of Wuthering Heights, a classic I’ve never managed to warm to.

#4 From one famous set of sisters in the arts to another with Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar, a novel about Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. It is presented as Vanessa’s diary, incorporating letters and telegrams. The interactions with their Bloomsbury set are delightful, and sibling rivalry is a perennial theme I can’t resist.

#5 Another Vanessa novel and one I would highly recommend to anyone wanting a nuanced look at the #MeToo phenomenon is My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. It’s utterly immersive and as good a first-person narrative as anything Curtis Sittenfeld has ever written. I also appreciated the allusions to other works of literature, from Nabokov (the title is from Pale Fire) to Swift. This would make a great book club selection.

#6 Speaking of feminist responses to #MeToo, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo is just as good as you’ve heard. If you haven’t read it yet, why not? It’s a linked short story collection about 12 black women navigating twentieth-century and contemporary Britain – balancing external and internal expectations to build lives of their own. It reads like poetry.

Cycling round from one Booker Prize winner to another, I’ve featured stories by and about strong women, with most of my links coming from names and titles.

Whatever could be on the 2021 Booker Prize longlist? We have a lot of literary prize races to see out before then, but I’m keen to learn what Rev. Rowan Williams and the rest of the judges deem worthy.

Where will your chain take you? Join us for #6Degrees of Separation! (Hosted on the first Saturday of each month by Kate W. of Books Are My Favourite and Best.) Next month’s starting point is Beezus and Ramona, in honour of Beverly Cleary (May 1, 2021).

Have you read any of my selections? Are you tempted by any you didn’t know before?

Posted in: memes | Tagged: A.S. Byatt, Bath, Bernardine Evaristo, bibliomemoirs, Booker Prize winners, Curtis Sittenfeld, Douglas Stuart, Emily Brontë, Jonathan Swift, Kate Elizabeth Russell, Miranda July, Miranda K. Pennington, Priya Parmar, Rowan Williams, short stories, sisters, Six Degrees of Separation, the Brontës, Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov

Random 2020 Superlatives and Statistics

By Rebecca Foster on December 31, 2020 | 27 Comments

My top ‘discoveries’ of the year: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (4 books), Octavia E. Butler, Tim Dee (3 books each, read or in progress), and Louise Erdrich (2 books, one in progress).

Also the publisher Little Toller Books: I read four of their releases this year and they were fantastic.

The authors I read the most by this year: Carol Shields tops the list at 6 books (3 of these were rereads) thanks to my buddy reads with Buried in Print, followed by Paul Auster with 5 due to Annabel’s reading week in February, then Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with 4, and finally Anne Lamott with 3 comfort rereads.

Debut authors whose next work I’m most looking forward to: Naoise Dolan, Bess Kalb, Dara McAnulty, Mary South, Brandon Taylor, and Madeleine Watts

My proudest reading achievement: 16 rereads, which must be a record for me. Also, I always say I’m not really a short story person … and yet somehow I’ve read 19 collections of them this year (and one stand-alone story, plus another collection currently on the go)!

My proudest (non-reading) bookish achievement: Conceiving of and coordinating the Not the Wellcome Prize blog tour.

Five favorite blog posts of the year: Love, Etc. – Some Thematic Reading for Valentine’s Day; Polio and the Plague: Epidemics in Fiction; Thinking about the Future with David Farrier & Roman Krznaric (Hay Festival); Three Out-of-the-Ordinary Memoirs: Kalb, Machado, McGuinness; Asking What If? with Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld (I had a lot of fun putting the current post together, too!)

The bookish experience that most defined my year: Watching the Bookshop Band’s live shows from their living room. Between their Friday night lockdown performances and one-offs for festivals and book launches, I think I saw them play 33 times in 2020!

Biggest book read this year: Going by dimensions rather than number of pages, it was the oversize hardback The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris.

vs.

Smallest book read this year: Pocket-sized and only about 60 pages: No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg.

Oldest author read this year: Peggy Seeger was 82 when her memoir First Time Ever was published. I haven’t double-checked the age of every single author, but I think second place at 77 is a tie between debut novelist Arlene Heyman for Artifact and Sue Miller for Monogamy. (I don’t know how old Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott and Peter Marren, the joint authors of The Consolation of Nature, are; Mynott may actually be the oldest overall, and their combined age is likely over 200.)

vs.

Youngest author read this year: You might assume it was 16-year-old Dara McAnulty with Diary of a Young Naturalist, which won the Wainwright Prize (as well as the An Post Irish Book Award for Newcomer of the Year, the Books Are My Bag Reader Award for Non-Fiction, and the Hay Festival Book of the Year!) … or Thunberg, above, who was 16 when her book came out. They were indeed tied for youngest until, earlier in December, I started reading The House without Windows (1927) by Barbara Newhall Follett, a bizarre fantasy novel published when the child prodigy was 12.

Most As on a book cover: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

vs.

Most Zs on a book cover: The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi. I haven’t read it yet, but a neighbor passed on a copy she was getting rid of. It was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.

The book that made me laugh the most: Kay’s Anatomy by Adam Kay

Books that made me cry: Writers and Lovers by Lily King, Monogamy by Sue Miller, First Time Ever by Peggy Seeger, and Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of (In)fertility by Myriam Steinberg (coming out in March 2021)

The book that put a song in my head every single time I looked at it, much less read it: I Am an Island by Tamsin Calidas (i.e., “I Am a Rock” by Simon and Garfunkel, which, as my husband pointed out, has very appropriate lyrics for 2020: “In a deep and dark December / I am alone / Gazing from my window to the streets below … Hiding in my room / Safe within my womb / I touch no one and no one touches me.”)

Best book club selections: Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale and The Wife by Meg Wolitzer tied for our highest score ever and gave us lots to talk about.

Most unexpectedly apt lines encountered in a book: “People came to church wearing masks, if they came at all. They’d sit as far from each other as they could.” (Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Describing not COVID-19 times but the Spanish flu.)

Most ironic lines encountered in a book: “September 12—In the ongoing hearings, Senator Joseph Biden pledges to consider the Bork nomination ‘with total objectivity,’ adding, ‘You have that on my honor not only as a senator, but also as the Prince of Wales.’ … October 1—Senator Joseph Biden is forced to withdraw from the Democratic presidential race when it is learned that he is in fact an elderly Norwegian woman.” (from the 1987 roundup in Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits – Biden has been on the U.S. political scene, and mocked, for 3.5+ decades!)

Best first line encountered this year: “And then there was the day when Addie Moore made a call on Louis Waters.” (Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf)

Best last lines encountered this year:

“my childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.” (Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen)
“What I want to say is: I misremember all this so vividly it’s as if it only happened yesterday.” (Other People’s Countries: A Journey into Memory by Patrick McGuinness)
“these friends would forever be her stitches, her scaffold, her ballast, her home.” (The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall)

My favorite title and cover combo of the year: A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth by Daniel Mason

The book I wish had gotten a better title and cover: Tennis Lessons by Susannah Dickey – I did enjoy this second-person novel about a young woman who is her own worst enemy, to the tune of 3.5 stars, but the title says nothing about it and the cover would have been a turnoff had I not won a signed copy from Mslexia.

The most unfortunate typos I found in published works: In English Pastoral by James Rebanks, “sewn” where he meant “sown” (so ironic in a book about farming!) versus, in Mr Wilder & Me by Jonathan Coe, “sown” in place of “sewn.” Also “impassible” where it should read “impassable” in Apeirogon by Colum McCann. This is what proofreaders like myself are for. We will save you from embarrassing homophone slips, dangling modifiers, and more!

The 2020 books that everybody else loved, but I didn’t: The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

The year’s biggest disappointments: I don’t like to call anything “worst” (after all, I didn’t read anything nearly as awful as last year’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull), but my lowest ratings went to A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom by John Boyne and At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison, and I was disappointed that When the Lights Go Out by Carys Bray was misleadingly marketed.

The downright strangest books I read this year: Enter the Aardvark by Jessica Anthony, A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom by John Boyne, The House Without Windows by Barbara Newhall Follett, and The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

The people and themes that kept turning up in my reading: Rachel Carson and Henry David Thoreau; curlews and plagues; how we define and relate to history; childhood memoirs (seven of them).

Some of my 2020 curlew reading. (Two more books with curlews on the cover were borrowed from the library.)

Some statistics on my 2020 reading:

Fiction: 57.2%

Nonfiction: 36.8%

Poetry: 6%

(Fiction reigned supreme this year! Last year my F:NF ratio was roughly 1:1. Poetry was down by ~5% this year compared to 2019.)

Male author: 34.1%

Female author: 63.8%

Nonbinary author: 0.3% (= 1 author, Jay Bernard)

Multiple genders (anthologies): 1.8%

(Women dominated by an extra ~5% this year over 2019. I’ve said this for four years now: I find it intriguing that female authors significantly outweigh male authors in my reading because I have never consciously set out to read more books by women; it must be a matter of being interested in the kinds of stories women tell and how they capture their experiences in nonfiction.)

E-books: 10.6%

Print books: 89.4%

(Almost exactly the same as last year. My e-book reading has been declining, partially because I’ve cut back on the reviewing gigs that involve only reading e-books and partially because I’ve done less traveling. Increasingly, I prefer to sit down with a big stack of print books.)

Books by BIPOC: 14.7%

Literature in translation: 6.6%

(Down from last year’s 7.2%; how did this happen?! This will be something to address in 2021.)

Where my books came from for the whole year:

Free print or e-copy from publisher: 25.6%
Public library: 25.6%
Free (giveaways, The Book Thing of Baltimore, the free mall bookshop, etc.): 14.9%
Secondhand purchase: 11.6%
Downloaded from NetGalley, Edelweiss or Project Gutenberg: 6.7%
New purchase (sometimes at a bargain price): 6.3%
Gifts: 5.5%
University library: 3.8%

I promised to scale back on review copies this year, and I did: last year they accounted for nearly 37% of my reading. My library reading was higher than last year’s, despite the challenges of lockdowns; my e-book reading decreased in general. I bought more than twice as many new books as usual this year, and read lots that I either bought secondhand or got for free.

Number of unread print books in the house: 435

At the end of last year this figure was at 440 after lots of stock-ups from the free mall bookshop, which has since closed. So even though it might look like I have only read five books of my own, I have in fact read loads from my shelves this year … but also acquired many more books, both new and secondhand.

In any case, the overall movement has been downward, so I’m calling it a win!

Posted in: Reading habits | Tagged: Adam Kay, Anne Lamott, Arlene Heyman, Barbara Newhall Follett, Bess Kalb, book acquisitions, Brandon Taylor, Cara Wall, Carol Shields, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Colum McCann, curlews, Daniel Mason, Dara McAnulty, Dave Barry, Douglas Stuart, e-books, free books, Greta Thunberg, Henry David Thoreau, Hilary Mantel, Ian McEwan, Jackie Morris, James Rebanks, Jay Bernard, Jeremy Mynott, Jessica Anthony, John Boyne, Jonathan Coe, Kent Haruf, Lily King, Little Toller, Louise Erdrich, Madeleine Watts, Maggie O’Farrell, Marilynne Robinson, Mary South, Meg Wolitzer, Michael McCarthy, Myriam Steinberg, Naoise Dolan, Not the Wellcome Prize, Octavia E. Butler, Patrick Gale, Patrick McGuinness, Paul Auster, Peggy Seeger, Peter Marren, plague, Rachel Carson, rereading, Robert Macfarlane, secondhand books, short stories, Simon and Garfunkel, statistics, Sue Miller, Susannah Dickey, Tamsin Calidas, The Bookshop Band, Tim Dee, Tove Ditlevsen, Trezza Azzopardi, Wainwright Prize

Booker and Young Writer Ceremonies & Tracy Chevalier Book Club

By Rebecca Foster on December 11, 2020 | 19 Comments

This year I correctly predicted Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and Surge by Jay Bernard as the winners of the Booker Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, respectively. Patting myself on the back!

(Earlier in the year, I had a feeling Maggie O’Farrell would win the Women’s Prize, but wasn’t confident enough to single her out; and I got the Wainwright Prizes all wrong.)

I watched both the Booker Prize (live) and Young Writer of the Year Award (pre-recorded) ceremonies online; not having to secure an invitation or pay £30 for the train into London has been an ongoing bonus of pandemic arrangements.

The Booker ceremony was nicely tailored to viewers at home, incorporating brief, informal pre-recorded interviews with each nominated author and a video chat between last year’s winners, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo. When Evaristo asked Atwood about the difference between winning the Booker in 2019 versus in 2000, she replied, deadpan, “I was older.” I especially liked the short monologues that well-known UK actors performed from each shortlisted book. Only a few people – the presenter, Evaristo, chair of judges and publisher Margaret Busby, and a string quartet – appeared in the studio, while all the other participants beamed in from other times and places. Stuart is only the second Scottish winner of the Booker, and seemed genuinely touched for this recognition of his tribute to his mother.

I’ve attended the Young Writer ceremony at the London Library twice: in 2017, when I was on the shadow panel, and again last year. It was a shame not to be able to meet up with fellow bloggers and the shortlisted authors, but I appreciated hearing the judges’ thoughts on each nominee. Tessa Hadley said the whole shortlist was “so full of young energy.” Kit de Waal called Catherine Cho’s Inferno “an absolute page-turner.” All the judges remarked at how funny, cutting and original Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times is. Critic Houman Barekat referred to Seán Hewitt’s Tongues of Fire as “unabashedly earnest.” Hadley said Marina Kemp’s Nightingale is just the kind of novel she loves, a “delicate, full notation,” and Barekat observed that it is a timely reminder of the value of care work.

It was clear that, for the judges, all five books were terrifically accomplished and would be worthy winners. Still, the unanimous decision was in favor of Surge, which Sunday Times literary editor Andrew Holgate said is “remarkable for its passionate engagement and diversity of voices.” Bernard read “Hiss” (also up on the Granta website) and said that “poems can take on another life” through performance and short films, so the poet can’t predict whether they will stay in poetry or branch out into other genres.

Back on 18 November, I attended another online event to which I’d gotten a last-minute invitation: a “book club” featuring Tracy Chevalier in conversation with her literary agent, Jonny Geller, on Girl with a Pearl Earring at 20 and her new novel, A Single Thread. In 1996 she sent Geller a letter asking if he’d read Virgin Blue, which she’d written for the MA at the University of East Anglia – the only UK Creative Writing course out there at the time. After VB, she started a contemporary novel set at Highgate Cemetery, where she was a tour guide. It was to be called Live a Little (since a Howard Jacobson title). But shortly thereafter, she was lying in bed one day, looking at a Vermeer print on the wall, and asked herself what the look on the girl’s face meant and who she was. She sent Geller one page of thoughts and he immediately told her to stick Live a Little in a drawer and focus on the Vermeer idea.

Intriguingly, Chevalier stated that the deadline of her pregnancy determined the form of Girl with a Pearl Earring: she knew she had to keep things simple, with a linear narrative, one point of view, and spare prose. While the novel had a quiet publication in August 1999, a good review from Deborah Moggach helped, and it became a “word of mouth success,” never hitting #1 but selling continuously. Chevalier believes this was due to a rare coming together of story and writing; sometimes good stories are hampered by mediocre writing, or vice versa. She and Geller discussed the strange coincidence of two other Vermeer novels coming out at the same time (e.g. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland); she had the good luck of being the victor. The film version is “lovely,” she said. Geller has never forgotten Scarlett Johansson, who turned 18 on set, leaving her gum in during a cast supper of spaghetti.

Chevalier’s actual Highgate novel, Falling Angels, didn’t borrow at all from her contemporary-set draft as it was set in 1900. Incorporating suffragette history, it felt like an untold story ripe for the plucking. Falling Angels has long been the one I consider my favorite Chevalier – as of last month, when we did The Last Runaway in book club, I’ve read all her work – but after this event I’m eager to reread it and GwaPE to see what I think.

Lastly, Chevalier and Geller talked about her new novel, A Single Thread, which was conceived before Trump and Brexit but had its central themes reinforced by the constant references back to 1930s fascism during the Trump presidency. She showed off the needlepoint spectacles case she’d embroidered for the novel. This wasn’t the first time she’d taken up a craft featured in her fiction: for The Last Runaway she learned to quilt, and indeed still quilts today. Geller likened her to a “method actor,” and jokingly fretted that they’ll lose her to one of these hobbies one day. Chevalier’s work in progress features Venetian glass. I’m already looking forward to it.

Like me, she moved to England from the Washington, D.C. area and has never lost the ‘accent’, so I feel like she’s a kindred spirit.

Bookish online events coming up soon: Penguin book quiz, followed by book club holiday social (a Zoom meeting with glasses of wine in hand!), on the 15th

Have you taken advantage of any online literary events recently?

Posted in: Events, Literary Prizes | Tagged: Andrew Holgate, Bernardine Evaristo, book clubs, Booker Prize, Catherine Cho, Deborah Moggach, Douglas Stuart, Granta, historical fiction, Houman Barekat, Howard Jacobson, Jay Bernard, Jonny Geller, Kit de Waal, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Busby, Marina Kemp, Naoise Dolan, online events, poetry, Scarlett Johansson, Seán Hewitt, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Susan Vreeland, Tessa Hadley, Tracy Chevalier, UEA, Vermeer

Bookish Beck

Tag Archives: Douglas Stuart

Booker Prize Shortlist Reads by Kennard and Perry & A Prediction

Black Bag by Luke Kennard

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry

Booker Prize Longlist Reads (Switzy, The End of Everything) & Shortlist Predictions

Switzy by Emma Cline

A bonus review:

A Better Death: The case for assisted dying by Jonathan Romain

The End of Everything by M. John Harrison

The Best Books from the First Half of 2026

Fiction

Nonfiction

Poetry

Have you read any of these, or might you now based on my recommendation? What other 2026 releases should I catch up on?

Book Serendipity, March to May

May Releases by Siri Hustvedt, Will Maclean & More

Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt

Solace House by Will Maclean

Reviewed for Shelf Awareness:

Book Serendipity, January to February

Most Anticipated Books of 2026

Fiction

Nonfiction

Six Degrees of Separation: From Shuggie Bain to Girl, Woman, Other

Have you read any of my selections? Are you tempted by any you didn’t know before?

Random 2020 Superlatives and Statistics

Some statistics on my 2020 reading:

Where my books came from for the whole year:

Booker and Young Writer Ceremonies & Tracy Chevalier Book Club

Have you taken advantage of any online literary events recently?

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