Carol Shields Prize Longlist Reading: The Future and Chrysalis
My first two dedicated reads for our informal Carol Shields Prize shadowing project exhibit one main way in which the prize is different from the Women’s Prize for Fiction: works in translation and short story collections are eligible. I have one of each to review today. Laura and I did a buddy read of an atmospheric dystopian novel translated from the French, and I caught up on a magical, erotic story collection I’d had on my Kindle for a long time. These were both very good, but my minor misgivings are such that I’d rate them the same: 
The Future by Catherine Leroux (2020; 2023)
[Translated from the French by Susan Ouriou]
For such a monolithic title, this has a limited stage: a few derelict districts of the ailing city we know as Detroit, Michigan – but in Leroux’s alternate version, it remained part of French Canada, with lingering Indigenous influence, and so is known as Fort Détroit. No doubt she was inspired by the many vacant properties that characterized Detroit in the 2010s; there’s even a ruins tour bus. In her Fort Détroit, a handful of determined adults cling on in their own homes, but the streets and parks have been abandoned to animals and to a gang of half-feral children who have developed their own nicknames (Adidas, Lego, Wolfpup), social hierarchy and vernacular. Worlds meet when Gloria determines to find her granddaughters Cassandra and Mathilda, who ran away after their addict mother Judith’s suspicious death. At the same time, her neighbour Eunice wants to find out who ran her father down in the street.
Despite their fierce independence and acts of protest, the novel’s children still rely on the adult world. Ecosystems are awry and the river is toxic, but Gloria’s friend Solomon, a former jazz pianist, still manages to grow crops. He overlooks the children’s thefts from his greenhouse and eventually offers to help them grow their own food supply, and other adults volunteer to prepare a proper winter shelter to replace their shantytown. Puberty threatens their society, too: we learn that Fiji, the leader, has been binding her breasts to hide her age.
I expected to be reminded strongly of Station Eleven, and while there were elements that were reminiscent of Emily St John Mandel’s work, Leroux’s is a more consciously literary approach. The present-tense omniscient narration occupies many perspectives, including that of a dog, and the descriptions and musings are more lyrical than literal. Where another author would site high drama – sixtysomething Gloria’s night quest, a few children rafting down the river – Leroux moves on swiftly to other character interactions. What did bring Mandel to mind was the importance of art during societal collapse: the children spin nursery rhyme mash-ups and fairytales, Stutt rescues a makeshift library and insists on Huckleberry Finn going along on the river journey, and Solomon plays the piano again after decades.
The opening mysteries of death and disappearance are resolved before the end, but don’t seem to have been the point. The Future is more subtle and slippery than many dystopian novels I’ve read in that there’s not really a warning, or a message here. Instead, there’s an intriguing situation that opens out and alters slightly, but avoids resolution. It’s all about atmosphere and language – I was especially impressed by Ouriou’s rendering of Leroux’s made-up dialect via folksy slang (“She figgers she’s growed-up”). I loved the details and one-on-one moments more than the momentous scenes. On the whole, I found the story elegant but somewhat frustrating. You might be drawn to it if you enjoyed To Paradise or the MaddAddam books. (Read via Edelweiss; published by Biblioasis)
See also Laura’s review.
Chrysalis: Stories by Anuja Varghese (2023)
This debut collection of 15 stories brims with magic and horror, and teems with women of colour and queer people. Indeed, Varghese dedicates the book to “all the girls and women who don’t see themselves in most stories.” Most of the characters are of South Asian extraction. Adoption recurs in a couple of places. Two of the rarer realist stories, “Milk” and “Stories in the Language of the Fist,” have protagonists dealing with schoolgirl bullying and workplace microaggressions. More often, there are unexplained phenomena that position the players between life and death. “In the Bone Fields” focuses on the twin daughters of an Indian immigrant family on a Canadian farm. The house and the bone field behind are active and hungry, and only one twin will survive. (I got mild North Woods vibes.)
In the title story, Radhika visits her mother’s grave and wonders whether her life is here in Montreal with her lover or back in Toronto with her husband. Fangs and wings symbolize her desire for independence. Elsewhere, watery metaphors alternately evoke fear of drowning or sexual fluidity. “Midnight at the Oasis” charts the transformation of a trans woman and “Cherry Blossom Fever,” one of my two favourites, bounces between several POVs. Marjan is in love with Talia, but she’s married to Sunil, who’s also in love with Silas. “People do it — open their relationships and negotiate rules and write themselves into polyamorous fairy tales … Other people. Not brown people,” Talia sighs. They are better off, at least, than they would be back in India, where homophobia can be deadly (“The Vetala’s Song”).
My other favourite was “Bhupati,” about a man who sets up multiple Lakshmi figures in the backyard, hoping devotion will earn him and his wife a better future. The statues keep being burned up by lightning; we learn his wife may be petitioning for different things. “Chitra” is a straightforward Cinderella retelling whose title character lives with two mean stepsisters and works in food service at the mall. A Shoe Chateau BOGO closing sale gives her the chance to get a bargain – and catch the manager’s eye. Despite a striking ending signalled by the story’s subtitle, all I could conclude about this one was “cute.” The three flash horror stories (a murder hotel, ghosts in a basement, werewolves) were much the weakest for me.
There’s a pretty even split of third- and first-person stories (nine versus six) here, and the genre shifts frequently. The quality wasn’t as consistent as I’d hoped, but it was an engaging read. The overall blend of feminism and horror had me thinking of Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, but I’d be most likely to recommend this to fans of Julia Armfield, Violet Kupersmith and Vauhini Vara. (Read via Edelweiss; published by House of Anansi Press)
Both of these are worthwhile books and it’s great that readers outside of Canada can discover them. I wouldn’t personally shortlist either, but the judges may well be dazzled enough to do so. I don’t yet have a sense of where they’d fit for me in the rankings.
Up next:
Cocktail by Lisa Alward (short story collection from Edelweiss)
A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power (buddy read with Laura)
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang (from library)
I’m aiming for one or two more batches of reviews before the shortlist is announced on 9 April.
Recent Writing for BookBrowse, Foreword, Shelf Awareness, Shiny New Books, and the TLS
I’ve compiled excerpts from some reviews I’ve contributed to other websites and publications this year. I link to the full text where available. (When writing a paid review, I seek to be balanced but positive. Ratings reflect my personal response.)
BookBrowse
The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel: In Ausubel’s offbeat third novel, a widowed scientist and her two daughters embark on a rogue plan to make history by resurrecting the woolly mammoth. There is a quirky combination of cosmic and domestic concerns here. A winsome sister duo is at the heart of the unusual and timely story, with priority given to the points of view of teenagers Eve and Vera, whose banter is a highlight. Ausubel has wisely chosen not to dwell on the scientific details of de-extinction, yet that means that this becomes more like speculative fiction or a fairy tale. Ironically, the fabulist-leaning novel is best when most realist, documenting struggles with bereavement, sexism and parenting teens. 
The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore: Moore’s hard-hitting novella is based in part on the memoir Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees: A Narrative of Indian Captivity. In Moore’s version, Sarah, 25, leaves her baby behind when she flees an abusive husband, and once in Minnesota Territory marries John Brinton, who becomes a doctor on a Sioux reservation. By 1862, Sarah is friendly with the Native women. Although the Civil War is unfolding, the greater threat here is of revolt by the starving Indigenous residents. There is much of anthropological and historical interest, but Sarah’s flat storytelling, which may represent a pastiche of period style, means threatening or climactic scenes lose some of their potential gravity.
Foreword
My Mother Says by Stine Pilgaard (trans. from the Danish by Hunter Simpson): After breaking up with her zookeeper girlfriend over their age gap and their conflicting takes on motherhood, the heroine moves back in with her father, a pastor who’s obsessed with Pink Floyd, and her stepmother. Her mother visits often, nagging her to finish her thesis. The line between her conversations and internal thoughts is thin. From her mansplaining doctor, she learns that the brain’s hippocampus is named for its seahorse shape. This inspires “Monologues of a Seahorse,” interludes of stream-of-consciousness association. Experimental and whimsical, this delivers deadpan narration of everyday woes. 
In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation by Isabel Zapata (trans. from the Spanish by Robin Myers): A Mexican poet probes the enduring mysteries of pregnancy and birth in a memoir in fragments that travels from fertility treatment through to the early weeks of pandemic-time motherhood. The clinical language of a gynecological history—late menstruation, polycystic ovary syndrome, eighteen years on the pill, and infertility—and the embryo transfer process contrasts with Zapata’s mystical thinking. The microessays integrate family stories, history, and artistic explorations. This resolute account of a personal metamorphosis alchemizes tender experiences into enchanting vignettes.
Shelf Awareness
Fiction
Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt: This engrossing debut novel explores the options for women in the mid-19th century while bringing a historical tragedy to life. Metaphorical conflagrations blaze in the background in the days leading up to the great Nantucket fire of 1846: each of three female protagonists (a whaling captain’s wife, a museum curator, and a pregnant Black entrepreneur) holds a burning secret and longs for a more expansive, authentic life. The action spans two tense weeks, one week before the fire through eight days after. The women’s lives collide in two climactic scenes. Gerstenblatt’s eye for detail results in sultry historical fiction for Sue Monk Kidd’s readers. 
Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling: Sterling’s brilliantly unsettling debut novel is set in mid-21st-century, post-oil North America. Prioritizing perspectives from two all-female communities, it contrasts the heights of opulence and technology with the basic instinct for survival. How the strands connect is a mystery sustained through much of the book. Characters go by multiple names and harbor ulterior motives; scenes echo each other as disparate subplots meet in unexpected ways. The background is all too plausible. Sterling also takes to its logical extreme the state of being constantly online. Compelling dystopian cli-fi with three-dimensional characters—perfect for fans of Station Eleven and To Paradise.
Dear Chrysanthemums by Fiona Sze-Lorrain: In this elegant collection of 11 linked short stories by a poet and translator, China’s mid-20th-century political upheaval casts a long shadow. Music and food, not to mention love, bring meaning to those displaced in the aftermath of dissent. The stories—set in China, Singapore, Paris, and New York—span seven decades but always take place in a year ending in a six, a sacred number in Chinese divination. A highlight is “News from Saigon,” in which a prostitute meets Marguerite Duras in a Paris café. The connections are subtle, with the final story pulling together many strands. Ideal for readers of Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing.
Nonfiction
Stranded by Maddalena Bearzi: Bearzi developed a deep love for marine fauna during childhood summers in Sardinia and cofounded the Ocean Conservation Society in the 1990s. Temporarily confined to land by Covid-19 lockdowns, she adopts a different tactic for exploring animal behavior: “an urban safari in my backyard and neighborhood.” These nature essays exemplify evenhandedness, curiosity, and close observation. From wasps to night-blooming flowers, her interest is wide-ranging. Gardening is a relaxing pastime and a connection to her mother while they are separated. As a behavioral ecologist, she views even her dog as a subject of study. A passionate primer to appreciating everyday nature.
Poetry
Lo by Melissa Crowe: This incandescent autobiographical collection travels from girlhood to marriage and motherhood in post-pandemic USA. Crowe delves into sexual abuse and growing up in rural poverty. Yet the collection is so carefully balanced in tone that it never feels bleak. The emotional range is enhanced by alliteration and botanical imagery. 
Dislocations by Karen Enns: The fourth collection by Canadian poet Enns skillfully evokes a rural upbringing and revels in the beauty of nature and music. One of its aphorisms could encapsulate the entire collection: “The ratio of love to grief / we understood as music.” Updating the pastoral tradition, the bittersweet verse also takes solace in the past.
Shiny New Books
A Fortunate Woman by Polly Morland & A Fortunate Man by John Berger: The similarities go much further than the title and subject matter: these two biographical works, both illustrated with black-and-white photographs, are set in the same English valley and the female subject of Morland’s is the next-but-one successor of the doctor who stars in Berger’s.
Berger (1926–2017), an art critic and Booker Prize-winning novelist, spent six weeks shadowing the doctor, to whom he gives the pseudonym John Sassall, with Swiss documentary photographer Jean Mohr, his frequent collaborator. Sassall’s dedication was legendary: he attended every birth in this community, and nearly every death. Sassall’s middle-class origins set him apart from his patients. There’s something condescending about how Berger depicts the locals as simple peasants. Mohr’s photos include soft-focus close-ups on faces exhibiting a sequence of emotions, a technique that feels outdated in the age of video. Along with recording the day-to-day details of medical complaints and interventions, Berger waxes philosophical on topics such as infirmity and vocation. A Fortunate Man is a curious book, part intellectual enquiry and part hagiography.
With its layers of local history and its braided biographical strands, A Fortunate Woman takes up many of the same heavy questions but feels more subtle and timely. It also soon delivers a jolting surprise: the doctor Berger called John Sassall was likely bipolar and, soon after the death of his beloved wife Betty, committed suicide in 1982. His story still haunts this community, where many of the older patients remember going to him for treatment. Like Berger, Morland keenly follows a range of cases. As the book progresses, we see this beautiful valley cycle through the seasons, with certain of Richard Baker’s landscape shots deliberately recreating Mohr’s scene setting. The timing of Morland’s book means that it morphs from a portrait of the quotidian for a doctor and a community to, two-thirds through, an incidental record of the challenges of medical practice during COVID-19.
The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller: Neffy has nothing to lose when she enrolls in a controversial vaccine trial in a familiar mid-pandemic landscape. The novel is presented as her journal. The bulk takes place in two weeks she spends on a locked unit with four fellow test subjects. In the meantime, she is introduced to an experimental technology for reliving memories. The characterisation of the four other cast members is somewhat thin, and the elements feel randomly assembled. The world-building and tech are unlikely to stand up to science fiction fans’ scrutiny, but this has just the right dose of the speculative for literary fiction readers. It also happens to fit into a recent vogue for octopus novels.
Times Literary Supplement
A late-twenties journalist sets out to survey the situation on the ground for ten British species being squeezed out by anthropogenic climate change: The mission is very similar, and both authors embody passionate dedication to conservation, but the difference in tone of these travel narratives makes them likely to appeal to separate audiences…
In Search of One Last Song by Patrick Galbraith & Forget Me Not by Sophie Pavelle:
Galbraith’s is an elegiac tour through imperilled countryside and urban edgelands. Each chapter resembles an in-depth magazine article: a carefully crafted profile of a beloved bird species, with a focus on the specific threats it faces. Galbraith recognises the nuances of land use. However, shooting plays an outsized role. (Curious for his bio not to disclose that he is editor of the Shooting Times.) The title’s reference is to literal birdsong, but the book also celebrates birds’ cultural importance through their place in Britain’s folk music and poetry. He is clearly enamoured of countryside ways, but too often slips into laddishness, with no opportunity missed to mention him or another man having a “piss” outside. Readers could also be forgiven for concluding that “Ilka” (no surname, affiliation or job title), who briefs him on her research into kittiwake populations in Orkney, is the only female working in nature conservation in the entire country; with few exceptions, women only have bit parts: the farm wife making the tea, the receptionist on the phone line, and so on.
Pavelle’s book is a tonic in more ways than one. Employed by Beaver Trust, she is enthusiastic and self-deprecating. Her nature quest has a broader scope, including insects like the marsh fritillary and marine species such as seagrass and the Atlantic salmon. Travelling between lockdowns in 2020–1, Pavelle took low-carbon transport wherever possible and bolsters her trip accounts with context, much of it gleaned from Zoom calls and e-mail correspondence with experts from museums and universities. Refreshingly, around half of these interviewees are women, and the animal subjects are never the obvious choices. Instead, she seeks out “underdog” species. The explanations are at a suitable level for laymen, true to her job as a science communicator. The snappy, casual prose (“the future of the bilberry bumblebee and its Aperol arse can be bright, but only if we get off our own”) could even endear her to teenage readers. As image goes, Pavelle’s cheerful naïveté holds more charm than Galbraith’s hardboiled masculinity.
Taking Flight by Lev Parikian: Parikian’s accessible account of the animal kingdom’s development of flight exhibits a layman’s enthusiasm for an everyday wonder. He explicates the range of flying strategies and the structural adaptations that made them possible. The archaeopteryx section, chronicling the transition between dinosaurs and birds, is a highlight. Though the most science-heavy of the author’s six works, this, perhaps ironically, has fewer footnotes. His usual wit is on display: he describes the feral pigeon as “the Volkswagen Golf of birds” and penguins as “piebald blubber tubes”. This makes it a pleasure to tag along on a journey through evolutionary time, one sure to engage even history- and science-phobes.
Do any of these catch your eye?
Women’s Prize 2023: Longlist Predictions vs. Wishes
I’ve been working on a list of novels eligible for this year’s Women’s Prize since … this time last year. Unusual for me to be so prepared! It shows how invested I’ve become in this prize over the years. For instance, last year my book club was part of an official shadowing scheme, which was great fun.
We’re now less than a month out from the longlist, which will be announced on 7 March. Like last year, I’ve separated my predictions from a wish list; two titles overlap. Here’s a reminder of the parameters, taken from the website:
“Any woman writing in English – whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter – is eligible. Novels must be published in the United Kingdom between 1 April in the year the Prize calls for entries, and 31 March the following year, when the Prize is announced. … The Prize only accepts novels entered by publishers, who may each submit a maximum of two titles per imprint, depending on size, and one title for imprints with a list of ten fiction titles or fewer published in a year. Previously shortlisted and winning authors are given a ‘free pass’.”
This year I dutifully kept tabs on publisher quotas as I compiled my lists. I also attempted to bear in mind the interests of this year’s judges (also from the website): “Chair of Judges, author and journalist Louise Minchin, is joined by award-winning novelist Rachel Joyce; author, journalist and podcaster Irenosen Okojie; bestselling author and journalist Bella Mackie and MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq.”
Predictions
A Spell of Good Things, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton
Joan, Katherine J. Chen
Maame, Jessica George
Really Good, Actually, Monica Heisey
Trespasses, Louise Kennedy
The Night Ship, Jess Kidd (my review)
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (my review)
Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng (my review)
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell
I’m a Fan, Sheena Patel
Elektra, Jennifer Saint
Best of Friends, Kamila Shamsie
River Sing Me Home, Eleanor Shearer
Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout – currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (my review)
Wish List
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz
The Weather Woman, Sally Gardner (my review)
Maame, Jessica George
The Great Reclamation, Rachel Heng
Bad Cree, Jessica Johns
I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai – currently reading
Sea of Tranquillity, Emily St. John Mandel (my review)
The Hero of This Book, Elizabeth McCracken (my review)
Nightcrawling, Leila Mottley (my review)
We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman – currently reading
Everything the Light Touches, Janice Pariat (my review)
Camp Zero, Michelle Min Sterling – review pending for Shelf Awareness
Briefly, A Delicious Life, Nell Stevens (my review)
This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub (my review)
Fight Night, Miriam Toews – currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (my review)
Of course, even if I’m lucky, I’ll still only get a few right across these two lists, and I’ll be kicking myself over the ones I considered but didn’t include, and marvelling at all the ones I’ve never heard of…
What would you like to see on the longlist?
~BREAKING NEWS: There are plans afoot to start a Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Now seeking funding to start in 2024. More details here.~
Appendix
(A further 99 eligible novels that were on my radar but didn’t make the cut:)
Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese
Rose and the Burma Sky, Rosanna Amaka
Milk Teeth, Jessica Andrews
Clara & Olivia, Lucy Ashe
Wet Paint, Chloë Ashby
Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson
Honey & Spice, Bolu Babalola
Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo
Either/Or, Elif Batuman
Girls They Write Songs About, Carlene Bauer
seven steeples, Sara Baume
The Witches of Vardo, Anya Bergman
Shadow Girls, Carol Birch
Permission, Jo Bloom
Horse, Geraldine Brooks
Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo
Mother’s Day, Abigail Burdess
Instructions for the Working Day, Joanna Campbell
People Person, Candice Carty-Williams
Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou
The Book of Eve, Meg Clothier
Cult Classic, Sloane Crosley
The Things We Do to Our Friends, Heather Darwent
The Bewitching, Jill Dawson
Common Decency, Susannah Dickey
Theatre of Marvels, L.M. Dillsworth
Haven, Emma Donoghue
History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Christy Edwall
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
Dazzling, Chikodili Emelumadu
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, Akwaeke Emezi
there are more things, Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Factory Girls, Michelle Gallen
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
The Illuminated, Anindita Ghose
Your Driver Is Waiting, Priya Guns
The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty
The Dance Tree, Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Weyward, Emilia Hart
Other People Manage, Ellen Hawley
Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
The Cloisters, Katy Hays
Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth
The Unfolding, A.M. Homes
The White Rock, Anna Hope
They’re Going to Love You, Meg Howrey
Housebreaking, Colleen Hubbard
Vladimir, Julia May Jonas
This Is Gonna End in Tears, Liza Klaussmann
The Applicant, Nazli Koca
Babel, R.F. Kuang
Yerba Buena, Nina Lacour
The Swimmers, Chloe Lane
The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li
Amazing Grace Adams, Fran Littlewood
All the Little Bird Hearts, Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Now She Is Witch, Kirsty Logan
The Chosen, Elizabeth Lowry
The Home Scar, Kathleen MacMahon
Very Cold People, Sarah Manguso
All This Could Be Different, Sarah Thankam Mathews
Becky, Sarah May
The Dog of the North, Elizabeth McKenzie
Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet
Young Women, Jessica Moor
The Garnett Girls, Georgina Moore
Black Butterflies, Priscilla Morris
Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh
Someone Else’s Shoes, Jojo Moyes
The Men, Sandra Newman
True Biz, Sara Nović
Babysitter, Joyce Carol Oates
Tomorrow I Become a Woman, Aiwanose Odafen
Things They Lost, Okwiri Oduor
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, Soraya Palmer
The Things that We Lost, Jyoti Patel
Still Water, Rebecca Pert
Stargazer, Laurie Petrou
Ruth & Pen, Emilie Pine
Delphi, Clare Pollard
The Whalebone Theatre, Joanna Quinn
The Poet, Louisa Reid
Carrie Soto Is Back, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan
Blue Hour, Sarah Schmidt
After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz
Signal Fires, Dani Shapiro
A Dangerous Business, Jane Smiley
Companion Piece, Ali Smith
Memphis, Tara M. Stringfellow
Flight, Lynn Steger Strong
Brutes, Dizz Tate
Madwoman, Louisa Treger
I Laugh Me Broken, Bridget van der Zijpp
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, Rebecca Wait
The Schoolhouse, Sophie Ward
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, Laura Warrell
The Odyssey, Lara Williams
A Complicated Matter, Anne Youngson
Avalon, Nell Zink
Best Books from 2022
I’m keeping it simple this year with one post covering a baker’s dozen from all genres: the 13 current-year releases that stood out to me the most. (No rankings this time; anything from my Best of First Half post that didn’t make it through to here can be considered a runner-up.)
Fiction
Groundskeeping by Lee Cole: In Cole’s debut novel, two aspiring writers meet on a Kentucky college campus and form a romantic connection despite very different backgrounds. There are stereotypes to be overcome as Owen introduces Alma to Kentucky culture and slang. Trump’s election divides families and colleagues. The gentle satire on the pretensions of writing programs is another enjoyable element. Three-dimensional characters, vivid scenes ripe for the Netflix treatment, timely themes and touching relationships.
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana: Fofana’s novel-in-stories orbits a Harlem apartment complex and spins bittersweet tales of ambition and disappointment in a range of vibrant voices. Endearing scoundrels are the focus in a number of stories. Minor characters from some go on to have starring roles in others. Though these tenants’ lives are filled with difficulties, their optimism and sheer joy shine through in their picaresque antics. A stellar debut from a very talented writer; Fofana should win all the prizes.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel: This dazzlingly intricate novel blends historical fiction, up-to-the-minute commentary and science-fiction predictions. In 2401, the Time Institute hires Gaspery-Jacques Roberts to investigate a recurring blip in time. Fans of The Glass Hotel will recognize some characters, and those familiar with Station Eleven will find similarities in a pandemic plot that resonates with the Covid-19 experience. How does Mandel do it? One compulsively readable hit after another.
Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso: The aphoristic style of some of Manguso’s previous books continues here as discrete paragraphs and brief vignettes build to a gloomy portrait of Ruthie’s archetypical affection-starved childhood in the fictional Massachusetts town of Waitsfield in the 1980s and 90s. The depiction of Ruthie’s narcissistic mother is especially acute. So much resonated with me. This is the stuff of girlhood – if not universally, then certainly for the (largely pre-tech) American 1990s as I experienced them.
Body Kintsugi by Senka Marić: This intense work of autofiction is all the more powerful due to the second-person narration that displaces the pain of breast cancer from the protagonist and onto the reader. Coming of age in a female body was traumatic in itself; now that same body threatens to kill her. Even as she loses the physical signs of femininity, she remains resilient: Her body will document what she’s been through. As forthright as it is about the brutality of cancer treatment, the novella is also creative, playful and darkly comic.
The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken: Is it autofiction or bereavement memoir? Both and neither. In 2019, an American writer wanders London, seeing the sights but mostly reminiscing about her mother, whom she describes through bare facts and apt anecdotes. London had been a favourite destination, their final trip together falling just three years before. As well as a tribute to a beloved mother and a matter-of-fact record of dealing with ageing parents and the aftermath of loss, this is a playful cross-examination of literary genres.
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka: Otsuka’s third novel of the Japanese American experience again employs the first-person plural, as well as the second person – rarer perspectives that provide stylistic novelty. The first two chapters are set at a pool that, for the title swimmers, serves as a locus of escape and safety. On the first page we’re introduced to Alice, whose struggle with dementia becomes central. I admired Otsuka’s techniques for moving readers through the minds of the characters, alternating range with profundity and irony with sadness.
Which Side Are You On by Ryan Lee Wong: Wong’s dynamite debut novel weaves timely issues of racism and protest into a pacy, funny story of idealism versus cynicism. Reed, an Asian American college student committed to social justice, rethinks how best to live out his values in the real world when he goes home for a few days. Wong probes the generational gap between him and his parents through snappy dialogue and enjoyable scenes that constitute an incidental tour of multi-ethnic Los Angeles.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: Sam and Sadie’s friendship, which over the years becomes a business partnership that also incorporates Sam’s college roommate, Marx Watanabe, is a joy. Their creative energy and banter are enviable. Marx is the uncomplicated, optimistic go-between when Sam and Sadie butt heads and take offense at betrayals. Underneath their conflicts is a love different from, and maybe superior to, romantic love. An immersive story of friendship and obsession; nostalgic, even cathartic.
Nonfiction
In Love by Amy Bloom: Bloom’s husband, Brian Ameche, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in his mid-60s, having exhibited mild cognitive impairment for several years. Brian quickly resolved to make a dignified exit while he still, mostly, had his faculties. This achieves the perfect tone, mixing black humour with teeth-gritted practicality as Bloom chronicles their relationship, the final preparations, his assisted suicide at Dignitas in Switzerland, and the aftermath. An essential, compelling read.
Sinkhole: A Natural History of a Suicide by Juliet Patterson: This gorgeously written family memoir approaches its subject matter with brave tenderness. In December 2008, poet Patterson’s father died by suicide near his Minnesota home. He wasn’t an obvious risk. Yet there was family history: both of Patterson’s parents lost their fathers to suicide. She returns to Kansas on research trips to unearth her grandfathers’ lives. Throughout, sinkholes, common in Kansas, are both reality and metaphor for the chasm a suicide leaves.
Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion by Louise Willder: A delightful bibliophile’s miscellany about ways of pithily spreading excitement about books. Over the last 25 years, Willder has written jacket copy for thousands of Penguin releases, so she has it down to a science as well as an art. (Reviewing is an adjacent skill.) The art of the first line, serialization and self-promotion, guidelines for good writing, differences between British and American jacket copy, the use of punctuation, and so much more. Very funny to boot.
Poetry
Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble by Carolyn Oliver: Carolyn used to blog at Rosemary and Reading Glasses and won the Agha Shahid Ali Prize for this debut collection. Every line feels tirelessly honed to elicit maximal meaning and a memorable sound. Traditional forms are adapted to great effect. Chronic illness, gardening, and everyday sexual danger are themes, but the poems that pierced me most were about her son: quirky things he says, but also the reality of modern parenting, where active shooter drills are de rigueur.
This year’s best-of selections (the ones I own in print, anyway; the rest were read on Kindle or have already gone back to the library).
Have you read any of my 2022 favourites?
What releases do I need to catch up on right away?
The Best Books from the First Half of 2022
Yes, it’s that time of year already! At first I thought I wouldn’t have enough 2022-released standouts to fill a post, but the more I looked through my list the more I realized that, actually, it has been a pretty good reading year. It remains to be seen, of course, how many of these will make it onto my overall best-of year list, but for now, these are my highlights. I made it up to an even 20 by including one that doesn’t release until July. Fiction is winning thus far! I give review excerpts below and link to the full text here or elsewhere.
Fiction
Our Wives under the Sea by Julia Armfield: Miri is relieved to have her wife back when Leah returns from an extended deep-sea expedition. Something went wrong with the craft when it was too late to evacuate, though. Chapters alternate between Miri describing their new abnormal and Leah recalling the voyage. As Miri tries to tackle life admin for both of them, she feels increasingly alone. This is a sensitive study of love, grief and dependency. Armfield gives an increasingly eerie story line a solid emotional foundation.
These Days by Lucy Caldwell: A beautiful novel set in Belfast in April 1941. We see the Second World War mostly through the eyes of the Bell family – especially daughters Audrey, engaged to be married to a young doctor, and Emma, in love with a fellow female first aider. The evocation of a time of crisis is excellent. The lack of speech marks, fluid shifting between perspectives, and alternation between past and present tense keep the story from seeming too familiar or generic. All of the female characters have hidden depths.
Groundskeeping by Lee Cole: In Cole’s debut novel, two aspiring writers meet on a Kentucky college campus and form a romantic connection despite very different backgrounds. There are stereotypes to be overcome as Owen introduces Alma to Kentucky culture and slang. Trump’s election divides families and colleagues. The gentle satire on the pretensions of writing programs is another enjoyable element. Three-dimensional characters, vivid scenes ripe for the Netflix treatment, timely themes and touching relationships: alright!
Days of Sand by Aimée de Jongh: This Great Depression-era story was inspired by the work of photographers such as Dorothea Lange. John Clark is following in his father’s footsteps as a photographer, leaving NYC for the Oklahoma panhandle. Locals are suspicious of John as an outsider, especially when they learn he is working to a checklist. Whether a cityscape or the midst of a dust storm, de Jongh’s scenes are stark and evocative. It’s rare for me to find the story and images equally powerful in a graphic novel, but that’s definitely the case here.
Dance Move by Wendy Erskine: The 11 stories in Erskine’s second collection do just what short fiction needs to: dramatize an encounter, or a moment, that changes life forever. Her characters are ordinary, moving through the dead-end work and family friction that constitute daily existence, until something happens, or rises up in the memory, that disrupts the tedium. Erskine being from Belfast, evidence of the Troubles is never far away. Her writing is blunt and edgy, with no speech marks plus flat dialogue and slang.
Antipodes by Holly Goddard Jones: Riveting stories of contemporary life in the American South and Midwest. Some have pandemic settings; others are gently magical. All are true to the anxieties of modern careers, marriage and parenthood. Endings elicit a gasp, particularly the audacious inconclusiveness of “Exhaust,” a tense tale of a quarreling couple driving through a blizzard. Worry over environmental crises fuels “Ark,” about a pyramid scheme for doomsday preppers. Nickolas Butler and Lorrie Moore fans will find much to admire.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel: This dazzlingly intricate novel blends historical fiction, up-to-the-minute commentary and science-fiction predictions. In 2401, the Time Institute hires Gaspery-Jacques Roberts to investigate a recurring blip in time. Fans of The Glass Hotel will recognize some characters, and those familiar with Station Eleven will find similarities in a pandemic plot that resonates with the Covid-19 experience. How does Mandel do it? One compulsively readable hit after another.
Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso: The aphoristic style of some of Manguso’s previous books continues here as discrete paragraphs and brief vignettes build to a gloomy portrait of Ruthie’s archetypical affection-starved childhood in the fictional Massachusetts town of Waitsfield in the 1980s and 90s. The depiction of Ruthie’s narcissistic mother is especially acute. So much resonated with me. This is the stuff of girlhood – if not universally, then certainly for the (largely pre-tech) American 1990s as I experienced them.
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu: Just the right blend of literary fiction and science fiction. Opening in 2031 and stretching another 70 years into the future, this linked short story collection imagines how a pandemic reshapes the world and how communication and connection might continue after death. All but one story are in the first person, so they feel like personal testimonies. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The focus on illness and bereavement, but also on the love that survives, made this a winner.
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka: Otsuka’s third novel of the Japanese American experience again employs the first-person plural, as well as the second person – rarer perspectives that provide stylistic novelty. The first two chapters are set at a pool that, for the title swimmers, serves as a locus of escape and safety. On the first page we’re introduced to Alice, whose struggle with dementia becomes central. I admired Otsuka’s techniques for moving readers through the minds of the characters, alternating range with profundity and irony with sadness.
French Braid by Anne Tyler: My 17th from Tyler, and easily her best new work in 18 years. It joins my other favourites such as Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant which reveal a dysfunctional family’s quirks through a close look, in turn, at the various members. Mercy is a painter and essentially moves into her studio, but without announcing it, and her husband Robin spends the next 25+ years pretending they still share a home. Other surprises from Tyler this time: a mild sex scene and a gay character. A return to form. Brava!
Nonfiction
In Love by Amy Bloom: Bloom’s husband, Brian Ameche, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in his mid-60s, having exhibited mild cognitive impairment for several years. Brian quickly resolved to make a dignified exit while he still, mostly, had his faculties. This achieves the perfect tone, mixing black humour with teeth-gritted practicality as Bloom chronicles their relationship, the final preparations, his assisted suicide at Dignitas in Switzerland, and the aftermath. An essential, compelling read.
Everything Is True by Roopa Farooki: Second-person, present-tense narration drops readers right into the life of a junior doctor. In February 2020, Farooki’s sister Kiron died of breast cancer. During the first 40 days of the initial UK lockdown, she continues to talk to Kiron. Grief opens the door for magic realism. There is also wry humour, wordplay, slang and cursing. A hybrid work that reads as fluidly as a novel while dramatizing real events, this is sure to appeal to people who wouldn’t normally pick up a bereavement or medical memoir.
Body Work by Melissa Febos: A boldly feminist essay collection that explores how autobiographical writing can help one face regrets and trauma and extract meaning from the “pliable material” of memory. “In Praise of Navel Gazing” affirms the importance of women airing their stories of abuse and thereby challenging the power structures that aim to keep victims silent. “A Big Shitty Party” warns of the dangers of writing about real people. “The Return” employs religious language for the transformation writing can achieve.
All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt: This poetic memoir about love and loss in the shadow of mental illness blends biography, queer history and raw personal experience. The book opens, unforgettably, in a Liverpool graveyard where Hewitt has assignations with anonymous men. His secret self, suppressed during teenage years in the closet, flies out to meet other ghosts: of his college boyfriend; of men lost to AIDS during his 1990s childhood; of English poet George Manley Hopkins; and of a former partner who was suicidal. (Coming out on July 12th from Penguin/Vintage (USA) and July 14th from Jonathan Cape (UK). My full review is forthcoming for Shelf Awareness.)
Poetry
Thorpeness by Alison Brackenbury: This tenth collection features abundant imagery of animals and the seasons. Alliteration is prominent, but there is also a handful of rhymes. Family history and the perhaps-idyllic rural underpin the verse set in Lincolnshire and Gloucestershire as Brackenbury searches for ancestral graves and delivers elegies. I especially loved “Aunt Margaret’s Pudding,” a multipart poem about her grandmother’s life. There are also playful meetings between historical figures.
Some Integrity by Padraig Regan: The sensual poems in this debut collection are driven by curiosity, hunger and queer desire. Flora and foods are described as teasing mystery, with cheeky detail. An unusual devotion to ampersands; an erotic response to statuary; alternating between bold sexuality and masochism to the point of not even wanting to exist; a central essay on the Orlando nightclub shooting and videogames – the book kept surprising me. I loved the fertile imagery, and appreciated Regan’s exploration of a nonbinary identity.
Love Poems in Quarantine by Sarah Ruhl: Having read Ruhl’s memoir Smile, I recognized the contours of her life and the members of her family. Cooking and laundry recur: everyday duties mark time as she tries to write and supervises virtual learning for three children. “Let this all be poetry,” she incants. Part 2 contains poems written after George Floyd’s murder, the structure mimicking the abrupt change in focus for a nation. Part 3’s haiku and tanka culminate in a series on the seasons. A welcome addition to the body of Covid-19 literature.
Rise and Float by Brian Tierney: Although it tackles heavy subjects like grief and mental health, the collection’s candor and stunning images transform the melancholy into the sublime. Much of the verse is in the first person, building an intimate portrait of the poet and his relationships. A family history of mental illness and electroshock treatment occasions a visit to a derelict psychiatric hospital. Recurring metaphors of holes dramatize a struggle against the void. Tierney’s close attention lends beauty to bleak scenes.
Vinegar Hill by Colm Tóibín: I didn’t realize when I started that this was Tóibín’s debut collection; so confident is his verse, I assumed he’d been publishing poetry for decades. There’s a wide range of tone, structures and topics. Bereavements and chemotherapy are part of a relatable current events background. Irish-Catholic nostalgia animates a witty sequence from “The Nun” to “Vatican II.” Come along on armchair travels. Poems are based around anecdotes or painterly observations. The line breaks are unfailingly fascinating.
What are some of the best books you’ve read so far this year?
What 2022 releases do I need to catch up on right away?
Women’s Prize Shadowing & Men Reading Books by Women
Back in April I announced that my book club was one of six selected to shadow this year’s Women’s Prize shortlist by reading and discussing one of the finalists. Our assigned title was one I’d already read, but I skimmed back through it before our meet-up and enjoyed getting reacquainted with Martha Friel. Here’s our group’s review:
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
Readability: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
Storyline: 4/5
Can’t Put It Down: 4.5/5
Total = 18.5/20
Our joint highest rating, and one of our best discussions – taking in mental illness and its diagnosis and treatment, marriage, childlessness, alcoholism, sisterhood, creativity, neglect, unreliable narrators and loneliness. For several of us, these issues hit close to home due to personal or family experience. We particularly noted the way that Mason sets up parallels between pairs of characters, accurately reflecting how family dynamics can be replicated in later generations.
Even the minor characters are fully rounded, and although Martha is not always pleasant to spend time with, her voice is impressively rendered. The picture of mental illness from the inside feels authentic, including the fact that Martha uses it as an excuse for her bad behaviour, becoming self-absorbed and not seeing how she is affecting others around her. Our main point of disagreement was about Mason’s decision not to name the mental illness Martha is suffering from. It seemed clear to several of us that it was meant to be bipolar disorder, so we wondered if it was a copout not to identify it as such.
We also thought about the meaning of the term “literary fiction”, and whether this has the qualities of a prize winner and will stand the test of time.
We had to fill out a feedback questionnaire about our experience of shadowing, and most of us sent in individual blurbs in response to the book. Some ended up in the final Reading Agency article. Here was mine:
“This deceptively light novel was a perfect book club selection, eliciting deep discussion about mental illness, family relationships and parenthood. Martha’s (unreliable) narration is a delight, wry and deadpan but also with moments of wrenching emotion. Mason masterfully controls the tone to create something that is witty and poignant all at once.”
Probably the main reason we were chosen for this opportunity is that we have a man – my husband, that is! – who attends regularly. This year the prize has been particularly keen to get more men reading books by women (see more below). So, he was responsible for giving The Male Response to the novel. No pressure, right? Luckily, he enjoyed it just as much as the rest of us. From the cover and blurb, it didn’t necessarily seem like the sort of book that he would pick up to read for himself, but he was fully engaged with the themes of mental illness, family relationships, and the question of whether or not to have children, and was so compelled that he read over half of it in a day.
I’m not sure who I expect to be awarded the Women’s Prize tomorrow. We of West Fields Readers would be delighted if it went to Meg Mason for Sorrow and Bliss, but I’d also be happy with a win for Louise Erdrich or Ruth Ozeki – though I wasn’t taken with their latest works compared with earlier ones I’ve read, they are excellent authors who deserve recognition. I don’t think The Bread the Devil Knead has a chance; I’d be disappointed in a win by Elif Shafak in that I would feel obligated to try her novel – the kind that gives magic realism a bad name – again; and, while I’m a Maggie Shipstead fan in general and admire the ambition of Great Circle, it would be galling for a book I DNFed twice to take the title!
Who are you rooting for/predicting?
I’d like to mock you with that thought,
jeer at the man
who won’t read novels
written by women –
at least not if they’re still alive
~from The Poet by Louisa Reid
Maybe you’ve seen on social media that the Women’s Prize has been canvassing opinion on the books by women that all men should read. This was prompted by some shocking statistics suggesting that even bestselling female authors can only attract a 20% male readership, whereas the best-known male authors are almost equally popular with men and women. They solicited 60 nominations from big names and ran a public poll. I voted for these 10:
Half of a Yellow Sun (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)
Possession (A.S. Byatt)
Homegoing (Yaa Gyasi)
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
The Sea, The Sea (Iris Murdoch)
The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
We Need to Talk about Kevin (Lionel Shriver)
Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout)
The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt)
Orlando (Virginia Woolf)
*If I could have added to that list, though, my top recommendations for all men to read would be Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (and probably a different Octavia E. Butler novel from the one nominated).
Three of my selections were among the 10 essential reads announced on the WP website. Their list was headed by Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, though of her works I’d be more likely to direct men to Oryx and Crake.
I’ve seen discussions on Twitter about why men don’t read novels (at all, prioritizing nonfiction), or specifically not ones by women. Do you have any theories?
What one book by a woman do you think all men should read?
Review Catch-Up: Capildeo, Castillo, Nagamatsu & Wedlich
A second catch-up for April. Today I have a sprightly poetry collection about history, language and nature; a linked short story collection that imagines funerary rituals and human meaning in a post-pandemic future; and a wide-ranging popular science book about the diverse connotations and practical uses of slime. As a bonus, I have a preview essay from a forthcoming collection about how reading promotes empathy and social justice.
Like a Tree, Walking by Vahni Capildeo (2021)
Capildeo is a nonbinary Trinidadian Scottish poet and the current University of York writer in residence. Their fourth collection is richly studded with imagery of the natural world, especially birds and trees. “In Praise of Birds” makes a gorgeous start:
“In praise of high-contrast birds, purple bougainvillea thicketing the golden oriole. … In praise of grackles quarrelling on the lawn. / In praise of unbeautiful birds abounding in Old Norse, language of scavenging ravens, thought and memory, a treacherous duo”
and finds a late echo in “In Praise of Trees”: “If I could have translated piano practice into botany, the lichen is that Mozart phrase my left hand trialled endlessly.”
The title section (named after a moment from the book of Mark) draws on several numbered series – “Walk #2,” “Nocturne #1,” “Lullaby 4,” and so on – that appeared in a pamphlet they published last year. These are not uncomplicated idylls, though. Walks might involve dull scenery and asthma-inducing dust, as well as danger: “If nobody has abducted you, I’ll double back to meet you. … Before raper-man corner and the gingerbread house.” Lullabies wish for good sleep despite lawnmowers and a neighbour shooting his guns. There’s more bold defiance of expectations in phrases like “This is the circus for dead horses only”.
Language is a key theme, with translations from the French of Eugène Ionesco, and of Pierre de Ronsard into Trini patois. There are also dual-language erasure poems after Dame Julian of Norwich (Middle English) and Simone Weil (French). Much of the work is based on engagement with literature, or was written in collaboration with performers.
“Death is a thief in a stationery shop. He strolls out. The shopkeeper, a poor man, runs after, shouting. – I saw you! Give that back! – Give back what? Death says, strolling out. Hermes is a tram attendant who holds your coffee, helping you find the coin you dropped; it rolls underfoot.” (from “Odyssey Response”)
“Windrush Reflections” impresses for its research into the situation of Caribbean immigrants to Britain. It’s one of a number of long, multipart pieces, some of them prose poems. The verse relies mostly on alliteration and anaphora for its sonic qualities. Along with history, there is reflection on current events, as in “Plague Poems.” Experiences of casual racism fuel one of my favourite passages:
“the doorbell was ringing / the downstairs american oxford neighbours / wanted to check / by chatting on the intercom / if i was doing terrorism / i was doing transcriptions” (from “Violent Triage”)
Honorifics by Cynthia Miller, which I reviewed last week, had more personal resonance for me, but these are both powerful collections – alive to the present moment and revelling in language and in flora and fauna. However, only Capildeo progressed from the Jhalak Prize longlist onto the shortlist, which was announced yesterday.
With thanks to Carcanet Press for the free e-copy for review.
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (2022)
“Things are bad in every generation. But we still have to live our life.”
This linked short story collection was one of my most anticipated books of the year. Like two of its fellow entries on that list, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel and To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara, it’s just the right blend of literary fiction and science fiction – an Octavia E. Butler level of the latter that I can handle. Opening in 2031 and stretching another 70 years into the future, it imagines how a pandemic reshapes the world and how communication and connection might continue after death. In the first story, Cliff is on the ground at the start of the Arctic plague, which emerges from a thawing Siberia (the same setup as in Under the Blue!), where his late daughter, Clara, had been part of a research group that discovered a 30,000-year-old Neanderthal girl they named Annie.
The virus is highly transmissible and deadly, and later found to mostly affect children. In the following 13 stories (most about Asian Americans in California, plus a few set in Japan), the plague is a fact of life but has also prompted a new relationship to death – a major thread running through is the funerary rites that have arisen, everything from elegy hotels to “resomation.” In the stand-out story, the George Saunders-esque “City of Laughter,” Skip works at a euthanasia theme park whose roller coasters render ill children unconscious before stopping their hearts. He’s proud of his work, but can’t approach it objectively after he becomes emotionally involved with Dorrie and her son Fitch, who arrives in a bubble.
All but one of these stories are in the first person, so they feel like intimate testimonies of how a pandemic transforms existence. Almost all of the characters have experienced a bereavement, or are sick themselves. Relatives or acquaintances become protagonists in later stories. For instance, in “Pig Son,” Dorrie’s ex, David, is a scientist growing organs for transplantation. Bereavement coordinator Dennis and his doctor brother Bryan narrate #5 and #8, respectively. Six years on, Cliff’s wife Miki takes their granddaughter on a space mission. My other two favourites were “Through the Garden of Memory,” in which patients on a plague ward build a human pyramid and plot a sacrifice, and “Songs of Your Decay,” about a researcher at a forensic body farm who bonds with her one live donor over rock music.
Some stories are weaker or less original than others, but this is one case where the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. The focus on illness and death, but also on the love that survives, made this a winner for me. I’d be especially likely to recommend it to fans of Kazuo Ishiguro and Karen Russell.
With thanks to Bloomsbury for the free copy for review.
Slime: A Natural History by Susanne Wedlich (2021)
[Translated from the German by Ayça Türkoğlu]
This is just the sort of wide-ranging popular science book that draws me in. Like Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, a work I’ve had many opportunities to recommend even to those who don’t normally pick up nonfiction, it incorporates many weird and wonderful facts about life forms we tend to overlook. Wedlich, a freelance science journalist in Germany, starts off at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, where she seeks a sample of the “primordial slime” collected by the HMS Challenger in 1876. “It seems to be an unwritten rule of horror: slime sells!” she remarks – from H. P. Lovecraft to Ghostbusters, it has provoked disgust. Jellyfish, snails, frogs and carnivorous plants – you’re in for a sticky tour of the natural world.
The technical blanket term for slimy substances is “hydrogels,” which are 99% water and held together by polymers. Biological examples have been inspiring new technologies, like friction reducers (e.g. in fire hoses) modelled on fish mucus, novel adhesives to repair organs and seal wounds, and glue traps to remove microplastics. Looking to nature to aid our lives is nothing new, of course: Wedlich records that slugs were once used to lubricate cart wheels.
The book branches off in a lot of directions. You’ll hear about writers who were spellbound or terrified by marine life (Patricia Highsmith kept snails, while Jean-Paul Sartre was freaked out by sea creatures), the Victorian fascination with underwater life, the importance of the microbiome and the serious medical consequences of its dysfunction, and animals such as amphibians that live between land and water. At times it felt like the narrative jumped from one topic to another, especially between the biological and the cultural, without following a particular plan, but there are enough remarkable nuggets to hold the interest.
With thanks to Granta for the free copy for review.
And a bonus:
I was delighted to be sent a preview pamphlet containing the author’s note and title essay of How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo, coming from Atlantic in August. This guide to cultural criticism – how to read anything, not just a book – is alive to the biased undertones of everyday life. “Anyone who is perfectly comfortable with keeping the world just as it is now and reading it the way they’ve always read it … cannot be trusted”. Castillo writes that it is not the job of people of colour to enlighten white people (especially not through “the gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic” – war, genocide, tragedy, etc.); “if our stories primarily serve to educate, console and productively scold a comfortable white readership, then those stories will have failed their readers”. This is bold, provocative stuff. I’m sure to learn a lot.
Would you be interested in reading one or more of these?
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (Doorstopper of the Quarter)
When I expressed interest in Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise on Twitter, having loved A Little Life and tepidly admired The People in the Trees, I didn’t expect to be chosen to receive one of my most anticipated releases of the year. A proof arrived while I was in the States for Christmas. As soon as I got back, I started it – with a vision of doing little else but reading it for a few days and reviewing it early in January. Instead, I read about 30 pages and set it aside, the 700-page heft mocking me from my coffee table stack for the better part of two months. Finally, I forced myself to set a daily reading goal: first 30 pages, then 40, then 60; and on Friday I read the last 100 pages over a couple sessions in the summerhouse. That regimented approach was what it took for me to get through my first doorstopper of the year.
The novel is in three parts – discrete enough to feel like separate books – set largely in 1893, 1993, and 2093. New York City’s Washington Square, even one particular house, recurs as a setting in all three, with some references to the American West and South and with flashbacks to time in Hawaii linking Books II and III.
The overarching theme is the American project: is freedom, both individual and collective, a worthy and attainable goal? Or are the country’s schisms too deep to be overcome? Class, race, sexuality, and physical and mental illness are some of the differences that Yanagihara explores. Even when equality of treatment has been won in one time and scenario – same-sex marriage is de rigueur in her alternative version of the 1890s, where the USA is divided into several nations – there is always the threat of a taken-for-granted right being retracted.
In Book I, David Bingham, who is to inherit his grandfather’s Washington Square property, considers a family-approved arranged marriage with an older man, Charles, versus eloping with a lower-class male teacher, Edward, with whom he has fallen in love. Edward wants them to light out for California, where new opportunities await but homosexuality is outlawed. Can they live in freedom if they’re repressing an essential part of their identity? The austere, elegant tone is a pitch-perfect pastiche of Henry James or Edith Wharton. Although this section took me the longest to read, it was the one I most appreciated for its flawless evocation of the time period and a rigid class structure. As in The Underground Railroad, though, the alt-history angle wasn’t really the most memorable aspect.
In Book II, David Bingham, also known as Kawika, is a paralegal having a secret affair with Charles, a partner in his law firm. Various friends and former lovers in their circle have AIDS, but Charles’s best friend Peter is dying of cancer. Before Peter flies to Switzerland for an assisted death, Charles throws him one last dinner party. Meanwhile, David receives a long letter from his ill father recounting their descent from Indigenous nobility and his failed attempt to set up a self-sufficient farm on their inherited land in Hawaii. This strand is closest to Yanagihara’s previous novels, the gay friendship circle reminiscent of A Little Life and the primitive back-to-the-land story recalling The People in the Trees. I also thought of Mrs Dalloway – David wanted to get the flowers for the party himself – and of Three Junes.
Book III is set in a dystopian future of extreme heat, rationing and near-constant pandemics. The totalitarian state institutes ever more draconian policies, with censorship, quarantine camps and public execution of insurgents. The narrator, intellectually disabled after a childhood illness, describes the restrictions with the flat affect of the title robot from Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun. When a stranger offers her the chance to escape, she is forced to weigh up freedom against safety. An alternating strand, based around letters sent by a Chinese Hawaiian character, traces how things got this bad, from the 2040s onwards.
While the closing speculative vision is all too plausible, two other literary/science fiction releases I’ve read this year, Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St. John Mandel and How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, are more powerful and direct. Book III takes up half of the text and could stand alone, but the fact that it appears as a culmination of two other narratives creates false expectations that it can’t meet. The connections between the three are incidental – abandonment by a mother, a child raised by a grandparent, an arranged marriage, isolating illness – with recurring tactics like stories within stories and epistolary sections. The most overt cohesive strategy, the repeating of names across time periods, feels gimmicky and, again, sets readers up for a letdown by promising meaning that isn’t there.
Ultimately, the message seems to be: America’s problems are inherent, and so persist despite apparent progress. It takes a lot of words to build to that somewhat obvious point. I couldn’t suppress my disappointment that none of the storylines are resolved – this does, however, mean that one can choose to believe things will turn out happily for the characters. Their yearning for a more authentic life, even in a rotten state, makes it easy to empathize with their situations. I had high regard for the self-assured cross-genre prose (my interest waning only during the elder Kawika’s improbably long letter), but felt the ambition perhaps outshone the achievement.
As I learned when reviewing a recent book about American utopian projects, Heaven Is a Place on Earth, and interviewing its author, Adrian Shirk, an imagined utopia and a projected dystopia aren’t actually so different. Here was her response to one of my questions:
At one point you say, “utopia is never far from its opposite.” Dystopian novels are as popular as ever. To what extent do you think real-life utopias and fictional dystopias have the same aims?
I think real-life utopian experiments and fictional dystopias both offer warnings about the dangers of relying too much on ideology, and not enough on living, or choosing the person over the belief. So, in that way, real utopian experiments and fictional dystopian narratives are two sides of the same coin: a dystopia is a utopia that lost sight of—or never included—understanding itself as resistance to a violent empire, and thus starts to look like a violent empire itself.
Both start by diagnosing a societal sickness. The question is how we then get to paradise.
Page count: 701
Book I: 
Book II:
Book III: 
My overall rating:
With thanks to Picador for the proof copy for review.
Book Serendipity, January to February 2022
This is a bimonthly feature of mine. 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. Because I usually 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. (I’ve realized that, of course, synchronicity is really the more apt word, but this branding has stuck.) I always like hearing about your bookish coincidences, too!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- The author takes Valium to cope with fear of flying in two memoirs I read at the same time, I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg and This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris.
- The fact that the Spanish brought wild horses to the USA is mentioned in the story “The Team” by Tommy Orange (in The Decameron Project) and the poetry collection Rise and Float by Brian Tierney – this also links back to a book I reread in late 2021, Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry.
- There are roaches in a New York City apartment in I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg and the story “Other People’s Lives” in Loss of Memory Is Only Temporary by Johanna Kaplan.
- The same Dostoevsky passage from The Brothers Karamazov, about loving everything (“Love all the earth, every ray of God’s light, every grain of sand or blade of grass, every living thing. If you love the earth enough, you will know the divine mystery” and so on), is quoted in Faith after Doubt by Brian McLaren and Reflections from the North Country by Sigurd Olson.
- A description of nicotine-stained yellow fingers in What I Wish People Knew About Dementia by Wendy Mitchell, The Cure for Sleep by Tanya Shadrick, and Free by Lea Ypi.
- Joni Mitchell’s music is mentioned in The Reactor by Nick Blackburn and The Cure for Sleep by Tanya Shadrick, two memoirs I was reading at the same time.
- From one summer camp story to another … I happened to follow up The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer with Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash.
- Audre Lorde’s definition of the erotic is quoted in Body Work by Melissa Febos and Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk, both of which are March 15, 2022 nonfiction releases I’ve reviewed for Shelf Awareness.
- The 2017 white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia is mentioned in This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris (who lives there), Faith after Doubt by Brian McLaren (who was part of the clergy counterprotest group that day), and Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk (she went there for a literary event a few months later).
- The Salvador Dalí painting The Persistence of Memory (that’s the one with the melting clock) is described in The Reactor by Nick Blackburn and This Boy We Made by Taylor Harris.
- On the same day, I came across the fact that Mary Shelley was pregnant while she wrote Frankenstein in two books: Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera and Smile by Sarah Ruhl.
- The fact that cysts in female organs can contain teeth comes up in Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk and I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins.
- Reading two novels by Japanese-American authors who grew up in Hawaii at the same time: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu and To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara.
- Twins are everywhere! Including, just in a recent reading pile, in Hands by Lauren Brown (she’s a twin, so fair enough), Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell, The Snow Collectors by Tina May Hall, Smile by Sarah Ruhl (this and the Cornwell are memoirs about birthing twins, so also fair enough), Ordinary Love by Jane Smiley, and The Priory by Dorothy Whipple. For as uncommon as they are in real life, they turn up way too often in fiction.
- Bell’s palsy AND giving birth to twins are elements in Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell and Smile by Sarah Ruhl.
- There’s a no-nonsense maternity nurse in Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell and The Priory by Dorothy Whipple.
- U.S. West Coast wolves (a particular one in each case, known by a tracking number) are the subject of a poem in Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz and The Necessity of Wildfire by Caitlin Scarano.
- Herons appear and/or have metaphorical/symbolic meaning in Thorpeness by Alison Brackenbury, What Willow Says by Lynn Buckle, Maggie Blue and the Dark World by Anna Goodall, and The Priory by Dorothy Whipple.
- There’s a character named Edwin in Booth by Karen Joy Fowler and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.
- The use of “hoard” where it should be “horde” in Maggie Blue and the Dark World by Anna Goodall and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan – both errors were encountered in the same evening.
- I read about Lindisfarne in Jini Reddy’s essay in Women on Nature (ed. Katharine Norbury) and The Interior Silence by Sarah Sands in the same evening.
- “Flitting” as a synonym for moving house in Thorpeness by Alison Brackenbury and Nature Cure by Richard Mabey.
- A brother named Paul in Tides by Sara Freeman and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.
- A woman knows her lover is on the phone with his ex by his tone of voice in Tides by Sara Freeman and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan.
- In two novels I’ve read so far this year – but I won’t say which ones as it’s a spoiler – the big reveal, towards the very end, is that a woman was caught breastfeeding someone who was not her baby and it caused a relationship-destroying rupture.
- Reading a second memoir this year where the chapters are titled after pop songs: Dear Queer Self by Jonathan Alexander (for a Foreword review) and now This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps.
- A second short novel entitled The Swimmers this year: the first was Julie Otsuka’s, recently reviewed for Shiny New Books; a proof copy is on the way to me of Chloe Lane’s, coming out from Gallic Books in May.
- Reading a second memoir this year whose author grew up in the Chicago suburbs of Illinois (Arlington Heights/Buffalo Grove vs. Oak Park): I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg and This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps.
- The linea nigra (a stripe of dark hair down a pregnant woman’s belly) provides the title for Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera and is also mentioned in Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell.
The famous feminist text Our Bodies, Ourselves is mentioned in Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell and I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins.
- Childbirth brings back traumatic memories of rape in Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell and This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Some of My Most Anticipated Releases of 2022
Ninety-nine 2022 releases have made it onto my Goodreads shelves so far. I’ve read about 10 already and will preview some of them tomorrow.
This year we can expect new fiction from Julian Barnes, Carol Birch, Jessie Burton, Jennifer Egan, Karen Joy Fowler, David Guterson, Sheila Heti, John Irving (perhaps? at last), Liza Klaussman, Benjamin Myers, Julie Otsuka, Alex Preston and Anne Tyler; a debut novel from Emilie Pine; second memoirs from Amy Liptrot and Wendy Mitchell; another wide-ranging cultural history/self-help book from Susan Cain; another medical history from Lindsey Fitzharris; a biography of the late Jan Morris; and much more. (Already I feel swamped, and this in a year when I’ve said I want to prioritize backlist reads! Ah well, it is always thus.)
I’ve limited myself here to the 20 upcoming releases I’m most excited about. The low figure is a bit of a cheat: with a few exceptions, I’ve not included books I have / have been promised. I’ll be scurrying around requesting copies of most of the others soon. The following are due out between January and August and are in (UK) release date order, within sections by genre. (U.S. details given too/instead if USA-only. Quotes are extracted from publisher blurbs on Goodreads.)
U.S. covers – included where different – rule!
N.B. Fiction is winning this year!
Fiction
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara [Jan. 11, Picador / Doubleday] You’ll see this on just about every list; her fans are legion after the wonder that was A Little Life. Another doorstopper, but this time with the epic reach to justify the length: sections are set in an alternative 1893, 1993, and 2093 – “joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another.” [Proof copy]
UK cover
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu [Jan. 18, Bloomsbury / William Morrow] Amazing author name! Similar to the Yanagihara what with the century-hopping and future scenario, a feature common in 2020s literature – a throwback to Cloud Atlas? I’m also reminded of the premise of Under the Blue, one of my favourites from last year. “Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come.”
Heartstopper, Volume 5 by Alice Oseman [Feb. ?, Hodder Children’s] I devoured the first four volumes of this teen comic last year. In 2020, Oseman tweeted that the fifth and final installment was slated for February 2022, but I don’t have any more information than that. Nick will be getting ready to go off to university, so I guess we’ll see how he leaves things with Charlie and whether their relationship will survive a separation. (No cover art yet.)
How Strange a Season by Megan Mayhew Bergman [March 29, Scribner] I enjoyed her earlier story collection, Almost Famous Women. “Bergman portrays women who wrestle with problematic inheritances: a modern glass house on a treacherous California cliff, a water-starved ranch, an abandoned plantation on a river near Charleston … provocative prose asks what are we leaving behind for our ancestors … what price will they pay for our mistakes?”
A Violent Woman by Ayana Mathis [April 7, Hutchinson] Her Oprah-approved 2013 debut, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, got a rare 5-star review from me. About “an estranged mother and her daughter. Dutchess lives in Bonaparte, Alabama, a once thriving black town now in its death throes. Lena lives in Philadelphia in the 1980s. Her involvement with the radical separatist group STEP leads to transcendence and tragedy.” (No cover art yet.)
there are more things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler [April 28, Fleet] I so wanted her 2019 debut novel, Stubborn Archivist, to win the Young Writer of the Year Award. I love the cover and Hamlet-sourced title, and I’m here for novels of female friendship. “In January 2016, Melissa [South London native] and Catarina [born to well-known political family in Brazil] meet for the first time, and as political turmoil unfolds … their friendship takes flight.”
UK cover
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel [April 28, Picador / April 5, Knopf] This is the other title you’ll find on everyone else’s list. That’s because The Glass Hotel, even more so than Station Eleven, was amazing. Another history-to-future-hopper: “a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.” [Edelweiss download]
Search by Michelle Huneven [April 28, Penguin] A late addition to my list thanks to the Kirkus review. Sounds like one for readers of Katherine Heiny! “Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic and food writer … asked to join [her California Unitarian Universalist] church search committee for a new minister. Under pressure to find her next book idea, she agrees, and resolves to secretly pen a memoir, with recipes, about the experience.”
UK cover
Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso [April 28, Picador / Feb. 8, Hogarth] The debut novel from an author by whom I’ve read four nonfiction works. “For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. Once home to the country’s oldest and most illustrious families[,] … it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets. … Ruthie slowly learns how the town’s prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history…”
UK cover
True Biz by Sara Nović [May 5, Little, Brown / April 5, Random House] Her 2015 Girl at War is one of my most-admired debuts of all time, and who can resist a campus novel?! “The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history final, and have doctors, politicians, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf.”
You Have a Friend in 10a: Stories by Maggie Shipstead [May 19, Transworld / May 17, Knopf] Shipstead’s Booker-shortlisted doorstopper, Great Circle, ironically, never took off for me; I’m hoping her short-form storytelling will work out better. “Diving into eclectic and vivid settings, from an Olympic village to a deathbed in Paris to a Pacific atoll, … Shipstead traverses ordinary and unusual realities with cunning, compassion, and wit.”
UK cover
Horse by Geraldine Brooks [June 2, Little, Brown / June 14, Viking] You guessed it, another tripartite 1800s–1900s–2000s narrative! With themes of slavery, art and general African American history. I’m not big on horses, at least not these days, but Brooks’s March and Year of Wonders are among my recent favourites. “Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred, Lexington, who became America’s greatest stud sire.”
UK cover
Briefly, a Delicious Life by Nell Stevens [June 23, Picador / June 21, Scribner] I’ve read her two previous autofiction-y memoirs and loved Mrs Gaskell & Me. The title, cover and Victorian setting of her debut novel beckon. “In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost.”
A Brief History of Living Forever by Jaroslav Kalfar [Aug. 4, Sceptre / Little, Brown] His Spaceman of Bohemia (2017) was terrific. “When Adela discovers she has a terminal illness, her thoughts turn to Tereza, the American-raised daughter she gave up at birth. … In NYC, Tereza is … the star researcher for two suspicious biotech moguls hellbent on developing a ‘god pill’ to extend human life indefinitely. … Narrated from the beyond by Adela.”
Nonfiction
The Cure for Sleep by Tanya Shadrick [Jan. 20, Weidenfeld & Nicolson] Nature memoir / self-help. “On return from near-death, Shadrick vows to stop sleepwalking through life. … Around the care of young children, she starts to play with the shape and scale of her days: to stray from the path, get lost in the woods, make bargains with strangers … she moves beyond her respectable roles as worker, wife and mother in a small town.” [Review copy]
The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Rourke [March 1, Riverhead] O’Rourke wrote one of the best bereavement memoirs ever. This ties in with my medical interests. “O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of ‘invisible’ illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal.”
UK cover
In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom [April 7, Granta / March 8, Random House] The true story of how Bloom accompanied her husband Brian, who had Alzheimer’s, to Dignitas in Switzerland to end his life. I’ve read quite a lot around assisted dying. “Written in Bloom’s captivating, insightful voice and with her trademark wit and candor, In Love is an unforgettable portrait of a beautiful marriage, and a boundary-defying love.”
Home/Land: A Memoir of Departure and Return by Rebecca Mead [April 21, Grove Press UK / Feb. 8, Knopf] I enjoyed Mead’s bibliomemoir on Middlemarch. The Anglo-American theme is perfect for me: “drawing on literature and art, recent and ancient history, and the experience of encounters with individuals, environments, and landscapes in New York City and in England, Mead artfully explores themes of identity, nationality, and inheritance.”
UK cover
Lost & Found: A Memoir by Kathryn Schulz [April 28, Picador / Jan. 20, Random House] I loved her 2010 book Being Wrong, and bereavement memoirs are my jam. “Eighteen months before Kathryn Schulz’s father died, she met the woman she would marry. In Lost & Found, she weaves the story of those relationships into a brilliant exploration of the role that loss and discovery play in all of our lives … an enduring account of love in all its many forms.”
Poetry
Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble by Carolyn Oliver [Aug. 19, Univ. of Utah Press] Carolyn used to blog at Rosemary and Reading Glasses. The poems she’s shared on social media are beautiful, and I’m proud of her for winning the Agha Shahid Ali Prize. “Inside this debut collection, girlhood’s dangers echo, transmuted, in the poet’s fears for her son. A body … is humbled by chronic illness. Stumbling toward joy across time and space, these poems hum with fear and desire, bewildering loss, and love’s lush possibilities.”
Themes arising: crossing three centuries; H & I titles, the word “brief”; moons and stars on covers. Mostly female authors (only two men here).
Do check out these other lists for more ideas!
Plus you can seek out all the usual lists (e.g. on Lit Hub and virtually every other book or newspaper site) … if you want to be overwhelmed!
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 