Book Serendipity, March to May
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?
Recent Online Events: Melanie Finn, Church Times Festival, Gavin Francis
It’s coming up on the one-year anniversary of the first UK lockdown and here we are still living our lives online. The first hint I had of how serious things were going to get was when a London event with Anne Tyler I was due to attend in March 2020 with Eric and Laura T. was cancelled, followed by … everything else. Oh well.
This February was a bountiful month for online literary conversations. I’m catching up now by writing up my notes from a few more events (after Saunders and Ishiguro) that helped to brighten my evenings and weekends.
Melanie Finn in Conversation with Claire Fuller
(Exile in Bookville American online bookstore event on Facebook, February 2nd)
I was a big fan of Melanie Finn’s 2015 novel Shame (retitled The Gloaming), which I reviewed for Third Way magazine. Her new book, The Hare, sounds appealing but isn’t yet available in the UK. Rosie and Bennett, a 20-years-older man, meet in New York City. Readers soon enough know that he is a scoundrel, but Rosie doesn’t, and they settle together in Vermont. A contemporary storyline looking back at how they met contrasts the romantic potential of their relationship with its current reality.
Fuller said The Hare is her favorite kind of novel: literary but also a page-turner. (Indeed, the same could be said of Fuller’s books.) She noted that Finn’s previous three novels are all partly set in Africa and have a seam of violence – perhaps justified – running through. Finn acknowledged that everyday life in a postcolonial country has been a recurring element in her fiction, arising from her own experience growing up in Kenya, but the new book marked a change of heart: there is so much coming out of Africa by Black writers that she feels she doesn’t have anything to add. The authors agreed you have to be cruel to your characters.
Finn believes descriptive writing is one of her strengths, perhaps due to her time as a journalist. She still takes inspiration from headlines. Now that she and her family (a wildlife filmmaker husband and twin daughters born in her forties) are rooted in Vermont, she sees more nature writing in her work. They recovered a clear-cut plot and grow their own food; they also forage in the woods, and a hunter shoots surplus deer and gives them the venison. Appropriately, she read a tense deer-hunting passage from The Hare. Finn also teaches skiing and offers much the same advice as about writing: repetition eventually leads to elegance.
I was especially interested to hear the two novelists compare their composition process. Finn races through a draft in two months, but rewriting takes her a year, and she always knows the ending in advance. Fuller’s work, on the other hand, is largely unplanned; she starts with a character and a place and then just writes, finding out what she’s created much later on. (If you’ve read her Women’s Prize-longlisted upcoming novel, Unsettled Ground, you, too, would have noted her mention of a derelict caravan in the woods that her son took her to see.) Both said they don’t really like writing! Finn said she likes the idea of being a writer, while Fuller that she likes having written – a direct echo of Dorothy Parker’s quip: “I hate writing. I love having written.” Their fiction makes a good pairing and the conversation flowed freely.
Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature, “Light in Darkness,” Part I
(February 20th)
I’d attended once in person, in 2016 (see my write-up of Sarah Perry and more), when this was still known as Bloxham Festival and was held at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire. Starting next year, it will take place in central Oxford instead. I attended the three morning events of Part I; there’s another virtual program taking place on Saturday the 17th of April.
Rachel Mann on The Gospel of Eve
Mann opened with a long reading from Chapter 1 of her debut novel (I reviewed it here) and said it is about her “three favorite things: sex, death, and religion,” all of which involve a sort of self-emptying. Mark Oakley, dean of St John’s College, Cambridge, interviewed her. He noted that her book has been likened to “Dan Brown on steroids.” Mann laughed but recognizes that, though she’s a ‘serious poet’, her gift as a novelist is for pace. She’s a lover of thrillers and, like Brown, gets obsessed with secrets. Although she and her protagonist, Kitty, are outwardly similar (a rural, working-class background and theological training), she quoted Evelyn Waugh’s dictum that all characters should be based on at least three people. Mann argued that the Church has not dealt as well with desire as it has with friendship. She thinks the best priests, like novelists, are genuine and engage with other people’s stories.
Francis Spufford on Light Perpetual
Mann then interviewed Spufford about his second novel, which arose from his frequent walks to his teaching job at Goldsmiths College in London. A plaque on an Iceland commemorates a World War II bombing that killed 15 children in what was then a Woolworths. He decided to commit an act of “literary resurrection” – but through imaginary people in a made-up, working-class South London location. The idea was to mediate between time and eternity. “All lives are remarkable and exceptional if you look at them up close,” he said. The opening bombing scene is delivered in extreme slow motion and then the book jumps on in 15-year intervals, in a reminder of scale. He read a passage from the end of the book when Ben, a bus conductor who fell in love with a Nigerian woman who took him to her Pentecostal Church, is lying in a hospice bed. It was a beautiful litany of “Praise him” statements, a panorama of everyday life: “Praise him at food banks,” etc. It made for a very moving moment.
Mark Oakley on the books that got him through the pandemic
Oakley, in turn, was interviewed by Spufford – everyone did double duty as speaker and questioner! He mentioned six books that meant a lot to him during lockdown. Three of them I’d read myself and can also recommend: Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald (my nonfiction book of 2020), Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt (one of my top five poetry picks from 2020), and Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious by David Dark. His top read of all, though, is a book I haven’t read but would like to: Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour (see Susan’s review). Rounding out his six were The Act of Living by Frank Tallis, about the psychology of finding fulfillment, and The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser, a bleak thriller set in the Outback. He read a prepared sermon-like piece on the books rather than just having a chat about them, which made it a bit more difficult to engage.
Spufford asked him if his reading had been about catharsis. Perhaps for some of those choices, he conceded. Oakley spoke of two lessons learned from lockdown. One is “I am an incarnational Christian” in opposition to the way we’ve all now been reduced to screens, abstract and nonmobile. And secondly, “Don’t be prosaic.” He called literalism a curse and decried the thinness of binary views of the world. “Literature is always challenging your answers, asking who you are when you get beyond what you’re good at.” I thought that was an excellent point, as was his bottom line about books: “It’s not how many you get through, but how many get through to you.”
Gavin Francis in Conversation with Louise Welsh
(Wellcome Collection event, February 25th)
Francis, a medical doctor, wrote Intensive Care (I reviewed it here) month by month and sent chapters to his editor as he went along. Its narrative begins barely a year ago and yet it was published in January – a real feat given the usual time scale of book publishing. It was always meant to have the urgent feel of journalism, to be a “hot take,” as he put it, about COVID-19. He finds writing therapeutic; it helps him make sense of and process things as he looks back to the ‘before time’. He remembers first discussing this virus out of China with friends at a Burns Night supper in January 2020. Francis sees so many people using their “retrospecto-scopes” this year and asking what we might have done differently, if only we’d known.
He shook his head over the unnatural situations that Covid has forced us all into: “we’re gregarious mammals” and yet the virus is spread by voice and touch, so those are the very things we have to avoid. GP practices have had to fundamentally change how they operate, and he foresees telephone triage continuing even after the worst of this is over. He’s noted a rise in antidepressant use over the last year. So the vaccine, to him, is like “liquid hope”; even if not 100% protective, it does seem to prevent deaths and ventilation. Vaccination is like paying for the fire service, he said: it’s not a personal medical intervention but a community thing. This talk didn’t add a lot for me as I’d read the book, but for those who hadn’t, I’m sure it would have been an ideal introduction – and I enjoyed hearing the Scottish accents.
Bookish online events coming up soon: The Rathbones Folio Prize announcement on the 24th and Claire Fuller’s book launch for Unsettled Ground on the 25th.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 