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! The following are in roughly chronological order.

• Characters who were in a chess club and debating society in high school/college in Playground by Richard Powers and Intermezzo by Sally Rooney.

• Pondering the point of a memorial and a mention of hiring mourners in Immemorial by Lauren Markham and Basket of Deplorables by Tom Rachman.

 

• A mention of Rachel Carson, and her The Sea Around Us in particular, in Playground by Richard Powers, while I was also reading for review Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love by Lida Maxwell.

 

• A character pretends to be asleep when someone comes into the room to check on them in Knulp by Hermann Hesse and Rental House by Weike Wang.

• A mention of where a partner puts his pistachio shells in After the Rites and Sandwiches by Kathy Pimlott and Rental House by Weike Wang.

 

• A character who startles very easily (in the last two cases because of PTSD) in Life before Man by Margaret Atwood, A History of Sound by Ben Shattuck, and Disconnected by Eleanor Vincent.

 

• The husband is named Nate in Life before Man by Margaret Atwood and Rental House by Weike Wang.

 

• In People Collide by Isle McElroy, there’s a mention of Elizabeth reading “a popular feminist book about how men explained things to women.” The day I finished reading the novel, I started reading the book in question: Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit.

• I learned about the “he’s-at-home” (19th-century dildo) being used by whalers’ wives on Nantucket while the husbands are away at sea through historical fiction – Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt, which I read last year – and encountered the practice again through an artefact found in the present day in The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck. Awfully specific!

 

• A week after I finished reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, it turned up in a discussion of Vancouver Island in Island by Julian Hanna.

 

• A Cape Cod setting in Sandwich by Catherine Newman (earlier in the year) plus The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck and Rental House by Weike Wang.

• A gay character references Mulder and Scully (of The X-Files) in the context of determining sexual preference, and there’s a female character named Kit, in The Old Haunts by Allan Radcliffe and one story of Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld.

 

• A mention of The Truman Show in the context of delusions in The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs and You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse.

 

• St. Lucia is mentioned in Beasts by Ingvild Bjerkeland, Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishøi (two Norwegian authors named Ingvild there!), and Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner.

• A pet named Darwin: in Levels of Life by Julian Barnes it’s Sarah Bernhardt’s monkey; in Cold Kitchen by Caroline Eden it’s her beagle. Within days I met another pet beagle named Darwin in Island by Julian Hanna. (It took me a moment to realize why it’s a clever choice!)

 

• A character named Henrik in The Place of Tides by James Rebanks and one story of Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld, and a Hendrik in The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden.

 

• A hat with a green ribbon in The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden and one story of Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld (in which it’s an emoji).

• Romanian neighbours who speak very good English in Island by Julian Hanna and Rental House by Weike Wang.

 

• A scene of returning to a house one used to live in in Hyper by Agri Ismaïl, The Old Haunts by Allan Radcliffe, and one story of Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld.

 

• A woman has had three abortions in The House of Dolls by Barbara Comyns and Without Exception by Pam Houston.

• Household items keep going missing and there’s broken china in The House of Dolls by Barbara Comyns and The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden.

 

• Punctuated equilibrium (a term from evolutionary biology) is used as a metaphor in Hyper by Agri Ismaïl and Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit.

 

• The author’s mother repeatedly asked her daughter a rhetorical question along the lines of “Do you know what I gave up to have you?” in Permission by Elissa Altman and Without Exception by Pam Houston.

 

• The author/character looks in the mirror at the end of a long day and hardly recognizes him/herself in The Place of Tides by James Rebanks, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse, and Amphibian by Tyler Wetherall.

• A man is afraid to hold his boyfriend’s hand in public in another country because he’s unsure about the cultural attitudes towards homosexuality in Clinical Intimacy by Ewan Gass and Small Rain by Garth Greenwell.

 

• The author’s mother is a therapist/psychologist and the author her/himself is undergoing some kind of mental health treatment in Unattached by Reannon Muth and You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse.

• A man declares that dying in one’s mid-40s is nothing to complain about in A Beginner’s Guide to Dying by Simon Boas and Small Rain by Garth Greenwell.

 

• A woman ponders whether her ongoing anxiety is related to the stressful circumstances of her birth in Unattached by Reannon Muth and When the World Explodes by Amy Lee Scott.

 

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