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. Of course, the truer term would be synchronicity, but the branding has stuck. In Liz Jensen’s Your Wild and Precious Life, she mentions that Carl Jung coined the term “synchronicity” for what he described as “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” I like thinking that it’s not just a matter of luck.

This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. I would normally have waited until the end of June, but I had way too many coincidences stored up! Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to finding them. People frequently ask how I remember all of these incidents. 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.

• Reading two King Lear updates at the same time: Private Rites by Julia Armfield and Daughter by Claudia Dey. The former has been specifically marketed as a “lesbian Lear,” but I had no idea that the latter also features two sisters plus a younger half-sister and their interactions with a larger-than-life father.

• Eating beans straight out of the tin in The Waterfall by Margaret Drabble and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

 

• Dead mice in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.

• Cloth holding the jaw of a corpse closed in one story from Barcelona by Mary Costello and A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux.

 

• Others see a character’s wife as a whore but the husband is oblivious in The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

 

• Setting up a game of solitaire in The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

 

• Main character called Mona in Daughter by Claudia Dey and Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin.

 

• Being surprised at an older man still having his natural hair colour in one story of Barcelona by Mary Costello (where he’s aged 76) and Life in the Balance by Jim Down (where it’s Alan Bennett, at 84!).

 

• A character named Anjali in Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan and Moral Injuries by Christie Watson.

• A character named Cherry in Daughter by Claudia Dey and one story of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things by Naomi Wood.

 

• My second memoir in two months in which a twentysomething son dies suddenly of a presumed heart problem: Fi by Alexandra Fuller, followed by Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen. (And a third in which his young friend died in the same way: The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater.) Also, Fuller and Jensen both see signs of their sons’ continued presence in bird sightings.

 

• Scratches on the inside of a coffin as proof of being buried alive in one story of Barcelona by Mary Costello and Life in the Balance by Jim Down.

• Surprise that one didn’t know the exact moment that a loved one died in one story of Barcelona by Mary Costello and Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen.

 

• Discussion of the meaning of brain stem death and a mention of meningococcal sepsis in Life in the Balance by Jim Down and Moral Injuries by Christie Watson.

 

• A scene set in a Denny’s diner in The Whole Staggering Mystery by Sylvia Brownrigg and After Dark by Haruki Murakami.

• A description of halal butchery in Barcelona by Mary Costello and Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad.

 

• A mention of ballet choreographer George Balanchine in Dances by Nicole Cuffy and The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater.

• A woman has an affair with a female postal worker in Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin and The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, both of which I DNFed.

 

• A character named Magdalena in Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream and The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz. The latter goes by Lena, which is also the name of the main character in Jungle House by Julianne Pachico. And there’s a character named Lina in Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad.

• Being presented with powdered milk in Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream and Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor.

 

• First I read a novel about a convent plagued by mice (Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood). Then I read a memoir about a convent plagued by feral cats (Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream).

 

• Buffalo, New York as a setting in Consent by Jill Ciment and The Age of Loneliness by Laura Marris. It’s also mentioned in Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad.

• Watching pigeons on one’s balcony in Keep by Jenny Haysom, Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen, and The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater.

 

• The family’s pet chicken is cooked for dinner in Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote and The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz.

 

• The mother is named Gloria in Consent by Jill Ciment and Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates (and The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish, a DNF).

 

• A character named Anton in The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz and Jungle House by Julianne Pachico.

 

• A cat named Dog in The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn and a dog named Tiger in Jungle House by Julianne Pachico.

 

• Two nature books that feature wild cold-water swimming (though don’t they all these days?!): In All Weathers by Matt Gaw and Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen.

• Two nature books that mention W.H. Hudson: In All Weathers by Matt Gaw and North with the Spring by Edwin Way Teale.

 

• A large anonymous donation to a church in Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue and Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (£10–11, which was much more in the 18th century of the former than in the 1950s of the latter).

 

• A mention of Poughkeepsie, New York in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan and Woman of Interest by Tracy O’Neill.

 

• A 1950s scene of perusing a lipstick display in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Excellent Women by Barbara Pym.

• A woman with a broken leg worries about how her garden will fare in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.

 

• The same silent film image of a spaceship entering the moon’s eye (from Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon) appears in Knife by Salman Rushdie and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. (I think this is the uncanniest coincidence of all this time!)
•  A cleric who wears a biretta in Excellent Women by Barbara Pym and Daughters of the House by Michèle Roberts.

 

• A Black single mother who believes in the power of crystals in Company by Shannon Sanders and Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace.

• An older woman really doesn’t want to leave her home but is moving into a retirement facility in Keep by Jenny Haysom and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. (There’s also a young woman who refuses to leave her house in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown.)

 

• A man throws his tie over his shoulder before eating in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Keep by Jenny Haysom.

 

• A mother writing a bad check becomes an important plot point in Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace.

 

• A scene of self-induced abortion in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Sleeping with Cats by Marge Piercy.

 

• The Yiddish word feh (an expression of disappointment) appears in Feh by Shalom Auslander (no surprise there!) but also in A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg, both of which are pre-release books I am reading for Shelf Awareness reviews.

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