Book Serendipity, June to Mid-August 2024
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 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.
- A self-induced abortion scene in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Sleeping with Cats by Marge Piercy.
- A woman who cleans buildings after hours, and a character named Tova who lives in the Seattle area in A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
- Flirting with a surf shop employee in Sandwich by Catherine Newman and Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
- Living in Paris and keeping ticket stubs from all films seen in Paris Trance by Geoff Dyer and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.
- A schefflera (umbrella tree) is mentioned in Cheri by Jo Ann Beard and Company by Shannon Sanders.
- The Plague by Albert Camus is mentioned in Knife by Salman Rushdie and Stowaway by Joe Shute.
- Making egg salad sandwiches is mentioned in Cheri by Jo Ann Beard and Sandwich by Catherine Newman.
- Pet rats in Stowaway by Joe Shute and Happy Death Club by Naomi Westerman. Rats are also mentioned in Mammoth by Eva Baltasar, The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo, and The Colour by Rose Tremain.
- Eels feature in Our Narrow Hiding Places by Kristopher Jansma, Late Light by Michael Malay, and The Colour by Rose Tremain.
- Atlantic City, New Jersey is a location in Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland and Company by Shannon Sanders.
The father is a baker in Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland and Our Narrow Hiding Places by Kristopher Jansma.
- A New Zealand setting (but very different time periods) in Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly and The Colour by Rose Tremain.
- A mention of Melanie Griffith’s role in Working Girl in I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol and Happy Death Club by Naomi Westerman.
Ermentrude/Ermyntrude as an imagined alternate name in Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly and a pet’s name in Stowaway by Joe Shute.
- A poet with a collection that was published on 6 August mentions a constant ringing in the ears: Joshua Jennifer Espinoza (I Don’t Want to Be Understood) and Keith Taylor (What Can the Matter Be?).
- A discussion of the original meaning of “slut” (a slovenly housekeeper) vs. its current sexualized meaning in Girlhood by Melissa Febos and Sandi Toksvig’s introduction to the story anthology Furies.
- An odalisque (a concubine in a harem, often depicted in art) is mentioned in I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol and The Shark Nursery by Mary O’Malley.
- Reading my second historical novel of the year in which there’s a disintegrating beached whale in the background of the story: first was Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor, then Come to the Window by Howard Norman.
A short story in which a woman gets a job in online trolling in Because I Don’t Know What You Mean and What You Don’t by Josie Long and in the Virago Furies anthology (Helen Oyeyemi’s story).
- Her partner, a lawyer, is working long hours and often missing dinner, leading the protagonist to assume that he’s having an affair with a female colleague, in Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown and Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell.
- A fierce boss named Jo(h)anna in Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell and Test Kitchen by Neil D.A. Stewart.
- An OTT rendering of a Scottish accent in Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly and Test Kitchen by Neil D.A. Stewart.
- A Padstow setting and a mention of Puffin Island (Cornwall) in The Cove by Beth Lynch and England as You Like It by Susan Allen Toth.
- A mention of the Big and Little Dipper (U.S. names for constellations) in Directions to Myself by Heidi Julavits and How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica.
- A mention of Binghamton, New York and its university in We Are Animals by Jennifer Case and We Would Never by Tova Mirvis.
- A character accidentally drinks a soapy liquid in We Would Never by Tova Mirvis and one story of The Man in the Banana Trees by Marguerite Sheffer.
The mother (of the bride or groom) takes over the wedding planning in We Would Never by Tova Mirvis and Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell.
- The ex-husband’s name is Jonah in The Mourner’s Bestiary by Eiren Caffall and We Would Never by Tova Mirvis.
- The husband’s name is John in Dot in the Universe by Lucy Ellmann and Liars by Sarah Manguso.
- An affair is discovered through restaurant receipts in Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell and Test Kitchen by Neil D.A. Stewart.
- A mention of eating fermented shark in The Museum of Whales You Will Never See by A. Kendra Greene and Test Kitchen by Neil D.A. Stewart.
- A mention of using one’s own urine as a remedy in Thunderstone by Nancy Campbell and Terminal Maladies by Okwudili Nebeolisa.
- The main character tries to get pregnant by a man even though one of the partners is gay in Mammoth by Eva Baltasar and Until the Real Thing Comes Along by Elizabeth Berg.
- Motherhood is for women what war is for men: this analogy is presented in We Are Animals by Jennifer Case, Parade by Rachel Cusk, and Want, the Lake by Jenny Factor.
Childcare is presented as a lifesaver for new mothers in We Are Animals by Jennifer Case and Liars by Sarah Manguso.
- A woman bakes bread for the first time in Mammoth by Eva Baltasar and A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans.
- A gay couple adopts a Latino boy in Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly and one story of There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes, Jr.
A husband who works on film projects in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans and Liars by Sarah Manguso.
- A man is haunted by things his father said to him years ago in Parade by Rachel Cusk and one story in There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes, Jr.
- Two short story collections in a row in which a character is a puppet (thank you, magic realism!): The Man in the Banana Trees by Marguerite Sheffer, followed by There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes, Jr.
- A farm is described as having woodworm in Mammoth by Eva Baltasar and Parade by Rachel Cusk.
- Sebastian as a proposed or actual name for a baby in Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus and Birdeye by Judith Heneghan.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
20 Books of Summer, 3–4: Cheri & All Things Are Too Small
A cancer story that treads the line between biography and fiction, and a set of high-brow essays about popular culture and modern life.
Cheri by Jo Ann Beard (2023)
{SPOILERS IN THIS ONE}
Claire Keegan helped popularize the trend of publishing stand-alone stories as small hardback volumes. It was my first time reading Beard, and her style does in fact remind me of Keegan, along with Denis Johnson and Ann Patchett. This originally appeared in the literary magazine Tin House in 2002. It is the life story of Cheri Tremble, a real woman who was born in 1950 and died in 1997 via an illegal assisted suicide conducted by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. I’d heard a lot about Cheri, but his name was never mentioned – to avoid spoilers, of course, yet it’s key.
Cheri is an Amtrak ticket-taker who’s diagnosed with breast cancer in her mid-forties. After routine reconstructive surgery goes wrong and she’s left disabled, she returns to the Midwest and buys a home in Iowa. Here she’s supported by her best friends Linda and Wayne, and visited by her daughters Sarah and Katy. “Others have lived. She won’t be one of them. She feels it in her bones, quite literally.” When she hears the cancer has metastasized, she refuses treatment and starts making alternative plans. She’s philosophical about it; “Forty-six years is a long time if you look at it a certain way. Ursa is her seventh dog.”
Beard recounts all of this matter-of-factly (“the diminished lung capacity, the clangorous pain”), drawing on what is known of Cheri Tremble’s life and only adding her own stamp by making up memories that fuel flashbacks as Cheri drifts through pain-filled half-waking. One of these, of falling through the ice on a frozen pond as a child, appears early in the book and recurs at her moment of death. Beard also contrasts onlookers’ compassion or lack thereof.
It’s a potent portrait of everyday suffering and heroism and, in its way, an argument for assisted dying, which mustn’t be cloaked in secrecy as it was for Cheri – “They leave under cover of darkness, like duck hunters or criminals” to meet ‘Dr. Death’ in another state. I finished the story feeling underwhelmed; maybe I’ve simply read too much around the topic, but I couldn’t see how granting the subject interiority (which is what fiction is all about, yes, though the best biographies can do it, too) was enough to set it apart. (New purchase with birthday voucher, Hungerford Bookshop)
All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess by Becca Rothfeld (2024)
Rothfeld, the Washington Post’s nonfiction book reviewer, is on hiatus from a philosophy PhD at Harvard. Her academic background is clear from her vocabulary. The more accessible essays tend to be ones that were previously published in periodicals. Although the topics range widely – decluttering, true crime, consent, binge eating, online stalking – she’s assembled them under a dichotomy of parsimony versus indulgence. And you know from the title that she errs on the side of the latter. Luxuriate in lust, wallow in words, stick two fingers up to minimalism and mindfulness and be your own messy self. You might boil the message down to: Love what you love, because that’s what makes you an individual. And happy individuals – well, ideally, in an equal society that gives everyone the same access to self-fulfillment and art – make for a thriving culture. That, with some Barthes and Kant quotes.
The writing has verve, from the alliterative word choice to the forcefulness of Rothfeld’s opinions. But in places her points of reference (from classic cinema, especially) are so obscure that I had no way in and the pieces felt like they would never end. My two favourites were “More Is More,” in which she’s as down on fragmentary autofiction (Jenny Offill et al.) as she is on Marie Kondo; and “Normal Novels,” about how she finds Sally Rooney’s self-deprecation and communism problematic. I knew the subject matter well enough to follow the arguments here, even if I ultimately disagreed with them.
The U.S. cover featuring a Bosch painting is so much better!
Rothfeld is worth reading as a cultural critic, at least in small doses. She is clearly not interested in being a personal essayist, however, as the intimacy she keeps discussing in theory is almost completely absent. A piece on mental health, “Wherever You Go, You Could Leave,” opens with one tantalizing autobiographical line – “My first year of college, I attempted suicide and was promptly hastened home by an ominously smiling administrator” – then proceeds to poke fun at meditation for most of its 40 pages. It was interesting to see her fan-girl over her favourite novel, which I would even try if it wasn’t 480 pages: “I want to be reading Mating [by Norman Rush] constantly; I want to have been reading Mating forever, but always for the first time; I want everything in my life to be Mating and nothing but Mating”. Keep an eye out for the sequel: Actually, Moderation Is Cool: How I Learned to Temper My Expectations.
With thanks to Virago Press for the free copy for review.
Novellas in November 2023: That’s a Wrap!
This was Cathy’s and my fourth year co-hosting Novellas in November. We’ve done our best to keep up with your posts, collected via four Inlinkz post parties. We had 52 bloggers take part this year, contributing a total of 175 posts. You can look back at them all here. See also Cathy’s wrap-up post.
Claire Keegan continued to get lots of love this year, and it was great to see people engaging with our weekly prompts and buddy reads, and cleverly combining challenges with German Lit Month, Nonfiction November and Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week. Other books highlighted more than once included Cheri by Jo Ann Beard, They by Kay Dick, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson and Two Lives by William Trevor.
We’d love to get your feedback about what worked well or less well this month…
- Did you like having the prompts? Or would you rather go back to themes?
- Was it good to have a choice of buddy reads? Or do you prefer having just one?
- Did Inlinkz work okay for hosting the link-up?
Thank you all for being so engaged with #NovNov23! We’ll see you back here next year.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 