Book Serendipity, August to October 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 down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they flit away!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- The William Carlos Williams line “no ideas but in things” is quoted in Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman and echoed with a slight adaptation in Want, the Lake by Jenny Factor.
- A woman impulsively stops into a tattoo parlour in We Are Animals by Jennifer Case and Birdeye by Judith Heneghan.
- Cleaning up a partner’s bristles from the sink in 300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso and The Echoes by Evie Wyld.
- Sarah Manguso, by whom I was reading two books for a Bookmarks article, was quoted in Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin.
- Someone is annoyed at their spouse making a mess cooking lemon preserves in How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli and Liars by Sarah Manguso, both of which are set in California.
- Rumpelstiltskin is referenced in one short story of a speculative collection: How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli and The Man in the Banana Trees by Marguerite Sheffer.
- A father who is hard of hearing, and an Australian woman looking for traces of her grandmother’s life in England in The House with All the Lights On by Jessica Kirkness and The Echoes by Evie Wyld.
- A character named Janie or Janey in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Echoes by Evie Wyld. The Pre-Raphaelite model Janey is also mentioned in The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing.
Contrasting one’s childhood love of the Little House on the Prairie books with reading them as an adult and being aware of the racial and colonial implications in Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- A mention of Little Women in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- A character grew up in a home hair-dressing business in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman.
- The discovery of an old pram in an outbuilding in Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell and Mina’s Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa.
- An Irish woman named Aoife in My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss and Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell.
- Cooking then throwing out entire meals in My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss and The Echoes by Evie Wyld. (Also throwing out a fresh meal in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan. Such scenes distress me!)
A new lover named Simon in one story of The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro and The Echoes by Evie Wyld.
- A character writes a recommendation letter for someone who then treats them vindictively, because they assumed the letter was negative when it wasn’t, in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and one story of The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro.
- After her parents’ divorce, the author never had a designated bedroom in her father’s house in Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman and The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing.
Reading The Bell Jar as a teenager in Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- A contentious Town Hall meeting features in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and Birdeye by Judith Heneghan.
- The wife is pregnant with twins in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. (There are also twins in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan. In general, I find that they occur far more often in fiction than in real life!)
- 1930s Florida as a setting in Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
- Dorothy Wordsworth and her journals are discussed in Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- Wordsworth’s daffodils are mentioned in Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- “F*ck off” is delivered in an exaggerated English accent in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan and The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken.
- The main character runs a country store in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro.
Reading a second novel this year in which the younger sister of a pair wants to go into STEM and joins the Mathletes in high school: first was A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg; later was Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner.
- An older sister who has great trouble attending normal school and so is placed elsewhere (including a mental institution) for a total of two years in Learning to Think by Tracy King and Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner.
- The idea of trees taking revenge on people for environmental destruction in one story of The Secret Life of Insects by Bernardo Esquinca and one poem of The Holy & Broken Bliss by Alicia Ostriker.
- An illiterate character in Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell and Also Here by Brooke Randel.
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Controversy over throwing a dead body into the trash in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan and Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent.
- A publishing assistant who wears a miniskirt and Doc Martens in Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner and Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell.
- Ancestors’ experience in Auschwitz in Also Here by Brooke Randel and Transgenesis by Ava Winter.
- The protagonist finds it comforting when her boyfriend lies down with his full weight on her in Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner and The Echoes by Evie Wyld.
- A woman badgers her ex-husband about when his affair with his high school/college sweetheart started (before or after the divorce) in Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner and Liars by Sarah Manguso.
I encountered an Irish matriarch who married the ‘wrong’ brother, not Frank, in The Bee Sting by Paul Murray earlier in the year, and then in Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell.
- A boy is playing in the family car on the driveway when it rolls backwards and kills someone in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout.
- Quantoxhead, Somerset is mentioned in On Trying to Keep Still by Jenny Diski and A House Unlocked by Penelope Lively.
- Tapeworms are mentioned in On Trying to Keep Still by Jenny Diski and one story of The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff.
- A description of horrific teeth in one story of The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff, and one story of The Long Swim by Terese Svoboda.
- A character researches potato blight, and another keeps his smoking a secret from his wife, in one story of The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff, and Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout.
A piano gets mauled out of anger in one story of Save Me, Stranger by Erika Krouse and Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent.
- Men experiencing eating disorders in Heavy by Kiese Laymon and Heartstopper Volumes 3 and 4 by Alice Oseman.
- Black people deliberately changing their vocabulary and speech register when talking to white people in James by Percival Everett and Heavy by Kiese Laymon.
- My second book of the year in which a woman from centuries ago who magically appears in the present requests to go night clubbing: first The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, then Isabella & Blodwen by Rachael Smith.
- Characters named Sadie in James by Percival Everett, The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken, and Still Life at Eighty by Abigail Thomas.
- Creepy hares in horror: A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand and What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. There were weird rabbits in I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill, too.
- I read two scenes of a calf being born, one right after the other: in Dangerous Enough by Becky Varley-Winter, then I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill.
- I read about an animal scratch leading to infection leading to death in a future with no pharmaceuticals in Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel in the morning and then in the afternoon heard Eve Smith mention the same thing happening due to antibiotic resistance in her novel The Waiting Rooms. Forget about R.I.P.; this is the stuff that scares me…
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Three on a Theme: Books on Communes by Crossman, Heneghan & Twigg
Communal living always seems like a great idea but rarely works out well. Why? The short answer: Because people. A longer answer: Political ideals are hard to live out in the everyday when egos clash, practical arrangements become annoying, and lines of privacy or autonomy get crossed. All three books I review today are set in the aftermath of utopian failure. Susanna Crossman, who grew up in an English commune, looks back at 15 years of an abnormal childhood. The community in Birdeye is set to collapse after two founding members announce their departure, leaving one ageing woman and her disabled daughter. And in Spoilt Creatures, from a decade’s distance, Iris narrates the disastrous downfall of Breach House.
Home Is Where We Start: Growing up in the Fallout of the Utopian Dream by Susanna Crossman
For Crossman’s mother, “the community” was a refuge, a place to rebuild their family’s life after divorce and the death of her oldest daughter in a freak accident. For her three children, it initially was a place of freedom and apparent equality between “the Adults” and “the Kids” – who were swiftly indoctrinated into hippie opinions on the political matters of the day. “There is no difference between private and public conversations, between the inside and the outside. No euphemisms. Vaginas are discussed over breakfast alongside domestic violence and nuclear bombs.” Crossman’s present-tense recreation of her precocious eight-year-old perspective is canny, as when she describes watching Charles and Diana’s wedding on television:
It was beautiful, but I know marriage is a patriarchal institution, a capitalist trap, a snare. You can read about it in Spare Rib, or if you ask community members, someone will tell you marriage is legalized rape. It is a construction, and that means it’s not natural, and is part of the social reproduction of gender roles and women’s unpaid domestic labour.
Their mum, now known only as “Alison,” often seemed unaware of what the Kids got up as they flitted in and out of each other’s units. Crossman once electrocuted herself at a plug. Another time she asked if she could go to an adult man’s unit for an offered massage. Both times her mother was unfazed.
The author is now a clinical arts therapist, so her recreation is informed by her knowledge of healthy child development and the long-term effects of trauma. She knows the Kids suffered from a lack of routine and individually expressed love. Community rituals, such as opening Christmas presents in the middle of a circle of 40 onlookers, could be intimidating rather than welcoming. Her molestation and her sister’s rape (when she was nine years old, on a trip to India ‘supervised’ by two other adults from the community) were cloaked in silence.
Crossman weaves together memoir and psychological theory as she examines where the utopian impulse comes from and compares her own upbringing with how she tries to parent her three daughters differently at home in France. Through vignettes based on therapy sessions with patients, she shows how play and the arts can help. (I’d forgotten that I’ve encountered Crossman’s writing before, through her essay on clowning for the Trauma anthology.) I somewhat lost interest as the Kids grew into teenagers. It’s a vivid and at times rather horrifying book, but the author doesn’t resort to painting pantomime villains. Behind things were good intentions, she knows, and there is nuance and complexity to her account. It’s a great mix of being back in the moment and having the hindsight to see it all clearly.
With thanks to Fig Tree (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.
Birdeye by Judith Heneghan
Like Crossman’s community, the Birdeye Colony is based in a big crumbling house in the countryside – but this time in the USA; the Catskills of upstate New York, to be precise. Liv Ferrars has been the de facto leader for nearly 50 years, since she was a young mother to twins. Now she’s a sixty-seven-year-old breast cancer survivor. To her amazement, her book, The Attentive Heart, still attracts visitors, “bringing their problems, their pain and loneliness, hoping to be mended, made whole.”
One of the ur-plots is “a stranger comes to town,” and that’s how Birdeye opens, with the arrival of a young man named Conor who’s read and admired Liv’s book, and seems to know quite a lot about the place. When Indian American siblings Sonny and Mishti, the only others who have been there almost from the beginning, announce that they’re leaving, it seems Birdeye is doomed. But Liv wonders if Conor can be part of a new generation to take it on.
It’s a bit of a sleepy book, with a touch of suspense as secrets emerge from Birdeye’s past. I was slightly reminded of May Sarton’s Kinds of Love. I most appreciated the character study of Liv and her very different relationships with her daughters, who are approaching fifty: Mary is a capable lawyer in London, while Rose suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and is severely intellectually disabled. Since Liv’s illness, Mary has pressured her to make plans for Rose’s future and, ultimately, her own. The duty of care we bear towards others – blood family; the chosen family of friends and comrades, even pets – arises as a major theme. I’d recommend this to those who love small-town novels.
With thanks to Salt Publishing for the free copy for review.
& 20 Books of Summer, #20:
Spoilt Creatures by Amy Twigg
Alas, this proved to be another disappointment from the Observer’s 10 best new novelists feature (following How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica). The setup was promising: in 2008, Iris reeling from her break-up from Nathan and still grieving her father’s death in a car accident, goes to live at Breach House after a chance meeting with Hazel, one of the women’s commune’s residents. “Breach House was its own ecosystem, removed from the malfunctioning world of indecision and patriarchy.” Any attempts to mix with the outside world go awry, and the women gain a reputation as strange and difficult. I never got a handle on the secondary characters, who fill stock roles (the megalomaniac leader, the reckless one, the disgruntled one), and it all goes predictably homoerotic and then Lord of the Flies. The dual-timeline structure with Iris’s reflections from 10 years later adds little. An example of the commune plot done poorly, with shallow conclusions rather than deeper truths at play.
With thanks to Tinder Press for the free copy for review.
On this topic, I have also read:
Novels:
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
On my TBR:
O Sinners by Nicole Cuffy
We Burn Daylight by Bret Anthony Johnston
Nonfiction:
Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk
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?
Book Serendipity, April to May 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. 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.
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- 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?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 