November Releases Including #NovNov24: Bennett, Pimlott, Rishøi, Shattuck
Two belated novellas: one a morbid farce set at an old folks’ home; the other a sweet Norwegian tale that offers sisterhood and magic as ways to survive a rough upbringing. Plus a lovely poetry pamphlet about the early days of widowhood and a linked short story collection spanning several centuries of art and relationships in New England.
Killing Time by Alan Bennett
I’d only previously read The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett; I perpetually have him confused with Arnold Bennett, by whom I know more. It could be debated whether this is a novella by word count, but even if more of a short story, for me it counts for #NovNov24 because it’s in a stand-alone volume, as publishing partner Faber produced for Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day last year.
I polished this off in one sitting. Bennett’s black comedy is set at a posh home for the elderly, the Edwardian mansion Hill Topp House. (Residents know to be on their best behaviour lest they be demoted to an inferior neighbouring facility, Low Moor.) When a prospective client calls, Mrs McBryde enthusiastically lists the assets:
We have a choir and on special occasions a glass of dry sherry. It’s less of a home and more of a club and very much a community. We go on frequent trips out. Only last week we went to a local farm where they have a flamingo. … We don’t vegetate at Hill Topp. And the cuisine is not unadventurous. It’s not long since we had a Norwegian evening.
The dialogue is sparkling, just like you’d expect from a playwright. As in the Hendrik Groen books and Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, the situation invites cliques and infantilizing. The occasional death provides a bit more excitement than jigsaws and knitting. Ageing bodies may be pitiable (the incontinence!), but sex remains a powerful impulse.
Here is where readers might start to feel disconnected from Bennett’s dated humour. The window cleaner turned gigolo is somewhat amusing; the repeated gag of a flasher, not so much. “Has she seen the sights yet?” two ladies ask. And a jesting conversation about clerical sexual abuse scandals seems particularly ill considered given recent news.
The story is most interesting and fresh once Covid comes onto the scene. Some perish early on; the survivors, ungoverned, do their best. I loved the detail of a resident turning a velvet dress into 60 masks. Two objects, one of them depicted on the cover (it’s not a grenade as I thought at first!), come to have particular importance. I liked this but thought by favouring broad humour it sacrificed characterization or compassion. You’ll enjoy it if you’re fond of wicked comedy by the likes of Alan Ayckbourn. [112 pages]
With thanks to Profile Books for the free copy for review.
After the Rites and Sandwiches: Poems by Kathy Pimlott
The 18 poems in this pamphlet (in America it would be called a chapbook) orbit the sudden death of Pimlott’s husband a few years ago. By the time she found Robert at the bottom of the stairs, there was nothing paramedics could do. What next? The callousness of bureaucracy: “Your demise constitutes a quarter off council tax; / the removal of a vote you seldom cast and then / only to be contrary; write-off of a modest overdraft; / the bill for an overpaid pension” (from “Death Admin I”). Attempts at healthy routines: “I’ve written my menu for the week. Today’s chowder. / I manage ten pieces of the 1000-piece jigsaw’s scenes / from Jane Austen. Tomorrow I’ll visit friends and say // it’s alright, it’s alright, seventy, eighty percent / alright” (from “How to be a widow”). Pimlott casts an eye over the possessions he left behind, remembering him in gardens and on Sunday walks of the sort they took together. Grief narratives can err towards bitter or mawkish, but this one never does. Everyday detail, enjambment and sprightly vocabulary lend the wry poems a matter-of-fact grace. I plan to pass on my copy to a new book club member who was widowed unexpectedly in May – no doubt she’ll recognise the practical challenges and emotional reality depicted.
With thanks to The Emma Press for the free copy for review.
Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishøi (2021; 2024)
[Translated from the Norwegian by Caroline Waight]
Ten-year-old Ronja and her teenage sister Melissa have to stick together – their single father may be jolly and imaginative, but more often than not he’s drunk and unemployed. They can’t rely on him to keep food in their Tøyen flat; they subsist on cereal. When Ronja hears about a Christmas tree seller vacancy, she hopes things might turn around. Their father lands the job but, after his crew at a local pub pull him back into bad habits, Melissa has to take over his hours. Ronja hangs out at the Christmas tree stand after school, even joining in enthusiastically with publicity. The supervisor, Tommy, doesn’t mind her being around, but it’s clear that Eriksen, the big boss, is uncomfortable with even a suggestion of child labour.
It’s touching to see Melissa take on a caring role and to meet the few indisputably good people who help the sisters, such as their elderly neighbour, Aronsen. Ronja’s innocent narration emphasizes her disbelief at their father’s repeated failings and also sets the story up for a late swerve into what seems like magic realism. I’m genuinely not sure what’s supposed to happen at the end, but the sisters find themselves alone in a wintry storm and the language of miracles is used. Rishøi’s debut will surely be compared to Small Things Like These and other classic holiday novellas. I found it a little obvious and saccharine, but if you find the right mood and moment it might just tug at your heart in the run-up to Christmas. [182 pages]
With thanks to Grove Press UK for the free copy for review.
The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck
“history is personal, even when it isn’t”
The dozen stories of Shattuck’s fiction debut form a “hook-and-chain” structure of five couplets, bookended by a first and last story that are related to each other. The links are satisfyingly overt: A pair might take place in the same house in different centuries, or the second will fill in the history of the characters from the first. In “Edwin Chase of Nantucket,” the eponymous figure recognizes his bereaved mother’s loneliness and does her a kindness. “Silver Clip,” which follows, is separated by 200 years, but its accounts of a young painter living in his ancestral island home reprises the motifs of grief, compassion and memory. “Graft,” about a woman spurned in the 1880s, and “Tundra Swan,” in which a man concocts a swindle to pay for his son’s rehab in the present day, are connected by a Cape Cod orchard. Artefacts and documents also play important roles: a journal accounts for a mysterious mass death, a radio transcript and a photograph explain a well-meaning con, and an excerpt from a history textbook follows up on the story of the religious cult in “The Children of New Eden.”
My favourite individual story was “August in the Forest,” about a poet whose artist’s fellowship isn’t all it cracked up to be – the primitive cabin being no match for a New Hampshire winter. His relationships with a hospital doctor, Chloe, and his childhood best friend, Elizabeth, seem entirely separate until Elizabeth returns from Laos and both women descend on him at the cabin. Their dialogues are funny and brilliantly awkward (“Sorry not all of us are quietly chiseling toward the beating heart of the human experience, August. One iamb at a time”) and it’s fascinating to watch how, years later, August turns life into prose. But the crowning achievement is the opening title story and its counterpart, “Origin Stories,” about folk music recordings made by two university friends during the First World War – and the afterlife of both the songs and the men.
From the start I was reminded strongly of North Woods by Daniel Mason, and particular sequences recall Shoot the Horses First by Leah Angstman and An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It by Jessie Greengrass. It’s a slight shame for Shattuck that what he was doing here didn’t seem as original to me because of my familiarity with these predecessors. Yet, to my surprise, I found that The History of Sound was more consistent than any of those. With the exception of a few phrases from “Graft” (“living room,” “had sex” and “boring” don’t strike me as 1880s lingo), all of the stories are historically convincing, and the very human themes of lust, parenthood, sorrow and frustrated ambition resonate across centuries and state lines. Really beautiful. (See Susan’s review too.)
[Some you-couldn’t-make-it-up trivia about Shattuck: he’s married to Jenny Slate (author of Little Weirds et al., as well as an actress known to me as Mona Lisa from Parks and Recreation); and he runs the oldest general store in America, built in 1793.]
With thanks to Swift Press for the free copy for review.
Which of these November releases catches your eye? What others can you recommend?
The Best Books from the First Half of 2023
Yes, it’s that time of year already! It remains to be seen how many of these will make it onto my overall best-of year list, but for now, these are my 20 highlights. Plus, I sneakily preview another great novel that won’t release until September. (For now I’m highlighting 2023 releases, whereas at the end of the year I divide my best-of lists into current year and backlist. I’ve read 86 current-year releases so far and am working on another 20, so I’m essentially designating a top 20% here.) I give review excerpts and link to the full text from this site or elsewhere. Pictured below are the books I read in print; all the others were e-copies.
Fiction
Shoot the Horses First by Leah Angstman: In 16 sumptuous historical stories, outsiders and pioneers face disability and prejudice with poise. The flash entries crystallize moments of realization, often about health. Longer pieces shine as their out-of-the-ordinary romances have space to develop. In the novella Casting Grand Titans, a botany professor in 1850s Iowa learns her salary is 6% of a male colleague’s. She strives for intellectual freedom, reporting a new-to-science species of moss, while working towards liberation for runaway slaves.
The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland: Moving at a propulsive pace, Beanland’s powerful second novel rotates through the perspectives of these main characters – two men and two women; two white people and two enslaved Black people – caught up in the Richmond Theater Fire of 1811 (one of the deadliest events in early U.S. history) and its aftermath. Painstakingly researched and full of historical detail and full-blooded characters, it dramatizes the range of responses to tragedy and how people rebuild their lives.
The New Life by Tom Crewe: Two 1890s English sex researchers (based on John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis) write a book called Sexual Inversion drawing on ancient Greek history and containing case studies of homosexual behaviour. Oscar Wilde’s trial puts everyone on edge; not long afterwards, their own book becomes the subject of an obscenity trial, and each man has to decide what he’s willing to give up in devotion to his principles. This is deeply, frankly erotic stuff, and, on the sentence level, just exquisite writing.
Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt: (Yes, another historical fire novel, and I reviewed both for Shelf Awareness!) This engrossing debut explores the options for women in the mid-19th century. Metaphorical conflagrations blaze in the background in the days leading up to the great Nantucket fire of 1846: each of three female protagonists (a whaling captain’s wife, a museum curator, and a pregnant Black entrepreneur) holds a burning secret and longs for a more expansive, authentic life. Tense and sultry; for Sue Monk Kidd fans.
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai: When an invitation comes from her boarding school alma mater, Granby, to teach a two-week course on podcasting, Bodie indulges her obsession with the 1995 murder of her former roommate. Makkai has taken her cues from the true crime genre and constructed a convincing mesh of evidence and theories. She so carefully crafts her pen portraits, and so intimately involves us in Bodie’s psyche, that it’s impossible not to get invested. This is timely, daring, intelligent, enthralling storytelling.
Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain: In this debut collection of 22 short stories, loosely linked by their location in the Appalachian hills in western Pennsylvania and a couple of recurring minor characters, McIlwain softens the harsh realities of addiction, poverty and violence with the tender bruises of infertility and lost love. Grief is a resonant theme in many of the stories, with pregnancy or infant loss a recurring element. At times harrowing, always clear-eyed, these stories are true to life and compassionate about human foibles and animal pain.
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano: Oprah’s 100th book club pick. It’s a family story spanning three decades and focusing on the Padavanos, a working-class Italian American Chicago clan with four daughters. Julia meets melancholy basketball player William Waters while at Northwestern in the late 1970s. There is such warmth and intensity to the telling, and brave reckoning with bereavement, mental illness, prejudice and trauma. I love sister stories in general, and the subtle echoes of Leaves of Grass and Little Women add heft.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld: Through her work as a writer for a sketch comedy show modelled on Saturday Night Live, Sally Milz meets Noah Brewster, a pop star with surfer-boy good looks. Plain Jane getting the hot guy – that never happens, right? In fact, Sally has a theory about this very dilemma… As always, Sittenfeld’s inhabiting of a first-person narrator is flawless, and Sally’s backstory and Covid-lockdown existence endeared her to me. Could this be called predictable? Well, what does one want from a romcom?
In Memoriam by Alice Winn: Heartstopper on the Western Front; swoon! Will Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt both acknowledge that this is love and not just sex, as it is for so many teenage boys at their English boarding school? And will one or both survive the trenches of the First World War? Winn depicts the full horror of war, but in between there is banter, friendship and poetry. Some moments are downright jolly. This debut is obsessively researched, but Winn has a light touch with it. Engaging, thrilling, and, yes, romantic.
A bonus:
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (Riverhead/Hutchinson Heinemann, 12 September): Groff’s fifth novel combines visceral detail and magisterial sweep as it chronicles a runaway Jamestown servant’s struggle to endure the winter of 1610. Flashbacks to traumatic events seep into her mind as she copes with the harsh reality of life in the wilderness. The style is archaic and postmodern all at once. Evocative and affecting – and as brutal as anything Cormac McCarthy wrote. A potent, timely fable as much as a historical novel. (Review forthcoming for Shelf Awareness.)
Nonfiction
All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett: A lovely memoir about grief and gardening, caring for an ill child and a dying parent. The book is composed of dozens of brief autobiographical, present-tense essays, each titled after a wildflower with traditional healing properties. The format realistically presents bereavement and caring as ongoing, cyclical challenges rather than one-time events. Sitting somewhere between creative nonfiction and nature essays, it’s a beautiful read for any fan of women’s life writing.
Monsters by Claire Dederer: The question posed by this hybrid work of memoir and cultural criticism is “Are we still allowed to enjoy the art made by horrible people?” It begins, in the wake of #MeToo, by reassessing the work of film directors Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. The book is as compassionate as it is incisive. While there is plenty of outrage, there is also much nuance. Dederer’s prose is forthright and droll; lucid even when tackling thorny issues. Erudite, empathetic and engaging from start to finish.
Womb by Leah Hazard: A wide-ranging and accessible study of the uterus, this casts a feminist eye over history and future alike. Blending medical knowledge and cultural commentary, it cannot fail to have both personal and political significance for readers of any gender. The thematic structure of the chapters also functions as a roughly chronological tour of how life with a uterus might proceed: menstruation, conception, pregnancy, labour, caesarean section, ongoing health issues, menopause. Inclusive and respectful of diversity.
Sea Bean by Sally Huband: Stories of motherhood, the quest to find effective treatment in a patriarchal medical system, volunteer citizen science projects, and studying Shetland’s history and customs mingle in a fascinating way. Huband travels around the archipelago and further afield, finding vibrant beachcombing cultures. In many ways, this is about coming to terms with loss, and the author presents the facts about climate crisis with sombre determination. She writes with such poetic tenderness in this radiant debut memoir.
Marry Me a Little by Robert Kirby: Hopping around in time, this graphic memoir tells the story of how the author and his partner John decided to get married in 2013. The blue and red color scheme is effective at evoking a polarized America and the ebb and flow of emotions, with blue for calm, happy scenes and concentrated red for confusion or anger. This is political, for sure, but it’s also personal, and it balances those two aims well by tracing the history of gay marriage in the USA and memorializing his own relationship.
All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer: In 2019, Vollmer’s mother died of complications of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Months later, his father reported blinking lights in the woods near the family cemetery. Although Vollmer had left the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in college, his religious upbringing influenced his investigation, which overlapped with COVID-19. Grief, mysticism, and acceptance of the unexplained are resonant themes. An unforgettable record of “a collision with the ineffable.”
Eggs in Purgatory by Genanne Walsh: This autobiographical essay tells the story of the last few months of her father’s life. Aged 89, he lived downstairs from Walsh and her wife in San Francisco. He was quite the character: idealist, stubborn, outspoken; a former Catholic priest. Although he had no terminal conditions, he was sick of old age and its indignities and ready to exit. The task of a memoir is to fully mine the personal details of a situation but make of it something universal, and that’s just what she does here. Stunning.
Poetry
More Sky by Joe Carrick-Varty: In this debut collection, the fact of his alcoholic father’s suicide is inescapable. The poet alternates between an intimate “you” address and third-person scenarios, auditioning coping mechanisms. His frame of reference is wide: football, rappers, Buddhist cosmology. The word “suicide” itself is repeated to the point where it becomes just a sibilant collection of syllables. The tone is often bitter, as is to be expected, but there is joy in the deft use of language.
Lo by Melissa Crowe: This incandescent autobiographical collection delves into the reality of sexual abuse and growing up in rural poverty. Guns are insidious, used for hunting or mass shootings. Trauma lingers. “Maybe home is what gets on you and can’t / be shaken loose.” The collection is so carefully balanced in tone that it never feels bleak. In elegies and epithalamiums (poems celebrating marriage), Crowe honors family ties that bring solace. The collection has emotional range: sensuality, fear, and wonder at natural beauty.
Standing in the Forest of Being Alive by Katie Farris: This debut collection addresses the symptoms and side effects of breast cancer treatment at age 36, but often in oblique or cheeky ways – it can be no mistake that “assistance” appears two lines before a mention of haemorrhoids, for instance, even though it closes an epithalamium distinguished by its gentle sibilance (Farris’s husband is Ukrainian American poet Ilya Kaminsky.) She crafts sensual love poems, and exhibits Japanese influences. (Review forthcoming at The Rumpus.)
The House of the Interpreter by Lisa Kelly: Kelly is half-Danish and has single-sided deafness, and her second collection engages with questions of split identity. One section ends with the Deaf community’s outrage that the Prime Minister’s Covid briefings were not translated into BSL. Bizarre but delightful is the sequence of alliteration-rich poems about fungi, followed by a miscellany of autobiographical poems full of references to colour, nature and travel.
What are some of the best books you’ve read so far this year?
What 2023 releases should I catch up on right away?
The 2023 Releases I’ve Read So Far
Some reviewers and book bloggers are constantly reading three to six months ahead of what’s out on the shelves, but I tend to get behind on proof copies and read from the library instead. (Who am I kidding? I’m no influencer.)
In any case, I happen to have read a number of pre-release books, generally for paid review for Foreword, Shelf Awareness, etc. Most of my reviews haven’t been published yet; I’ll give very brief excerpts and ratings here to pique the interest.
Early in January I’ll follow up with my 20 Most Anticipated titles of the coming year.
My top recommendations so far:
(In alphabetical order)
Shoot the Horses First by Leah Angstman [Feb. 28, Kernpunkt Press]: Sixteen sumptuous historical stories ranging from flash to novella length depict outsiders and pioneers who face disability and prejudice with poise. 
The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland [April 4, Simon & Schuster]: Four characters – two men and two women; two white people and two Black slaves – are caught up in the Richmond Theater Fire of 1811. Painstakingly researched and a propulsive read.
Tell the Rest by Lucy Jane Bledsoe [March 7, Akashic Books]: A high school girl’s basketball coach and a Black poet, both survivors of a conversion therapy camp in Oregon, return to the site of their spiritual abuse, looking for redemption.
All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer [April 4, Hub City Press]: A pensive memoir investigates the blinking lights that appeared in his family’s woods soon after his mother’s death from complications of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in 2019.
Other 2023 releases I’ve read:
(In publication date order; links to the few reviews that are already available online)
Pusheen the Cat’s Guide to Everything by Claire Belton [Jan. 10, Gallery Books]: Good-natured and whimsical comic scenes delight in the endearing quirks of Pusheen, everyone’s favorite cartoon cat since Garfield. Belton creates a family and pals for her, too. 
Everything’s Changing by Chelsea Stickle [Jan. 13, Thirty West]: The 20 weird flash fiction stories in this chapbook are like prizes from a claw machine: you never know whether you’ll pluck a drunk raccoon or a red onion the perfect size to replace a broken heart. 
Decade of the Brain by Janine Joseph [Jan. 17, Alice James Books]: With formal variety and thematic intensity, this second collection by the Philippines-born poet ruminates on her protracted recovery from a traumatic car accident and her journey to U.S. citizenship.
For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie [Jan. 19, Bloomsbury]: Two female medieval mystics, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, are the twin protagonists of Mackenzie’s debut. She allows each to tell her life story through alternating first-person strands that only braid together very late on.
The Faraway World by Patricia Engel [Jan. 24, Simon & Schuster]: These 10 short stories contrast dreams and reality. Money and religion are opposing pulls for Latinx characters as they ponder whether life will be better at home or elsewhere.
Your Hearts, Your Scars by Adina Talve-Goodman [Jan. 24, Bellevue Literary Press]: The author grew up a daughter of rabbis in St. Louis and had a heart transplant at age 19. This posthumous collection gathers seven poignant autobiographical essays about living joyfully and looking for love in spite of chronic illness.
God’s Ex-Girlfriend: A Memoir About Loving and Leaving the Evangelical Jesus by Gloria Beth Amodeo [Feb. 21, Ig Publishing]: In a candid memoir, Amodeo traces how she was drawn into Evangelical Christianity in college before coming to see it as a “common American cult” involving unhealthy relationship dynamics and repressed sexuality.
Zig-Zag Boy: A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood by Tanya Frank [Feb. 28, W. W. Norton]: A wrenching debut memoir ranges between California and England and draws in metaphors of the natural world as it recounts a decade-long search to help her mentally ill son.
The Distance from Slaughter County by Steven Moore [March 7, The University of North Carolina Press]: An Iowan now based in Oregon, Moore balances nostalgia and critique to craft nuanced, hypnotic autobiographical essays about growing up in the Midwest. The piece on Shania Twain is a highlight.
Currently reading:
(In release date order)
My What If Year: A Memoir by Alisha Fernandez Miranda [Feb. 7, Zibby Books]: “On the cusp of turning forty, Alisha Fernandez Miranda … decides to give herself a break, temporarily pausing her stressful career as the CEO of her own consulting firm … she leaves her home in London to spend one year exploring the dream jobs of her youth.”
Sea Change by Gina Chung [April 11, Vintage]: “With her best friend pulling away to focus on her upcoming wedding, Ro’s only companion is Dolores, a giant Pacific octopus who also happens to be Ro’s last remaining link to her father, a marine biologist who disappeared while on an expedition when Ro was a teenager.”
Additional pre-release books on my shelf:
(In release date order)
Will you look out for one or more of these?
Any 2023 reads you can recommend already?
Book Serendipity, Mid-October to Mid-December 2022
The last entry in this series for the year. Those of you who join me for Love Your Library, note that I’ll host it on the 19th this month to avoid the holidays. Other than that, I don’t know how many more posts I’ll fit in before my year-end coverage (about six posts of best-of lists and statistics). Maybe I’ll manage a few more backlog reviews and a thematic roundup.
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 few months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. The following are in roughly chronological order.
- Tom Swifties (a punning joke involving the way a quotation is attributed) in Savage Tales by Tara Bergin (“We get a lot of writers in here, said the rollercoaster operator lowering the bar”) and one of the stories in Birds of America by Lorrie Moore (“Would you like a soda? he asked spritely”).
- Prince’s androgynous symbol was on the cover of Dickens and Prince by Nick Hornby and is mentioned in the opening pages of Shameless by Nadia Bolz-Weber.
- Clarence Thomas is mentioned in one story of Birds of America by Lorrie Moore and Encore by May Sarton. (A function of them both dating to the early 1990s!)
- A kerfuffle over a ring belonging to the dead in one story of Shoot the Horses First by Leah Angstman and Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth.
- Excellent historical fiction with a 2023 release date in which the amputation of a woman’s leg is a threat or a reality: one story of Shoot the Horses First by Leah Angstman and The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland.
- More of a real-life coincidence, this one: I was looking into Paradise, Piece by Piece by Molly Peacock, a memoir I already had on my TBR, because of an Instagram post I’d read about books that were influential on a childfree woman. Then, later the same day, my inbox showed that Molly Peacock herself had contacted me through my blog’s contact form, offering a review copy of her latest book!
- Reading nonfiction books titled The Heart of Things (by Richard Holloway) and The Small Heart of Things (by Julian Hoffman) at the same time.
- A woman investigates her husband’s past breakdown for clues to his current mental health in The Fear Index by Robert Harris and Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth.
- “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” is a repeated phrase in Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson, as it was in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.
- Massive, much-anticipated novel by respected author who doesn’t publish very often, and that changed names along the way: John Irving’s The Last Chairlift (2022) was originally “Darkness as a Bride” (a better title!); Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water (2023) started off as “The Maramon Convention.” I plan to read the Verghese but have decided against the Irving.
- Looting and white flight in New York City in Feral City by Jeremiah Moss and Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson.
- Two bereavement memoirs about a loved one’s death from pancreatic cancer: Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.
- The Owl and the Pussycat of Edward Lear’s poem turn up in an update poem by Margaret Atwood in her collection The Door and in Anna James’s fifth Pages & Co. book, The Treehouse Library.
- Two books in which the author draws security attention for close observation of living things on the ground: Where the Wildflowers Grow by Leif Bersweden and The Lichen Museum by A. Laurie Palmer.
- Seal and human motherhood are compared in Zig-Zag Boy by Tanya Frank and All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer, two 2023 memoirs I’m enjoying a lot.
- Mystical lights appear in Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir (the Northern Lights, there) and All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer.
- St Vitus Dance is mentioned in Zig-Zag Boy by Tanya Frank and Robin by Helen F. Wilson.
- The history of white supremacy as a deliberate project in Oregon was a major element in Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk, which I read earlier in the year, and has now recurred in The Distance from Slaughter County by Steven Moore.
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 