The Best Books from the First Half of 2024
Hard to believe, but it’s that time of year already! It’s the eighth year in a row that I’ve been making a first-half superlatives list. It remains to be seen how many of these will make it onto my overall best-of year rundown, but for now, these are my 18 favourite 2024 releases that I’ve read so far (representing the top 20% of my current-year reading). One is a bonus in that it won’t actually be published until August; six happen to be books I reviewed for Shelf Awareness. Pictured below are the ones I read in print; all the others were e-copies. Links are to my full reviews where available.
Fiction
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley: This nuanced debut novel alternately goes along with and flouts the tropes of spy fiction and time travel sci-fi, making clever observations about how we frame stories of empire and progress. The narrator is a “bridge” helping to resettle a Victorian polar explorer in near-future London. You just have to suspend disbelief and go with it. Bradley’s descriptive prose is memorable but never quirky for the sake of it. I haven’t had so much fun with a book since Romantic Comedy. A witty, sexy, off-kilter gem.
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj: Darraj’s second novel-in-stories is a shimmering composite portrait of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore. Across nine stellar linked stories, she explores the complex relationships between characters divided by—or connected despite—class, language, and traditional values. Each of the stories (four in the first person, five in the third person) spotlights a particular character. The book depicts the variety of immigrant and second-generation experience, especially women’s.
Piglet by Lottie Hazell: The protagonist works for a cookbook publisher, loves to cook, and has a history of overeating during psychological distress. When her fiancé blindsides her with a confession 13 days before their wedding, she returns to binge eating, dress fittings be damned. Food is also a sign of her education and class pretensions. Uncomfortable themes, but I kept reading in fascinated horror because Hazell writes absolutely incredible scenes. This is also about what women are allowed to want, and how they are expected to settle.
Wellness by Nathan Hill: A state-of-the-nation novel filtered through one Chicago family experiencing midlife and marital crises: underperforming academic Jack; his wife Elizabeth, a placebo researcher at Wellness; and their YouTube-obsessed son Toby. They’ve recently invested their life savings in a new condo. The addictive and spot-on novel asks questions about authenticity, purpose, and nurture. Is love itself a placebo? Hill is clearly fascinated with psychological experimentation but also turns it to humorous effect.
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim: Over 2.5 days in June 2020, a Korean American family (mother Hannah and 20-year-old twins Mia and John, home from college for the lockdown) investigates, on their own and with the help of police and tip-offs, what happened to the father, Adam, who’d been at River Falls Park with the severely disabled 14-year-old son, Eugene, who is autistic and has mosaic Angelman syndrome. Mia narrates, and it’s a pleasure spending time with her quick, systematic brain as she considers each theory and red herring.
Company by Shannon Sanders: This energetic debut novel in 13 linked stories traces several generations of the Collins clan, whose experiences at once exemplify African American gentrification and evoke timeless patterns of parental legacy and sibling jealousy. Sisters Cassandra, Fay, Lee and Suzette grew up at their parents’ Atlantic City jazz club before going their separate ways. We revisit relatives at different points in their lives, mostly between the 1990s and the present day. Celebration scenes make for memorable moments.
Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang (illus. LeUyen Pham): A super-cute teen story with gorgeous illustrations, including lots of pink and red to suit the theme. We follow Vietnamese-American Valentina through high school as she plays host to an internal debate between cynicism and romanticism. Ever since her mother left, she’s longed to believe in romance but feared that love is a doomed prospect for her family. The Asian community of Oakland, California and a new hobby of lion dancing provide engrossing cultural detail.
Nonfiction
Intervals by Marianne Brooker: An extended essay about her mother’s protracted death with multiple sclerosis and the issues it brought up around disability, poverty, and inequality of access to medical care and services. Brooker decries the injustice of the wealthy having the option of travelling to Dignitas in Switzerland for an assisted death, whereas her single mother had so such relief in sight. Brooker’s description of the vigil of the last days, like her account of her vivacious mother’s life, is both tender and unflinching.
Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley: A bereavement memoir like no other. Heart-wrenching yet witty, it bears a unique structure and offers fascinating glimpses into the New York City publishing world. Crosley’s Manhattan apartment was burgled exactly a month before the suicide of her best friend and former boss, Russell. Throughout the book, the whereabouts of her family jewelry is as much of a mystery as the reason for Russell’s death, and investigating the stolen goods in parallel serves as a displacement activity for her.
First Love: Essays on Friendship by Lilly Dancyger: Poignant interlocking essays about female friendship. Love and death coexist here. Dancyger’s first best friend was her cousin Sabina, who was raped and murdered at age 20. “Sad Girls” takes on Sylvia Plath fandom. Dancyger also maps her bisexuality and ponders whether to have a child. She is nostalgic for the freedom of being young and unsupervised in New York City and Europe. A sensitive interrogation of women’s relationships, perfect for fans of Melissa Febos and Emma Straub.
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti: Heti put 10 years of diary contents into a spreadsheet, alphabetizing each sentence, and then ruthlessly culled the results. The recurring topics are familiar from the rest of her oeuvre: obsessive cogitating about relationships, art and identity, but also the practicalities of trying to make a living as a woman in a creative profession. Heti transcends the quotidian by exploding chronology. Remarkably, the collage approach produces a genuine, crystalline vision of the self. A sui generis work of life writing.
Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children by Nicole Louie: This impassioned auto/biographical collage combines the strengths of oral history, group biography and a fragmented memoir. “Motherhood as the epicentre of women’s lives was all I’d ever witnessed” via her mother and grandmother, Louie writes, so finding examples of women living differently was key. As readers, we watch her life, her thinking and the book all take shape. It’s intimate and empathetic, with layers of stories that reflect diversity of experience.
The Age of Loneliness: Essays by Laura Marris: A perceptive, moving collection of nine braided essays linking personal experience of loss with the climate crisis. “Cancerine” is a strong example. Cancer, the sign of the crab, was her father’s cause of death; horseshoe crabs were ground into fertilizer in the 19th century, and their blood is still harvested for biomedical testing. Driven by curiosity and environmental conscience, these reflective pieces reminiscent of Helen Macdonald’s longform journalism ponder human responsibility and resilience. [Graywolf Press, 6 August]
Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie: I’ve not had much success with Rushdie’s fiction, but this is excellent, with intriguing side tendrils and lots of quotable lines. It traces lead-up and aftermath; unexpected echoes, symbolism and ironies. Although Rushdie goes into some medical detail about his recovery, you get the sense of him more as an unchanging mind and a resolute will. The most remarkable section imagines dialogues between him and his imprisoned assailant, probing his beliefs and motivations.
Poetry
Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali: In this poised debut collection by a Muslim poet, spiritual enlightenment is a female, embodied experience, mediated by the matriarchs of the Abrahamic faiths. Ali’s poems hymn women’s bodies, desire, and motherhood. She blurs the line between human and divine with her allusions to the Quran. Ambivalence towards faith is clear in the alliteration-laden verse that recalls Kaveh Akbar’s. Wordplay, floral metaphors, and multiple ghazals make for dazzling language.
Baby Schema by Isabel Galleymore: A slant-wise look at environmental crisis and an impending decision about motherhood. The title comes from Konrad Lorenz’s identification of features that invite nurture. Galleymore edges towards the satirical fantasies of Caroline Bird or Patricia Lockwood as she imagines alternative scenarios of caregiving. What is worthy of maternal concern? Does cuteness merit survival? Extinction and eco-grief on the one hand, yes, but the implacability of biological cycles on the other. Sardonic yet humane.
Inconsolable Objects by Nancy Miller Gomez: This debut collection recalls a Midwest girlhood of fairground rides and lake swimming, tornadoes and cicadas. But her Kansas isn’t all rose-tinted nostalgia; there’s an edge of sadness and danger. “Missing History” notes how women’s stories, such as her grandmother’s, are lost to time. In “Tilt-A-Whirl,” her older sister’s harmless flirtation with a ride operator turns sinister. She also takes inspiration from headlines. The alliteration and slant rhymes are to die for. (Full review to come.)
Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick: Motherhood and the body are overarching themes. The speaker experiences multiple miscarriages and names her lost children after plants. Becoming a mother is a metamorphosis all its own, while the second long section is about her husband transitioning. Bird metaphors are inescapable. The structure varies throughout: columns, stanzas; a list, a recipe. Amid the sadness, there is dark humour and one-line rejoinders. If you’re wondering how life can be captured in achingly beautiful poetry, look no further.
Two of the novels above were among my Most Anticipated books of the year. I’ve now read 10 of the 12 on that list and DNFed another (the Sarah Perry), which just leaves Memory Piece by Lisa Ko to find – though others’ responses make me think it might not be worthwhile to do so. I sometimes wonder if designating a book as anticipated or a priority is a kiss of death, as I was at least somewhat disappointed with over half of my choices this time.
In the second part of the year, I’m looking forward to new releases from Rachel Clarke, Sarah Manguso, Charlotte Mendelson, Richard Powers, Sally Rooney, Elizabeth Strout and Evie Wyld.
What 2024 releases should I catch up on? What’s in your sights for the rest of the year?
20 Books of Summer, 1: Company by Shannon Sanders
I started the summer’s reading right with Company. Shannon Sanders’s energetic debut novel-in-stories traces several generations of the Collins clan, whose experiences at once exemplify African American gentrification and evoke timeless patterns of parental legacy and sibling jealousy. Sisters Cassandra, Fay, Lee and Suzette grew up at their parents’ Atlantic City jazz club before going their separate ways: Cassandra to a PhD and provost position at a college, Fay to painting and the role of family spirit-keeper, Lee to her own brood of four and a no-good jazz musician husband, and Suzette to music and a too-early death. With roots in Mississippi, they have dispersed to Atlanta, New York City and Washington, DC.
We revisit relatives at different points in their lives, mostly between the 1990s and the present day. There are 13 linked stories here, 10 in the third person and three with a first-person narrator. Each focuses on a different individual or set of characters. Celebration scenes make for memorable moments. “Bird of Paradise” is set at the party to commemorate Cassandra’s new position. There’s a Black president at the time and people can’t stop comparing her dress to Michelle Obama’s inaugural ball attire, while she can’t stop fretting that she and her nieces will live up to stereotypes of Black women’s bodies. Later, “La Belle Hottentote” revisits this evening from the nieces’ perspective as they ponder where the family’s money came from. In “Rioja,” Cassandra’s daughter Cecilia, visiting her boyfriend Cole’s family for Thanksgiving, tries not to embarrass him with any pretentious or avant-garde behavior.
The title story, which is among the stand-outs, is the only one to feature the grandparent generation – though Opal and Centennial are but ghosts commenting on the begrudging welcome Fay offers when her niece Aubrey turns up on her doorstep in New Jersey. Fay is the sole sister without partner or children, but she got the family home as a sort of consolation prize and fills its walls with symbolism-heavy portraits of four sisters. My other favorite, alongside this and “Bird of Paradise,” was “The Opal Cleft,” in which Lee’s son Theo hosts his cousin Cyrus (Cassandra’s son) while the latter performs his drag queen act in the area.
I was reminded by turns of Danielle Evans, Kim Coleman Foote and Deesha Philyaw, while final story “The Everest Society,” about Lee’s daughter Mariolive’s desperation to impress the social worker who has to okay her and Dante adopting, recalls Sidik Fofana with its composite picture of their apartment building’s residents. In a few cases I felt that Sanders might have extended the sphere too wide by moving outside the family: “The Gatekeepers” I assume is about a co-worker or neighbor of Cassandra’s; “Mote” is about Cole’s cousin and his partner (and makes the one white woman in the book evil…); and “Dragonflies” features that cousin’s colleague. It’s not to say that these aren’t good stories, but I wondered why they couldn’t have starred extended family members instead.
Trying to get pregnant and the early days of motherhood are recurring concerns, as is the distribution of talent and wealth around the family and beyond. As these characters reach toward the upper middle class, they keep in mind the struggles they came from. Although the family legends morph over the years, shared habits and heirlooms make connections across the generations. Sanders is strong on characterization, scene-setting and social observation; I would happily have spent even longer with the Collins family. I’ll be keen to follow her career in the years to come. 
With thanks to Pushkin Press for the free copy for review.
Carol Shields Prize Reading: Coleman Hill and Between Two Moons
Two last Carol Shields Prize nominees today: from the shortlist, a gorgeous tapestry of African-American family history; and, from the longlist, a likable debut novel about Muslim twin sisters navigating the febrile summer of their high school graduation in Brooklyn.
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote
Is this family memoir or autofiction? I’ve shelved it as both on Goodreads; it’s a blend, one for which Foote borrows the term that Audre Lorde coined for Zami, “biomythography.” Like Edwidge Danticat, Jesmyn Ward and Jacqueline Woodson, Foote draws on personal stories but also invokes overarching narratives of Black migration and struggle. The result is magisterial, a debut novel that feels like oral history and a family scrapbook rolled into one.
During the First World War, the Coleman family were part of a mass exodus from the segregated South to the industrialized North. They hoped for a better life in New Jersey than they’d had under slavery and sharecropping in Alabama and Florida, but in fact many of the author’s ancestors became mired in ill-paid service roles (cleaner, maid, refuse collector) and, ironically, ended up having fewer opportunities for advancement than relatives who stayed behind and enrolled in Black educational institutions in the South.
Like a linked short story collection, the book pulls together 15 vignettes stretching from 1916 to 1989 and told in different styles and voices, including AAVE – I’m reliably informed that the audiobook is wonderful for that reason. A prologue in the first-person plural introduces the women who would become family matriarchs: “We wanted to go to school but couldn’t. The walk was too long. We was needed at home to plant and harvest. And boys could get more outta schooling, folks said, so it was our brothers who went.”
Other sections alternate first and third person. I especially admired the use of the second person for passages from the perspective of Celia Coleman, who develops a dependence on Four Roses whisky after being widowed. An interlude gives two poems from the point-of-view of cotton – crop failure was partly responsible for the initial relocation. There are also black-and-white photographs heading each chapter, and a family tree at the start. When I first heard about this book through its longlisting, the idea of family history told by nine characters sounded overwhelming (and potentially worthy). But the voices are so distinct that there is never a danger of getting lost, and the scenes are so vivid that you cringe from the beatings and cheer when a woman stands up to her meddling mother-in-law. There are echoes and reversals across the generations, as alcoholism and domestic abuse recur.
The core story is about Celia’s nastiness and resistance to her son Jeb’s marriage to Bertha Grimes. Bertha, battered by Jebbie and Celia alike, escapes to a brothel where she works as a cleaner. Celia ends up raising their children, along with another set of grandchildren, earning the nickname “Gra’ Coleman” and a reputation for meanness. (One excellent stand-alone story about the younger generation is titled “How to Kill Gra’ Coleman and Live to Tell About It (c. 1950).”) The inherited trauma is clear, yet I never found the content as bleak here as in A Council of Dolls; Foote weaves in enough counterbalancing lightness and love. There are so many strong female characters – Jeb’s older sisters, Bertha’s younger ones; their daughters – and plenty of humour and spirit despite the sometimes distressing subject matter. The family home, and the objects hoarded there, also play a major role.
It’s difficult to suggest the scope, as large and various as any American family’s history. An author’s note at the end details Foote’s approach – somewhere between “channeling spirits” and fictionalizing – to a novel that was many years in the gestation. I’d particularly recommend Coleman Hill to fans of Ayana Mathis and Toni Morrison. For me, there’s no contest; this should win the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. 
With thanks to publicist Nicole Magas and SJP Lit (Zando) for the free e-copy for review.
Longlisted:
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad
This debut novel is cleverly set within the month of Ramadan, a time of abstention. In this way, Gawad emphasizes the tension between faith and the temptations of alcohol and sex. Egyptian-American twin sisters Amira and Lina Emam are on the cusp, about to graduate from high school and go their separate ways. Lina wants to be a model and is dating a nightclub manager she hopes can make this a reality; Amira, ever the sensible one, is college-bound. But then she meets her first boyfriend, Faraj, and lets Lina drag her into a reckless partying lifestyle. “I was seized with that summertime desire of girls: to push my body to its limits.” Meanwhile, the girls’ older brother, Sami, just home from prison, is finding it a challenge to integrate back into the family and their Bay Ridge mosque, reeling from a raid on a Muslim-owned neighbourhood business and a senseless attack on the old imam.
I feared that a tired terrorism plot would surface and was relieved when this wasn’t the case, although there is a passionate message about the injustice of police surveillance of Muslim communities. I agree with Laura (see her review) that it does at times feel like an adult is producing YA fiction. It’s proficiently written and I enjoyed getting a glimpse into an unfamiliar world, but the novel never truly sparked into life for me. It also commits one of my pet peeves: inserting third-person segments to fill in events that the narrator could not have witnessed (while referring to the other characters as “the mother,” “the boy,” or “the other girl”). One to put on high school curricula but not on a prize list. 
With thanks to Laura for passing on her copy.
And a DNF:
You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy – I read the first 22% of this short fiction collection, which equated to a brief opener in the second person about a situation of abuse, followed by part of one endless-feeling story based around one apartment and bodega and featuring two young female family friends, one of whom accepts sexual favours in the supply closet from most male visitors. The voice and prose didn’t grab me, but of course I can’t say whether later stories would have been more to my taste. (Edelweiss)
Overall thoughts and prediction:
I’m grateful for the chance to have read most of the Carol Shields Prize longlist this year, thanks to the library, Edelweiss, and especially the publicist providing multiple books in digital format straight from the publishers. I’ve been introduced to a number of books and authors I might never have otherwise come across, and my reactions to what I expected to love or to dislike sometimes surprised me. It was also fun to do a few as buddy reads with Laura.
Here’s a recap of what I read, from favourite to least favourite:
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote – see above
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
Cocktail by Lisa Alward
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (read last year)
Dances by Nicole Cuffy
Daughter by Claudia Dey
Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese
The Future by Catherine Leroux
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad – see above
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan (a skim)
A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power
You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy (DNF) – see above
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (skimmed last year)
Loot by Tania James (skim/DNF)
Thus, my ideal shortlist would have been the top five: Coleman Hill, Land of Milk and Honey, Cocktail, I Have Some Questions for You, and Dances.
It’s impossible to predict what the judges will pick from the actual shortlist. I never even attempted one of the finalists (A History of Burning by Janika Oza – Marcie’s comments made me confident it wouldn’t be for me) and only skimmed two others (Catton and Ganeshananthan). Sod’s law would suggest that one of those few will therefore win! I could see the case for any of the five, anyway. But I will have my fingers crossed for Coleman Hill.
The winner will be announced on Monday, 13 May.
Will you seek out something from the shortlist (or longlist)?
My Best Backlist Reads of the Year
Like many bloggers, I’m irresistibly drawn to the new books released each year. However, I consistently find that many of my more memorable reads were published earlier – most of these happen to have been published between one and a few years ago, with the ‘oldest’ being from 2004. These dozen selections – alphabetical within genre but in no particular rank order – together with my Best of 2023 post (coming up tomorrow), make up about the top 10% of my year’s reading.
Fiction
Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt: The heart-wrenching story of a woman who adopts her granddaughter because of her daughter’s drug addiction. The prose is stunning as Boyt traces the history of this complicated, makeshift family. The title has a wry double meaning, but also connotations of anticipatory grief. There can be love even where there is estrangement, or eternal separation. That is one of the enduring messages of this gem of a short novel.
Homesick by Jennifer Croft: Each vignette – some just a paragraph long – is perfectly chosen to reveal a family dynamic and a moment in American history. What Croft does so brilliantly is to chart the accretion of ordinary and landmark events that form a life. In the end it didn’t matter whether this was presented as memoir or autofiction, so true was it to the experience of 1990s girlhood, as well as to sisterhood and coming of age.
Search by Michelle Huneven: When middle-aged restaurant critic Dana Potowski is invited to be on the search committee to appoint the next minister for her California Unitarian church, she reluctantly agrees but soon wonders whether the experience could be interesting fodder for a new book… The setup might seem niche but will resonate with anyone who’s had a brush with bureaucracy. Pure pleasure; lit fic full of gossip and good food.
Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey: Researchers identified Big Burr, Kansas as the most homophobic town in America. An Acceptance Across America task force descends on the rural backwater for a two-year program promoting education and friendship. Each chapter in the linked short story collection is a first-person, present-tense confession from a local or a queer visitor, whose stories interlock. Laskey inhabits all 11 with equal skill and compassion.
The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry: This utterly immersive novel examines Thomas Hardy’s relationship with his first wife, Emma Gifford. It opens on the morning of her death. The couple had long been estranged, but Hardy was instantly struck with grief – and remorse, his guilt compounded by what he found in her journals. A universal tale of waning romance, loss, and regret. Beautifully understated; perfectly convincing for the period but also timeless.
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout: As Covid hits, William whisks Lucy from her NYC apartment to a house at the Maine coast. She’s an Everywoman recounting the fear and confusion of the early pandemic. Isolation has benefits: the first ‘room of her own’ she’s ever had, and time to ponder her childhood trauma and what went wrong in her marriage. Astute on American politics and writers’ inspirations; an effortless voice and emotional intelligence.
Nonfiction
Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince: Ince was meant to undertake a stadium tour in Autumn 2021, but a Covid resurgence put paid to that. Not one for sitting around at home, he formulated Plan B: 100+ events, most of them in independent bookshops, over the course of two months, criss-crossing Britain and hitting many of my favourites. He’s not just a speaker at them but, invariably, a customer. I sensed a kindred spirit in so many lines. Witty and open-minded.
A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors: Nors lives in rural Jutland along the west coast of Denmark – little visited and largely unknown to foreigners. This can be both good and bad. Tourists feel they’re discovering somewhere new, but the residents are insular. Local legends and traditions, bird migration, reliance on the sea, wanderlust, maritime history, a visit to church frescoes, and more. Gorgeous writing and atmosphere, despite the bleakness.
Here and Now by Henri Nouwen: This collection of micro-essays under themed headings like “Living in the Present” and “Suffering” is a perfect introduction to the Dutch Catholic priest’s theology. I marked out many reassuring or thought-provoking passages. I was taken by his ideas that the life of compassion is one of “downward mobility” and that inner freedom comes when you don’t judge anyone. Peaceful and readable; a good bedside devotional.
Poetry
Ephemeron by Fiona Benson: Exquisite poems about the ephemeral, whether that be insect lives, boarding school days, primal emotions or moments from her children’s early years. The book is in four discrete corresponding sections but themes and language bleed from one into another and the whole is shot through with astonishing corporeality and eroticism. The form varies but the alliteration, slant rhymes and unexpected metaphors make each poem glisten.
Leave Me a Little Want by Beverly Burch: Burch’s fourth collection juxtaposes the cosmic and the mundane, marvelling at the behind-the-scenes magic that goes into one human being born but also making poetry of an impatient wait in a long post office queue. Beset by environmental anxiety and the scale of bad news during the pandemic, she pauses in appreciation of the small and gradual.
Making the Beds for the Dead by Gillian Clarke: Full of colour and nature imagery, profuse with alliteration and slant rhymes, relishing its specialist terminology, and taking on the serious subject matter of manmade disasters. Several sequences are devoted to gardening and geology; some pieces are ekphrastic, or dedicated to particular poets. The title sequence tackles the 2001foot and mouth disease outbreak. “The Fall” is on 9/11. Very affecting stuff.
My overall favourites were: in novels, Search and The Chosen (one contemporary and one historical) and in poetry, Ephemeron.
What were your best backlist reads this year?
The 2024 Releases I’ve Read So Far
I happen to have read eight pre-release books so far, all of them for paid review; mostly for Shelf Awareness, with one for Foreword. (I also have proof copies of upcoming novels by Tania James, Margot Livesey, Sigrid Nunez and Sarah Perry on the shelf, but haven’t managed to start on them yet.) I’ve given review excerpts, links where available, and ratings below to try to pique your interest. Early in January I’ll follow up with a list of my dozen Most Anticipated titles for the coming year.
My top recommendations so far:
(in alphabetical order)
Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali [Jan. 16, Alice James Books]: In this poised debut collection by a Muslim poet, spiritual enlightenment is a female, embodied experience, mediated by matriarchs. Ali’s ambivalence towards faith is clear in alliteration-laden verse that recalls Kaveh Akbar’s. Wordplay, floral metaphors, and multiple ghazals make for dazzling language. 
Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley [Feb. 27, MCD]: A bereavement memoir like no other. Heart-wrenching yet witty, it bears a unique structure and offers fascinating glimpses into the New York City publishing world. Crosley’s apartment was burgled exactly a month before the suicide of her best friend and former boss. Investigating the stolen goods in parallel serves as a displacement activity for her.
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj [Jan. 16, HarperVia]: Darraj’s second novel-in-stories is a sparkling composite portrait of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore. Across nine stellar linked stories, she explores the complex relationships between characters divided by—or connected despite—class, language, and traditional values. The book depicts the variety of immigrant and second-generation experience, especially women’s. 
The Ritual Effect by Michael Norton [April 9, Scribner]: Many use the words “habit” and “ritual” interchangeably, but the Harvard Business School behavioral scientist argues convincingly that they are very different. While a habit is an automatic, routine action, rituals are “emotional catalysts that energize, inspire, and elevate us.” He presents an engaging and commonsense précis of his research, making a strong case for rituals’ importance in the personal and professional spheres as people mark milestones, form relationships, or simply “savor the experiences of everyday life.”
Other 2024 releases I’ve read:
(in publication date order)
House Cat by Paul Barbera [Jan. 2, Thames & Hudson]: The Australian photographer Paul Barbera’s lavish art book showcases eye-catching architecture and the pets inhabiting these stylish spaces. Whether in a Revolutionary War-era restoration or a modernist show home, these cats preside with a befitting dignity. (Shelf Awareness review forthcoming) 
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo [Feb. 13, Henry Holt/Quercus]: Choo’s third novel is steeped in Chinese folklore, like her previous work, this time with a focus on tantalizing stories related to foxes, which were often worshiped at village shrines in China. Two tandem searches ramp up the level of suspense: in the winter of 1908 in Manchuria, in northeast China, a detective investigates a series of unexplained deaths; at the same time, a fox-woman masquerading as a servant plots vengeance against the man who murdered her child.
The Only Way Through Is Out by Suzette Mullen [Feb. 13, University of Wisconsin Press]: A candid, inspirational memoir traces the events leading to her midlife acceptance of her lesbian identity and explores the aftermath of her decision to leave her marriage and build “a life where I would choose desire over safety.” The book ends on a perfect note as Mullen attends her first Pride festival aged 56. “It’s never too late” is the triumphant final line. (Foreword review forthcoming)
36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le [March 5, Knopf]: A fearless poetry debut prioritizes language and voice to explore inherited wartime trauma and expose anti-Asian racism. Each poem is titled after a rhetorical strategy or analytical mode. Anaphora is one sonic technique used to emphasize the points. Language and race are intertwined. This is a prophet’s fervent truth-telling. High-concept and unapologetic, this collection from a Dylan Thomas Prize winner pulsates. (Shelf Awareness review forthcoming) 
Currently reading:
(in release date order; all for Shelf Awareness review)
God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music by Leah Payne [Jan. 4, Oxford University Press]: “traces the history and trajectory of CCM in America and, in the process, demonstrates how the industry, its artists, and its fans shaped—and continue to shape—conservative, (mostly) white, evangelical Protestantism.”
Raised by Wolves: Fifty Poets on Fifty Poems, A Graywolf Anthology [Jan. 23, Graywolf Press]: “Graywolf poets have selected fifty poems by Graywolf poets, offering insightful prose reflections on their selections. What arises is a choral arrangement of voices and lineages across decades, languages, styles, and divergences, inspiring a shared vision for the future.”
The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl [April 30, Random House]: “When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual gift: a one-way plane ticket, and a note reading ‘Go to Paris’. But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure … When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.”
Will you look out for one or more of these?
Any other 2024 reads you can recommend?
That’s it for me until later next week when I start in on my year-end round-ups (DNFs, miscellaneous superlatives, books of the year, and final statistics). Merry Christmas!
Review Catch-Up: Monica, Bibliomaniac, Family Meal, Fudge & More
I’m catching up with reviews of the many October releases I read, including these four sent by publishers…
- a genre-bending, Technicolor graphic novel in the form of short comics
- a book-addict’s memoir of an ambitious Covid-times tour of Britain’s bookshops
- an understated novel about queer men of colour coping with death and mental illness
- and a quirky contemporary poetry collection I read in one sitting.
Followed by a bonus list of October books I reviewed for Shelf Awareness, similarly varied in genre: autofiction, flash fiction, horror-tinged historical fiction, graphic memoirs and more.
Monica by Daniel Clowes
Daniel Clowes is a respected American graphic novelist best known for Ghost World, which was adapted into a 2001 film starring Scarlett Johansson. I’m not sure what I was expecting of Monica. Perhaps something closer to a quiet life story like Alison by Lizzy Stewart? In any case, not this jumble of 1970s nostalgia and supernatural horror. The book is in nine loosely connected stories that make the head spin with their genre and tonal shifts; one thing that stays constant is Clowes’s drawing style, which combines vibrant, campy colour with exaggerated faces and blunt haircuts.
At first it seems there will be a straightforward linear narrative: the prologue, “Foxhole,” has two soldiers dreaming of what life will be like Vietnam, with the one looking forward to a simple life with his fiancée Penny. “Pretty Penny” shatters those illusions as we see that Penny has fully embraced sexual liberation while he’s been away. She rejects her mother and, in a countercultural decision, keeps the baby when she gets pregnant. Young Monica has a sequence of stepfather figures before Penny dumps her with her parents and goes AWOL.
To an extent, the rest of the book is about Monica’s search for her parents. We see her as a young college student communicating with her dead grandfather via a radio, as a successful entrepreneur selling candles, and as an older woman caretaking for a California Airbnb. But in between there are bizarre sci-fi/folk horror interludes – “The Glow Infernal” and “The Incident” – about unconnected characters, and Monica’s involvement with a cult inevitably turns strange. I couldn’t get past the distasteful story lines or grotesque style. Mostly, I wasn’t convinced that Clowes liked or cared about any of his own characters, so why should I? (This might be Tom Cox’s dream book, but not mine.) I suppose I might try a classic work by Clowes one day, but only if I can be assured that it has more plot and heart.
With thanks to Jonathan Cape (Penguin) for the free copy for review.
Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour of the Bookshops of Britain by Robin Ince
Do you know anyone who can buy just one book? Do you know anyone who leaves a bookshop only with what they walked in to buy?
I understand that Robin Ince is a radio personality and comedian who, though holding no formal qualifications, often delivers presentations about science. He was meant to undertake a stadium tour with Professor Brian Cox in the autumn of 2021, but a Covid resurgence put paid to that. Not one for sitting around at home – he comes across as driven, antsy; positively allergic to boredom – he formulated Plan B: 100+ events, most of them in independent bookshops (the oddest venue was a Chinese restaurant; he was speaking to the Plymouth Humanists), over the course of two months, criss-crossing Britain and hitting many favourite places such as Hay-on-Wye, Hungerford (my local indie) and Wigtown. The topic of his previous book was curiosity, which gave him free rein to feature anything that interested him, so no two talks were the same and he incorporated lots of ad hoc book recommendations.
Ince is not just a speaker at the bookshops but, invariably, a customer – as well as at just about every charity shop in a town. Even when he knows he’ll be carrying his purchases home in his luggage on the train, he can’t resist a browse. And while his shopping basket would look wildly different to mine (his go-to sections are science and philosophy, the occult, 1960s pop and alternative culture; alongside a wide but utterly unpredictable range of classic and contemporary fiction and antiquarian finds), I sensed a kindred spirit in so many lines:
“A bookshop with a proximity to an interesting graveyard is a fine combination.”
“I like charity bookshops, because I can delude myself into believing that I am committing an altruistic act by purchasing too many books. I am not satisfying my consumer lust – I am digging a well in Uganda.”
“This is one of the wonders of books: the delight of being a species that can chronicle and preserve. I pick up a book from a shelf, and someone who is no more than ash or bone can still change me.”
He’s also refreshingly open-minded, determined not to become a white male dinosaur: he once spent a wonderful year reading only women authors, and gratefully accepts the gift of a Black queer feminist work – at which he knows a younger version of himself would have scoffed. I took lots of notes on shops I hadn’t heard of, but also appreciated the witty asides on British ways and on the rigours and coincidences of the tour. If you liked White Spines, this will be right up your street, though to me this was universal where the Royle was too niche. And it didn’t matter a jot that I was previously unfamiliar with Ince as a public figure.
Bibliomaniac came out in paperback on 5 October. My thanks to Atlantic Books for the free copy for review.
Family Meal by Bryan Washington
After the verve of his linked short stories (Lot, which won the Dylan Thomas Prize) and the offbeat tenderness of his debut novel, Memorial, I couldn’t wait for Bryan Washington’s next book. While it’s set in the multicultural Houston of his first book and similarly peopled by young queer men of colour, Family Meal shares the more melancholy edge of Memorial with its focus on bereavement and the habits and relationships that help the characters to cope.
Cam has moved back to Houston from Los Angeles after the untimely death of his boyfriend Kai, who had a budding career as a translator and spent part of each year in Japan. Cam works in a failing gay bar, crashes with his boss and has mostly stopped eating. Although he still loves cooking Asian food for others, he rarely tastes it himself; his overpowering appetite now is for pills and sex, leading him to arrange as many as four hook-ups per day. Kai still appears and communicates to him. “Easier to spend time dwelling on death than it is to live, says Kai.” Is it to escape this spectre, or the memory of what happened to Kai, that Cam descends into his addictions? Meanwhile, his estranged friend TJ, with whom Cam grew up at TJ’s Korean American family’s bakery after the death of Cam’s parents, has his own history of loss and unhealthy relationships. But a connection with the bakery’s new nonbinary employee, Noel, seems like it might be different.
If you’ve read Washington before, you’ll know what to expect: no speech marks, obscenity-strewn dialogue, sexually explicit scenes that seem to be there for the sake of it (because sex is part of life, rather than because they particularly advance the plot). An issue I had here, like with Memorial, is that having multiple first-person narrators doesn’t add anything; Kai and TJ sound so much like Cam, who narrates roughly the first half, that it’s hard to tell their affectless accounts apart. Such interchangeable voices two books running suggests to me that Washington hasn’t yet managed to fully imagine himself outside of his own personality.
The novel has much to convey about found family, food as nurture, and how we try to fill the emptiness in our lives with things that aren’t good for us. However, it often delivers these messages through what wise secondary characters say, which struck me as unsubtle.
“You don’t have to do this alone, says TJ.”
(Kai:) “My mother would say, Cooking is care. The act is the care.”
“Love can be a lot of things though, says Noel. Right? It’s pleasure but it’s also washing the dishes and sorting medication and folding the laundry. It’s picking out what to eat for dinner three nights in a row, even if you don’t want to. And it’s knowing when to speak up, and when to stay quiet, and when, I think, to move on. But also when to fight for it.”
“Sometimes the best we can do is live for each other, she [Kai’s sister] says. It’s enough. Even if it seems like it isn’t.”
There’s no doubting how heartfelt this story is. It brought tears to my eyes at the beginning and end, but in between did not captivate me as much as I hoped. While intermittently poignant on the subject of bereavement, it is so mired in the characters’ unhealthy coping mechanisms that it becomes painful to read.
In my mind Washington and Brandon Taylor are in the same basket, though that may be reductive or unimaginative of me (young, gay Black authors from the American South who have published three books and tend to return to the same themes and settings). Before this year I would have said Taylor had the edge, but The Late Americans was so disappointingly similar to his previous work that Washington has taken the lead. I just hope that with his next work he challenges himself instead of coasting along in the groove he’s created thus far.
I wish I could get a copy of this into the hands of Sufjan Stevens…
With thanks to Atlantic Books for the free copy for review.
Fudge by Andrew Weatherhead
I read this over a chilled-out coffee at the Globe bar in Hay-on-Wye (how perfect, then, to come across the lines “I know the secret of life / Is to read good books”). Weatherhead mostly charts the rhythms of everyday existence in pandemic-era New York City, especially through a haiku sequence (“The blind cat asleep / On my lap—and coffee / Just out of reach” – a situation familiar to any cat owner). His style is matter-of-fact and casually funny, juxtaposing random observations about hipster-ish experiences. From “Things the Photoshop Instructor Said and Did”: “Someone gasped when he increased the contrast / I feel like everyone here is named Taylor.”
The central piece, “Poem While on Hold with NBA League Pass Customer Support Nov. 17, 2018,” descends into the absurd, but his four hours lost on the phone are reclaimed through his musings on a sport he once played (“I had begun to find meaning in art and music / I was always too cerebral a player anyways … That feeling—of perfect grace and equanimity— / must be what we’re all searching for in this life”) and on life in general. This is poetry that doesn’t feel like poetry, if that makes sense. I have a hunch that it might appeal to readers of David Foster Wallace.
Published by Publishing Genius. With thanks to publicist Lori Hettler for the e-copy for review.
Reviewed for Shelf Awareness:
(Links to full text)
The Flowers of Provence by Jamie Beck (Gift books feature): A gorgeous book of photographs, perfect for gardeners, romantics, and armchair travelers. Her still lifes are as detailed and colorful as medieval paintings.
Edith Holler by Edward Carey (forthcoming): A dark fairy tale about a precocious girl confined to her family’s theatre in Norwich, England yet driven to reveal the truth behind her city’s child disappearances. Reminiscent of Dahl, Dickens, and Shakespeare at their goriest.
I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast: A laugh-out-loud-funny tour through her dream journal as well as a brief introduction to dream theory. Delightfully captures the randomness of dream topics and dialogues.
Tremor by Teju Cole: A kaleidoscopic work of autofiction that journeys between the US and Nigeria as it questions the ownership and meaning of Black art. The sophisticated structure is a highlight of this elegant study of art criticism, suffering, and subjectivity.
Our Strangers by Lydia Davis (Review and Q&A): In her ninth collection of mostly flash-length stories (a whopping 143 of them), an overarching theme is the mystery of human communication and connection. A real cornucopia of genres, structures, and voices. [Only available via Bookshop.org and independent bookstores.]
Lotería by Esteban Rodríguez: Lotería is a traditional Mexican game of chance. Each Spanish-language card is allotted a one-page poem in a creative, poignant recounting of his Mexican American family history.
Glass Half Empty by Rachael Smith: The British comics artist third graphic memoir is a refreshingly candid account of her recovery from alcoholism after her father’s death. In some panes, her adult self appears alongside her younger self, offering advice.
The Dead Peasant’s Handbook by Brian Turner: The final installment – after The Wild Delight of Wild Things and The Goodbye World Poem – in an intimate, autobiographical trilogy. Love is presented as the key to surviving bereavement and wartime trauma.
Short Stories in September, Part III: Linked Collections by Jonathan Escoffery & Soraya Palmer
These two debut linked short story collections had enough in common to get a mention in yesterday’s Book Serendipity post, including a 2023 publication date, a central sibling pair, Jamaican heritage, and memories of a devastating hurricane.
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
A starred Kirkus review first put this on my radar, and I requested a copy back in February. Though I enjoyed the first two stories, I then set the book aside. Its longlisting for this year’s Booker Prize reminded me to pick it back up and it’s now one of the six on the shortlist.
Five of eight stories are filtered through the consciousness of Trelawny, the younger son of Topper and Sanya, who immigrated to Miami in the late 1970s to escape unrest in Kingston, Jamaica. Older brother Delano is the golden boy, yet in a post-recession landscape both sons struggle to get by. After their parents’ split, the family home seems like a totem of security.
An accident leads Delano to give up his tree service business and pursue reggae music professionally. Trees play a pivotal role: when Topper humiliates him at a party by calling him “soft” and “defective,” Trelawny attacks his father’s beloved ackee tree with an axe. After Topper kicks him out, Trelawny lives in his car, accepting a succession of strange and sordid gigs (the stuff of “Odd Jobs” and the title story; “in Miami … you’re as likely to wind up getting your organs harvested as you are to make a profit”) before settling on teaching.
Three stories are in the always engaging second person (one of those inhabiting Topper’s perspective), three are narrated in the first person by Trelawny, and two are in the third person – the one about Delano and another about their cousin Cukie (“Splashdown”). Family legacy, particularly from fathers, is a major theme. “I felt sick with hatred,” Trelawny says. “For her [racist] father, yes, but for all fathers, for their propensity for passing down the worst of themselves.”
Trelawny is an entertaining POV character, jaded but quick-witted as he navigates microaggressions. People are confused about whether he’s African American or Latino. “In Flux,” the opening story and probably the strongest, has him coming to terms with what it means to be Black in America while living in Florida or at college in the Midwest, prompted by a question he frequently has to field: “What are you?” My other favourite story was “Independent Living,” in which he’s an administrator for an oversubscribed senior housing block and has to become as wily as his residents.
Escoffery creates a strong sense of place and character. I suspect there’s a lot that’s autobiographical here, as is common in first books. His ambivalence about sites that hold personal significance is palpable. Ideally, a linked collection will be composed of confident stand-alone stories that together are more than the sum of their parts. I didn’t really feel that about these. While the voice is promising and several stories are highlights, the whole didn’t set me on fire. (And I’d be astonished if it won the Booker. That’ll go to a guy named Paul.) Maybe Escoffery has a great novel brewing, though.
A favourite passage:
“On the day you are scheduled to begin the sixth grade, a hurricane named Andrew pops your house’s roof open, peeling it back like the lid of a Campbell’s soup can, pouring a fraction of the Atlantic into your bedroom, living room—everywhere—bloating carpet, drywall, and fibreboard with sopping sea salt corrosion. It disinters the kidney-colored fibreglass from the walls and ceiling, splaying the house’s entrails on the lawn. The storm chops your neighbor’s house to rubble, parks a tugboat at the far end of your street.”
With thanks to 4th Estate for the free copy for review.
Buy from Bookshop [affiliate link].
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter & Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer
Sasha and Zora are steeped in Caribbean folklore absorbed from their parents. Nigel, from Jamaica, tells them about “Rolling Calf,” the vengeful ghost of a butcher paying penance for all the animals he slaughtered; Trinidadian Beatrice reminds them that the hero of the Anansi stories is a woman. Like the trickster spider, these Brooklyn adolescents will have to live by their wits when their family disintegrates – Nigel leaves to marry a German woman and Beatrice returns to Trinidad when she’s diagnosed with metastatic skin cancer.
Apart from a few third-person segments about the parents, the chapters, set between 1997 and 2005, trade off first-person narration duties between Zora, a romantic would-be writer, and Sasha, the black sheep and substitute family storyteller-in-chief, who dates women and goes by Ashes when she starts wearing a binder. It’s interesting to discover examples of queer erasure in both parents’ past, connecting Beatrice more tightly to Sasha than it first appears – people always condemn most vehemently what they’re afraid of revealing in themselves.
I’ve had too much of the patois + legends/magic realism combo recently (e.g., When We Were Birds) and Palmer tries too hard to root her stories in time through 1990s pop culture references. She also exhibits a slightly annoying MFA stylistic showiness, whereas Escoffery’s work feels more natural. Still, this is more novel than stories (the opposite is true for If I Survive You) and thus the kind of book that would make a good wildcard selection on the Women’s Prize longlist. (Passed along by a book club friend)
A favourite passage:
Zora: “It was like the end of a Jenga game, the way shit just fell apart. Our family foundation had been fading slowly for years, and yet when it all collapsed, it seemed to happen all at once.”
Buy from Bookshop [affiliate link].
Final reviews and a roundup coming up soon.
Currently reading: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro; Close Company: Stories of Mothers and Daughters, ed. Christine Park; Small, Burning Things by Cathy Ulrich
Book Serendipity, August to September 2023
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.
In Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop, Alba Donati remarks on this phenomenon: “Jung called these coincidences ‘synchronicities’, postulating that the universe possessed its own form of intelligence, which generated harmonies. A universe that detects and brings together the elements it feels are seeking each other in the endless swirl of life. Chance be damned.”
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. The following are in roughly chronological order.
- A memoir that opens with a little girl being injured in a bicycle accident: Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin and Pharmakon by Almudena Sánchez.
- Telling stories through embroidery in Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera and The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks.
- A small boy nicknamed “Willmouse” (real name: William) in Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout and The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden.
- An account of a routine sonogram that ends with the technician leaving the doctor to deliver bad news in Reproduction by Louisa Hall and The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan.
- Black dreadlocks/braid/ponytail being cut off in When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright, and Rebecca, Not Becky by Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene.
- Wondering how to arm a Black daughter against racist microaggressions in Rebecca, Not Becky by Christine Platt and Catherine Wigginton Greene and Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe.
- Countering the commodification or romanticization of Black suffering in The Book of Delights by Ross Gay and Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe.
- An account of how the foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001 affected the UK, especially northwest England, in Making the Beds for the Dead by Gillian Clarke and The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks.
- I encountered the quote from Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain about pain being inexpressible in Reproduction by Louisa Hall and The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke on the same day. It’s also referenced in Mary Jean Chan’s Bright Fear.
- A mention of eating frogs’ legs in The Book of Delights by Ross Gay and La Vie by John Lewis-Stempel.
- I read about the effects of heavy metal pollution on the body in The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke and Windswept by Annie Worsley in the same evening.
- Composer Erik Satie is mentioned in Making the Beds for the Dead by Gillian Clarke and August Blue by Deborah Levy.
- Stendhal syndrome and Florence are mentioned in The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright and Pharmakon by Almudena Sánchez.
- Swallows nesting in an old Continental building in Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati and La Vie by John Lewis-Stempel.
- France being all about the rules and a “Putain de merde” exclamation to bad news in Dirt by Bill Buford and La Vie by John Lewis-Stempel.
- A character named Nomi in Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan and one called Noemi in Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati.
- Epigenetics (trauma literally determining the genetic traits that are passed on) is discussed in The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke and Pharmakon by Almudena Sánchez.
- Women of a certain age in Tuscany in The Three Graces by Amanda Craig and Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati.
- Audre Lorde is quoted in Tremor by Teju Cole, Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince, The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke, Alone by Daniel Schreiber, and Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe.
- A Galway Kinnell poem is mentioned/quoted in The Dead Peasant’s Handbook by Brian Turner and Otherwise by Julie Marie Wade.
- The Bamiyan Buddhas are mentioned in Tremor by Teju Cole and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook by Brian Turner.
- Both The Three Graces by Amanda Craig and The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor open with a man shooting someone from his bedroom window.
- Linked short story collections about two children’s relationship with their Jamaican father, and mention of a devastating hurricane, in If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery and The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer. (Dual review coming up tomorrow!)
- Characters named Ben and Mara in The Whispers by Ashley Audrain and one story in Kate Doyle’s I Meant It Once.
- Occasional uncut pages in my copies of I Meant It Once by Kate Doyle and The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan.
- A Florida setting and mention of the Publix supermarket chain in If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery and Arms and Legs by Chloe Lane.
- A down-at-heel English seaside town near Scarborough features in The Seaside by Madeleine Bunting and Penance by Eliza Clark.
- A fictional northern town with “Crow” in the name: Crow-on-Sea in Penance by Eliza Clark and Crows Bank in Weyward by Emilia Hart.
- Claw-machine toys are mentioned in Penance by Eliza Clark and Directions to Myself by Heidi Julavits.
- Reading books by two Nobel Prize winners at the same time: Abdulrazak Gurnah (By the Sea) and Alice Munro (Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage).
- Reading my second 2023 release featuring North Carolina ghost lights (after All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer, which I actually read last year): The Caretaker by Ron Rash.
- Reading my second 2023 release featuring a cat named Virginia Woolf (after Tell the Rest by Lucy Jane Bledsoe, which I actually read last year): one of the short stories in I Meant It Once by Kate Doyle.
- A character named Shay in Everyone but Myself by Julie Chavez, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer and The Caretaker by Ron Rash.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Short Stories in September, Part II: Brautigan, Doyle, Minot, Simpson
Every time I do this self-set challenge, I am amazed anew by how different short story collections can be in mood and theme – even if their overall concerns are the same as in most fiction: life and death, relationships, identity, choices. Today I have one debut work, two new-to-me authors, and a disappointing showing from an old favourite.
Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962–1970 by Richard Brautigan (1972)
There are more than five dozen stories in this slim volume, most just one to three pages and in the first person (55 of 62); bizarre or matter-of-fact slices of life in the Pacific Northwest or California, often with a grandiose title that’s then contradicted by the banality of the contents (e.g., in the three-page “A Short History of Religion in California,” some deer hunters encounter a group of Christian campers). The simple declarative sentences and mentions of drinking and hunting made me think of Carver and Hemingway, but Brautigan is funnier, coming out with the occasional darkly comic zinger. Here’s “The Scarlatti Tilt” in its entirety: “‘It’s very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who’s learning to play the violin.’ That’s what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.”
In the absurdist “Homage to the San Francisco YMCA,” a man replaces his plumbing with poetry: “He took out his bathtub and put in William Shakespeare. The bathtub did not know what was happening. He took out his kitchen sink and put in Emily Dickinson. The kitchen sink could only stare back in wonder.” Brautigan has an incomer’s admiration for California: “I come from someplace else and was gathered to the purpose of California like a metal-eating flower gathers the sunshine.” Many of the flash stories feel autobiographical and bridge country and city life with themes of bear hunting versus movie-going and riding buses.
There are some macho attitudes towards women, who are generally objects of male desire rather than subjects in their own right. But I appreciated this flash fiction collection for its unexpected metaphors and tonal range, from the over-the-top humour of “Complicated Banking Problems” to a pathos-filled rundown of a life in “The World War I Los Angeles Aeroplane.” (Secondhand – Westwood Books, Sedbergh, 2023) 
I Meant It Once by Kate Doyle (2023)
A debut collection of 16 stories, three of them returning to the same sibling trio. Many of Doyle’s characters are young people who still define themselves by the experiences and romances of their college years. In “That Is Shocking,” Margaret can’t get over the irony of her ex breaking up with her on Valentine’s Day after giving her a plate of heart-shaped scones. Former roommates Christine and Daisy are an example of fading friendship in “Two Pisces Emote about the Passage of Time.”
The title phrase comes from “Cinnamon Baseball Coyote,” one of the Helen–Grace–Evan stories, when the sparring sisters are children and the one writes down “I hate my sister” and saves the paper in her desk because, as she tells their father, “I don’t mean it anymore. I only kept it because I meant it once.” Moments of great drama or emotion, and the regret that comes in their aftermath, are the stuff of these mainly New York City-set stories.
Across nine first-person and seven third-person stories, the content and point of view are pretty samey and minor; nothing here to make you feel you’re reading a rising star of American fiction. I only found a few standouts. “Hello It’s You” is about Meg’s history of same-sex partners: though she’s with Sara now, she can’t stop thinking about Jenny, her college girlfriend. “Aren’t We Lucky” has a soupçon of magic as it imagines a house and its ghosts resisting renovations. But my favourite was “Moments Earlier,” about Kelly’s medical crisis and the friends who never get past it.
With thanks to Corsair for the free copy for review. See also Susan’s review.
Why I Don’t Write and Other Stories by Susan Minot (2020)
Minot was new to me (as was Brautigan). These stories were first published between 1991 and 2019, so they span a good chunk of her career. “Polepole” depicts a short-lived affair between two white people in Kenya, one of whom seems to have a dated colonial attitude. In “The Torch,” a woman with dementia mistakes her husband for an old flame. “Occupied” sees Ivy cycling past the NYC Occupy camp on her way to pick up her daughter. The title story, published at LitHub in 2018, is a pithy list of authorial excuses. “Listen” is a nebulous set of lines of unattributed speech that didn’t add up to much for me. “The Language of Cats and Dogs” reminded me of Mary Gaitskill in tone, as a woman remembers her professor’s inappropriate behaviour 40 years later.
Eight of the stories are in the third person and two in the first person. They’re almost all accomplished in terms of scene setting and creating characters and motivations, but I can’t say Minot won me over such that I’ll seek out more of her work. Only a few stories will stay with me: “Green Glass,” in which a man encounters his ex-girlfriend at a wedding and cuts her down to size in a way that alarms his current partner; “Boston Common at Twilight,” an account of a strange but ultimately non-consensual sexual encounter; and my favourite, “Café Mort,” the only one with a speculative edge, about an establishment that only serves the dead. (New bargain purchase – Dollar Tree, Hagerstown, Maryland, 2023)
Hey Yeah Right Get a Life by Helen Simpson (2000)
This was my sixth collection from Simpson, who only appears to write short fiction. This was one of my least favourite of her books, unfortunately, because her common theme of frazzled mothers trying to balance parenting with career felt tired. The title story is about Dorrie, mum of three, and this set of characters recurs in the final piece, “Hurrah for the Hols.” Simpson does get the mindset just right:
She had to be thinking of other people all the time or the whole thing fell apart.
I can’t see how the family would work if I let myself start wanting things again, thought Dorrie; give me an inch and I’d run a mile, that’s what I’m afraid of.
The whole pattern of family life hung for a vivid moment above the chopping board as a seamless cycle of nourishment and devoural.
It was like being on holiday with Punch and Judy – lots of biffing and shrieking and fights over sausages.
But I’ve read too many of her exasperated-mum stories at this point. Two here were about female bankers. One, “Burns and the Bankers,” set at a seemingly endless Burns Night supper, rather outstayed its welcome and made overly obvious its message about this being a man’s field. Do read Simpson, but maybe not this (despite the amazing title); I’d recommend Four Bare Legs in a Bed or In the Driver’s Seat (UK title: Constitutional) instead. (Secondhand – Books for Amnesty, York, 2023)
I’ll have one more set of reviews and a roundup on the last day of the month.
Currently reading: If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery; The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff; How to Disappear by Tara Masih; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro; The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer; Close Company: Stories of Mothers and Daughters, ed. Christine Park; Small, Burning Things by Cathy Ulrich
June Releases by K Patrick, Brandon Taylor and More
These two sensual, campus-set queer novels were perfect additional reading for Pride Month. As a bonus, I read a recently reissued postcolonial poetry collection.
Mrs S by K Patrick
Like Tom Crewe’s The New Life, this was one of the Guardian’s 2023 debuts to look out for, and both are seriously sexy. Patrick’s unnamed narrator is an early-twenties Australian, shunned by her family, who has come to England to be a matron at a girls’ boarding school. No other characters are named, either, with The Girls discussed in aggregate and the whole institution – a tradition-bound place that issues a classical education – in thrall to the memory of “the dead author,” an Emily Brontë-like figure whose genius is both inspiration and burden.
The narrator is butch and wears a binder, and in fact, we soon learn, is not the only lesbian on staff. She and the Housemistress become drinking buddies, even venturing into the nearest large town to frequent a gay bar. But there’s also Mrs S, the headmaster’s wife, perhaps 20 years her senior, whose attention initially seems maternal – as they tend the rose garden, lead an art lesson together and fill in for a play performance – but gradually becomes more erotic when they go wild swimming and meet in the kitchen during a dinner party.
A heat wave gives the novel a sultry atmosphere as hints give way to explicit scenes. The Girls’ little dramas (one punches a boy and breaks his nose at a campus party; one group gets drunk while another gets high on mushrooms) pale in comparison to the steamy secrets. Summer romances can never last, but their intensity is legendary, and this feels like an instant standard of the type. Given the pre-Internet clues, it likely dates to the 1990s, and Mrs S and the narrator are on different pages about gender roles; had it been today, the narrator would surely have been frankly nonbinary like Patrick.
Her heterosexuality, public-facing. Its cosy violence. Who does she want to be? If I ask her that, she might fall apart. If I ask her that, I must be willing to live through the answer. … She is trying to be two people, I am not. Maybe I was. Not anymore.
The author takes the no-speech-marks thing to another level, the dialogue all in paragraph form with no new lines for each speaker. That and the under-punctuation are deliberate choices that make this somehow hyper-contemporary and a throwback to the Bloomsbury modernists all at once – what with the metaphors of propagating roses and garden fecundity, I couldn’t help but think of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Mrs S isn’t your average coming-of-age story, seduction narrative, or cougar stereotype. It’s a new queer classic.
With thanks to Europa Editions for the free copy for review. Released in the UK by Fourth Estate.
The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor
I was a huge fan of Taylor’s debut novel, the Booker-shortlisted Real Life, and also admired his follow-up linked story collection, Filthy Animals. This third book falls somewhere between the two in style. Although it’s been marketed as a novel, the nine close third person chapters are so discrete as to be more like short stories, all orbiting a group of students at the University of Iowa: many BIPOC, most gay; lots of them current or former ballet dancers.
Seamus is the subject of the opening title story and “Gorgon’s Head,” so he felt to me like the core of the novel and I would happily have had him as the protagonist throughout. He’s a spiky would-be poet who ends up offending his classmates with his snobby opinions (“her poems were, in the words of a fictional Robert Lowell in an Elizabeth Bishop biopic, ‘observations broken into lines’ … she lacked a poetic intelligence”) and funds his studies by working in the kitchen at a hospice, where he meets a rough local named Bert and they have a sexual encounter that shades into cruelty.
Other characters include on-again, off-again homosexual couples Fyodor and Timo, and Ivan and Goran. Their fundamental differences account for why they so often spar: Fyodor works in a meat-packing plant, while Timo is vegetarian; Goran lives off family wealth, whereas Ivan has to get by on his own, and starts making amateur pornography for money. Noah, too, has the misfortune to get involved with Bert; most of the men, in fact, sleep with one or more of the other men. It’s hard to believe in the durability of this incestuous group. They’re all facing transitions as their studies come to an end, looking for jobs or internships, sometimes switching fields and deciding whether to leave relationships behind. Two late chapters from the perspectives of women, Noah’s neighbour Bea and dancer Fatima, who experiences sexualized shaming, were refreshing. Overall, I’m torn: Taylor’s writing can be stunning:
Iowa was a kind of cultural winter—they had all come to this speck of a city in the middle of a middle state in order to study art, to hone themselves and their ideas like perfect, terrifying weapons, and in the monastic kind of deprivation they found here, they turned to one another. Every dying species sought its own kind of comfort.
They were all posturing all the time. Everything they did was a posture, defensive or offensive, meant to demonstrate something to the outside world, perhaps that they were worthy or good or all right, perhaps to imply that they were in on the joke, that they were nothing and all they had were these crude choreographies of the self.
But it can also be laughable:
There was a resinous, burning taste in Noah’s mouth, and he wondered if it was from the semen or the cigarette or the pepper on the trout at dinner.
And even when it’s sublime, it feels a bit wasted on repetitive stories of meaningless hook-ups, assault, and resentment. This ended up being something of a disappointment from my Most Anticipated list. After three books about angsty homosexuals at midwestern universities, the author is in real danger of being perceived as a one-trick pony. I hope he’ll stretch himself and try something different with his next book.
With thanks to Jonathan Cape for the proof copy for review. Released in the USA by Riverhead.
And a bonus:
The Fat Black Woman’s Poems by Grace Nichols (1984)
I discovered Grace Nichols a few years ago when I reviewed Passport to Here and There for Wasafiri. One of “Five Gold Reads” to mark Virago’s 50th anniversary, this was the Guyanese-British poet’s second collection (the reissue also includes a few poems from her first book, I Is a Long-Memoried Woman).
The title character is a woman of pleasures, jovial and sensual, but not without cliches (“Come up and see me sometime // My breasts are huge exciting / amnions of watermelon”). I preferred the later sections of the book about childhood memories and the expat’s dilemma: what you miss haunts you, even if what you gained in leaving was objectively better.
In London
every now and then
I get this craving
for my mother’s food
I leave art galleries
in search of plantains
These islands
not picture postcards
for unravelling tourist
you know
…
Poverty is the price we pay for the sun
The patois reminded me of work I’ve read by Bernardine Evaristo and Jackie Kay, and I might recommend the collection as a whole to readers of Fire Rush or Cane, Corn & Gully. But it didn’t spark much for me compared with Nichols’ more recent poetry.
With thanks to Virago for the free copy for review.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 