Tag Archives: Lisa Alward

Book Serendipity, March to April 2024

By Rebecca Foster on April 17, 2024 | 15 Comments

I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. The following are in roughly chronological order.

I encountered quotes from “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats on the same day in Immanuel by Matthew McNaught and Waiting for the Monsoon by Rod Nordland. A week or so later, I found another allusion to it – a “rough _________ slouching toward ________” – in Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

Reading my second memoir this year in which the author’s mother bathed them until they were age 17 (in other words, way past when it ceased to be appropriate): I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy was followed by Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

Quoting a poem with the word “riven” in it (by Christian Wiman) in Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown and (by a character in the novel) in Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson. The word “riven” (which is really not a very common one, is it?) also showed up in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs. And then “riving” in one of the poems in The Intimacy of Spoons by Jim Minick.

East Timor as a destination in Waiting for the Monsoon by Rod Nordland and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

Quoting John Donne in Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (to which a Donne line is the epigraph); mimicking Donne in one poem of Fields Away by Sarah Wardle.

“Who do you think you are?” as a question an abusive adult asks of a child in The Beggar Maid (aka Who Do You Think You Are?) by Alice Munro and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

Sylvia Plath is mentioned in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray … and Katherine Mansfield in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro.

Mosquitoes are mentioned in a poem in Rapture’s Road by Seán Hewitt and Divisible by Itself and One by Kae Tempest.

Reading two memoirs that quote a Rumi poem (and that released on 9 April and that I reviewed for Shelf Awareness): Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller and Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott. (Rumi was also quoted as an epigraph in Viv Fogel’s poetry collection Imperfect Beginnings.)

Bereavement memoirs that seek significance in eagle sightings (i.e. as visitations from the dead): Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller.

Snyder’s pretzels as a snack in Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott and Come and Get It by Kiley Reid.

Reading two C-PTSD memoirs at the same time: A Flat Place by Noreen Masud and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

Information about coral reefs dying in Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

The gay slang term “twink” appears in The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

Assisting a mother who reads tarot cards in Intervals by Marianne Brooker and The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. (Tarot is also read in First Love by Lilly Dancyger and The Future by Catherine Leroux.)

An Asian American character who plays poker in a graphic novel: Advocate by Eddie Ahn and Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang.

Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments, which I was also reading at the time, is mentioned in Intervals by Marianne Brooker.

An Uncle Frank in an Irish novel with no speech marks: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is quoted in Some Kids I Taught & What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy and How to Raise a Viking by Helen Russell.

Using quarters for laundry in Come and Get It by Kiley Reid and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.

A scene of someone watching from a lawn chair as someone else splits wood in Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray.

Quotes from cultural theorist Sara Ahmed in Intervals by Marianne Brooker and A Flat Place by Noreen Masud.

I read about windows being blocked up because of high taxes on the same evening in Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.

I saw Quink ink mentioned in The Silence by Gillian Clarke and Trespasses by Louise Kennedy on the same evening.

The song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” is mentioned in You’re on Your Own, Snoopy by Charles M. Schulz and Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal.

A pet magpie in George by Frieda Hughes and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.

A character tests to see what will happen (will God strike them down?) when they mess with the Host (by stealing the ciborium or dropping a wafer on the floor, respectively) in A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.

Marrying the ‘wrong’ brother in The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.

Indigenous author, Native versus Catholic religion, and descriptions of abuse and cultural suppression at residential schools in Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.

Teen girls obsessed with ‘sad girl’ poetry, especially by Sylvia Plath, in First Love by Lilly Dancyger and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

“Hyacinth” is a poem in Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space by Catherine Barnett, and “Hyacinth Girl” a story in Cocktail by Lisa Alward. (Hyacinths are also mentioned in a poem in The Iron Bridge by Rebecca Hurst.)

A character named Sissy in A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.

Harming amphibians, whether deliberately or accidentally, in a story in Barcelona by Mary Costello, a poem in Baby Schema by Isabel Galleymore, and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

A significant character called Paul in Dances by Nicole Cuffy, Daughter by Claudia Dey (those two were both longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize), and Moral Injuries by Christie Watson.

Out of Africa (the film and then the book), which I was looking through for the #1937Club, is mentioned in The Whole Staggering Mystery by Sylvia Brownrigg – her writer grandfather lived in Nairobi’s “Happy Valley” in the 1930s.

Reading two novels at the same time in which a teen girl’s plans to study medicine are derailed by war: Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan and The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz.

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

Posted in: book serendipity | Tagged: Alexandra Fuller, Alice Munro, Annabel Abbs, Anne Lamott, book serendipity, Carol Shields, Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, Catherine Barnett, Catherine Leroux, Charles Schulz, Charlotte Wood, Chris La Tray, Christian Wiman, Christie Watson, Claudia Dey, Eddie Ahn, Francesca Segal, Frieda Hughes, Gene Luen Yang, Gillian Clarke, graphic novels, Greg Wrenn, Helen Russell, indigenous religion, Isabel Galleymore, Isak Dinesen, Jennette McCurdy, Jim Minick, Joanna Pearson, John Donne, Kae Tempest, Karen Blixen, Kate Clanchy, Katherine Mansfield, Kaveh Akbar, Kenya, Kiley Reid, Lilly Dancyger, Lisa Alward, Louise Kennedy, Marianne Brooker, Mary Costello, Matthew McNaught, Molly McCully Brown, Mona Susan Power, Nicole Cuffy, Noreen Masud, Paul Murray, Paula Lichtarowicz, poetry, Rebecca Hurst, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, Rod Nordland, Rumi, Sarah Wardle, Seán Hewitt, Sylvia Brownrigg, Sylvia Plath, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Viv Fogel, Vivian Gornick, W.B. Yeats

Carol Shields Prize Longlist Reads: Cocktail & Land of Milk and Honey

By Rebecca Foster on April 8, 2024 | 14 Comments

Two final reviews in advance of tomorrow’s shortlist announcement: a sophisticated, nostalgic short story collection and an intense future-set novel full of the pleasures of the flesh. Both make it onto my wish list at the end of this post.

Cocktail by Lisa Alward

The 12 stories of this debut collection brought to mind Tessa Hadley and Alice Munro for their look back at chic or sordid 1960s–1980s scenes and dysfunctional families or faltering marriages. They’re roughly half and half first-person and third-person (five versus seven). The title story opens the book with a fantastic line: “The problem with parties, my mother says, is people don’t drink enough.” Later, the narrator elaborates:

Her meaning is that if people drank more, they’d loosen up. Parties would be more fun, like they used to be. And I laugh along. Yes, I say, letting her top up my glass of Chardonnay. That’s it, not enough booze. But I’m thinking about Tom Collins.

Not the drink, but an alias a party guest used when he stumbled into her bedroom looking for a toilet. She was about eleven at this point and she and her brother vaguely resented being shut away from their parents’ parties. While for readers this is an uncomfortable moment as we wonder if she’s about to be molested, in memory it’s taken on a rosy glow for her – a taste of adult composure and freedom that she has sought with every partner and every glass of booze since. This was a pretty much perfect story, with a knock-out ending to boot.

Dependence on alcohol recurs, and “Hawthorne Yellow,” is also about a not-quite affair, between a restless stay-at-home mother and the decorator who discovers antique sketches in the old servants’ quarters of her home. “Orlando, 1974” again contrasts childhood nostalgia with seedy reality: Disney World should have been an idyll, but the narrator mostly remembers a lot of vomiting. “Old Growth” and “Bear Country” have Ray renegotiating his relationship with his son after divorcing Gwyneth. “Hyacinth Girl,” too, is about complicated stepfamilies, while “Wise Men Say” looks back at cross-class romance. The protagonist of “Maeve” feels she can’t match the title character’s perfect parenting skills; the first-person plural in “Pomegranate” portrays a group of wild convent schoolgirls.

“Little Girl Lost” was the most Hadley-meets-Munro, with an alcoholic painter’s daughter seen first as a half-feral child and later as a hippie young woman. “How the Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was the least essential with its elderly narrator piecing things together in the aftermath of a burglary. Along with the title story, the standout for me was “Bundle of Joy,” about a persnickety grandmother going to her daughter’s place to spend time with her new grandson. She disapproves of just about every decision Erin has made (leaving the dogs’ frozen turds in the backyard all winter, for instance), but her interference threatens to have lasting consequences. Not a dud in the dozen, and a very strong voice I’ll expect to read much more from. (Read via Edelweiss; published by Biblioasis)

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

We all die. We have only the choice, if we are privileged, of whether death comes with a whimper or a bang; of what worlds we taste before we go.

A real step up from How Much of These Hills Is Gold, which I read for book club last year – while it was interesting to see the queer, BIPOC spin Zhang put on the traditional Western, I found her Booker-longlisted debut bleak and strange in such a detached way that it was hard to care about. By contrast, I was fully involved in her sensuous and speculative second novel.

A 29-year-old Chinese American chef is exiled when the USA closes its borders while she’s working in London. On a smog-covered planet where 98% of crops have failed, scarcity reigns – but there is a world apart, a mountaintop settlement at the Italian border where money can buy any ingredient desired and threatened foods are cultivated in a laboratory setting. While peasants survive on mung bean flour, wealthy backers indulge in classic French cuisine. The narrator’s job is to produce lavish, evocative multi-course meals to bring investors on board. Foie gras, oysters, fine wines; heirloom vegetables; fruits not seen for years. But also endangered creatures and mystery meat wrested back from extinction. Her employer’s 21-year-old daughter, Aida, oversees the lab where these rarities are kept alive.

Ironically, surrounded with such delicacies, the chef loses her appetite for all but cigarettes – yet another hunger takes over. Her relationship with Aida is a passionate secret made all the more peculiar by the fact that the chef’s other role is to impersonate Aida’s dead mother, Eun-Young. It’s clear this precarious setup can’t last; ambition and technology keep moving on. The novel presents such a striking picture of desire at the end of the world. Each sentence is honed to flawlessness, with whole paragraphs of fulsome descriptions of meals. Zhang’s prose reminded me of Stephanie Danler’s and R.O. Kwon’s – no surprise, then, that they’re on the Acknowledgments list, as are a cornucopia of foods and other literary influences.

I’m not usually one for a dystopian novel, but the emotional territory keeps this one grounded even as the plot grows more sinister. My only complaint is that I would have left off the final chapter as I don’t think tracing the protagonist through four more decades of life adds much. I would rather have left this world in limbo than thought of the episode as a blip in a facile regeneration process – that’s the most unrealistic element of all. But this has still been my favourite read from the longlist so far. And there’s even a faithful pet cat, a “recalcitrant beast” that keeps coming back to the chef despite benign neglect. (Public library)

My ideal shortlist, based on what I’ve read and still want to read, would be:

Cocktail by Lisa Alward

Dances by Nicole Cuffey

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

I wouldn’t be averse to seeing The Future or Chrysalis on there either. (Just not Loot, please!)

See Laura’s post for a recap of her reviews and her wish list. Marcie has also been reading from the longlist; see her first write-up here.

Posted in: Fiction Reviews, Literary Prizes | Tagged: alcoholism, Alice Munro, C. Pam Zhang, Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, cats, chef, dysfunctional families, dystopian, food, foodie, Italy, lesbian, Lisa Alward, Nicole Cuffey, R.O. Kwon, Rebecca Makkai, short stories, speculative fiction, Stephanie Danler, Tessa Hadley, V.V. Ganeshananthan

Thoughts on the Women’s Prize and Carol Shields Prize Longlists

By Rebecca Foster on March 9, 2024 | 36 Comments

Yesterday was my 9th blog anniversary! I love that it coincides with International Women’s Day.

It’s traditionally also been the day of the Women’s Prize longlist announcement, but the past two years they’ve brought it forward to pre-empt news of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction longlist. It’s hard not to see these prizes as being in competition, though the CSP is only for U.S. and Canadian residents; also considers short story collections, graphic novels, and work in translation; and is more deliberate about including trans and nonbinary authors.

Like last year, their lists are extremely different. In 2023 there was no crossover; this year only one novel appears on both (Brotherless Night). Although it’s easier for me to feel engaged with the WP, I’m drawn to reading much more from the CSP list.

Women’s Prize

Of my predictions, only 1 was correct, compared to last year’s 4. I got none of my personal wishes, as in 2023. I guess making a wish list is a kiss of death! Once again, we have a mix of new and established authors, with a full half of the list being debut work. Nine of the authors are BIPOC. I’ve read 2 of the nominees and would be agreeable to reading up to 6 more. My library always buys the entire longlist, so I’ll eventually get the chance to read them, but not soon enough to add to the conversation.

Read:

The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (CORRECT PREDICTION): Enright’s astute eighth novel traces the family legacies of talent and trauma through the generations descended from a famous Irish poet. The novel switches between Nell’s funny, self-deprecating narration and third-person vignettes about her mother, Carmel. Cycles of abandonment and abuse characterize the McDaraghs. Enright convincingly pinpoints the narcissism and codependency behind their love-hate relationships.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo: Easy to warm to even if you’ve never played and know nothing about squash. A debut novella that is illuminating on what is expected of young Gujarati women in England; on sisterhood and a bereaved family’s dynamic; but especially on what it is like to feel sealed off from life by grief. This offbeat, delicate coming-of-age story eschews literary fireworks. In place of stylistic flair is the sense that each word and detail has been carefully placed.

Will read:

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad – requested from the library

8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee – on my Kindle from NetGalley

Interested in reading:

In Defence of the Act by Effie Black – queer novella, suicide theme

And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott – Indigenous Canadian, postpartum depression theme

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy – Irish author, new motherhood theme

The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord – Black sci-fi author

Maybe:

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan – see below

Not interested in reading:

Hangman by Maya Binyam – meh

The Maiden by Kate Foster – not keen on historical mysteries, and this looks very commercial

Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville – will read more Grenville, but not this one any time soon

River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure – have read mixed reviews

Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie – disliked her debut novel

Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan – enjoyed her first novel, but DNFed this

A Trace of Sun by Pam Williams – nah

See also the reactions posts from Eric and Laura.

Predictions:

I’d expect to see two or three of the Irish writers on the shortlist, plus probably Western Lane, Enter Ghost, and a couple of other wildcards (but not the SF novel). Enter Ghost, set in Palestine, would certainly be a timely winner…

What comes next:

Shortlist (6 titles) on 24 April and winner on 13 June.

Carol Shields Prize

After I badgered the administrators for six months about Q&A responses that never materialized, they kindly offered me digital review copies of any of the nominees that I’m not able to easily access in the UK. This is, in general, a more rigorous list of highbrow literary fiction, with some slight genre diversity thanks to Catton and Makkai (plus a mixture of historical and contemporary fiction, three story collections, and one book in translation); 10 of 15 authors are BIPOC. There are further details about all the nominees on the website.