Book Serendipity, August to September
From Jennifer Croft’s superb Notes on Postcards (forthcoming in November):
I’d heard that story of Horace Walpole and the etymology of “serendipity” before. Tying together dangling threads is a good description of what I try to do with these posts, which arise from my reading.
I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I have read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away!
The more accurate keyword would probably be “synchronicity,” which according to Carl Jung, who “believed in a universe of mysterious connections,” is “a meaningful coincidence in which an internal mental state somehow attracts a real-world parallel” (quotes from The Spirituality Gap by Ali Millar). An intriguing idea, that: somehow, by thinking about these ideas or details, I might be … luring repeat incidents to me?!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
What’s in a name?
- Girlfriends named Maddie (in Year of the Drought by Roland Buti) and Mattie (Tom’s in Pardon Our French by Alex Durand and Tom Carles); plus a granddaughter (in The Typing Lady and Other Fictions by Ruth Ozeki) and niece (in The Land and Its People by David Sedaris) named Maddy.
- A character named Hattie in Leaving the Yellow House by Saul Bellow and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
- A character named India in Leaving the Yellow House by Saul Bellow and Family Family by Laurie Frankel (our second The Marriage Plot/Literary Wives club read this year in which the protagonist was named India, after Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell).
A daughter named Rebecca in Switzy by Emma Cline and Family Family by Laurie Frankel (where she’s known as Bex); and sisters named Rebecca (known as Becks) in one story of The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales by Kirsty Logan and The Long Road to Holy Island by Austin Suggs. Those are both nicknames I’ve had, by the way. The one nickname I detest is Becky.- A mother named Monica in The Summerhouse Trilogy by Alice Thomas Ellis and Apt Pupil by Stephen King.
- A Hilda in The Given World by Melissa Harrison and one story of Self-Help by Lorrie Moore.
- A Clare in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin, The Leveret by Anna Goldreich and The Given World by Melissa Harrison.
- A Sergio in Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong and a Serge in So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak.
- A son named Silas in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin and So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak.
- Compensation for run-over chickens in Year of the Drought by Roland Buti and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller.
- “Enough is enough” is a slogan in The Land and Its People by David Sedaris (where it’s also an essay title) and Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins.
Telluride, Colorado features as a setting in Almost Animal by Amy Irvine and in one essay of The Land and Its People by David Sedaris.
- A trip from Paris to see Chartres Cathedral in The Magician by W. Somerset Maugham and Shadow of a Man by May Sarton.
- Fleeting references to the Donner Party in Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins and The Nightingales by Emil Wilson.
- An essay about an Icelandic sheep ram, and the idea that one should ride geldings because they’re calmer and more reliable than mares, in Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston and The Land and Its People by David Sedaris.
- The protagonist’s work performance declining due to dementia, and a tweed jacket, in Switzy by Emma Cline and Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer. (There’s also a tweed jacket mentioned in Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami.)
- German artist Käthe Kollwitz is mentioned in Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground (the title is from one of her works) by Pat Browne and The Book of Mating by Laksmi Pamuntjak.
- Child brides and incestuous rape are mentioned/feature in Almost Animal by Amy Irvine and The Book of Mating by Laksmi Pamuntjak, both of which I was reading early for Foreword Reviews.
- The keeping of goats in Almost Animal by Amy Irvine and American Daughter by Era Bell Thompson, both of which I was reading early for Foreword Reviews.
- In August I unwittingly started rereading two books that I’d first read in April 2013 (is 13+ years the ideal interval?!): I Feel Bad about My Neck by Nora Ephron and Flush by Virginia Woolf.
- Men by the name of Christmas: the narrator’s parents wanted to name him Noel (but the German state didn’t allow it?!) in Botany of Madness by Leon Engler; and a main character is named Joe Christmas in Light in August by William Faulkner.
- To the narrator’s question of whether something awful has happened / they’ve done something wrong, a reply of “it very likely had but she hadn’t heard about it yet” in Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns and “Most likely. You know that better than I do” in Botany of Madness by Leon Engler.
- The idea that human–animal communication/connection is deeper than that between humans because it is beyond language plays a major role in three books I read around the same time: Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston, Mitz by Sigrid Nunez, and Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer. (The Houston and Orringer both publish on 13 October and I was reviewing them early for Shelf Awareness.)
- The fact that children of alcoholics feel they have to make everything perfect to avoid conflict appears in Botany of Madness by Leon Engler and Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston.
I encountered lines from the song “Closing Time” by Semisonic in Here We Are at the End by Sara Barnard (a specific reference to the pop song accompanied “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end” – which I was amused to learn is actually a quote from Seneca!) and Family Family by Laurie Frankel (“You don’t have to go home. But you can’t stay here.” – not attributed, but I can’t but think she had the song in mind.)
- The stereotype of overachieving Asian Americans is mentioned or discussed in Family Family by Laurie Frankel, Miracle Creek by Angie Kim, and To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time by Matthew Salesses. There are Korean Americans in all three, and Korean children adopted into a white family in the Frankel and Salesses.
- A young woman is aghast at her mother getting rid of loved pet(s) in Nightjar by Emily Ruskovich and The Nightingales by Emil Wilson (both titled after birds!)
- A mention of the practice of buying single cigarettes from a city corner shop for 50 cents in Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad and Miracle Creek by Angie Kim.
- Saving turtles from the road in Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins and then a mention of someone else doing so in To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time by Matthew Salesses.
The lines “Leave as soon as you think to yourself, ‘This is a great party. I’m having a wonderful time’” from Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck are echoed in Emma Cline’s Switzy.
- A holy well is mentioned in The Given World by Melissa Harrison and Shiver by Brigid Lowe.
- A sexy pastor’s wife features in one story of Hail Mary by Funmi Fetto and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw.
- A flawed pearl is mentioned in Apt Pupil by Stephen King and A Desert between Two Seas by A. Muia.
- A mention of hara-kiri (literal) in Death in Midsummer by Yukio Mishima and A Better Death by Jonathan Romain; and as a metaphor in What I Don’t Know about Animals by Jenny Diski.
- Camel cigarettes appear in Miracle Creek by Angie Kim and Apt Pupil by Stephen King.
- A woman remembers being nicknamed an “ice queen” in one story of Everest by Ashani Lewis and Plum by Hollie McNish.
- A woman has to have a bowel movement in the labour ward in Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong and Natural Disaster by Lisa Owens.
- The challenge of being a mother in the film industry is discussed in Family Family by Laurie Frankel and So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak.
A three-year-old gets their own cereal breakfast in Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong and So Good to See You by Francesca Hornak.
- A woman feels guilty of neglect due to her eight-year-old son’s death in a lake in Under Story by Cloe Benjamin and The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.
- A viral scandal where photographs/video footage are misconstrued to make a woman look bad in Hum by Helen Phillips and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw.
- A misunderstanding causes a mother to be investigated for child neglect in one story of Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong and Hum by Helen Phillips.
Shirley Temples (the non-alcoholic cocktail) are mentioned in Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw.
- A woman impulsively takes a dishwashing job in Under Story by Cloe Benjamin and Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
- A scene of putting out sandbags in Rattlebone by Maxine Clair and The Long Road to Holy Island by Austin Suggs.
An unwanted mince pie in Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford and I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron.
- A child in hospital with acute appendicitis in one story of Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark by Celia Fremlin and Natural Disaster by Lisa Owens (and with suspected appendicitis in Shiver by Brigid Lowe).
- The Tennyson poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is mentioned in Idle Grounds by Krystelle Bamford and Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus.
- Having to get off an elevator at the previous floor because it doesn’t go up to the destination in Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel and Blood Is Dripping onto the Courtyard by Elvira Navarro.
- Realizing one’s bed is unmade in one story of Everest by Ashani Lewis and A Very British Midlife Crisis by Rob Temple.
- Confusion over the name of a possibly abused dog (with special powers!) adopted from a shelter in Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus and Luna, Phoenix, Queen by Julie Orringer.
- I encountered the phrase “She’s not worth it” in both Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw within 10 minutes!
Someone being pulled back into the womb in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin and Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020 by Mirko Ilić.
- An apple orchard as a setting in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin and one story of Apple and Palm by Patricia Henley.
- “Little Nemo in Slumberland” as an image and metaphor in Switzy by Emma Cline and Nightmares and Daydreams: A.C. 2020 by Mirko Ilić.
- A lost twin sibling – lost at birth in Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus and H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald; lost later on in one story of The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales by Kirsty Logan.
- A portal to another timeline, and characters who are doubles of each other, in Under Story by Chloe Benjamin and Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel.
- A lesbian couple moves to a new house and the one woman feels isolated and sad because she’s recently had a miscarriage in the debut novels The New People by Andrea Uptmor (reviewed for BookBrowse) and then The Leveret by Anna Goldreich.
- Nagging a woman to use lotion on her hands as they’re the first place to show signs of ageing in Hum by Helen Phillips and one story of Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams.
A couple of visual ones:
- I was reading The Land and Its People by David Sedaris at the same time as Country People by Daniel Mason, one of whose blurbs happens to borrow Sedaris’s title phrase.
- I was reading Botany of Madness by Leon Engler and encountered this passage on the day of the solar eclipse in Europe (12 August):
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Mega #ShortStorySeptember Catch-Up! Fetto, P. Fitzgerald, Henley, Logan, L. Moore, E. Williams & 2 Partial Reads, 3 DNFs, 2 Single Stories
In total, I read 10 collections, as well as parts of five more, and nine individual stories for Short Story September. It would be absurd for me to be disappointed with those numbers (in comparison to last year’s 15 collections, I guess). Today is the last day of the link-up, so I’m calling it a day and giving brief responses to the rest of the books I read for the challenge. (My other reviews: six stories, Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong, “Death in Midsummer” by Yukio Mishima, three R.I.P. collections.) The range of styles, settings, and subject matter in the below really showcase how much the short story can do, often in very few pages.
Hail Mary by Funmi Fetto (2025)
These nine stories explore religious and cultural limitations on Nigerian women’s lives at home and in London. The title story questions whether Riliwa’s efforts to assimilate have been worthwhile; “It amazed her how much England was lauded and celebrated back home. Her reality was cruel and cold.” In “Dodo Is Yoruba for Fried Plantain,” Morayo married into privilege in the Gloucestershire countryside, but long since discovered the relationship was a sham. On trips to London markets to buy authentic African ingredients, she wonders if reconnecting with her roots will redeem lost time. A longing for motherhood underpins several of the stories, even sometimes explaining willingness to ignore homosexual urges. I was most impressed by “House Girl,” in which the abused protagonist flees her inescapable situation in a full-on Anna Karenina finale. There is not a lot of cheer here, but ample Adichie-esque talent with character, details, and plot to keep one reading. (Public library) 
The Means of Escape by Penelope Fitzgerald (2000)
I already reviewed the single story “The Axe,” which is the odd one out – a mischievous ghost story. The rest are more typical of Fitzgerald: elegant slices of historical fiction, immediately establishing mastery of a place, time and set of circumstances, whether that be a convict on the loose in 1850s Australia (the title story), Impressionist-era English painters seeking models in Paris (“The Red-Haired Girl)”, or a poor boy who loses his precious medal in the 1660s (“Desideratus”). A couple of the stories appear to be contemporary and have a gently comic tone: the fussy conductor located on a tiny Scottish island in “Beehernz,” the overbearing stately-home guide in “Not Shown.” There’s a timeless, allegorical feel to “The Prescription” (one of two Greek/Turkish settings), in which doctors who once had a mentor–student relationships give rival diagnoses, and the title of “Our Lives Are Only Lent to Us” indicates philosophizing about the tragic losses in a small Central American town. I was dazzled by the breadth of Fitzgerald’s imagination and the confidence of her execution. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury) 
Apple & Palm by Patricia Henley (2026)
How had I never heard of Henley – an accomplished novelist, story writer, poet and playwright who was a National Book Award finalist for her debut? These eight linked short stories initially attracted me because they’re set in (fictional) Whistle Pig, Western Maryland, a region of my home state I know reasonably well, with Baltimore an occasional counterpart. Each spins its own web of connections and complications; together, they form a composite portrait of a community through its (ageing) women. Though Roxy’s 100th birthday has passed, she still shows her photographs and supports friends through a women’s art collective. Jill manages the family orchard and frets about her gambling-addicted father. After a disabling accident, Harper borrows Aunt Jill’s car for her gig as an artist’s model. Claire lashes out at her tenure refusal and her husband’s request for an open marriage. Sally leaves an IVF struggle behind for a vacation home in the Bahamas. A massage therapist hears a customer’s life story; sixtysomething friends diverge through varying experiences of illness and sex. I especially appreciated the matter-of-fact portrayal of a middle-aged asexual character. These fine stories reminded me of work by Stewart O’Nan and Ann Patchett.
Published by Cornerstone Press. With thanks to publicist Caitlin Hamilton Summie for the e-copy for review.
The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales by Kirsty Logan (2014)
I’m not sure why I felt led to buy this Polari First Book Prize winner, as I’ve struggled with Logan’s fiction before (“The Gracekeeper” here was expanded into a novel). Of the 20 stories, many are flash length; I tended to prefer the slightly longer, queer takes on history and folklore. “Underskirts” is voiced by houseguests and servants, including the various maids the Lady of the manor seduces. It starts as a bit of fun when teenage girls experiment sexually with each other; then one goes to live with Baba Yaga in “Witch.” In “Coin-Operated Boys,” Elodie comes up with a novel solution to her lack of suitors. Many of the characters are young people reeling from loss or facing transition moments. A fair few stories are in titled or numbered fragments and have multiple narrators or a reverse chronology. You certainly couldn’t complain of them being samey. Still, many feel wispy, like there isn’t enough time to care about or understand the characters; to turn a skit into a full-length, satisfying drama. (New purchase from Salt Publishing) 
Self-Help by Lorrie Moore (1985)
My fourth collection (after Bark, Birds of America and Like Life) by Moore, who is truly one of the great short story writers. In keeping with the title, four story names start with “How” and several are in the second person, to distance the main character and/or establish a tongue-in-cheek, advice-giving imperative. Women navigate marriage, infidelity, motherhood, and having ill or mentally compromised mothers of their own. I got Melissa Bank and Nora Ephron vibes from the first story, “How to Be an Other Woman.” Charlene’s quick wit makes her much more than just a mistress: “‘So, you’re a secretary.’ Squirm and quip: ‘More like a sedentary’.” “The Kid’s Guide to Divorce” adopts a child’s perspective with equal aplomb and is only four pages. In “Go Like This,” Liz schedules her escape from cancer for Bastille Day. The diary entries of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” wrestle with freedom vs. control in a couple’s relationship through their argument about whether or not to let the cat go outside. A woman persists in writing despite her professors and classmates objecting to her “outrageous and incompetent” sense of plot. There are such hilarious turns of phrase – “a strange flesh sundae of despair and exhilaration,” “full-haired as Easter basket grass” – throughout that I was taken aback by the dark turn in the final story, “To Fill,” where the narrator’s flippant wordplay masks her mental instability. A treat for Amy Bloom and Helen Simpson fans. (Secondhand – The Bookshop, Wigtown)
Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams (2024)
I could make a quip about how apt the title is for the contents, but that would feel mean. My sense with Williams’s second collection was that her practice was to think of an outlandish image or moment and go from there. What if a courtship withered because one partner accidentally sent footage of walrus sex? (“Scrimshaw,” which was a finalist for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2020.) What if someone hired a skywriter to scrawl “Will you marry me?” outside a restaurant window and it wasn’t received well? What if someone reading the radio shipping forecast (which lends the title phrase) used that segment to address their failing relationship? These 19 stories are inventive, yes, and often delight in wordplay and obscure vocabulary. That will be no surprise to anyone who’s read Attrib. and Other Stories or The Liar’s Dictionary. Too often, though, it feels like showing off skill but not committing emotionally, which means I didn’t believe in the lovelorn narrators and their peculiar predicaments. (“Too-quick chicanery of thought can cause a conversational form of the bends.” Quite.) The highlight was “Squared Circle,” about two pro wrestlers who convene every year on the anniversary of their famous showdown, even when one is seriously ill. (Gift from my wish list last year)
I’m still reading two excellent linked short story collections that I’m taking my time over:
Rattlebone by Maxine Clair (1994): Vibrant and varied snapshots of a Black community in Kansas. I feel like Tayari Jones must have been influenced by it.
A Desert between Two Seas by A. Muia (2025): Exquisitely detailed historical stories about a Mexican priest, his houseboy’s enforced pearl-diving, and the wanderings that ensue.
A few DNFs:
Fen by Daisy Johnson (2016): Adolescent girls discover sex – “Virginity was a half-starved dog you were looking after, wanted to give away as quickly as possible so you could forget it ever existed.” I read six stories but found the majority of them too similar, and provocative for the sake of it. Two good ones: “Starver” compares disordered eating with local eels that refuse to eat when the land is drained; in “Language,” a ghost struggles to communicate. (Gift from my wish list)
Everest by Ashani Lewis (2024): I read more than two-thirds of the book but can barely tell you anything about it. There’s some anxiety about social media, some coming-of-age discovery, some mean-girls friendship. Technically, the stories are accomplished, but they lack warmth. Two good ones: “Antarctica,” about an ill, older woman petitioning to go to the Scott Polar Research Institute; in “The Imitation Oyster,” fine dining is the basis of a liaison. (Public library)
Night, Neon by Joyce Carol Oates (2021): I reviewed two stories on Oates’s birthday. My third Oates DNF; I don’t have high hopes of getting through a book by this lady. Despite the short form, she has such repetitive phrasing. Two good ones: in “Curious,” a writer makes generous anonymous donations to change a grocery clerk’s life; in “Parole Hearing, California Institution for Women, Chino, CA,” a Charles Manson follower appeals. Even in this nine-pager – short for Oates – the anaphora of “Because…” statements gets old. (Public library)
Single stories:
“The Quiet” by Carys Davies (2014)
[from The Redemption of Galen Pike]
A good companion to West and Clear; all three share a vivid historical setting and a surprise ending that makes you want to stand up and cheer. Susan Boyce is a pioneer’s wife, isolated and battered. Her neighbour, Henry Fowler, keeps coming around, including when her husband is away, and at first there’s a hint of menace about his visits. But then they compare their scars. Brilliant. (New purchase from Salt Publishing)
“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant (1884)
[translated from French by Marjorie Laurie; from the Everyman Short Stories volume]
Thanks to Emma of Words and Peace for recommending this one. It’s such an instant classic I a) can’t believe I’d never encountered it before and b) can’t imagine a time when it didn’t exist. A young woman with little money but grand pretensions marries.
She was eternally restive under the conviction that she had been born to enjoy every refinement and luxury. Depressed by her humble surroundings, the sordid walls of her dwelling, its worn furniture and shabby fabrics were a torment to her.
She had no pretty gowns, no jewels, nothing—and yet she cared for nothing else. She felt that it was for such things as these that she had been born.
Now, as Madame Loisel, she is keen to make a good impression at her first society outing, an At Home at the Education Office, but has nothing to wear. She begs her husband for money to buy a new dress, then borrows a diamond necklace from a friend. When the necklace gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the party, it has lasting consequences. “How small a thing can serve to save or ruin you!” This sobering morality tale is like Flaubert crossed with O. Henry. The lesson I drew from it was, just confess! I lost one of the earrings that I borrowed from a friend to wear to the Booker Prize ceremony, and everything was fine! (Little Free Library)
Whew, all caught up!
And the final statistics for Short Story September:
25 bloggers
80 posts
38 individual stories &
60 whole collections reviewed
(+ 1 bonus biography of a short story writer)
All the posts are here and here.
Thank you all again for joining in!
Three on a Theme (Valentine’s Day): “Love” Books by Amy Bloom, George Mackay Brown & Hilary Mantel
Every year I say it: I’m really not a Valentine’s Day person and yet it’s become a tradition to put together a themed post featuring one or more books with “Love” or “Heart” in the title. This is the tenth year in a row, in fact – after 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. As you might expect, none of the three below contains a straightforward love story. The relationships portrayed tend to be unequal, creepy or doomed, but the solid character work and use of setting and voice was enough to keep me engaged with all of the books.
Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom (1997)
I’ve found Bloom’s short stories more successful than her novels. This is something of a halfway house: linked short stories (one of which was previously published in Come to Me; another that gives the title line to her 2000 collection A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You) about Elizabeth Taube. When we first meet her on Long Island in the 1960s, she’s a rebellious and sexually precocious Jewish girl; by the time we’ve journeyed through several decades of vignettes, she’s a flighty and psychologically scarred single mother. Stories of her Lolita-esque attractiveness to grown salesmen and teachers, her shoplifting, her casual work for elderly African American Mrs. Hill, and her great love for Horace, nicknamed Huddie, a Black basketball player, are in the first person. The longer second part – about the aftermath of her physical affair with Huddie and her ongoing emotional entanglement with her English teacher, Max Stone – is in the third person yet feels more honest. Liz seems like bad news for everyone she meets. Bloom shows us some of the reasons for what she does, but I still couldn’t absolve her protagonist. I’d also reverse the title: We Invent Love. Liz is responsible for irrevocably altering two lives besides her own based on what she needs to feel secure. This is very much Lorrie Moore territory, but Moore leaves less of a bitter taste. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project)
A Calendar of Love and Other Stories by George Mackay Brown (1967)
The title story opens a collection steeped in the landscape and history of Orkney. Each month we check in with three characters: Jean, who lives with her ailing father at the pub they run; and her two very different suitors, pious Peter and drunken Thorfinn. When she gives birth in December, you have to page back to see that she had encounters with both men in March. Some are playful in this vein or resemble folk tales: a boy playing hooky from school, a distant cousin so hapless as to father three bairns in the same household, and a rundown of the grades of whisky available on the islands. Others with medieval time markers are overwhelmingly bleak, especially “Witch,” about a woman’s trial and execution – and one of two stories set out like a play for voices. I quite liked the flash fiction “The Seller of Silk Shirts,” about a young Sikh man who arrives on the islands, and “The Story of Jorfel Hayforks,” in which a Norwegian man sails to find the man who impregnated his sister and keeps losing a crewman at each stop through improbable accidents. This is an atmospheric book I would have liked to read on location, but few of the individual stories stand out. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury) 
An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel (1995)
Mantel is best remembered for the Wolf Hall trilogy, but her early work includes a number of concise, sharp novels about growing up in the north of England. Carmel McBain attends a Catholic school in Manchester in the 1960s before leaving to study law at the University of London in 1970. In lockstep with her are a couple of friends, including Karina, who is of indeterminate Eastern European extraction and whose tragic Holocaust family history, added to her enduring poverty, always made her an object of pity for Carmel’s mother. But Karina as depicted by Carmel is haughty, even manipulative, and over the years their relationship swings between care and competition. As university students they live on the same corridor and have diverging experiences of schoolwork, romance, and food. “Now, I would not want you to think that this is a story about anorexia,” Carmel says early on, and indeed, she presents her condition as more like forgetting to eat. But then you recall tiny moments from her past when teachers and her mother shamed her for eating, and it’s clear a seed was sown. Carmel and her friends also deal with the results of the new-ish free love era. This is dark but funny, too, with Carmel likening roast parsnips to “ogres’ penises.” Further proof, along with Every Day Is Mother’s Day, that it’s well worth exploring authors’ back catalogue. (Public library) 
Plus a DNF:
Unexpected Lessons in Love by Bernardine Bishop (2013): I loved Bishop’s The Street, and this posthumous novel initially drew me in with its medical detail (two friends who both had stoma operations) and the exploration of different forms of love – romantic, parental, grandparental – before starting to feel obvious (two adoptions, one historical and one recent), maudlin and overlong. With some skimming, I made it to page 120. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com)
Other relevant reading on the go:
I would have tried spinning this one into another thematic trio, but ran out of time…
A Rough Guide to the Heart by Pam Houston (1999): A mix of personal essays and short travel pieces. The material about her dysfunctional early family life, her chaotic dating, and her thrill-seeking adventures in the wilderness is reminiscent of the highly autobiographical Waltzing the Cat. Amusingly, this has a previous price label from Richard Booth’s Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye, where it was incorrectly classed as Romance Fiction – one could be excused the mistake based on the title and cover! (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project)
And three books about marriage…
The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier – A pleasant year’s diary of rural living and adjusting to her husband’s new diagnosis of neurodivergence.- Strangers by Belle Burden – A high-profile memoir about her husband’s strange and marriage-ending behaviour (his affair was only part of it) during the 2020 lockdown.
- Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell – For Literary Wives Club in March. I’m in the early pages but it seems comparable to Richard Yates.
Short Stories in September Roundup: Alexie, Donoghue, Groff Anthology, Houston, McCracken, Moore, Svoboda, Walker
I gave myself an extra week to finish up the story collections I was in the middle of, so I’ve managed to read 13 during this challenge to self (including my first and second posts). Again I’m borrowing Marcie’s five-sentence review format to keep things simple.
The Lone-Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (1993)
There are 22 stories in this fairly short book, so most top out at no more than 10 pages: little slices of life on and around the reservation at Spokane, Washington. Some central characters recur, such as Victor, Thomas Builds-the-Fire and James Many Horses, but there are so many tales that I couldn’t keep track of them across the book even though I read it quickly. My favourite was “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” in which Victor and Thomas fly out to collect the ashes of Victor’s father. Some of the longer titles give a sense of the tone: “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock” and “Jesus Christ’s Half-Brother Is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation.” I couldn’t help but think of it as a so-so rehearsal for The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian because a similar cast of drunks, jokers, relatives and basketball players populates the stories and a comparable voice prevails. (University library)
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue (2002)
The title story is about Mary Toft – I thought of making her hoax the subject of a Three on a Theme post because I actually have two novels about her downloaded from NetGalley and Edelweiss (Mary and the Rabbit Dream by Noémi Kiss-Deáki and Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer), but the facts as conveyed here don’t seem like nearly enough to fuel a whole book, so I doubt I’ll read those. Donoghue has a good eye for historical curios and incidents and an academic’s gift for research, yet not many of these 17 stories, most of which are in the third person, rise above the novelty. Many protagonists are British or Irish women who were a footnote in the historical record: an animal rights activist, a lord’s daughter, a cult leader, a blind poet, a medieval rioter, a suspected witch. There are mild homoerotic touches, too. I enjoyed “Come, Gentle Night,” about John Ruskin’s honeymoon, and “Cured,” which reveals a terrifying surgical means of controlling women’s moods but, as I found with Astray and Learned by Heart, Donoghue sometimes lets documented details overwhelm other elements of a narrative. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com)
The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff (2023)
Hard to convey the variety of this 20-story anthology in a concise way because they run the gamut from realist (Nigerian homosexuality in “Happy Is a Doing Word” by Arinze Ifeakandu; Irish gangsters in “The Blackhills” by Eamon McGuinness) to absurd (Ling Ma’s “Office Hours” has academics passing through closet doors into a dream space; the title of Catherine Lacey’s “Man Mountain” is literal; “Ira and the Whale” is Rachel B. Glaser’s gay version of the Jonah legend). Also difficult to encapsulate my reaction, because for every story I would happily have seen expanded into a novel (the gloomy character study “The Locksmith” by Grey Wolfe LaJoie, the teenage friends’ coming-of-age in “After Hours at the Acacia Park Pool” by the marvellous Kirstin Valdez Quade), there was another I thought might never end (“Dream Man” by Cristina Rivera-Garza and “Temporary Housing” by Kathleen Alcott). Three are in translation. I admired Lisa Taddeo’s tale of grief and revenge, “Wisconsin,” and Naomi Shuyama-Gómez’s creepy Colombian-set “The Commander’s Teeth.” But my two favourites were probably “Me, Rory, and Aurora” by Jonas Eika (Danish), which combines an uneasy threesome, the plight of the unhoused and a downright chilling Ishiguro-esque ending; and “Xífù,” K-Ming Chang’s funny, morbid take on daughter/mother-in-law relations in China. (PDF review copy)
Waltzing the Cat by Pam Houston (1998)
The novel-in-stories is about Lucy, a photographer in her early thirties with a penchant for falling for the wrong men – alcoholics or misogynists or ones who aren’t available. When she’s not working she’s thrill-seeking: rafting in Colorado, travelling in the Amazon, sailing in the Caribbean, or gliding. “Everything good I’ve gotten in life I’ve gotten by plunging in,” she boasts, to which a friend replies, “Sure, and everything bad you’ve gotten in your life you’ve gotten by plunging in.” Ultimately she ‘settles down’ on the Colorado ranch she inherits from her grandmother with a dog, making this – based on what I learned from the autobiographical essays in Deep Creek – even more autofiction for Houston than her debut, Cowboys Are My Weakness, was. Although the final magic realist touch of having her child-self come to her with a box of photographs of traumatic memories is overdone, the themes of accepting vulnerability, seeking to freeze time and creating a home for yourself resonated, and the title story, about the death of Lucy’s mother, is a brilliant and heart-wrenching standalone. (Secondhand – British Red Cross, Berwick)
The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken (2021)
McCracken is terrific in short forms: The Hero of This Book, a novella, was one of my top books of 2022, and I also loved her previous story collection, Thunderstruck. Five of these dozen stories are taken from different points in the lives of Jack and Sadie, English and American academics (who I inevitably read as McCracken and her husband, Edward Carey) who come from large-family zaniness versus claustrophobic mother–daughter melancholy. I kept thinking that McCracken’s are just the sorts of scenarios Lucy and Olive would have told stories about in Tell Me Everything: accidents, misfortunes; random connections. Travel is a major element in many of the stories, including to Denmark (in the title story) and Amsterdam. I couldn’t decide whether I preferred the Jack-and-Sadie material or the rest, but I had a favourite from each: “The Irish Wedding” cracked me up as much as it did Sadie with the accidental use of crass American slang, while “Proof,” about a man communing with his father despite his early dementia, is set on a boat trip I’ve made (in 2004!) to see puffins on the Treshnish islands of Scotland. (Secondhand – Dogs Trust charity shop, Marlborough)
Like Life by Lorrie Moore (1990)
Compared to Birds of America, this feels a little dated and the plots are overall less memorable. Still, the eight stories of Moore’s second collection are chewy with insight into relationships and the mindsets of youngish and middle-aged women, and there’s an effortless wry wit to her turns of phrase. Her exasperated would-be feminist characters remind me of Helen Simpson’s, while the cheese-selling protagonist of “Joy” made me think of an early Carol Shields story; and who knew a “cute meet” (aka a meet-cute) was a thing back then? New York City contrasts with the Midwest, most notably in “You’re Ugly, Too” and “The Jewish Hunter.” The title story, which comes last, crafts a weirdly muted dystopia built around shortages and marital misery; I preferred the (comparative lightness) of “Vissi d’Arte,” about a lonely playwright, and “Places to Look for Your Mind,” in which an empty-nest entrepreneur hosts an aimless young Englishman her daughter met on her study abroad year. (Secondhand – Bark charity shop, Berwick)
The Long Swim by Terese Svoboda (2023)
These 44 stories, mostly of flash fiction length, combine the grit of Denis Johnson with the bite of Flannery O’Connor. Siblings squabble over a late parent’s effects or wishes, marriages go wrong, the movie business isn’t as glittering as it’s cracked up to be, and drugs and alcohol complicate everything. The settings range through North America and the Caribbean, with a couple of forays to Europe. There are no speech marks and, whether the narrative is in first person or third, all the voices are genuine and distinctive yet flow together admirably. Svoboda has a poet-like talent for compact, zingy lines; two favourites were “my laziness is born of generalized-looking-to-get-specific grief, like an atom trying to make salt” (“Niagara”) and “Ditziness, a kind of Morse code of shriek-and-stop, erupts around the girls” (“Orphan Shop”).
Winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction. Published by University of Massachusetts Press. With thanks to the author for the free PDF copy for review.
In Love and Trouble by Alice Walker (1973)
I’d only ever read The Color Purple, so when I spotted this in a bookshop on our Northumberland holiday it felt like a good excuse to try something else by Walker. I had actually encountered one of the stronger stories before: “Everyday Use” is in the Close Company Virago anthology. In these Southern scenes (“a hate-filled state complete with magnolias, tornadoes and broken-tongued field hands”), Black women oppressed by fathers and partners gain what few advantages they can through deception or folk medicine. I liked “Entertaining God,” which opens with a boy abducting a gorilla from a zoo, and “To Hell with Dying,” about a friendship with an elderly neighbour in cotton country. Setting, style, characters; nothing drew me to any of the others or made me think I’ll read Walker again in the future. (Secondhand – Berrydin Books, Berwick) 
Which of these would you read?
Currently reading: I’m not good at picking up short stories in the rest of the year, but I’ve discovered that I really enjoy reviewing them for Shelf Awareness – the length and format of their reviews really suits essay and story collections. So I’m now partway through Save Me, Stranger by Erika Krouse (2025) for an early Shelf Awareness review. Another book I started in Northumberland, Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags by Shena Mackay, I didn’t finish in time for this challenge but will either continue or set aside and pick back up next year. Both are fantastic!
#ReadIndies Catch-up: Ansell, Kinard, McNaught, Ponce, Toews and Vara
At last, my first dedicated selections for Read Indies month, two of which have been languishing on the shelf since 2022! A few more indie titles will appear in my February roundup tomorrow. I’ve got a huge variety here: an extended essay comparing life among the unhoused in London in the 1980s with the freedom of the open road and the island of Jura; gospel-saturated poems of queer African American life; an exposé of spiritual abuse in a Pentecostal church with branches in England and Nigeria; an Ecuadorian novella obsessed with bodies and sex; a funny yet heartbreaking novel about a zany family trying not to fall apart; and short stories about siblings, adolescence, memory, death and much more. I name the publishers and other books I have on the docket from each one.
Deer Island by Neil Ansell (2013)
My last unread book by Ansell (whose Deep Country, The Last Wilderness, and The Circling Sky I’ve loved) and one that had been out of print for many years, so it was great to hear that Little Toller was reissuing it. Ansell has visited most countries; pressed for a favourite place, he names the Scottish isle of Jura. In memory he returns to a place he hadn’t been in over 20 years. In the early 1980s he lived in London and volunteered with The Simon Community, a homeless charity, for three years. Later that decade, he found himself in the same situation as those he served, squatting in chaotic multi-occupancy London properties. But in between he’d had a magical jaunt to Jura by hitchhiking and motorbike with a girlfriend. And later, when his only sentimental keepsake was stolen from his squat bedroom, he left that lifestyle behind and fled to Jura, haunt of golden eagles and otters; refuge for George Orwell, who experienced his fair share of squalor – Down and Out in Paris and London gets a mention, but Ansell doesn’t belabour a comparison he more than earns. It’s a shame this is so short, but it’s a carefully crafted slice of life, and illustrates a sobering truth: “Security is an illusion.”
With thanks to Little Toller Books for the free copy for review. Deer Island came out in paperback on 27 February.
Little Toller
Also read recently: brother. do. you. love. me. by Manni Coe
Currently reading: The Long Field by Pamela Petro
Orders of Service by Willie Lee Kinard III (2023)
At a confluence of Southern, Black and gay identities, Kinard writes of matriarchal families, of congregations and choirs, of the descendants of enslavers and enslaved living side by side. The layout mattered more than I knew, reading an e-copy: often it is white text on a black page; words form rings or an infinity symbol; erasure poems gray out much of what has come before. “Boomerang” interludes imagine a chorus of fireflies offering commentary – just one of numerous insect metaphors. Mythology also plays a role. “A Tangle of Gorgons,” a sample poem I’d read before, wends its serpentine way across several pages. “Catalog of My Obsessions or Things I Answer to” presents an alphabetical list. For the most part, the poems were longer, wordier and more involved (four pages of notes on the style and allusions) than I tend to prefer, but I could appreciate the religious frame of reference and the alliteration.
Two favorite passages:
Ma taught me how to change a tire
the fall before it got real cold one October,
on the plot of dirt the pole beans we call Babel
spiral from, where our boozy station wagon
sat after hobbling home & passing out
in the backyard
(from “Work”)
I left before the door was closed.
I built myself of drowning hymns.
I stole every one to fly.
(from “Icarus Confesses”)
With thanks to Alice James Books for the advanced e-copy for review.
Alice James Books
Also read recently: Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali
Immanuel by Matthew McNaught (2022)
“Immanuel was the centre of the world once. Long after it imploded, its gravitational pull remains.” McNaught grew up in an evangelical church in Winchester, England, but by the time he left for university he’d fallen away. Meanwhile, some peers left for Nigeria to become disciples at charismatic preacher TB Joshua’s Synagogue Church of All Nations in Lagos. It’s obvious to outsiders that this was a cult, but not so to those caught up in it. It took years and repeated allegations for people to wake up to faked healings, sexual abuse, and the ceding of control to a megalomaniac who got rich off of duping and exploiting followers. This book won the inaugural Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize. I admired its blend of journalistic and confessional styles: research, interviews with friends and strangers alike, and reflection on the author’s own loss of faith. He gets to the heart of why people stayed: “A feeling of holding and of being held. A sense of fellowship and interdependence … the rare moments of transcendence … It was nice to be a superorganism.” This gripped me from page one, but its wider appeal strikes me as limited. For me, it was the perfect chance to think about how I might write about traditions I grew up in and spurned.
With thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions for the proof copy for review.
Fitzcarraldo Editions
Currently reading: Intervals by Marianne Brooker
Up next: Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce (2020; 2024)
[Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker]
Like other short works I’ve read by Hispanic women authors (Die, My Love, September and the Night, In Vitro), this Ecuadorian novella is intense, fragmentary, and obsessed with the female body and psyche. The unnamed narrator, a woman separated from her husband and freed from inhibitions, gives in to her substance and sex addictions – “For me, anything that isn’t falling in love has never merited much attention. That giddiness from proximity or bodies”. I was reminded of A Spy in the House of Love in that she flits compulsively from one lover to another, but Ponce is much more explicit than Nin. At least at the start, the sex scenes are almost constant and described in graphic detail. The narrator meets her lovers in warehouses and caves. Literal holes/orifices and blood are profuse, but also symbolically weighty, with fear of pregnancy also featuring heavily. I was impressed at how Booker rendered the stream-of-consciousness approach, which involves several-page paragraphs and metaphors of moths and moss. I wouldn’t say this was a pleasant book to spend time with, but the style and vocabulary made it worthy of note.
With thanks to Dead Ink for the free copy for review. Blood Red was first published in English by Restless Books in the USA in 2022.
Dead Ink
Up next: Sinking Bell by Bojan Louis
Fight Night by Miriam Toews (2022)
I knew from All My Puny Sorrows that Canadian author Miriam Toews has a knack for combining humour and heartbreak. I can’t believe it took me since 2015 to read another of her novels. Once again, there seems to be a strong autobiographical element and suicide in the family is part of the backstory. Although abandonment and failure haunt these three female generations, we see everything through a child’s point-of-view, which turns life into a jolly adventure. Swiv’s mother, an underemployed actress, is heavily pregnant with “Gord”; her father is out of the picture. Swiv has been expelled, which gives her plenty of time with Grandma Elvira, who makes friends with everyone she meets but, alas, is crumbling physically. Luckily, Swiv knows just how to keep her going with nitro spray and compression socks and pills rescued from the floor. Before Gord arrives, Grandma wants one last adventure: a flight from Canada to Fresno, California to see her remaining family. Their trip is a disaster, in hilarious ways. Child narrators are tough to pull off, so kudos to Toews for making eight-year-old Swiv almost completely believable (though a bit too precocious). These characters are all foul-mouthed fighters, with a quick wit and the determination to make their stories matter. You’ll laugh and cry.
With thanks to Faber for the proof copy for review.
Faber
Also read recently: Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
Currently reading: Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown
This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara (2023)
The epigraph is from the two pages of laughter (“Ha!”) in “Real Estate,” one of the stories of Birds of America by Lorrie Moore. Vara shares Moore’s themes, which are the stuff of literary fiction generally – adolescence, friendship, ageing, memory, romantic relationships – but also her tone of dark comedy. The death of a sibling recurs. In “The Irates,” teenage Swati, whose brother died of cancer, and her friend Lydia get phone sales jobs through the Chinese restaurant where they go for egg rolls. In “I, Buffalo,” Sheila tries to hide her alcoholism when her sister Priya comes for a visit with Sheila’s brother-in-law and niece. “The girl” in “You Are Not Alone” is delighted to spend her eighth birthday in Florida with her estranged father, but less so when she learns there’s a stepmother figure in the picture. The women of “Sibyls” look after an elderly neighbour with dementia. The querulous child in “Unknown Unknowns” reminded me of Good Talk by Mira Jacob. My two favourites were the title story, about building a Noah’s Ark replica, and “What Next,” about a woman accompanying her teenage daughter to meet her father for the first time. A few stories didn’t stand out, and while I liked the writing, this didn’t necessarily feel like a cohesive collection.
With thanks to Grove Press UK for the free copy for review. This Is Salvaged came out in paperback in the UK on 1 February.
Grove Atlantic
Up next: Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker, Home/Land by Rebecca Mead, We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman
Have you discovered any new-to-you independent publishers recently?
Some 2023 Reading Superlatives
Longest book read this year: The Weather Woman by Sally Gardner (457 pages) – not very impressive compared to last year’s 720-page To Paradise. That means I didn’t get through a single doorstopper this year. D’oh!
Shortest book read this year: Pitch Black by Youme Landowne and Anthony Horton (40 pages)
Authors I read the most by this year: Margaret Atwood, Deborah Levy and Brian Turner (3 books each); Amy Bloom, Simone de Beauvoir, Tove Jansson, John Lewis-Stempel, W. Somerset Maugham, L.M. Montgomery and Maggie O’Farrell (2 books each)
Publishers I read the most from: (Setting aside the ubiquitous Penguin and its many imprints) Carcanet (11 books) and Picador/Pan Macmillan (also 11), followed by Canongate (7).
My top author discoveries of the year: Michelle Huneven and Julie Marie Wade
My proudest bookish accomplishment: Helping to launch the Little Free Library in my neighbourhood in May, and curating it through the rest of the year (nearly daily tidying; occasional culling; requesting book donations)
Most pinching-myself bookish moments: Attending the Booker Prize ceremony; interviewing Lydia Davis and Anne Enright over e-mail; singing carols after-hours at Shakespeare and Company in Paris
Books that made me laugh: Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson, The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt, two by Katherine Heiny, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood
Books that made me cry: A Heart that Works by Rob Delaney, Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout, Family Meal by Bryan Washington
The book that was the most fun to read: Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
Best book club selections: By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah and The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Best last lines encountered this year: “And I stood there holding on to this man as though he were the very last person left on this sweet sad place that we call Earth.” (Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout)
A book that put a song in my head every time I picked it up: Here and Now by Henri Nouwen (Aqualung song here)
Shortest book title encountered: Lo (the poetry collection by Melissa Crowe), followed by Bear, Dirt, Milk and They
Best 2023 book titles: These Envoys of Beauty and You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis
Best book titles from other years: I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times, The Cats We Meet Along the Way, We All Want Impossible Things
Favourite title and cover combo of the year: I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore (shame the contents didn’t live up to it!)
Biggest disappointment: Speak to Me by Paula Cocozza
A 2023 book that everyone was reading but I decided not to: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
The worst books I read this year: Monica by Daniel Clowes, They by Kay Dick, Swallowing Geography by Deborah Levy and Self-Portrait in Green by Marie Ndiaye (1-star ratings are extremely rare for me; these were this year’s four)
The downright strangest book I read this year: Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood
Cover Love 2023
As I did in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, I’ve picked out some favourite book covers from the past year’s new releases. Gone are the days of mostly flora and fauna covers and abstract faces. Last year it was all about colour blocks and textures, with some partial images of female bodies. This year it’s a more random selection.
Gustave Caillebotte is one of my favourite painters, so I appreciated the use of his simple Bed of Daisies as the cover of Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake (though I still think the book could have had a more evocative title, such as The Cherry Orchard).
I lied; there was still a bit of flora and fauna this past year – those daisies, and the abstract trees, bunch of flowers and dangling creatures below:
The cover of Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang reminded me of a bento box or comic strip.
I was also into the swirly lines (often signifying fire) this year:
And these all stood out to me for their use of colours and font (the Acheson and Hull are almost twins):
The sad truth is that for many of the above I liked the covers more than the contents, with exceptions being the Crowe, Napolitano and Patchett.
What cover trends have you noticed this year? Which ones tend to grab your attention?
Book Serendipity, Mid-February to Mid-April
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.
Last time, my biggest set of coincidences was around books set in or about Korea or by Korean authors; this time it was Ghana and Ghanaian authors:
- Reading two books set in Ghana at the same time: Fledgling by Hannah Bourne-Taylor and His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie. I had also read a third book set in Ghana, What Napoleon Could Not Do by DK Nnuro, early in the year and then found its title phrase (i.e., “you have done what Napoleon could not do,” an expression of praise) quoted in the Medie! It must be a popular saying there.
- Reading two books by young Ghanaian British authors at the same time: Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley and Maame by Jessica George.
And the rest:
- An overweight male character with gout in Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom and The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph.
- I’d never heard of “shoegaze music” before I saw it in Michelle Zauner’s bio at the back of Crying in H Mart, but then I also saw it mentioned in Pulling the Chariot of the Sun by Shane McCrae.
- Sheila Heti’s writing on motherhood is quoted in Without Children by Peggy O’Donnell Heffington and In Vitro by Isabel Zapata. Before long I got back into her novel Pure Colour. A quote from another of her books (How Should a Person Be?) is one of the epigraphs to Lorrie Moore’s I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home.
- Reading two Mexican books about motherhood at the same time: Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel and In Vitro by Isabel Zapata.
- Two coming-of-age novels set on the cusp of war in 1939: The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle and Martha Quest by Doris Lessing.
- A scene of looking at peculiar human behaviour and imagining how David Attenborough would narrate it in a documentary in Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson and I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai.
- The painter Caravaggio is mentioned in a novel (The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent) plus two poetry books (The Fourth Sister by Laura Scott and Manorism by Yomi Sode) I was reading at the same time.
- Characters are plagued by mosquitoes in The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel and Through the Groves by Anne Hull.
- Edinburgh’s history of grave robbing is mentioned in The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent and Womb by Leah Hazard.
- I read a chapter about mayflies in Lev Parikian’s book Taking Flight and then a poem about mayflies later the same day in Ephemeron by Fiona Benson.
- Childhood reminiscences about playing the board game Operation and wetting the bed appear in Homesick by Jennifer Croft and Through the Groves by Anne Hull.
- Fiddler on the Roof songs are mentioned in Through the Groves by Anne Hull and We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman.
- There’s a minor character named Frith in Shadow Girls by Carol Birch and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
- Scenes of a female couple snogging in a bar bathroom in Through the Groves by Anne Hull and The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore.
- The main character regrets not spending more time with her father before his sudden death in Maame by Jessica George and Pure Colour by Sheila Heti.
- The main character is called Mira in Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton and Pure Colour by Sheila Heti, and a Mira is briefly mentioned in one of the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans.
- Macbeth references in Shadow Girls by Carol Birch and Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton – my second Macbeth-sourced title in recent times, after Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin last year.
- A ‘Goldilocks scenario’ is referred to in Womb by Leah Hazard (the ideal contraction strength) and Taking Flight by Lev Parikian (the ideal body weight for a bird).
- Caribbean patois and mention of an ackee tree in the short story collection If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery and the poetry collection Cane, Corn & Gully by Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa.
- The Japanese folktale “The Boy Who Drew Cats” appeared in Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, which I read last year, and then also in Enchantment by Katherine May.
- Chinese characters are mentioned to have taken part in the Tiananmen Square massacre/June 4th incident in Dear Chrysanthemums by Fiona Sze-Lorrain and Oh My Mother! by Connie Wang.
- Endometriosis comes up in What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo and Womb by Leah Hazard.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Three on a Theme for Valentine’s Day: “Love” Short Story Collections
Even though I’m really not a Valentine’s Day sort of person*, this is the seventh year in a row that I’ve put together a themed post featuring books that have “Love” or a similar word in the title in the run-up to mid-February (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022).
I also don’t generally read short story collections if it’s not September – I seem to need that alliterative crutch to get to a dozen or so of them – but my “Birds” trio and these three were so great that I had to wonder why I don’t read them all year round.
Are these love stories? Some, to an extent. But also loss stories. Loneliness stories. Hatred stories. Abandonment stories. A few even verge on horror. In other words, realistic slivers of life. And as different as Carver’s lean, masculine tales of addiction and failure might seem from Bloom’s wry scenes of family life and Dunmore’s intimate pictures of isolation and mental illness, I found that all three resonated with each other. As for character detail, Dunmore’s “fat men” echo the overweight male protagonist in Bloom’s first story cycle.
Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom (2010)
One of these stories, “Sleepwalking,” was familiar to me because it is reprinted from her 1993 collection, Come to Me, and another two were originally published in 2000’s A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You – isn’t she great at titles?! She excels at first lines, too: some from this volume are “At two o’clock in the morning, no one is to blame,” “William has gout,” “Clare can’t walk,” “No power” and “I had always planned to kill my father.”
The book contains two quartets of linked stories and four stand-alone stories. The first set is about Clare and William, whose dynamic shifts from acquaintances to couple-friends to lovers to spouses. Bloom, a former psychotherapist, is interested in tracking how they navigate these changes over the years, and does so by switching between first- and third-person narration and adopting a different perspective for each story. She does the same with the four stories about Lionel and Julia, a Black man and his white stepmother. Over the course of maybe three decades, we see the constellations of relationships each one forms, while the family core remains. She also includes sexual encounters between characters who are middle-aged and older – when, according to stereotypes, lust should have been snuffed out.
Of the unlinked stories, the most memorable was “By-and-By,” a distressingly unemotional account of the ripple effects of a serial killer’s actions as seen by a victim’s roommate. I also loved the title story, which appears last. An older man and his daughter-in-law meet twice, by accident, in small-town eateries, the one wanting to come clean about a troubled past and the other wanting to embark on a new and surprising romance. This one reminded me of Richard Russo and early John Irving, while the collection as a whole would suit fans of Julia Glass, Tessa Hadley, Sue Miller, Lorrie Moore and Elizabeth Strout. (Secondhand – Bookbarn International)
What We Talk about When We Talk about Love by Raymond Carver (1981)
Such a famous title that it has spawned countless imitators, two of which I’ve even read (What We Talk about When We Talk about God by Rob Bell and What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank by Nathan Englander). It turns out I had Carver confused with John Cheever, so I was expecting gritty stories of alcoholism in the 1950s Midwest. Yes to the alcohol abuse, but Carver was from the Pacific Northwest and was writing in the 1980s. A number of his protagonists are drunk, deadbeat dads who have been kicked out and make a scene to get back at their wives. Others are more passive, stuck in suburban ennui. Grown men fear turning into their fathers (“Sacks”). Ultimatums are defused (“Everything Stuck to Him”) and custody arrangements fought over (the Solomonic fable “Popular Mechanics”).
The declarative simplicity of the prose, and the interest in male activities like gambling, hunting and fishing, can’t fail to recall Ernest Hemingway, yet I warmed to Carver much more than Hem. Two of these stories struck me as feminist for how they expose nonchalant male violence towards women; elsewhere I spotted tiny gender-transgressing details (a man who knits, for instance). In “Tell the Women We’re Going,” two men escape their families to play pool and drink, then make a fateful decision on the way home. I don’t think I’ve been as shocked by the matter-of-fact brutality of a short story since “The Lottery.” My favourite was also chilling, “So Much Water So Close to Home.” Both reveal how homosocial peer pressure leads to bad behaviour; this was toxic masculinity before we had that term.
Many of the stories are only 3–8 pages long, such that 17 fit into a slender volume. They’re about half and half first- and third-person, sometimes with speech marks and sometimes not. At 15 pages, the title story is the longest and a great one. Two couples are having pre-dinner drinks and discussing types of love – physical, spiritual and so on. The POV character mostly conveys monologues by his friend Mel, a cardiologist (of course he would be a heart doctor!), comparing the obsessive love of his first wife’s ex, who turned out to be a stalker, and the mature devotion he saw in an elderly couple at his hospital after a horrific car accident. There were a few flippant or less memorable stories in here, but I’m impressed enough to seek out more of Carver’s work, poetry or prose. (Secondhand – Books for Amnesty, York)
Love of Fat Men by Helen Dunmore (1997)
This was an early work by Dunmore, who was so prolific in her two-decade career that I still come across titles of hers that I’ve never heard of before. I don’t think a book by this title would get published nowadays, but I won’t hold it against her. It is literal in that Ulli, a recurring character in 10 of these 19 stories, finds comfort in sleeping with larger men. I wondered what so captured Dunmore’s imagination about Scandinavia: you can work out that Ulli is from Finland and most of the stories are set there or in nearby countries.
Every other story returns to Ulli, but the fragments of her life miss out the connective tissue: we suspect she’s pregnant as a teen, but don’t learn what she chose to do about it; we witness some dysfunctional scenes and realize she’s estranged from her family later on, but don’t find out if there was some big bust-up that prompted it. She comes across as a loner and a nomad, apt to be effaced by stronger personalities. In “The Ice Bear,” she’s on a ferry from Sweden back to Finland and can’t escape the prattle of a male missionary. In “A Question of Latitude” she’s out for a restaurant meal with friends, one of whom diagnoses her thus: “Nothing really affects you, does it? You just smile and put it out of your mind. And you cut people out of your life the same way, when you’ve finished with them.”
Whereas in the Bloom the interconnected stories are the strongest, here my preference was for the others. “The Bridge Painter” is about a man who leaves a peculiar calling card at each bridge he visits. “Annina” paints a woman with a questionable grasp on reality after the loss of a child. Best of all is probably “North Sea Crossing,” which contrasts two father-and-son pairs. If you only know Dunmore from novels, I can recommend her poetry and short stories, too. (Secondhand – Bas Books, Newbury)
All three: 
Try all of these authors right away if you haven’t already!
*A daytrip into London on Thursday was our Valentine’s gift to selves. We toured the Tower of London and the Science Museum (the Wellcome medical collections for me) and had an exceptional late lunch at Dishoom (starters and drinks pictured below). Tonight we’ll be having chocolate prune pots in front of The Bookshop Band’s love-themed livestream concert.
Book Serendipity, Mid-December 2022 to Mid-February 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. This is a regular feature of mine every few months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. The following are in roughly chronological order.
My biggest overall coincidence set this time was around Korean culture, especially food:
- A demanding Korean/American mother (“Umma”) in Sea Change by Gina Chung, Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling, and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.
- In the Chung and Zauner, she has eyebrows tattooed on.
- In the Chung and Sterling, there’s also a mall setting.
- Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin was set in South Korea and mentioned a lot of the same cultural factors and foods. KIMCHI (which I’ve never had) was inescapable in these four books.
And the rest…
- The concept of Satan as “the enemy” in God’s Ex-Girlfriend by Gloria Beth Amodeo and All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer, two 2023 memoirs I reviewed for Foreword Reviews.
- A mention of the Newsboys (my favourite Christian rock band when I was a teenager) in God’s Ex-Girlfriend by Gloria Beth Amodeo and, of all places, Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir (the context: a list of songs with “Born” in the title; theirs is called – you guessed it! – “Born Again”).
- Two Moores in my stack at once: Birds of America by Lorrie Moore and The Distance from Slaughter County by Steven Moore.
- A chapter in The Distance from Slaughter County by Steven Moore is called “Fight Night” and I was reading the early pages of Fight Night by Miriam Toews at the same time.
- A story in Birds of America by Lorrie Moore is called “Real Estate” and I was reading Real Estate by Deborah Levy at the same time.
- The Virgil quote “there are tears at the heart of things” and the theme of melancholy link Bittersweet by Susan Cain and The Heart of Things by Richard Holloway.
- A character who stutters in Bournville by Jonathan Coe and A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale.
- (Werther’s) butterscotch candies are mentioned in Leila and the Blue Fox by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, What Napoleon Could Not Do by DK Nnuro, and How to Be Sad by Helen Russell.
- A mother who loves going to church in Bournville by Jonathan Coe and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah.
- The metaphor of a girl trapped in a block of marble ready to have her identity carved out in Sea Change by Gina Chung and Everything’s Changing by Chelsea Stickle.
- When I read a short story about a landmine-detecting rat in Everything’s Changing by Chelsea Stickle, I knew it wasn’t the first time I’d encountered that very specific setup. It took some digging, but I found out the other was in Attrib. by Eley Williams.
- Shane McCrae, whose forthcoming memoir Pulling the Chariot of the Sun I was also reading, is a named poetic influence/source in More Sky by Joe Varrick-Carty.
- I’m sure that after the one in Margaret Atwood’s The Door I encountered another poem about a frozen cat … but can’t now find it for the life of me.
- A character named Marnie in Martha Quest by Doris Lessing and City of Friends by Joanna Trollope.
- Cape Verdean immigrants in the Boston area, then and now, in Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt and The War for Gloria by Atticus Lish.
- Someone swaps green tea for coffee in Bittersweet by Susan Cain and City of Friends by Joanna Trollope.
- A half-French, half-Asian protagonist in a novella translated from the French: A Single Rose by Muriel Barbery and Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin.
- A (semi-)historical lesbian couple as a subject of historical fiction in Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt and Chase of the Wild Goose by Mary Gordon.
- A lesbian couple with a ten-year age gap breaks up because the one partner wants a baby and the other does not in My Mother Says by Stine Pilgaard and City of Friends by Joanna Trollope.
- After I specifically read three Frost Fairs books … 18th-century frolics on the frozen Thames were mentioned in The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph.
- As I was reading The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph, I saw him briefly mentioned in How to Be Sad by Helen Russell.
- From one 139-page book about a foreigner’s wanderings in Kyoto (often taking in temples) to another: I followed up A Single Rose by Muriel Barbery with How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart by Florentyna Leow.
- Persimmon jam is mentioned in Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin and How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart by Florentyna Leow.
- A brave post-tragedy trip to a mothers and babies group ends abruptly when people are awkward or rude in All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett and How to Be Sad by Helen Russell.
As I was reading What We Talk about when We Talk about Love by Raymond Carver, I encountered a snippet from his poetry as a chapter epigraph in Bittersweet by Susan Cain.
- Sexologist Havelock Ellis inspired one of the main characters in The New Life by Tom Crewe and is mentioned in passing in Martha Quest by Doris Lessing.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
