Book Serendipity, June to July
Life can have odd confluences. Esme will not say serendipity: she loathes the word. But sometimes she thinks there must be something at work, some impulse, some collision of forces, some kinks in chronology.
~The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
Unlike Esme Lennox, I love the word serendipity! You probably know by now that I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away!
Thanks to Kay for posting about her own book serendipity moments here!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- A woman gets on a flight even though she’s technically too pregnant to do so in one poem of Family Lines (ed. Armitage and Bower) and Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan.
- A mention of a Spanish cat in one poem of Family Lines (ed. Armitage and Bower) and Tsi-Tsa by George Mikes.
- Rum and coke is mentioned in I Sing to the Greenhearts by Maggie Harris and Our Father Who Art in the Tree by Judy Pascoe.
- A character named Gladys in Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates and Our Father Who Art in the Tree by Judy Pascoe.
- A character named Celia in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid and Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan.
- A girl holds her breath until she faints in Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash and Our Father Who Art in the Tree by Judy Pascoe.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s performance as a father appears in one poem of Family Lines (ed. Armitage and Bower) and one essay of Frog by Anne Fadiman.
- A cat scratches a tatami mat in Letters of Note: Cats (ed. Shaun Usher) and I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki.
- A Freudian explanation of the collector’s obsessive impulse in The Madman’s Guide to Stamp Collecting by Robert Irwin and The Butterfly Season by Lea Korsgaard.
- A book/other arts coincidence, this: I first saw the actress Anya Taylor-Joy in The Menu, which I watched on my sister’s TV streaming system in the US, and then realized she’s pictured on the Netflix tie-in cover of a book I borrowed from the library, The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis.
- Manhattans are drunk in Furnishing Eternity by David Giffels and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
- A main character has a history of living in an orphanage in Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, Buckeye by Patrick Ryan, and The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis; and in children’s homes in Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller.
- An in-law named Fran(cesca) in The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell and The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.
- A scene of visiting one’s grandmother in a dementia ward in The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell and Black Lake by Emily Skaja.
- Eating spoons of sugar straight from the jar/box in Depression Cooking by Sonali Menezes and The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.
- Young people living in a squat in Sunset Park by Paul Auster and then Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller.
- A people-trafficking plot in Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash and The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel.
- Someone who doesn’t want to be recognized says “I don’t know what you’re talking about” / “I have no idea what you’re talking about” when someone identifies them in Apt Pupil by Stephen King and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
- A woman suffers from insomnia despite having done all the ‘right’ things, sleep hygiene-wise, in one story of Lesser-Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu and Kakigori Summer by Emily Itami.
- A future blonde bombshell actress gets married off at age 15 in Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
- A homosexual encounter takes place in a public bathroom in What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. (Plus heterosexual ones in a private shower in Partita by Barbara Kingsolver.)
- A reference to Emerson’s “transparent eyeball” in The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel and Black Lake by Emily Skaja.
- A character named Manny in Dominion by Addie E. Citchens, Partita by Barbara Kingsolver, and one story of The Typing Lady by Ruth Ozeki.
- A female character named Mick(ie) in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and Partita by Barbara Kingsolver. (There’s also a male Mick in Few and Far Between by Jan Carson.)
- Shoplifting takes place in Receipts from the Bookshop by Katie Clapham, The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, one story of The Typing Lady by Ruth Ozeki, and The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.
- The medical necessity of ironing all one’s clothing, especially nappies/underwear, is mentioned in L’Appart by David Lebovitz (a Greek person told him that) and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller (de rigueur in 1970s Rhodesia).
Remarking on how quiet/noisy a French dishwasher is in Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik/L’Appart by David Lebovitz and a mention of one’s good fortune in getting a store to accept a returned appliance.
- A mention of Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline in Receipts from the Bookshop by Katie Clapham and Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat.
- Characters are robbed in a motel room in Dominion by Addie E. Citchens and The New People by Andrea Uptmor.
- Living in the space above a garage in one story of The Typing Lady by Ruth Ozeki and The New People by Andrea Uptmor.
- Scenes of a woman/girl reassembling a gun, and a gun amnesty, in one story of Lesser-Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller.
- The use of a typewriter in Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat, Apt Pupil by Stephen King, A Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken, one story of Night, Neon by Joyce Carol Oates, and The Typing Lady by Ruth Ozeki.
- Thousands of dollars being stored in/under a mattress in Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat and The New People by Andrea Uptmor.
The smell of vetiver: a cologne in Year of the Drought by Roland Buti and fabric softener in Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat.
- I encountered sections on the sense of smell at about the same time in Life in Five Senses by Gretchen Rubin and Wearing God by Lauren Winner.
- A person bites someone else’s finger in Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller, one story of The Typing Lady by Ruth Ozeki, and The New People by Andrea Uptmor. (And an ear in The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy.)
- Eating an omelette in a Paris café in The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy, Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik, and Moveable Feasts by Chris Newens. (I suppose these things will happen if I read multiple Paris-set books at once!)
- The fact that “Pas mal” (“not bad”) is high praise in French is explained in Pardon Our French by Alex Durand and Tom Carles and L’Appart by David Lebovitz.
An insistence that the soles of a woman’s feet not be shown in A Rough Guide to the Heart by Pam Houston (etiquette in Bhutan) and Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (when Norma Jeane Baker, aka Marilyn Monroe, is having early nude photos taken).
- A nude photo shoot takes place in The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel and Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates. There are also nude portrait sittings in The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy and The Original by Nell Stevens.
- A man has glass embedded in his face in Few and Far Between by Jan Carson and The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel.
- The idea that one will be cursed for touching a stranger’s grave appears in Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller and Kakigori Summer by Emily Itami.
- I find myself rereading two childhood memoirs of wartime life at the same time: Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Book Serendipity, March to May
I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away! Feel free to join in with your own.
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- A sister named Fiona in The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright and Leaving Home by Mark Haddon.
- A parent burns a dirty magazine in Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell and The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman.
- Sabbath chains, Gaelic sermons, and psalm singing on the very pious Isle of Lewis in John of John by Douglas Stuart (set in the 1990s), then Findings by Kathleen Jamie (essay from the early 2000s). I doubt any of the above can still be found there, though we did note “Respect the Sabbath” signs on playground equipment on our 2022 trip.
- A single mother who won’t answer the phone because she’s afraid of who/what it might be in Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates and The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker.
- An orphaned narrator named (Eva) Luna in Eva Luna by Isabel Allende and Fountainville by Tishani Doshi. Then I came across a dog named Luna in Transcription by Ben Lerner! And the main character in one story of Baby in a Box by Sarah Braunstein starts going by her nickname, Luna.
- There’s a Muriel Rukeyser poem in the anthology Night Feeds and Morning Songs (ed. Ana Sampson) and Rukeyser is a character in Sophie Ward’s Our Better Natures, which I was also reading at the time.
- Eating boiled ham in Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (and boiled turkey in The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker).
Checking a hotel room for bedbugs in Transcription by Ben Lerner and Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy.
- A young person writing in shorthand in I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and First Class Murder by Robin Stevens.
- A character named Emmie in Transcription by Ben Lerner and (no surprise here) Emmie Arbel: The Colour of Memory by Barbara Yelin.
- Noting that roses are not suited to a particular climate in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson and Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl.
- A Welsh character named Owain in Fountainville by Tishani Doshi and Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd.
- The Secret Garden is discussed/mentioned in Reading My Mother Back by Timothy C. Baker and Mare by Emily Haworth-Booth, and mentioned in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson.
- The protagonist is emotionless at their mother’s deathbed in Like Mother by Jenny Diski and Leaving Home by Mark Haddon.
- (Apologies: this one is grim.) A young woman is sexually assaulted with a bottle in The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine and The Truth about Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent (both Irish novelists).
- A husband is involved in a deliberate (suicidal) crash in Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson and one story of I Am the Ghost Here by Kim Samek.
- Ali Baba’s cave is used as a metaphor in The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King.
- A brother- and sister-in-law have an affair in the two Portuguese novels I read on my Portugal holiday, The Migrant Painter of Birds by Lídia Jorge and The Piano Cemetery by José Luís Peixoto.
- A woman describes her discovery of orgasm in The Half Life by Rachel Beanland and The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel.
- ‘There are two kinds of people…’ thinking in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and one story of It Will Come Back to You by Sigrid Nunez.
- Money is hidden behind a boiler in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and The Murderer’s Ape by Jakob Wegelius.
The surname Callaway in The Half Life by Rachel Beanland and Calloway in The Watersmith by Yance Wyatt.
- Louise Erdrich, whose The Mighty Red I was reading at the time, is mentioned in The Madman’s Guide to Stamp Collecting by Robert Irwin.
- A minor character named Genevieve appears in Our Numbered Bones by Katya Balen and The Watersmith by Yance Wyatt.
- The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich is the second novel I’ve read within eight months (after The Wedding People by Alison Espach) in which a reluctant bride is saddled with a groom named Gary.
- A mountain lion sighting in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer.
- A character has a love of Agatha Christie novels in The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel and Buckeye by Patrick Ryan.
- A character with the nickname Kitten in Nonesuch by Francis Spufford (particularly funny because it’s for a thug) and Kitten by Stacey Yu.
- Reading two queer novels with an academic writing course setting at the same time: Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.
- A remark about the rare beauty of black hair with blue eyes in Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly and My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy.
- An STD is evidence of a husband’s infidelity in The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain and A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello.
- Bottles being used to hold picnic meals / foraged blackberries (noted because these days it would be plastic pots for everything) in Zami by Audre Lorde (the 1940s) and The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain (the 1960s).
Kismet is a character name in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich, so I was primed to notice the word being used in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (it’s a synonym for fate).
- A writer who faces the wall to work in The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain (Ted Hughes, that is) and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein (referring to Alice B. Toklas!).
- A painting of an Arctic tern features in The Migrant Painter of Birds by Lídia Jorge (on the cover) and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.
- Hot milk is drunk in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson, Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly (with Ovaltine), Nonesuch by Francis Spufford, and Kitten by Stacey Yu.
- William James is mentioned in My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy and Wise by Frank Tallis.
Algerian Muslim men appear in A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello and Moveable Feasts by Chris Newens.
- A pet cat was found on the shore in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson and Kitten by Stacey Yu.
- Bringing cherries to an invalid in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.
- Sex with a woman who has a mastectomy scar in Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly and Zami by Audre Lorde.
- A sighting of a kingfisher as auspicious in Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly and Transcription by Ben Lerner.
- The idea that former lovers leave a mark on people in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Zami by Audre Lorde.
- Pet cat(s) do themselves a mischief by getting into paint supplies in Zami by Audre Lorde and Kitten by Stacey Yu.
- A Sandymount, Dublin setting in A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello and Hood by Emma Donoghue.
- An Irish family where the mother and one daughter move to the USA and the father and other daughter stay behind in Hood by Emma Donoghue and The Truth about Ruby Cooper by Liz Nugent (both Irish novelists).
- The concept of a “funeral cake” in The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.
- A character regrets wearing eye makeup on an emotional occasion in The Memory of Borrowed Books by Meg Anderson and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly.
My second Irish novel of the year that takes place over one week: Hood by Emma Donoghue (after One by One in the Dark by Deirdre Madden).
- A cat of confusing gender: Grace is male in Hood by Emma Donoghue and Bob is always referred to as “it” in My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy.
- The idea that it’s rare for a woman to a) be a good storyteller (in The Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev) or b) tell a punchline with a straight face (in The Correspondent by Virginia Evans – at least the man gets called out on his sexist opinion in this case). I also noticed the use of the word “caprice” in both books (and also in Turgenev’s First Love) because it’s unusual and I like it.
- Another grim, grim one: reading two books at the same time in which a woman is / women are drugged and raped while unconscious (A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot and Women Talking by Miriam Toews).
- I read two short stories in quick succession about a peasant porter who carries a broom: “A Real Durwan” by Jhumpa Lahiri (from Interpreter of Maladies) followed by “Mumu” by Ivan Turgenev.
- An older woman insists that she still is/has a little girl inside in The Correspondent by Virginia Evans and A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot.
The number 7 has magical significance for the author in Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt and A Hymn to Life by Gisèle Pelicot.
- A couple meets when they see each other reading the same book in an outdoor location: A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; and The Great Gatsby in Sunset Park by Paul Auster.
- Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For is mentioned in Hood by Emma Donoghue; I was reading a Bechdel book, The Secret of Superhuman Strength, at the same time.
- Gnats are irksome in Sunset Park by Paul Auster and Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 