Book Serendipity, Mid-November–Early January
This is a short set but I’ll post it now to keep things ticking over. I’ve lost nearly a week to the upper respiratory virus from hell, and haven’t felt up to sitting at my computer for any extended periods of time. I had to request extensions on a few of my work deadlines; I’ll hope to be back to normal blogging next week, too.
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.
- Ayot St Lawrence as a setting in Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff and Flesh by David Szalay.
- A man who has panic attacks in Pan by Michael Clune and All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun.
- Two of my Shelf Awareness PRO (early) reviews in a row were of 2026 novels set on a celebrity/reunion cruise: All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun, followed by American Fantasy by Emma Straub. In both, the narrative alternates between three main characters, the cruise is to celebrate a milestone birthday for a passenger’s relative, and there’s a celebrity who’s in AA.
- A teacher–student relationship develops into a friendship in The Irish Goodbye by Beth Ann Fennelly (with Molly McCully Brown, whose Places I’ve Taken My Body I’ve reviewed) and Lessons from My Teachers by Sarah Ruhl (with Max Ritvo, about whom she wrote a whole book).
Someone becomes addicted to benzodiazepines in The Pass by Katriona Chapman and All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun (both 2026 releases).
- A New York City event scheduled to occur on September 15 or 16, 2001 is postponed because of 9/11 in Joyride by Susan Orlean (her wedding) and All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun (a cruise departure – it’s moved to Boston).
- A 1960s attempted suicide by putting one’s head in a gas oven in The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson and The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor.
- A plan to eat cheese to induce dreams in The Reservation by Rebecca Kauffman and Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth.
- An author is (at least initially) aghast at the liberties taken with an adaptation of her book in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Joyride by Susan Orlean (the film Adaptation, one of my favourites, bears little relation to her nonfiction work The Orchid Thief, which I also love).
- A North American author meets her British publishers, André Deutsch and Diana Athill, in Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood and Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff. (Atwood also mentions Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, the title reference in the Hanff.)
- An older white woman feels compelled to add, as an aside after a memory of slightly dodgy behaviour observed, that cultural appropriation was not a thing in those days in Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood and Winter by Val McDermid.
- I read two books in 2025 with a title taken from a Christian Wiman poem: A Truce that Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews, then Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer.
- A special trip undertaken for a younger sister’s milestone birthday: a road trip through Scotland in a campervan in Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth for a 40th; and a boy band reunion cruise to the Bahamas for a 45th in American Fantasy by Emma Straub.
- A reference to Sartre’s “hell is other people” line (paraphrased) in Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo and The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas.
- The clock-drawing test as a shorthand for assessing a loved one’s dementia in Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood (her partner Graeme) and Joyride by Susan Orlean (her mother).
A sexual encounter between two men is presaged by them relieving themselves side by side at urinals in A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland and The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas.
- An older man who knows he’s having a stroke just wants to sit quietly in a chair and not be taken to hospital in Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood (her partner Graeme) and The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr.
- A man who’s gone through Alcoholics Anonymous gets dangerously close to falling off the wagon: picks up a bottle of gin in a shop in The Names by Florence Knapp / buys a drink at a bar in All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun.
- I was reading two nonfiction books with built-in red ribbon bookmarks at the same time: Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood and Robin by Stephen Moss.
- Homoeopathy is an element in The Names by Florence Knapp and The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas.
- A character named Sparrow in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Songs of No Provenance by Lydi Conklin.
- A mention of special celebrations for a Korean mother’s 70 birthday in Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo and All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun.
- Some kinky practices in Songs of No Provenance by Lydi Conklin and Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood.
- A girl from an immigrant family reads Greek mythology for escape in Visitations by Julia Alvarez and The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson.
- “View halloo” (originally a fox-hunting term) is used as a greeting in Talking It Over by Julian Barnes and Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Some 2025 Reading Superlatives
Longest book read this year: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (724 pages)
Shortest book read this year: Sky Tongued Back with Light by Sébastien Luc Butler (a 38-page poetry chapbook coming out in 2026)
Authors I read the most by this year: Paul Auster and Emma Donoghue (3) [followed by Margaret Atwood, Chloe Caldwell, Michael Cunningham, Mairi Hedderwick, Christopher Isherwood, Rebecca Kauffman, Stephen King, Elaine Kraf, Maggie O’Farrell, Sylvia Plath and Jess Walter (2 each)]
Publishers I read the most from: (Besides the ubiquitous Penguin Random House and its myriad imprints) Faber (14), Canongate (12), Bloomsbury (11), Fourth Estate (7); Carcanet, Picador/Pan Macmillan and Virago (6)
My top author ‘discoveries’ of the year (I’m very late to the party on some of these!): poet Amy Gerstler, Christopher Isherwood, Stephen King, Elaine Kraf, Sylvia Plath, Chloe Savage’s children’s picture books (women + NB characters, science, adventure, dogs), Robin Stevens’s middle-grade mysteries, Jess Walter
Proudest book-related achievement: Clearing 90–100 books from my shelves as part of our hallway redecoration. Some I resold, some I gave to friends, some I put in the Little Free Library, and some I donated to charity shops.
Most pinching-myself bookish moment: Miriam Toews’ U.S. publicist e-mailing me about my Shelf Awareness review of A Truce That Is Not Peace to say, “saw your amazing review! Thank you so much for it – Miriam loved it!”
Books that made me laugh: LOTS, including Spent by Alison Bechdel (which I read twice), The Wedding People by Alison Espach, Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, Is This My Final Form? by Amy Gerstler, The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith, The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Aged 37 ¾, and Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth
A book that made me cry: Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry
Best book club selections: Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam; The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell and Stoner by John Williams (these three were all rereads)
Best first line encountered this year:
- From Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones: “Hard, ugly, summer-vacation-spoiling rain fell for three straight months in 1979.”
Best last lines encountered this year:
- Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane: “Death and love and life, all mingled in the flow.”
(Two quite similar rhetorical questions:)
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam: “If they didn’t know how it would end—with night, with more terrible noise from the top of Olympus, with bombs, with disease, with blood, with happiness, with deer or something else watching them from the darkened woods—well, wasn’t that true of every day?”
&
- Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter: “And even if they don’t find what they’re looking for, isn’t it enough to be out walking together in the sunlight?”
- Wreck by Catherine Newman: “You are still breathing.”
The Irish Goodbye by Beth Ann Fennelly: “Dear viewer of my naked body, Enjoy the bunions.”
- A Certain Smile by Françoise Sagan: “It was a simple story; there was nothing to make a fuss about.”
- Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood: “We scribes and scribblers are time travellers: via the magic page we throw our voices, not only from here to elsewhere, but also from now to a possible future. I’ll see you there.”
Book that put a song in my head every time I picked it up: The Harvest Gypsies by John Steinbeck (see Kris Drever’s song of the same name). Also, one story of Book of Exemplary Women by Diana Xin mentioned lyrics from “Wild World” by Cat Stevens (“Oh, baby, baby, it’s a wild world. And I’ll always remember you like a child, girl”).
Shortest book titles encountered: Pan (Michael Clune), followed by Gold (Elaine Feinstein) & Girl (Ruth Padel); followed by an 8-way tie! Spent (Alison Bechdel), Billy (Albert French), Carol (Patricia Highsmith), Pluck (Adam Hughes), Sleep (Honor Jones), Wreck (Catherine Newman), Ariel (Sylvia Plath) & Flesh (David Szalay)
Best 2025 book titles: Chopping Onions on My Heart by Samantha Ellis [retitled, probably sensibly, Always Carry Salt for its U.S. release], A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews [named after a line from a Christian Wiman poem – top taste there] & Calls May Be Recorded for Training and Monitoring Purposes by Katharina Volckmer.
Best book titles from other years: Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags by Shena Mackay
Biggest disappointments: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – so not worth waiting 12 years for – and Heart the Lover by Lily King, which kind of retrospectively ruined her brilliant Writers & Lovers for me.
The 2025 books that it seemed like everyone was reading but I decided not to: Helm by Sarah Hall, The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (I’m 0 for 2 on his 2020s releases)
The downright strangest books I read this year: Both by Elaine Kraf: I Am Clarence and Find Him! (links to my Shelf Awareness reviews) are confusing, disturbing, experimental in language and form, but also ahead of their time in terms of their feminist content and insight into compromised mental states. The former is more accessible and less claustrophobic.
Book Serendipity, Mid-June through August
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!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- A description of the Y-shaped autopsy scar on a corpse in Pet Sematary by Stephen King and A Truce that Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews.
- Charlie Chaplin’s real-life persona/behaviour is mentioned in The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus and Greyhound by Joanna Pocock.
- The manipulative/performative nature of worship leading is discussed in Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever by Lamorna Ash and Jarred Johnson’s essay in the anthology Queer Communion: Religion in Appalachia. I read one scene right after the other!
- A discussion of the religious impulse to celibacy in Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever by Lamorna Ash and The Dry Season by Melissa Febos.
- Hanif Kureishi has a dog named Cairo in Shattered; Amelia Thomas has a son by the same name in What Sheep Think About the Weather.
- A pilgrimage to Virginia Woolf’s home in The Dry Season by Melissa Febos and Writing Creativity and Soul by Sue Monk Kidd.
- Water – Air – Earth divisions in the Nature Matters (ed. Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf) and Moving Mountains (ed. Louise Kenward) anthologies.
The fact that humans have two ears and one mouth and so should listen more than they talk is mentioned in What Sheep Think about the Weather by Amelia Thomas and The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
- Inappropriate sexual comments made to female bar staff in The Most by Jessica Anthony and Isobel Anderson’s essay in the Moving Mountains (ed. Louise Kenward) anthology.
- Charlie Parker is mentioned in The Most by Jessica Anthony and The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus.
- The metaphor of an ark for all the elements that connect one to a language and culture was used in Chopping Onions on My Heart by Samantha Ellis, which I read earlier in the year, and then again in The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus.
- A scene of first meeting their African American wife (one of the partners being a poet) and burning a list of false beliefs in The Dry Season by Melissa Febos and The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus.
- The Kafka quote “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us” appears in Shattered by Hanif Kureishi and Writing Creativity and Soul by Sue Monk Kidd. They also both quote Dorothea Brande on writing.
- The simmer dim (long summer light) in Shetland is mentioned in Storm Pegs by Jen Hadfield and Sally Huband’s piece in the Moving Mountains (ed. Louise Kenward) anthology (not surprising as they both live in Shetland!).
- A restaurant applauds a proposal or the news of an engagement in The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce and Likeness by Samsun Knight.
- Noticing that someone ‘isn’t there’ (i.e., their attention is elsewhere) in Woodworking by Emily St. James and Palaver by Bryan Washington.
- I was reading Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones and Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor – which involves her literally leaving Atlanta to be the pastor of a country church – at the same time. (I was also reading Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam.)
- A mention of an adolescent girl wearing a two-piece swimsuit for the first time in Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han, and The Stirrings by Catherine Taylor.
- A discussion of John Keats’s concept of negative capability in My Little Donkey by Martha Cooley and What Sheep Think About the Weather by Amelia Thomas.
- A mention of JonBenét Ramsey in Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam and the new introduction to Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones.
- A character drowns in a ditch full of water in Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones and The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
A girl dares to question her grandmother for talking down the girl’s mother (i.e., the grandmother’s daughter-in-law) in Cekpa by Leah Altman and Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones.
- A woman who’s dying of stomach cancer in The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and Book of Exemplary Women by Diana Xin.
- A woman’s genitals are referred to as the “mons” in Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam and The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
- A girl doesn’t like her mother asking her to share her writing with grown-ups in People with No Charisma by Jente Posthuma and one story of Book of Exemplary Women by Diana Xin.
- A girl is not allowed to walk home alone from school because of a serial killer at work in the area, and is unprepared for her period so lines her underwear with toilet paper instead in Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones and The Stirrings by Catherine Taylor.
When I interviewed Amy Gerstler about her poetry collection Is This My Final Form?, she quoted a Walt Whitman passage about animals. I found the same passage in What Sheep Think About the Weather by Amelia Thomas.
- A character named Stefan in The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld and Palaver by Bryan Washington.
- A father who is a bad painter in The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld and The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce.
- The goddess Minerva is mentioned in The Dime Museum by Joyce Hinnefeld and The Stirrings by Catherine Taylor.
- A woman finds lots of shed hair on her pillow in In Late Summer by Magdalena Blažević and The Dig by John Preston.
An Italian man who only uses the present tense when speaking in English in The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce and Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.
- The narrator ponders whether she would make a good corpse in People with No Charisma by Jente Posthuma and Terminal Surreal by Martha Silano. The former concludes that she would, while the latter struggles to lie still during savasana (“Corpse Pose”) in yoga – ironic because she has terminal ALS.
- Harry the cat in The Wedding People by Alison Espach; Henry the cat in Calls May Be Recorded by Katharina Volckmer.
- The protagonist has a blood test after rapid weight gain and tiredness indicate thyroid problems in Voracious by Małgorzata Lebda and The Stirrings by Catherine Taylor.
- It’s said of an island that nobody dies there in Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave by Mariana Enríquez and Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.
- A woman whose mother died when she was young and whose father was so depressed as a result that he was emotionally detached from her in The Wedding People by Alison Espach and People with No Charisma by Jente Posthuma.
A scene of a woman attending her homosexual husband’s funeral in The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce and Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins.
- There’s a ghost in the cellar in In Late Summer by Magdalena Blažević, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and Book of Exemplary Women by Diana Xin.
- Mention of harps / a harpist in The Wedding People by Alison Espach, The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce, and What Mennonite Girls Are Good For by Jennifer Sears.
- “You use people” is an accusation spoken aloud in The Dry Season by Melissa Febos and Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.
- Let’s not beat around the bush: “I want to f*ck you” is spoken aloud in The Wedding People by Alison Espach and Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins; “Want to/Wanna f*ck?” is also in The Wedding People by Alison Espach and in Bigger by Ren Cedar Fuller.
A young woman notes that her left breast is larger in Voracious by Małgorzata Lebda and Woodworking by Emily St. James. (And a girl fondles her left breast in one story of Book of Exemplary Women by Diana Xin.)
- A shawl is given as a parting gift in How to Cook a Coyote by Betty Fussell and one story of What Mennonite Girls Are Good For by Jennifer Sears.
- The author has Long Covid in Alec Finlay’s essay in the Moving Mountains anthology, and Pluck by Adam Hughes.
- An old woman applies suncream in Kate Davis’s essay in the Moving Mountains anthology, and How to Cook a Coyote by Betty Fussell.
- There’s a leper colony in What Mennonite Girls Are Good For by Jennifer Sears and The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
- There’s a missionary kid in South America in Bigger by Ren Cedar Fuller and What Mennonite Girls Are Good For by Jennifer Sears.
A man doesn’t tell his wife that he’s lost his job in Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins and The Summer House by Philip Teir.
- A teen brother and sister wander the woods while on vacation with their parents in Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam and The Summer House by Philip Teir.
- Using a famous fake name as an alias for checking into a hotel in one story of Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny and Seascraper by Benjamin Wood.
- A woman punches someone in the chest in the title story of Dreams of Dead Women’s Handbags by Shena Mackay and Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Astraea by Kate Kruimink (Weatherglass Novella Prize) #NovNov24
Astraea by Kate Kruimink is one of two winners* of the inaugural Weatherglass Novella Prize, as chosen by Ali Smith. Back in September, I was introduced to it through Weatherglass Books’ “The Future of the Novella” event in London (my write-up is here).
Taking place within about a day and a half on a 19th-century convict ship bound for Australia, it is the intense story of a group of women and children chafing against the constraints men have set for them. The protagonist is just 15 years old and postpartum. Within a hostile environment, the women have created an almost cosy community based on sisterhood. They look out for each other; an old midwife can still bestow her skills.
The ship was their shelter, the small chalice carrying them through that which was inhospitable to human life. But there was no shelter for her there, she thought. There was only a series of confines between which she might move but never escape.
The ship’s doctor and chaplain distrust what they call the “conspiracy of women” and are embarrassed by the bodily reality of one going into labour, another tending to an ill baby, and a third haemorrhaging. They have no doubt they know what is best for their charges yet can barely be bothered to learn their names.
Indeed, naming is key here. The main character is effectively erased from the historical record when a clerk incorrectly documents her as Maryanne Maginn. Maryanne’s only “maybe-friend,” red-haired Sarah, has the surname Ward. “Astraea” is the name not just of the ship they travel on but also of a star goddess and a new baby onboard.
The drama in this novella arises from the women’s attempts to assert their autonomy. Female rage and rebellion meet with punishment, including a memorable scene of solitary confinement. A carpenter then constructs a “nice little locking box that will hold you when you sin, until you’re sorry for it and your souls are much recovered,” as he tells the women. They are all convicts, and now their discipline will become a matter of religious theatrics.
Given the limitations of setting and time and the preponderance of dialogue, I could imagine this making a powerful play. The novella length is as useful a framework as the ship itself. Kruimink doesn’t waste time on backstory; what matters is not what these women have done to end up here, but how their treatment is an affront to their essential dignity. Even in such a low page count, though, there are intriguing traces of the past and future, as well as a fleeting hint of homoeroticism. I would recommend this to readers of The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Devotion by Hannah Kent and Women Talking by Miriam Toews. And if you get a hankering to follow up on the story, you can: this functions as a prequel to Kruimink’s first novel, A Treacherous Country. (See also Cathy’s review.)
[115 pages]
With thanks to Weatherglass Books for the free copy for review.
*The other winner, Aerth by Deborah Tomkins, a novella-in-flash set on alternative earths, will be published in January. I hope to have a proof copy in hand before the end of the month to review for this challenge plus SciFi Month.
#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?
Book Serendipity, January to February 2024
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 finished two poetry collections by a man with the surname Barnett within four days in January: Murmur by Cameron Barnett and Birds Knit My Ribs Together by Phil Barnett.
- I came across the person or place name Courtland in The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty, then Cortland in a story from The Orange Fish by Carol Shields, then Cotland (but where? I couldn’t locate it again! Was it in Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey?).
- The Manet painting Olympia is mentioned in Christmas Holiday by W. Somerset Maugham and The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl (both of which are set in Paris).
- There’s an “Interlude” section in Babel by R.F. Kuang and The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez.
- The Morris (Minor) car is mentioned in Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey and Various Miracles by Carol Shields.
- The “flour/flower” homophone is mentioned in Babel by R.F. Kuang and Various Miracles by Carol Shields.
- A chimney swift flies into the house in Cat and Bird by Kyoko Mori and The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty.
- A character named Cornelius in The Fruit Cure by Jacqueline Alnes and Wellness by Nathan Hill.
- Reading two year challenge books at the same time, A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans and Local by Alastair Humphreys, both of which are illustrated with frequent black-and-white photos by and of the author.
- A woman uses a bell to summon children in one story of Universally Adored and Other One Dollar Stories by Elizabeth Bruce and The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty.
- Apple turnovers get a mention in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans and Wellness by Nathan Hill.
- A description of rolling out pie crust in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans and Cat and Bird by Kyoko Mori.
- The idea of a house giving off good or bad vibrations in Wellness by Nathan Hill and a story from Various Miracles by Carol Shields.
- Emergency C-sections described or at least mentioned in Brother Do You Love Me by Manni Coe, The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan, Wellness by Nathan Hill, and lots more.
- Frustration with a toddler’s fussy eating habits, talk of “gentle parenting” methods, and mention of sea squirts in Wellness by Nathan Hill and Matrescence by Lucy Jones.
- The nickname “Poet” in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and My Friends by Hisham Matar.
- A comment about seeing chicken bones on the streets of London in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe.
- Swans in poetry in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick.
- A mention or image of Captcha technology in Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick and Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe.
- An animal automaton in Loot by Tania James and Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick.
- A mention of Donna Tartt in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley, Looking in the Distance by Richard Holloway, and Matrescence by Lucy Jones.
- Cathy Rentzenbrink appears in The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe.
Dialogue is given in italics in the memoirs The Tidal Year by Freya Bromley and The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan.
- An account of a man being forced to marry the sister of his beloved in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans, Wellness by Nathan Hill, and The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht.
- Saying that one doesn’t want to remember the loved one as ill (but really, not wanting to face death) so not saying goodbye (in Cat and Bird by Kyoko Mori) or having a closed coffin (Wellness by Nathan Hill).
- An unhappy, religious mother who becomes a hoarder in Wellness by Nathan Hill and I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
- Characters called Lidija and Jin in Exhibit by R. O. Kwon and Lydia and Jing in the first story of This Is Salvaged by Vauhini Vara.
- Distress at developing breasts in Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere and I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
- I came across mentions of American sportscaster Howard Cosell in Heartburn by Nora Ephron and Stations of the Heart by Richard Lischer (two heart books I was planning on reviewing together) on the same evening. So random!
- Girls kissing and flirting with each other (but it’s clear one partner is serious about it whereas the other is only playing or considers it practice for being with boys) in Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere and Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell.
- A conversion to Catholicism in Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown and Stations of the Heart by Richard Lischer.
- A zookeeper is attacked by a tiger when s/he goes into the enclosure (maybe not the greatest idea!!) in Tiger by Polly Clark and The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht.
- The nickname Frodo appears in Tiger by Polly Clark and Brother Do You Love Me by Manni Coe.
- Opening scene of a parent in a coma, California setting, and striking pink and yellow cover to Death Valley by Melissa Broder and I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
- An Englishman goes to Nigeria in Howards End by E.M. Forster and Immanuel by Matthew McNaught.
The Russian practice of whipping people with branches at a spa in Tiger by Polly Clark and Fight Night by Miriam Toews.
- A mother continues washing her daughter’s hair until she is a teenager old enough to leave home in Mrs. March by Virginia Feito and I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
- Section 28 (a British law prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools) is mentioned in A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy, and Brother Do You Love Me by Manni Coe.
- Characters named Gord (in one story from Various Miracles by Carol Shields, and in Fight Night by Miriam Toews), Gordy (in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie), and Gordo (in Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce).
- Montessori and Waldorf schools are mentioned in Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere and When Fragments Make a Whole by Lory Widmer Hess.
- A trailer burns down in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
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?
Women’s Prize 2023: Longlist Predictions vs. Wishes
I’ve been working on a list of novels eligible for this year’s Women’s Prize since … this time last year. Unusual for me to be so prepared! It shows how invested I’ve become in this prize over the years. For instance, last year my book club was part of an official shadowing scheme, which was great fun.
We’re now less than a month out from the longlist, which will be announced on 7 March. Like last year, I’ve separated my predictions from a wish list; two titles overlap. Here’s a reminder of the parameters, taken from the website:
“Any woman writing in English – whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter – is eligible. Novels must be published in the United Kingdom between 1 April in the year the Prize calls for entries, and 31 March the following year, when the Prize is announced. … The Prize only accepts novels entered by publishers, who may each submit a maximum of two titles per imprint, depending on size, and one title for imprints with a list of ten fiction titles or fewer published in a year. Previously shortlisted and winning authors are given a ‘free pass’.”
This year I dutifully kept tabs on publisher quotas as I compiled my lists. I also attempted to bear in mind the interests of this year’s judges (also from the website): “Chair of Judges, author and journalist Louise Minchin, is joined by award-winning novelist Rachel Joyce; author, journalist and podcaster Irenosen Okojie; bestselling author and journalist Bella Mackie and MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq.”
Predictions
A Spell of Good Things, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton
Joan, Katherine J. Chen
Maame, Jessica George
Really Good, Actually, Monica Heisey
Trespasses, Louise Kennedy
The Night Ship, Jess Kidd (my review)
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (my review)
Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng (my review)
The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell
I’m a Fan, Sheena Patel
Elektra, Jennifer Saint
Best of Friends, Kamila Shamsie
River Sing Me Home, Eleanor Shearer
Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout – currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (my review)
Wish List
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz
The Weather Woman, Sally Gardner (my review)
Maame, Jessica George
The Great Reclamation, Rachel Heng
Bad Cree, Jessica Johns
I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai – currently reading
Sea of Tranquillity, Emily St. John Mandel (my review)
The Hero of This Book, Elizabeth McCracken (my review)
Nightcrawling, Leila Mottley (my review)
We All Want Impossible Things, Catherine Newman – currently reading
Everything the Light Touches, Janice Pariat (my review)
Camp Zero, Michelle Min Sterling – review pending for Shelf Awareness
Briefly, A Delicious Life, Nell Stevens (my review)
This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub (my review)
Fight Night, Miriam Toews – currently reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (my review)
Of course, even if I’m lucky, I’ll still only get a few right across these two lists, and I’ll be kicking myself over the ones I considered but didn’t include, and marvelling at all the ones I’ve never heard of…
What would you like to see on the longlist?
~BREAKING NEWS: There are plans afoot to start a Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Now seeking funding to start in 2024. More details here.~
Appendix
(A further 99 eligible novels that were on my radar but didn’t make the cut:)
Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese
Rose and the Burma Sky, Rosanna Amaka
Milk Teeth, Jessica Andrews
Clara & Olivia, Lucy Ashe
Wet Paint, Chloë Ashby
Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson
Honey & Spice, Bolu Babalola
Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo
Either/Or, Elif Batuman
Girls They Write Songs About, Carlene Bauer
seven steeples, Sara Baume
The Witches of Vardo, Anya Bergman
Shadow Girls, Carol Birch
Permission, Jo Bloom
Horse, Geraldine Brooks
Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo
Mother’s Day, Abigail Burdess
Instructions for the Working Day, Joanna Campbell
People Person, Candice Carty-Williams
Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou
The Book of Eve, Meg Clothier
Cult Classic, Sloane Crosley
The Things We Do to Our Friends, Heather Darwent
The Bewitching, Jill Dawson
Common Decency, Susannah Dickey
Theatre of Marvels, L.M. Dillsworth
Haven, Emma Donoghue
History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Christy Edwall
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
Dazzling, Chikodili Emelumadu
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, Akwaeke Emezi
there are more things, Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Factory Girls, Michelle Gallen
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
The Illuminated, Anindita Ghose
Your Driver Is Waiting, Priya Guns
The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty
The Dance Tree, Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Weyward, Emilia Hart
Other People Manage, Ellen Hawley
Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
The Cloisters, Katy Hays
Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth
The Unfolding, A.M. Homes
The White Rock, Anna Hope
They’re Going to Love You, Meg Howrey
Housebreaking, Colleen Hubbard
Vladimir, Julia May Jonas
This Is Gonna End in Tears, Liza Klaussmann
The Applicant, Nazli Koca
Babel, R.F. Kuang
Yerba Buena, Nina Lacour
The Swimmers, Chloe Lane
The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li
Amazing Grace Adams, Fran Littlewood
All the Little Bird Hearts, Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Now She Is Witch, Kirsty Logan
The Chosen, Elizabeth Lowry
The Home Scar, Kathleen MacMahon
Very Cold People, Sarah Manguso
All This Could Be Different, Sarah Thankam Mathews
Becky, Sarah May
The Dog of the North, Elizabeth McKenzie
Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet
Young Women, Jessica Moor
The Garnett Girls, Georgina Moore
Black Butterflies, Priscilla Morris
Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh
Someone Else’s Shoes, Jojo Moyes
The Men, Sandra Newman
True Biz, Sara Nović
Babysitter, Joyce Carol Oates
Tomorrow I Become a Woman, Aiwanose Odafen
Things They Lost, Okwiri Oduor
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, Soraya Palmer
The Things that We Lost, Jyoti Patel
Still Water, Rebecca Pert
Stargazer, Laurie Petrou
Ruth & Pen, Emilie Pine
Delphi, Clare Pollard
The Whalebone Theatre, Joanna Quinn
The Poet, Louisa Reid
Carrie Soto Is Back, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan
Blue Hour, Sarah Schmidt
After Sappho, Selby Wynn Schwartz
Signal Fires, Dani Shapiro
A Dangerous Business, Jane Smiley
Companion Piece, Ali Smith
Memphis, Tara M. Stringfellow
Flight, Lynn Steger Strong
Brutes, Dizz Tate
Madwoman, Louisa Treger
I Laugh Me Broken, Bridget van der Zijpp
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, Rebecca Wait
The Schoolhouse, Sophie Ward
Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, Laura Warrell
The Odyssey, Lara Williams
A Complicated Matter, Anne Youngson
Avalon, Nell Zink
Six Degrees of Separation: From Sorrow and Bliss to Weather
This month we begin with Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. (See also Kate’s opening post.) This is my personal favourite from the Women’s Prize shortlist and couldn’t be a better pick for the Six Degrees starter this month because I’ll be skimming back through the novel this weekend in advance of my book club’s discussion of it on Monday. (We’re one of this year’s six book groups shadowing the Women’s Prize through a Reading Agency initiative, so we then have to give semi-official feedback on our experience of the book by Wednesday.)
#1 Sorrow and Bliss is a terrific tragicomedy about sisterhood and mental health – as is All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews, with which it shares a loaded title word as well.
#2 Toews grew up in a Canadian Mennonite community, which leads me to my second choice, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen, a set of droll autobiographical essays that I read on a USA trip in 2017.
#3 During the same trip, I read Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles, a witty novel about Bennie Ford’s rather miserable life, presented in the form of his longwinded complaint letter to the airline that has treated him to an unexpected overnight layover in Chicago.
#4 Another laugh-out-loud book in the form of unlikely letters: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher, in which Jason Fitger, an irascible middle-aged English professor in the Midwest, writes ambivalent letters of recommendation for students and colleagues.
#5 One more “Dear” book of letters – I just can’t get enough of the epistolary form: Dear Fahrenheit 451 by Annie Spence. As the subtitle states, it’s a librarian’s love letters and breakup notes to books she’s adored and loathed. Casual and amusing, with good book recs.
#6 I’ll finish with Weather by Jenny Offill, one of my favourites from 2020, which is also voiced by a librarian. Through Lizzie, Offill captures modern anxiety about Trump-era politics, the climate crisis and making meaningful use of time.
I have read all the books in this month’s chain (the links above are to my Goodreads reviews), and in a time of relentless bad news have chosen to prioritize humour and keep my descriptions short and light. These are all books that made me laugh, sometimes despite their weighty content, and half of them are built around letters. I’ve also looped from one Women’s Prize-shortlisted title to another.
Where will your chain take you? Join us for #6Degrees of Separation! (Hosted on the first Saturday of each month by Kate W. of Books Are My Favourite and Best.) Next month’s starting point will be Wintering by Katherine May – though it’s summer here, it’s winter where Kate is in Australia!
Have you read any of my selections? Tempted by any you didn’t know before?
Wellcome Book Prize Blog Tour: Sigrid Rausing’s Mayhem
“Now that it’s all over I find myself thinking about family history and family memories; the stories that hold a family together and the acts that can split it apart.”
Sigrid Rausing’s brother, Hans, and his wife, Eva, were wealthy philanthropists – and drug addicts who kept it together long enough to marry and have children before relapsing. Hans survived that decade-long dive back into addiction, but Eva did not: in July 2012 the 48-year-old’s decomposed body was found in a sealed-off area of the couple’s £70 million Chelsea mansion. The postmortem revealed that she had been using cocaine, which threw her already damaged heart into a chaotic rhythm. She’d been dead in their drug den for over two months.
Those are the bare facts. Scandalous enough for you? But Mayhem is no true crime tell-all. It does incorporate the straightforward information that is in the public record – headlines, statements and appearances – but blends them into a fragmentary, dreamlike family memoir that proceeds through free association and obsessively deliberates about the nature and nurture aspects of addictive personalities. “We didn’t understand that every addiction case is the same dismal story,” she writes, in a reversal of Tolstoy’s maxim about unhappy families.
Rausing’s memories of idyllic childhood summers in Sweden reminded me of Tove Jansson stories, and the incessant self-questioning of a family member wracked by remorse is similar to what I’ve encountered in memoirs and novels about suicide in the family, such as Jill Bialosky’s History of a Suicide and Miriam Toews’ All My Puny Sorrows. Despite all the pleading letters and e-mails she sent Hans and Eva, and all the interventions and rehab spells she helped arrange, Rausing has a nagging “sense that when I tried I didn’t try hard enough.”
The book moves sinuously between past and present, before and after, fact and supposition. There are a lot of peculiar details and connections in this story, starting with the family history of dementia and alcoholism. Rausing’s grandfather founded the Tetra Pak packaging company, later run by her father. Eva had a pet conspiracy theory that her father-in-law murdered Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986.
Rausing did anthropology fieldwork in Estonia and is now the publisher of Granta Books and Granta magazine. True to her career in editing, she’s treated this book project like a wild saga that had to be tamed, “all the sad and sordid details redacted,” but “I fear I have redacted too much,” she admits towards the end. She’s constantly pushing back against the more sensational aspects of this story, seeking instead to ground it in family experience. The book’s sketchy nature is in a sense necessary because information about her four nieces and nephews, of whom she took custody in 2007, cannot legally be revealed. But if she’d waited until they were all of age, might this have been a rather different memoir?
Mayhem effectively conveys the regret and guilt that plague families of addicts. It invites you to feel what it is really like to live through the “years of failed hope” that characterize this type of family tragedy. It doesn’t offer any easy lessons seen in hindsight. That makes it an uncomfortable read, but an honest one.
With thanks to Midas PR for the free copy for review.
My gut feeling: This book’s style could put off more readers than it attracts. I can think of two other memoirs from the longlist that I would have preferred to see in this spot. I suppose I see why the judges rate Mayhem so highly – Edmund de Waal, the chair of this year’s judging panel, describes the Wellcome shortlist as “books that start debates or deepen them, that move us profoundly, surprise and delight and perplex us” – but it’s not in my top tier.
See what the rest of the shadow panel has to say about this book:
Annabel’s review: “Rausing is clearly a perceptive writer. She is very hard on herself; she is brutally honest, knowing that others will be hurt by the book.”
Clare’s review: “Rausing writes thoughtfully about the nature of addiction and its many contradictions.”
Laura’s review: “One of the saddest bits of Mayhem is when Rausing simply lists some of the press headlines that deal with her family story in reverse order, illustrating the seemingly inescapable spiral of addiction.”
Paul’s review: “It is not an easy read subject wise, thankfully Rausing’s sparse but beautiful writing helps makes this an essential read.”
Also, be sure to visit Laura’s blog today for an exclusive extract from Mayhem.
Shortlist strategy: Tomorrow I’ll post a quick response to Meredith Wadman’s The Vaccine Race.
If you are within striking distance of London, please consider coming to one of the shortlist events being held this Saturday and Sunday.
I was delighted to be asked to participate in the Wellcome Book Prize blog tour. See below for details of where other reviews and extracts have appeared or will be appearing soon.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 