Tag Archives: motherhood

Three on a Theme: Matrescence Memoirs (and a Bonus Novel)

By Rebecca Foster on January 25, 2024 | 23 Comments

I think of pregnancy and childbirth like any extreme adventure (skydiving, polar exploration): wholly extraordinary experiences with much to recommend them – though better appreciated retrospectively than in the moment – to which my response is a hearty “no, thanks.” But just as books have taken me to deserts and the frozen north, miles above or below the earth, into many eras and cultures, they’ve long been my window onto motherhood.

Matrescence, a word coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s, is the process of becoming a mother. It’s a transition period, like adolescence, that involves radical physical and mental changes and has lasting effects. And as Lucy Jones reports, up to 45% of women describe childbirth as traumatic. That’s not a niche experience; it’s an epidemic. If it was men going through this, you can bet it would be at the top of international research agendas.

These three memoirs (and a bonus novel) are bold, often harrowing accounts of the metamorphosis involved in motherhood. They’re personal yet political in how they expose the lack of social support for creating and raising the next generation. All four of these 2023 releases are eye-opening, lyrical and vital; they deserve to be better known.

Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood by Lucy Jones

Like Jones’s previous book, Losing Eden, about climate breakdown and the human need for nature, Matrescence is a potent blend of scientific research and stories from the frontline. She has synthesized a huge amount of information into a tight 260-some pages that are structured thematically but also proceed roughly chronologically through her own matrescence. Not long into her pregnancy with her first child, a daughter, she realised the extent to which outdated and sexist expectations still govern motherhood: concepts like “natural childbirth” and “maternal instinct,” the judgemental requirement for exclusive breastfeeding, the idea that a parent should “enjoy every minute” of their offspring’s babyhood rather than admitting depression or overwhelm. After the cataclysm of birth, loneliness set in. “Matrescence was another country, another planet. I didn’t know how to talk about the existential crisis I was facing, or the confronting, encompassing relationship I was now in.”

Jones is now a mother of three. You might think delivery would get easier each time, but in fact the birth of her second son was worst, physically: she had to go into immediate surgery for a fourth-degree anal sphincter tear. In reflecting on her own experiences, and speaking with experts, she has become passionate about fostering open discussion about the pain and risk of childbirth, and how to mitigate them. Women who aren’t informed about what they might go through suffer more because of the shock and isolation. There’s the medical side, but also the equally important social implications: new mothers need so much more practical and mental health support, and their unpaid care work must be properly valued by society. “Yet the focus remains on individual responsibility, maintaining the illusion that we are impermeable, impenetrable machines, disconnected from the world around us.”

The hybrid nature of the book is its genius. A purely scientific approach might have been dry; a social history well-trod and worthy; a memoir too inward-looking to make wider points. Instead it’s equally committed to all three purposes. I appreciated the laser focus on her own physical and emotional development, but the statistical and theoretical context gives a sense of the universal. The literary touches – lists and word clouds, verse-like meditations and flash vignettes about natural phenomena – are not always successful, but there is a thrill to seeing Jones experimenting. Like Leah Hazard’s Womb, this is by no means a book that’s just for mothers; it’s for anyone who’s ever had a mother.

With thanks to Allen Lane (Penguin) for the free copy for review.

Milk: On Motherhood and Madness by Alice Kinsella

Kinsella is an Irish poet who became a mother in her mid-twenties; that’s young these days. In unchronological vignettes dated in relation to her son’s birth – the number of months after; negative numbers to indicate that it happened before – she explores her personality, mental health and bodily experiences, but also comments more widely on Irish culture (the stereotype of the ‘mammy’; the only recent closure of Magdalene laundries and overturning of anti-abortion laws) and theories about motherhood.

I liked this most when the author stuck close to her own sensory and emotional life; overall, the book felt too long and I thought a late segue into an argument against the dairy industry was unnecessary. Had I been the editor, I would have cut the titled essays and just stuck to the time-stamped pieces. At its best, though, this is a poetic engagement with the tropes and reality of motherhood, sometimes delivered in paragraphs that more closely resemble verse:

+1 I have become the common myth. Mother. The sleepy hum of early memories. The smell of shampoo, of Olay, of lavender. The feeling of safety. The absence of fear.

+2 There’s a possibility,
that we are among the happiest
people in the world:
mothers.

[Record freeze preserve.] Fighting death by reproducing our days. Fighting death by reproducing. Here: your life on paper. Here: their life to come.

We’re expected to be mothers the instant we lock eyes with our baby. To shed everything we were and be reborn: Madonnas.

The baby’s favourite thing to do is sit on my lap and interact with other people. This is what mothers are for, I think. Comfort, security, a place to get to know the world from.

The language is gorgeous, and while Kinsella complains of disorientation to the point of worrying about losing herself (although she had struggled with mental health earlier in life, the subtitle’s reference to ‘madness’ seemed to me like overkill compared to other memoirs I’ve read of postpartum depression, trauma or psychosis, such as Inferno by Catherine Cho and Birth Notes by Jessica Cornwell), she comes across as entirely lucid. Her goal here is to find and add to the missing literature of motherhood, in much the same way that Jazmina Barrera, another young mother and writer, attempted with Linea Nigra. This would also make a good companion read to A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa.

Kinsella is among my predictions for the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award shortlist, along with Eliza Clark (Penance) and Tom Crewe (The New Life). (Public library)

The Unfamiliar: A Queer Motherhood Memoir by Kirsty Logan

I’ve read one of Kirsty Logan’s novels and dipped into her short stories. I immediately knew her parenting memoir would be up my street, but wondered how her fantasy/horror style might translate into nonfiction. Second-person narration is perfect for describing her journey into motherhood: a way of capturing the bewildering weirdness of this time but also forcing the reader to experience it firsthand. It is, in a way, as feminist and surreal as her other work. “You and your partner want a baby. But your two bodies can’t make a baby together. So you need some sperm.” That opening paragraph is a jolt, and the frank present-tense storytelling carries all through.

To start with, Logan’s wife Annie tried getting pregnant. They had a known sperm donor and did home insemination, then advanced to IVF. But after three miscarriages and a failed cycle, they took a doctor’s advice and switched to the younger womb – Logan’s, by four years. As “The Planning” makes way for “The Growing,” it helps that Annie knows exactly what she’s going through. The pregnancy sticks, though the fear of something going wrong never abates, and after the alternating magic and discomfort of those nine months (“You’ve reached the ‘shoplifting a honeydew’ stage”) it’s time for “The Birth,” as horrific an account as I’ve read. The baby had shifted to be back-to-back, which required an emergency C-section, but before that there was a sense of total helplessness, abandonment to unmanaged pain.

Finally the doctor comes. She asks what you would like, and you, shaking shitting pissing bleeding, unable to see when the pain reaches its peak, not screaming, not swearing, not being rude to anyone, not begging for an epidural, … say: I’d like to try some gas and air, if that’s okay, please.

What is remarkable is how Logan recreates this time so intensely – she took notes all through the pregnancy, plus on her phone in hospital and in the early days after bringing the baby home – but can also see how, even in the first hours, she was shaping it into a narrative. “You like that it’s a story. You like that it’s Gothic and gory … and funny.” Except it wasn’t. “You thought you were going to die.” And yet. “How can the lucid, everyday world explain this? The wonder, the curiosity, the recognition. The baby has lived inside your body, and you’ve only just met. The baby is your familiar, and deeply unfamiliar.”

This reminded me of other memoirs I’ve read about queer family-making, especially small by Claire Lynch, which similarly turns on the decision about which female partner will carry the pregnancy and is written in an experimental style. The Unfamiliar is utterly absorbing and conveys so much about the author and her family, even weaving in her father’s death seven years before. I’ve signed up for Logan’s online memoir-writing course (“Where to Start and Where to End”) organised by Writers & Artists (part of Bloomsbury) for next month.

With thanks to Virago Press for the free copy for review.

And, as a bonus, a short novel that deals with many of these same themes:

Reproduction by Louisa Hall

Procreation. Duplication. Imitation. All three connotations are appropriate for the title of an allusive novel about motherhood and doppelgangers. A pregnant writer starts composing a novel about Mary Shelley and finds the borders between fiction and (auto)biography blurring: “parts of her story detached themselves from the page and clung to my life.” The first long chapter, “Conception,” is full of biographical information about Shelley and the writing and plot of Frankenstein, chiming with Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout, which I read last year. It’s a recognisable piece of autofiction, moving with Hall from Texas to New York to Montana to Iowa as she marries, takes on various university teaching roles and goes through two miscarriages and then, in the “Birth” section, the traumatic birth of her daughter, after which she required surgery and blood transfusions.

These first two sections are exceptional. There’s a sublime clarity to them, like life has been transcribed to the page exactly as it was lived. The change of gears to the third section, “Science Fiction,” put me off, and it took me a long time to get back into the flow. In this final part, the narrator reconnects with a friend and colleague, Anna, who is determined to get pregnant on her own and genetically engineer her embryos to minimise all risk. Here she is more like a Rachel Cusk protagonist, eclipsed by another’s story and serving primarily as a recorder. I found this tedious. It all takes place during Trump’s presidency [Laura F. told me I accidentally published with that saying pregnancy – my brain was definitely saturated with the topic after these reads!] and the Covid pandemic, heightening the strangeness of matrescence and of the lengths Anna goes to. “What, after all, in these end times we lived in, was still really ‘natural’ at all?” the narrator ponders. She casts herself as the narrating Walton, and Anna as Dr. Frankenstein (or sometimes his monster), in this tale of transformation – chosen or not – and peril in a country hurtling toward self-implosion. It’s brilliantly envisioned, and – almost – flawlessly executed. (Public library)

Additional related reading:

Notes Made while Falling by Jenn Ashworth

After the Storm by Emma Jane Unsworth

And coming out in 2025: Mother, Animal by Helen Jukes (Elliott & Thompson)

Posted in: Fiction Reviews, Nonfiction Reviews | Tagged: Allen Lane, Anne Eekhout, autofiction, Catherine Cho, childbirth, Claire Lynch, COVID-19, Dana Raphael, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Emma Jane Unsworth, Frankenstein, genetic engineering, Helen Jukes, Ireland, Irish literature, IVF, Jazmina Barrera, Jenn Ashworth, Jessica Cornwell, Kirsty Logan, Leah Hazard, lesbian, Louisa Hall, Lucy Jones, Mary Shelley, matrescence, mental health, miscarriage, motherhood, mothers, parenthood, parenting, postnatal depression, postpartum depression, pregnancy, queer, Rachel Cusk, science, science fiction, second person, single parenting, Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, trauma, Virago Press

Short Stories in September Roundup: Munro, Ulrich; Virago Anthology

By Rebecca Foster on October 3, 2023 | 15 Comments

This comes a few days later than I intended, but better late than never. I’ve been focusing on short stories in September for the last eight years. In September 2021 I read 12 short story collections; last year it was 11.5; this year I finished 11, so pretty much par for the course, and pushing my year-to-date total to 30 story collections – not bad going for someone who feels like she hardly ever reads stories and doesn’t seek them out. This year’s reviews are here, here and here.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro (2001)

I always think I’ve never read Munro before, but that’s not the case. A decade or more ago I read Lives of Girls and Women. The ironic thing is that I chose it because I thought it was the odd one out in her oeuvre, being a novel rather than short stories. In fact, it’s a linked story collection, and really they might as well be discrete stories. That book left no impression, but I’d happened to accumulate several more Munro collections over the years and, especially after she won the Nobel, felt delinquent for not reading her.

There are nine stories in the 320-page volume, so the average story here is 30–35 pages – a little longer than I tend to like, but it allows Munro to fill in enough character detail that these feel like miniature novels; they certainly have all the emotional complexity. Her material is small-town Ontario and the shifts and surprises in marriages and dysfunctional families.

More commonly, she employs an omniscient third person to allow her to move between minds, yet I found that the three first-person stories were among the most memorable: in “Family Furnishings,” a woman recalls the encounter with her father’s cousin that made her resolve to be a writer; in “Nettles,” childhood friends meet again in midlife and a potential affair is quashed by the report of a tragedy; in “Queenie,” a young woman spends a short time living with her older stepsister and her husband, her music teacher she ran off with. This last one reminded me of Tessa Hadley’s stories – no doubt Munro has been an influence on many.

For instance, the title story, which opens the collection, gave me strong Elizabeth Hay and Mary Lawson vibes. A housekeeper sets off on the train to start a new life, encouraged by a romantic correspondence fabricated by her adolescent charge, Sabitha, and her friend. Munro pays close attention to domestic minutiae like furniture and clothing. Illness and death are frequent seeds of a story: cancer in “Floating Bridge,” the suicide of an ALS patient in “Comfort,” and dementia in the oft-anthologized “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.”

Individual plots are less likely to stay with me than the quality of the prose, the compassionate eye, and the feeling of being immersed in a novel-length narrative when really I was only halfway through a few dozen pages. I’ll certainly read more Munro collections. (Free from a neighbour)

Close Company: Stories of Mothers and Daughters, ed. Christine Park and Caroline Heaton (1987)

Back in 2021, I read 14 of these 25 stories (reviewed here) and set the book aside. At that time I noted the repeated theme of women’s expectations of their daughters, and that was true of the remainder as well. The editors quote Simone de Beauvoir in the introduction, “the daughter is for the mother at once her double and another person.” So in Emily Prager’s “A Visit from the Footbinder,” Lady Guo Guo subjects her spirited daughter to the same painful procedure she underwent as a child. The cultural detail was overpowering in this one, like the author felt she had to prove she’d done her research on China. The father–daughter relationship struck me more in Judith Chernaik’s Jewish Brooklyn-set “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.”

From this batch, two stood out the most: in “Children’s Liberation” by Jan Clausen, Lisa rebels against her lesbian mother’s bohemian lifestyle by idolizing heterosexual love stories; and in Zhang Jie’s “Love Must Not Be Forgotten,” a daughter comes to understand her mother by reading her diary about her doomed romance. My overall favourites, though, were still the stories by Jane Gardam, Janet Frame, Alice Walker and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (Free mall bookshop)

Small, Burning Things by Cathy Ulrich (2023)

Ulrich’s second collection contains 50 flash fiction pieces, most of which were first published in literary magazines. She often uses the first-person plural and especially the second person; both “we” and “you” are effective ways of implicating the reader in the action. Her work is on a speculative spectrum ranging from magic realism to horror. Some of the situations are simply bizarre – teenagers fall from the sky like rain; a woman falls in love with a giraffe; the mad scientist next door replaces a girl’s body parts with robotic ones – while others are close enough to the real world to be terrifying. The dialogue is all in italics. Some images recur later in the collection: metamorphoses, spontaneous combustion. Adolescent girls and animals are omnipresent. At a certain point this started to feel repetitive and overlong, but in general I appreciated the inventiveness.

Published on 2 July by Okay Donkey Press. With thanks to publicist Lori Hettler for the free e-copy for review.

I also read the first two stories in The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, edited by Lauren Groff. If these selections by Ling Ma and Catherine Lacey are anything to go by, Groff’s taste is for gently magical stories where hints of the absurd or explained enter into everyday life. Ma’s “Office Hours” has academics passing through closet doors into a dream space; the title of Lacey’s “Man Mountain” is literal. I’ll try to remember to occasionally open the book on my e-reader to get through the rest.

Posted in: Fiction Reviews | Tagged: Alice Munro, Alice Walker, ALS, Brooklyn, Canadian literature, Caroline Heaton, Catherine Lacey, Cathy Ulrich, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, China, Christine Park, Christine Park and Caroline Heaton, dementia, Elizabeth Hay, first-person plural, free books, horror, Jan Clausen, Jane Gardam, Janet Frame, Judith Chernaik, Lauren Groff, Ling Ma, magic realism, Mary Lawson, motherhood, mothers, Nobel Prize, Ontario, science fiction, second person, short stories, Simone de Beauvoir, Tessa Hadley, Virago Press, Zhang Jie

Short Stories in September, Part II: Brautigan, Doyle, Minot, Simpson

By Rebecca Foster on September 22, 2023 | 24 Comments

Every time I do this self-set challenge, I am amazed anew by how different short story collections can be in mood and theme – even if their overall concerns are the same as in most fiction: life and death, relationships, identity, choices. Today I have one debut work, two new-to-me authors, and a disappointing showing from an old favourite.

Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962–1970 by Richard Brautigan (1972)

There are more than five dozen stories in this slim volume, most just one to three pages and in the first person (55 of 62); bizarre or matter-of-fact slices of life in the Pacific Northwest or California, often with a grandiose title that’s then contradicted by the banality of the contents (e.g., in the three-page “A Short History of Religion in California,” some deer hunters encounter a group of Christian campers). The simple declarative sentences and mentions of drinking and hunting made me think of Carver and Hemingway, but Brautigan is funnier, coming out with the occasional darkly comic zinger. Here’s “The Scarlatti Tilt” in its entirety: “‘It’s very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who’s learning to play the violin.’ That’s what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.”

In the absurdist “Homage to the San Francisco YMCA,” a man replaces his plumbing with poetry: “He took out his bathtub and put in William Shakespeare. The bathtub did not know what was happening. He took out his kitchen sink and put in Emily Dickinson. The kitchen sink could only stare back in wonder.” Brautigan has an incomer’s admiration for California: “I come from someplace else and was gathered to the purpose of California like a metal-eating flower gathers the sunshine.” Many of the flash stories feel autobiographical and bridge country and city life with themes of bear hunting versus movie-going and riding buses.

There are some macho attitudes towards women, who are generally objects of male desire rather than subjects in their own right. But I appreciated this flash fiction collection for its unexpected metaphors and tonal range, from the over-the-top humour of “Complicated Banking Problems” to a pathos-filled rundown of a life in “The World War I Los Angeles Aeroplane.” (Secondhand – Westwood Books, Sedbergh, 2023)

I Meant It Once by Kate Doyle (2023)

A debut collection of 16 stories, three of them returning to the same sibling trio. Many of Doyle’s characters are young people who still define themselves by the experiences and romances of their college years. In “That Is Shocking,” Margaret can’t get over the irony of her ex breaking up with her on Valentine’s Day after giving her a plate of heart-shaped scones. Former roommates Christine and Daisy are an example of fading friendship in “Two Pisces Emote about the Passage of Time.”

The title phrase comes from “Cinnamon Baseball Coyote,” one of the Helen–Grace–Evan stories, when the sparring sisters are children and the one writes down “I hate my sister” and saves the paper in her desk because, as she tells their father, “I don’t mean it anymore. I only kept it because I meant it once.” Moments of great drama or emotion, and the regret that comes in their aftermath, are the stuff of these mainly New York City-set stories.

Across nine first-person and seven third-person stories, the content and point of view are pretty samey and minor; nothing here to make you feel you’re reading a rising star of American fiction. I only found a few standouts. “Hello It’s You” is about Meg’s history of same-sex partners: though she’s with Sara now, she can’t stop thinking about Jenny, her college girlfriend. “Aren’t We Lucky” has a soupçon of magic as it imagines a house and its ghosts resisting renovations. But my favourite was “Moments Earlier,” about Kelly’s medical crisis and the friends who never get past it.

With thanks to Corsair for the free copy for review. See also Susan’s review.

Why I Don’t Write and Other Stories by Susan Minot (2020)

Minot was new to me (as was Brautigan). These stories were first published between 1991 and 2019, so they span a good chunk of her career. “Polepole” depicts a short-lived affair between two white people in Kenya, one of whom seems to have a dated colonial attitude. In “The Torch,” a woman with dementia mistakes her husband for an old flame. “Occupied” sees Ivy cycling past the NYC Occupy camp on her way to pick up her daughter. The title story, published at LitHub in 2018, is a pithy list of authorial excuses. “Listen” is a nebulous set of lines of unattributed speech that didn’t add up to much for me. “The Language of Cats and Dogs” reminded me of Mary Gaitskill in tone, as a woman remembers her professor’s inappropriate behaviour 40 years later.

Eight of the stories are in the third person and two in the first person. They’re almost all accomplished in terms of scene setting and creating characters and motivations, but I can’t say Minot won me over such that I’ll seek out more of her work. Only a few stories will stay with me: “Green Glass,” in which a man encounters his ex-girlfriend at a wedding and cuts her down to size in a way that alarms his current partner; “Boston Common at Twilight,” an account of a strange but ultimately non-consensual sexual encounter; and my favourite, “Café Mort,” the only one with a speculative edge, about an establishment that only serves the dead. (New bargain purchase – Dollar Tree, Hagerstown, Maryland, 2023)

Hey Yeah Right Get a Life by Helen Simpson (2000)

This was my sixth collection from Simpson, who only appears to write short fiction. This was one of my least favourite of her books, unfortunately, because her common theme of frazzled mothers trying to balance parenting with career felt tired. The title story is about Dorrie, mum of three, and this set of characters recurs in the final piece, “Hurrah for the Hols.” Simpson does get the mindset just right:

She had to be thinking of other people all the time or the whole thing fell apart.

I can’t see how the family would work if I let myself start wanting things again, thought Dorrie; give me an inch and I’d run a mile, that’s what I’m afraid of.

The whole pattern of family life hung for a vivid moment above the chopping board as a seamless cycle of nourishment and devoural.

It was like being on holiday with Punch and Judy – lots of biffing and shrieking and fights over sausages.

But I’ve read too many of her exasperated-mum stories at this point. Two here were about female bankers. One, “Burns and the Bankers,” set at a seemingly endless Burns Night supper, rather outstayed its welcome and made overly obvious its message about this being a man’s field. Do read Simpson, but maybe not this (despite the amazing title); I’d recommend Four Bare Legs in a Bed or In the Driver’s Seat (UK title: Constitutional) instead. (Secondhand – Books for Amnesty, York, 2023)

I’ll have one more set of reviews and a roundup on the last day of the month.

Currently reading: If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery; The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff; How to Disappear by Tara Masih; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro; The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts by Soraya Palmer; Close Company: Stories of Mothers and Daughters, ed. Christine Park; Small, Burning Things by Cathy Ulrich

Posted in: Fiction Reviews | Tagged: California, Corsair, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Simpson, Kate Doyle, linked short stories, Mary Gaitskil, motherhood, New York City, Raymond Carver, Richard Brautigan, San Francisco, secondhand books, short stories, Susan Minot, William Shakespeare

August Releases: Bright Fear, Uprooting, The Farmer’s Wife, Windswept

By Rebecca Foster on August 30, 2023 | 18 Comments

This month I have three memoirs by women, all based on a connection to land – whether gardening, farming or crofting – and a sophomore poetry collection that engages with themes of pandemic anxiety as well as crossing cultural and gender boundaries.

My August highlight:

Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan

Chan’s Flèche was my favourite poetry collection of 2019. Their follow-up returns to many of the same foundational subjects: race, family, language and sexuality. But this time, the pandemic is a lens through which all is filtered. This is particularly evident in Part I, “Grief Lessons.” “London, 2020” and “Hong Kong, 2003,” on facing pages, contrast Covid-19 with SARS, the major threat when they were a teenager. People have always made assumptions about them based on their appearance or speech. At a time when Asian heritage merited extra suspicion, English was both a means of frank expression and a source of ambivalence:

“At times, English feels like the best kind of evening light. On other days, English becomes something harder, like a white shield.” (from “In the Beginning Was the Word”)

“my Chinese / face struck like the glow of a torch on a white question: / why is your English so good, the compliment uncertain / of itself.” (from “Sestina”)

At the centre of the book, “Ars Poetica,” a multi-part collage incorporating lines from other poets, forms a kind of autobiography in verse. Chan also questions the lines between genres, wondering whether to label their work poetry, nonfiction or fiction (“The novel feels like a springer spaniel running off-/leash the poem a warm basket it returns to always”).

The poems’ structure varies, with paragraphs and stanzas of different lengths and placement on the page (including, in one instance, a goblet shape). The enjambment, as you can see in lines I’ve quoted above and below, is noteworthy. Part III, “Field Notes on a Family,” reflects on the pressures of being an only child whose mother would prefer to pretend lives alone rather than with a female partner. The book ends with hope that Chan might be able to be open about their identity. The title references the paradoxical nature of the sublime, beautifully captured via the alliteration that closes “Circles”: “a commotion of coots convincing / me to withstand the quotidian tug-/of-war between terror and love.”

Although Flèche still has the edge for me, this is another excellent work I would recommend even to those wary of poetry.

Some more favourite lines, from “Ars Poetica”:

“What my mother taught me was how

to revere the light language emitted.”

“Home, my therapist suggests, is where

you don’t have to explain yourself.”

With thanks to Faber for the free copy for review.

Three land-based memoirs:

(All: )

Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside – Finding Home in an English Country Garden by Marchelle Farrell

This Nan Shepherd Prize-winning memoir shares Chan’s attention to pandemic-era restrictions and how they prompt ruminations about identity and belonging. Farrell is from Trinidad but came to the UK as a student and has stayed, working as a psychiatrist and then becoming a wife and mother. Just before Covid hit, she moved to the outskirts of Bath and started rejuvenating her home’s large and neglected garden. Under thematic headings that also correspond to the four seasons, chapters are named after different plants she discovered or deliberately cultivated. The peace she finds in her garden helps her to preserve her mental health even though, with the deaths of George Floyd and so many other Black people, she is always painfully aware of her fragile status as a woman of colour, and sometimes feels trapped in the confining routines of homeschooling. I enjoyed the exploration of postcolonial family history and the descriptions of landscapes large and small but often found Farrell’s metaphors and psychological connections obvious or strained.

With thanks to Canongate for the free copy for review.

The Farmer’s Wife: My Life in Days by Helen Rebanks

I fancied a sideways look at James Rebanks (The Shepherd’s Life and Wainwright Prize winner English Pastoral) and his regenerative farming project in the Lake District. (My husband spotted their dale from a mountaintop on holiday earlier in the month.) Helen Rebanks is a third-generation farmer’s wife and food and family are the most important things to her. One gets the sense that she has felt looked down on for only ever wanting to be a wife and mother. Her memoir, its recollections structured to metaphorically fall into a typical day, is primarily a defence of the life she has chosen, and secondarily a recipe-stuffed manifesto for eating simple, quality home cooking. (She paints processed food as the enemy.)

Growing up, Rebanks started cooking for her family early on, and got a job in a café as a teenager; her mother ran their farm home as a B&B but was forgetful to the point of being neglectful. She met James at 17 and accompanied him to Oxford, where they must have been the only student couple cooking and eating proper food. This period, when she was working an office job, baking cakes for a café, and mourning the devastating foot-and-mouth disease epidemic from a distance, is most memorable. Stories from travels, her wedding, and the births of her four children are pleasant enough, yet there’s nothing to make these experiences, or the telling of them, stand out. I wouldn’t make any of the dishes; most you could find a recipe for anywhere. Eleanor Crow’s black-and-white illustrations are lovely, though.

With thanks to Faber for the free copy for review.

Windswept: Life, Nature and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands by Annie Worsley

I’d come across Worsley in the Wildlife Trusts’ Seasons anthologies. For a decade she has lived on Red River Croft, in a little-known pocket of northwest Scotland. In word pictures as much as in the colour photographs that illustrate this volume, she depicts it as a wild land shaped mostly by natural forces – also, sometimes, manmade. From one September to the next, she documents wildlife spectacles and the influence of weather patterns. Chronic illness sometimes limited her daily walks to the fence at the cliff-top. (But what a view from there!) There is more here about local history and ecology than any but the keenest Scotland-phile may be interested to read. Worsley also touches on her upbringing in polluted Lancashire, and her former academic career and fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Her descriptions are full of colours and alliteration, though perhaps a little wordy: “Pale-gold autumnal days are spliced by fickle and feisty bouts of turbulent weather. … Sunrises and sunsets may pour with cinnabar and henna; dawn and dusk can ripple with crimson and purple.” The kind of writing I could appreciate for the length of an essay but not a whole book.

With thanks to William Collins for the free copy for review.

Would you read one or more of these?

Posted in: Nonfiction Reviews, Poetry Reviews | Tagged: Annie Worsley, Canongate, Chinese, chronic illness, COVID-19, Eleanor Crow, Faber, farming, gardening, Helen Rebanks, Hong Kong, James Rebanks, Lake District, Lancashire, lesbian, Marchelle Farrell, Mary Jean Chan, memoirs, motherhood, Nan Shepherd Prize, Oxford, Papua New Guinea, photography, poetry, recipes, Scotland, Trinidad, Wainwright Prize, William Collins

20 Books of Summer, 15–17: Bill Buford, Kristin Newman, J. Courtney Sullivan

By Rebecca Foster on August 25, 2023 | 16 Comments

One last foodie selection for the summer: a chef’s memoir set mostly in Lyon, France. Plus a bawdy travel memoir I DNFed halfway through, and an engaging but probably overlong contemporary novel about finances, generational conflict and women’s relationships.

Dirt: Adventures in French Cooking by Bill Buford (2020)

Buford’s Heat was one of the highlights of my foodie summer reading in 2020. This is a sequel insomuch as it tells you what he did next, after his Italian-themed apprenticeships. The short answer is that he went to Lyon to learn French cooking in similarly obsessive fashion. Without knowing a word of French. And this time he had a wife and twin toddlers in tow. He met several celebrated French chefs – Michel Richard, Paul Bocuse, Daniel Boulud – and talked his way into training at a famous cookery school and in Michelin-starred kitchens.

These experiences are discussed in separate essays, so I rather lost track of the timeline. It’s odd that it took the author so many years to get around to publishing about it all. You’d think his sons were still young, but in fact they’re now approaching adulthood. The other slightly unusual thing is the amount of space Buford devotes to his pet theory that French cuisine (up to ragout, at least) evolved from Italian. Unsurprisingly, the French don’t favour this idea; I didn’t particularly care one way or the other.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading about his encounters with French bureaucracy; the stress of working in busy (and macho) restaurants, where he’s eventually entrusted with cooking the staff lunch; and his discovery of what makes for good bread: small wheat-growing operations rather than industrially produced flour – his ideal was the 90-cent baguette from his local boulangerie. This could have been a bit more focused, and I’m still more likely to recommend Heat, but I am intrigued to go to Lyon one day. (Secondhand gift, Christmas 2022)

What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristin Newman (2014)

(DNF, 156/291 pages) As featured in my Six Degrees post earlier in the month. Newman is a comedy writer for film and television (That ’70s Show, How I Met Your Mother, etc.). I liked how the title unabashedly centres things other than couplehood and procreation. When she’s travelling, she can be spontaneous, open-to-experience “Kristin-adjacent,” who loves doing whatever it is that locals do. And be a party girl, of course (“If there is one thing that is my favorite thing in the world, it’s making out on a dance floor”). However, this chronological record of her sexual conquests in Amsterdam, Paris, Russia, Argentina, etc. gets repetitive and raunchy. I also felt let down when I learned that she married and had a child right after she published it. So this was just her “Pietra Pan” stage before she copied everyone else. Which is fine, but were her drunken shenanigans really worth commemorating? (Secondhand, Bas Books & Home)

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan (2020)

I got Emma Straub vibes from this big, juicy novel focusing on two women in upstate New York: Elisabeth, a married journalist who moved out of Brooklyn when she finally conceived via IVF; and Sam, a college art student who becomes her son Gil’s babysitter. Elisabeth misses her old crowd and doesn’t fit in with the middle-aged book club ladies in her suburban neighbourhood; Sam is almost her only friend, a confidante who’s also like a little sister (better, anyway, than Elisabeth’s real sister, who lives on tropical islands and models swimwear for inspirational Instagram posts). And Sam admires Elisabeth for simultaneously managing a career and motherhood with seeming aplomb.

But fundamental differences between the two emerge, mostly to do with economics. Elisabeth comes from money and takes luxury products for granted, while Sam is solidly working-class and develops a surprising affinity with Elisabeth’s father-in-law, George, who is near bankruptcy after Uber killed off his car service business. His pet theory, “The Hollow Tree,” explains that ordinary Americans have been sold the lie that they are responsible for their own success, when really they are in thrall to corporations and the government doesn’t support them as it should. This message hits home for Sam, who is distressed about the precarious situation of the Latina dining hall employees she has met via her work study job. Both Elisabeth and Sam try to turn their privilege to the good, with varied results.

Although I remained engrossed in the main characters’ stories, which unfold in alternating chapters, I thought this could easily have been 300 pages instead of nearly 400. In particular, Sullivan belabours Sam’s uncertainty over her thirtysomething English fiancé, Clive, whom Elisabeth refers to as “sleazy-hot.” The red flags are more than obvious to others in Sam’s life, and to us as readers, yet we get scene after scene meant to cast shade on him. I also kept wondering if first person would have been the better delivery mode for one or both strands. Still, this was perfect literary cross-over summer reading. (Little Free Library)

Posted in: Fiction Reviews, Nonfiction Reviews | Tagged: Amsterdam, Argentina, Bill Buford, Brooklyn, campus novels, chef, cooking, Daniel Boulud, Emma Straub, financial crisis, foodoirs, France, Italy, IVF, J. Courtney Sullivan, Kristin Newman, Little Free Library, Lyon, Michel Richard, Michelin star, motherhood, Paris, Paul Bocuse, Russia, summer reading, travel books

Book Serendipity, June to July 2023

By Rebecca Foster on August 4, 2023 | 26 Comments

I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better.

Are all of these pure coincidence? Or, as a character says in The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg, maybe it’s true that “Sometimes serendipity is just intention, unmasked.”

This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. The following are in roughly chronological order.

A deadbeat boyfriend named Andrew in Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang and The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark.

A partner’s piano playing is by turns annoying (practice) and revelatory (performance) in The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan and The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor.

Frequent meals of potatoes due to poverty, and a character sneaking salt in, in Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson and How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang.

Getting close to a seal even though the character knows it might bite in Salt & Skin by Eliza Henry-Jones and one story in High-Wire Act by JoeAnn Hart.

Rev. Robert Kirk’s writings on fairies are mentioned in The Archaeology of Loss by Sarah Tarlow and The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark (and were also a major element in Sally Magnusson’s previous novel, The Ninth Child; I happened to be reading her most recent novel at the same time as the above two!).

Menthols are smoked in Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater and The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor.

Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking is mentioned in Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater and The Archaeology of Loss by Sarah Tarlow.

An ant farm as a metaphor in The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan and The Wild Delight of Wild Things by Brian Turner.

The main character, in buying a house, inherits the care of a large, elaborate garden from an older woman who kept it immaculate, in The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg and one story in High-Wire Act by JoeAnn Hart.

A widow, despite her feminist ideals, wishes she had a man to take care of DIY and other house stuff for her in The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg and The Archaeology of Loss by Sarah Tarlow.

A spouse’s death in 2016 and a description of cremation in The Archaeology of Loss by Sarah Tarlow and The Wild Delight of Wild Things by Brian Turner.

A character deliberately burns a sexual partner’s cheek with a cigarette in Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater and The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor.

Counting down the days, then hours, until a wedding, in The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg, The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan, and Crudo by Olivia Laing.

Similar sentiments – about reading to find our own experiences expressed in a way we never would have thought to put them – in passages I encountered on the same day from A Life of One’s Own by Joanna Biggs (“I want to have that moment of recognition, finding something on the page I’ve felt but haven’t put into words”) and The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt (“the reader says to him or herself, Yes, that’s how it is, only I didn’t know it to describe it”).

I encountered mentions of “Believe” by Cher in The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland and House Gone Quiet by Kelsey Norris on the same evening.

Calculating how old a newborn child will be on a certain date in the future – and fearing what the world will be like for them then – in Matrescence by Lucy Jones and Milk by Alice Kinsella.

Moving with twin sons is a key part of the setup in Dirt by Bill Buford and Speak to Me by Paula Cocozza.

I read scenes of a mother’s death from brain cancer in The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt and One Last Thing by Wendy Mitchell in the same evening.

There’s a mint-green house, and a house with a rope banister (the same house in one case, but not in the other) in both Speak to Me by Paula Cocozza and The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt, two 6 July 2023 releases.

Connective tissue in the body is compared to the threads of textiles in Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera and Floppy by Alyssa Graybeal.

The metaphorical framework of one day is used as the structure in One Midsummer’s Day by Mark Cocker and The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks.

I’ve read two chef’s memoirs this summer with a scene of pig slaughter: A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain and Dirt by Bill Buford.

A character who lost an arm in the First World War in The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt and Haweswater by Sarah Hall.

I read descriptions of fried egg residue on a plate, one right after the other in the same evening, in The Dead Are Gods by Eirinie Carson and The Wren The Wren by Anne Enright.

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

Posted in: book serendipity | Tagged: Alice Kinsella, Alice Slater, Alyssa Graybeal, Andrew Leland, Anne Enright, Anthony Bourdain, bereavement, Bill Buford, book serendipity, Brandon Taylor, Brian Turner, C. Pam Zhang, chef, circadian narratives, cremation, Eirinie Carson, Eliza Henry-Jones, Elizabeth Berg, fairies, gardening, Helen Rebanks, Jazmina Barrera, Joan Didion, Joanna Biggs, JoeAnn Hart, Kelsey Norris, Kirsty Wark, Lucy Jones, Mark Cocker, motherhood, Naoise Dolan, Olivia Laing, Patrick deWitt, Paula Cocozza, piano, Rebecca F. Kuang, Robert Kirk, Sally Magnusson, Sarah Hall, Sarah Tarlow, seals, twins, weddings, Wendy Mitchell, widowhood

The Best Books from the First Half of 2023

By Rebecca Foster on June 30, 2023 | 26 Comments

Yes, it’s that time of year already! It remains to be seen how many of these will make it onto my overall best-of year list, but for now, these are my 20 highlights. Plus, I sneakily preview another great novel that won’t release until September. (For now I’m highlighting 2023 releases, whereas at the end of the year I divide my best-of lists into current year and backlist. I’ve read 86 current-year releases so far and am working on another 20, so I’m essentially designating a top 20% here.) I give review excerpts and link to the full text from this site or elsewhere. Pictured below are the books I read in print; all the others were e-copies.

Fiction

Shoot the Horses First by Leah Angstman: In 16 sumptuous historical stories, outsiders and pioneers face disability and prejudice with poise. The flash entries crystallize moments of realization, often about health. Longer pieces shine as their out-of-the-ordinary romances have space to develop. In the novella Casting Grand Titans, a botany professor in 1850s Iowa learns her salary is 6% of a male colleague’s. She strives for intellectual freedom, reporting a new-to-science species of moss, while working towards liberation for runaway slaves.

The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland: Moving at a propulsive pace, Beanland’s powerful second novel rotates through the perspectives of these main characters – two men and two women; two white people and two enslaved Black people – caught up in the Richmond Theater Fire of 1811 (one of the deadliest events in early U.S. history) and its aftermath. Painstakingly researched and full of historical detail and full-blooded characters, it dramatizes the range of responses to tragedy and how people rebuild their lives.

The New Life by Tom Crewe: Two 1890s English sex researchers (based on John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis) write a book called Sexual Inversion drawing on ancient Greek history and containing case studies of homosexual behaviour. Oscar Wilde’s trial puts everyone on edge; not long afterwards, their own book becomes the subject of an obscenity trial, and each man has to decide what he’s willing to give up in devotion to his principles. This is deeply, frankly erotic stuff, and, on the sentence level, just exquisite writing.

Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt: (Yes, another historical fire novel, and I reviewed both for Shelf Awareness!) This engrossing debut explores the options for women in the mid-19th century. Metaphorical conflagrations blaze in the background in the days leading up to the great Nantucket fire of 1846: each of three female protagonists (a whaling captain’s wife, a museum curator, and a pregnant Black entrepreneur) holds a burning secret and longs for a more expansive, authentic life. Tense and sultry; for Sue Monk Kidd fans.

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai: When an invitation comes from her boarding school alma mater, Granby, to teach a two-week course on podcasting, Bodie indulges her obsession with the 1995 murder of her former roommate. Makkai has taken her cues from the true crime genre and constructed a convincing mesh of evidence and theories. She so carefully crafts her pen portraits, and so intimately involves us in Bodie’s psyche, that it’s impossible not to get invested. This is timely, daring, intelligent, enthralling storytelling.

Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain: In this debut collection of 22 short stories, loosely linked by their location in the Appalachian hills in western Pennsylvania and a couple of recurring minor characters, McIlwain softens the harsh realities of addiction, poverty and violence with the tender bruises of infertility and lost love. Grief is a resonant theme in many of the stories, with pregnancy or infant loss a recurring element. At times harrowing, always clear-eyed, these stories are true to life and compassionate about human foibles and animal pain.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano: Oprah’s 100th book club pick. It’s a family story spanning three decades and focusing on the Padavanos, a working-class Italian American Chicago clan with four daughters. Julia meets melancholy basketball player William Waters while at Northwestern in the late 1970s. There is such warmth and intensity to the telling, and brave reckoning with bereavement, mental illness, prejudice and trauma. I love sister stories in general, and the subtle echoes of Leaves of Grass and Little Women add heft.

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld: Through her work as a writer for a sketch comedy show modelled on Saturday Night Live, Sally Milz meets Noah Brewster, a pop star with surfer-boy good looks. Plain Jane getting the hot guy – that never happens, right? In fact, Sally has a theory about this very dilemma… As always, Sittenfeld’s inhabiting of a first-person narrator is flawless, and Sally’s backstory and Covid-lockdown existence endeared her to me. Could this be called predictable? Well, what does one want from a romcom?

In Memoriam by Alice Winn: Heartstopper on the Western Front; swoon! Will Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt both acknowledge that this is love and not just sex, as it is for so many teenage boys at their English boarding school? And will one or both survive the trenches of the First World War? Winn depicts the full horror of war, but in between there is banter, friendship and poetry. Some moments are downright jolly. This debut is obsessively researched, but Winn has a light touch with it. Engaging, thrilling, and, yes, romantic.

A bonus:

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (Riverhead/Hutchinson Heinemann, 12 September): Groff’s fifth novel combines visceral detail and magisterial sweep as it chronicles a runaway Jamestown servant’s struggle to endure the winter of 1610. Flashbacks to traumatic events seep into her mind as she copes with the harsh reality of life in the wilderness. The style is archaic and postmodern all at once. Evocative and affecting – and as brutal as anything Cormac McCarthy wrote. A potent, timely fable as much as a historical novel. (Review forthcoming for Shelf Awareness.)

Nonfiction

All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett: A lovely memoir about grief and gardening, caring for an ill child and a dying parent. The book is composed of dozens of brief autobiographical, present-tense essays, each titled after a wildflower with traditional healing properties. The format realistically presents bereavement and caring as ongoing, cyclical challenges rather than one-time events. Sitting somewhere between creative nonfiction and nature essays, it’s a beautiful read for any fan of women’s life writing.

Monsters by Claire Dederer: The question posed by this hybrid work of memoir and cultural criticism is “Are we still allowed to enjoy the art made by horrible people?” It begins, in the wake of #MeToo, by reassessing the work of film directors Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. The book is as compassionate as it is incisive. While there is plenty of outrage, there is also much nuance. Dederer’s prose is forthright and droll; lucid even when tackling thorny issues. Erudite, empathetic and engaging from start to finish.

Womb by Leah Hazard: A wide-ranging and accessible study of the uterus, this casts a feminist eye over history and future alike. Blending medical knowledge and cultural commentary, it cannot fail to have both personal and political significance for readers of any gender. The thematic structure of the chapters also functions as a roughly chronological tour of how life with a uterus might proceed: menstruation, conception, pregnancy, labour, caesarean section, ongoing health issues, menopause. Inclusive and respectful of diversity.

Sea Bean by Sally Huband: Stories of motherhood, the quest to find effective treatment in a patriarchal medical system, volunteer citizen science projects, and studying Shetland’s history and customs mingle in a fascinating way. Huband travels around the archipelago and further afield, finding vibrant beachcombing cultures. In many ways, this is about coming to terms with loss, and the author presents the facts about climate crisis with sombre determination. She writes with such poetic tenderness in this radiant debut memoir.

Marry Me a Little by Robert Kirby: Hopping around in time, this graphic memoir tells the story of how the author and his partner John decided to get married in 2013. The blue and red color scheme is effective at evoking a polarized America and the ebb and flow of emotions, with blue for calm, happy scenes and concentrated red for confusion or anger. This is political, for sure, but it’s also personal, and it balances those two aims well by tracing the history of gay marriage in the USA and memorializing his own relationship.

All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer: In 2019, Vollmer’s mother died of complications of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Months later, his father reported blinking lights in the woods near the family cemetery. Although Vollmer had left the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in college, his religious upbringing influenced his investigation, which overlapped with COVID-19. Grief, mysticism, and acceptance of the unexplained are resonant themes. An unforgettable record of “a collision with the ineffable.”

Eggs in Purgatory by Genanne Walsh: This autobiographical essay tells the story of the last few months of her father’s life. Aged 89, he lived downstairs from Walsh and her wife in San Francisco. He was quite the character: idealist, stubborn, outspoken; a former Catholic priest. Although he had no terminal conditions, he was sick of old age and its indignities and ready to exit. The task of a memoir is to fully mine the personal details of a situation but make of it something universal, and that’s just what she does here. Stunning.

Poetry

More Sky by Joe Carrick-Varty: In this debut collection, the fact of his alcoholic father’s suicide is inescapable. The poet alternates between an intimate “you” address and third-person scenarios, auditioning coping mechanisms. His frame of reference is wide: football, rappers, Buddhist cosmology. The word “suicide” itself is repeated to the point where it becomes just a sibilant collection of syllables. The tone is often bitter, as is to be expected, but there is joy in the deft use of language.

Lo by Melissa Crowe: This incandescent autobiographical collection delves into the reality of sexual abuse and growing up in rural poverty. Guns are insidious, used for hunting or mass shootings. Trauma lingers. “Maybe home is what gets on you and can’t / be shaken loose.” The collection is so carefully balanced in tone that it never feels bleak. In elegies and epithalamiums (poems celebrating marriage), Crowe honors family ties that bring solace. The collection has emotional range: sensuality, fear, and wonder at natural beauty.

Standing in the Forest of Being Alive by Katie Farris: This debut collection addresses the symptoms and side effects of breast cancer treatment at age 36, but often in oblique or cheeky ways – it can be no mistake that “assistance” appears two lines before a mention of haemorrhoids, for instance, even though it closes an epithalamium distinguished by its gentle sibilance (Farris’s husband is Ukrainian American poet Ilya Kaminsky.) She crafts sensual love poems, and exhibits Japanese influences. (Review forthcoming at The Rumpus.)

The House of the Interpreter by Lisa Kelly: Kelly is half-Danish and has single-sided deafness, and her second collection engages with questions of split identity. One section ends with the Deaf community’s outrage that the Prime Minister’s Covid briefings were not translated into BSL. Bizarre but delightful is the sequence of alliteration-rich poems about fungi, followed by a miscellany of autobiographical poems full of references to colour, nature and travel.

What are some of the best books you’ve read so far this year?

What 2023 releases should I catch up on right away?

Posted in: Book lists, Fiction Reviews, Nonfiction Reviews, Poetry Reviews | Tagged: 2023 releases, alcoholism, Alice Winn, Alzheimer's, Ann Napolitano, bereavement memoirs, breast cancer, Claire Dederer, COVID-19, Curtis Sittenfeld, deafness, essays, fungi, gardening, gay marriage, gay rights, Genanne Walsh, graphic memoirs, grief, gynecology, Havelock Ellis, historical fiction, homosexuality, Ilya Kaminsky, Iowa, Joe Carrick-Varty, John Addington Symonds, Jolene McIlwain, Julie Gerstenblatt, Katie Farris, Lauren Groff, Leah Angstman, Leah Hazard, Lisa Kelly, Matthew Vollmer, Melissa Crowe, memoirs, mental illness, motherhood, Nantucket, nature writing, Oscar Wilde, Parkinson’s, poetry, poverty, Rachel Beanland, Rebecca Makkai, Richmond, Robert Kirby, romance, Sally Huband, Shelf Awareness, Shetland, short stories, sisters, suicide, The Rumpus, Tom Crewe, true crime, Victoria Bennett, women's health, women's memoirs, World War I

Three on a Theme: “Rainbow” Books for Pride Month

By Rebecca Foster on June 14, 2023 | 10 Comments

Two of these are short story collections (and one almost is); two are specifically queer in outlook; all attracted me for their colorful covers, and all were borrowed from the library. #LoveYourLibrary

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories by Lydia Conklin (2022)

The 10 stories in this confident debut collection are unabashedly queer, and half involve the trans experience, whether ideation or reality. Conklin is nonbinary, so it’s tempting to read several stories as autobiographical: female characters long to get top surgery and transition to male or nonbinary, but worry it will change how they are perceived or desired. “Pink Knives” and “Boy Jump,” especially, have the flavor of autofiction, with protagonists traveling in Poland and feeling attraction to people of various genders. (The former has a pandemic setting, which I’ve noticed has at this point started to feel dated.) My overall favorite was “Sunny Talks,” in which middle-aged Lillia accompanies her trans teenage nephew to a conference for celebrity YouTubers but can’t bring herself to announce her own intended transition. Though life hasn’t been easy for Sunny, he has support she lacked growing up.

Asher and Ivan, two characters of nebulous sexuality and future gender, are the core of “Cheerful Until Next Time” (check out the acronym), which has the fantastic opening line “The queer feminist book club came to an end.” “Laramie Time” stars a lesbian couple debating whether to have a baby (in the comic Leigh draws, a turtle wishes “reproduction was automatic or mandatory, so no decision was necessary”). “A Fearless Moral Inventory” features a pansexual who is a recovering sex addict. Adolescent girls are the focus in “The Black Winter of New England” and “Ooh, the Suburbs,” where they experiment with making lesbian leanings public and seeking older role models. “Pioneer,” probably my second favorite, has Coco pushing against gender constraints at a school Oregon Trail reenactment. Refusing to be a matriarch and not allowed to play a boy, she rebels by dressing up as an ox instead. The tone is often bleak or yearning, so “Counselor of My Heart” stands out as comic even though it opens with the death of a dog; Molly’s haplessness somehow feels excusable.

Six of the stories are in the third person and four in first person. I’d be interested to try Conklin’s longer-form work, and think first-person narration would particularly suit her. I didn’t really sense that this was a book meant for me, but that’s okay; a lot of readers will feel seen and represented. Pair this with, or have it on hand as a follow-up to, work by Allison Blevins, Melissa Febos and, most of all, Eley Williams.

Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey (2020)

In Laskey’s debut, which has been marketed as a novel but reads more like linked short stories, a favorite format of mine, researchers have identified Big Burr, Kansas as the most homophobic town in America. A task force from Acceptance Across America descends on the rural backwater for a targeted two-year program promoting education and friendship. Each chapter is a first-person, present-tense confession from a local or a queer visitor, whose stories interlock and push the chronology forward. For every positive step – a gender-neutral bathroom in the high school, a closeted individual who summons up the courage to come out – there is a regressive one, such as a AAA billboard being set on fire or a house being egged.

Laskey inhabits all 11 personae with equal skill and compassion. Avery, the task force leader’s daughter, resents having to leave L.A. and plots an escape with her new friend Zach, a persecuted gay teen. Christine, a Christian homemaker, is outraged about the liberal agenda, whereas her bereaved neighbor, Linda, finds purpose and understanding in volunteering at the AAA office. Food hygiene inspector Henry is thrown when his wife leaves him for a woman, and meat-packing maven Lizzie agonizes over the question of motherhood. Task force members David, Tegan and Harley all have their reasons for agreeing to the project, but some characters have to sacrifice more than others.

Little references in later chapters catch you up on what’s happened with the others. I only questioned the need for Elsie as a POV character, and the exclusion of Jamal (presumably Laskey thought it unwise to write from the perspective of a Black man, but he’s a glaring omission). A final chapter, returning to one of the protagonists and set 10 years later, presents a town that’s changed enough to host its first gay wedding and first LGBTQ-owned business.

The novel is realistically sad, but not overly so, and was compellingly readable and heartwarming in a way that reminded me of how I felt about Shotgun Lovesongs. You might not want to live there, but I guarantee you’ll develop a certain fondness for Big Burr.

Scattered Showers: Stories by Rainbow Rowell; illus. Jim Tierney (2022)

I spotted this collection while shelving in the YA section of the library one day and admired the sky blue naked hardback for its red sprayed edges, chunky rainbow endpapers, distinctive font, and teal and magenta interior color scheme. I’d read one Rowell book before, the graphic novel Pumpkinheads. This is probably a better match for her dedicated fans in that three of the stories are spin-offs from her fiction and a few of the rest are one-offs (Amazon Original Stories, a World Book Day publication, a contribution to an anthology), such that I felt a little like I was reading leftovers. A B-sides volume, if you will.

Four of the nine are holiday-themed, so this could make a good Twixtmas read if you like seasonality; eight are in the third person and just one has alternating first person narrators. All are what could be broadly dubbed romances, with most involving meet-cutes or moments when long-time friends realize their feelings go deeper (“Midnights” and “The Snow Ball”). Only one of the pairings is queer, however: Baz and Simon (who are a vampire and … a dragon-man, I think? and the subjects of a trilogy) in the Harry Potter-meets Twilight-meets Heartstopper “Snow for Christmas.” The rest are pretty straightforward boy-girl stories.

I liked “Kindred Spirits,” in which Elena joins a small group (“three cold nerds”) of hardcore Star Wars fans waiting in line for the first sequel and notices Gabe, a classmate, as if for the first time; “Winter Songs for Summer,” in which a sensitive jock proves he knows his upstairs dorm mate better than anyone through the breakup-recovery tracks he puts on a mix CD for her; and “If the Fates Allow,” about Nebraska neighbors who bond over Jell-O salad during a couple of pandemic Christmases.

I wasn’t as enamored by the couple of fantasy stories, “The Prince and the Troll,” a fairy tale twisted into a vague environmental dystopian parable (“This isn’t easy. This is just another kind of hard. That’s all that’s left now, for any of us”), and “In Waiting,” about the evolving characters incubating in a writer’s head. “Mixed Messages” was refreshing for having middle-aged characters, two friends texting back and forth to try to work out whether the one missed a period because she’s pregnant or in perimenopause, but I doubt I’d be tempted to seek out the book these characters originated in (Attachments), or any of Rowell’s others.

There was a clear winner here: Under the Rainbow!

Extra goodies:

Celebrate Pride Month! The Bookshop.org team has curated this list of books by LGBTQIA+ authors for you to enjoy. Please enjoy 20% OFF all titles. [affiliate link]

A song Sufjan Stevens wrote for Pride Month 2019.

Posted in: Fiction Reviews | Tagged: Allison Blevins, Bookshop.org, Celia Laskey, Christmas, Eley Williams, fantasy, holiday reading, homophobia, Jim Tierney, Kansas, library books, linked short stories, Lydia Conklin, Melissa Febos, Midwest, motherhood, Nebraska, Nickolas Butler, nonbinary, pandemic, Poland, Pride Month, queer, Rainbow Rowell, short stories, Sufjan Stevens, Three on a Theme, transgender, YA fiction

Recent Writing for BookBrowse, Foreword, Shelf Awareness, Shiny New Books, and the TLS

By Rebecca Foster on June 7, 2023 | 20 Comments

I’ve compiled excerpts from some reviews I’ve contributed to other websites and publications this year. I link to the full text where available. (When writing a paid review, I seek to be balanced but positive. Ratings reflect my personal response.)

BookBrowse

The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel: In Ausubel’s offbeat third novel, a widowed scientist and her two daughters embark on a rogue plan to make history by resurrecting the woolly mammoth. There is a quirky combination of cosmic and domestic concerns here. A winsome sister duo is at the heart of the unusual and timely story, with priority given to the points of view of teenagers Eve and Vera, whose banter is a highlight. Ausubel has wisely chosen not to dwell on the scientific details of de-extinction, yet that means that this becomes more like speculative fiction or a fairy tale. Ironically, the fabulist-leaning novel is best when most realist, documenting struggles with bereavement, sexism and parenting teens.

The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore: Moore’s hard-hitting novella is based in part on the memoir Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees: A Narrative of Indian Captivity. In Moore’s version, Sarah, 25, leaves her baby behind when she flees an abusive husband, and once in Minnesota Territory marries John Brinton, who becomes a doctor on a Sioux reservation. By 1862, Sarah is friendly with the Native women. Although the Civil War is unfolding, the greater threat here is of revolt by the starving Indigenous residents. There is much of anthropological and historical interest, but Sarah’s flat storytelling, which may represent a pastiche of period style, means threatening or climactic scenes lose some of their potential gravity.

Foreword

My Mother Says by Stine Pilgaard (trans. from the Danish by Hunter Simpson): After breaking up with her zookeeper girlfriend over their age gap and their conflicting takes on motherhood, the heroine moves back in with her father, a pastor who’s obsessed with Pink Floyd, and her stepmother. Her mother visits often, nagging her to finish her thesis. The line between her conversations and internal thoughts is thin. From her mansplaining doctor, she learns that the brain’s hippocampus is named for its seahorse shape. This inspires “Monologues of a Seahorse,” interludes of stream-of-consciousness association. Experimental and whimsical, this delivers deadpan narration of everyday woes.

In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation by Isabel Zapata (trans. from the Spanish by Robin Myers): A Mexican poet probes the enduring mysteries of pregnancy and birth in a memoir in fragments that travels from fertility treatment through to the early weeks of pandemic-time motherhood. The clinical language of a gynecological history—late menstruation, polycystic ovary syndrome, eighteen years on the pill, and infertility—and the embryo transfer process contrasts with Zapata’s mystical thinking. The microessays integrate family stories, history, and artistic explorations. This resolute account of a personal metamorphosis alchemizes tender experiences into enchanting vignettes.