Book Serendipity, August to October 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. 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 flit away!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- The William Carlos Williams line “no ideas but in things” is quoted in Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman and echoed with a slight adaptation in Want, the Lake by Jenny Factor.
- A woman impulsively stops into a tattoo parlour in We Are Animals by Jennifer Case and Birdeye by Judith Heneghan.
- Cleaning up a partner’s bristles from the sink in 300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso and The Echoes by Evie Wyld.
- Sarah Manguso, by whom I was reading two books for a Bookmarks article, was quoted in Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin.
- Someone is annoyed at their spouse making a mess cooking lemon preserves in How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli and Liars by Sarah Manguso, both of which are set in California.
- Rumpelstiltskin is referenced in one short story of a speculative collection: How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli and The Man in the Banana Trees by Marguerite Sheffer.
- A father who is hard of hearing, and an Australian woman looking for traces of her grandmother’s life in England in The House with All the Lights On by Jessica Kirkness and The Echoes by Evie Wyld.
- A character named Janie or Janey in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Echoes by Evie Wyld. The Pre-Raphaelite model Janey is also mentioned in The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing.
Contrasting one’s childhood love of the Little House on the Prairie books with reading them as an adult and being aware of the racial and colonial implications in Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- A mention of Little Women in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- A character grew up in a home hair-dressing business in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman.
- The discovery of an old pram in an outbuilding in Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell and Mina’s Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa.
- An Irish woman named Aoife in My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss and Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell.
- Cooking then throwing out entire meals in My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss and The Echoes by Evie Wyld. (Also throwing out a fresh meal in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan. Such scenes distress me!)
A new lover named Simon in one story of The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro and The Echoes by Evie Wyld.
- A character writes a recommendation letter for someone who then treats them vindictively, because they assumed the letter was negative when it wasn’t, in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and one story of The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro.
- After her parents’ divorce, the author never had a designated bedroom in her father’s house in Home Is Where We Start by Susanna Crossman and The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing.
Reading The Bell Jar as a teenager in Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- A contentious Town Hall meeting features in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and Birdeye by Judith Heneghan.
- The wife is pregnant with twins in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. (There are also twins in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan. In general, I find that they occur far more often in fiction than in real life!)
- 1930s Florida as a setting in Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
- Dorothy Wordsworth and her journals are discussed in Some of Us Just Fall by Polly Atkin and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- Wordsworth’s daffodils are mentioned in Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus and My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss.
- “F*ck off” is delivered in an exaggerated English accent in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan and The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken.
- The main character runs a country store in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro.
Reading a second novel this year in which the younger sister of a pair wants to go into STEM and joins the Mathletes in high school: first was A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg; later was Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner.
- An older sister who has great trouble attending normal school and so is placed elsewhere (including a mental institution) for a total of two years in Learning to Think by Tracy King and Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner.
- The idea of trees taking revenge on people for environmental destruction in one story of The Secret Life of Insects by Bernardo Esquinca and one poem of The Holy & Broken Bliss by Alicia Ostriker.
- An illiterate character in Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell and Also Here by Brooke Randel.
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Controversy over throwing a dead body into the trash in Birdeye by Judith Heneghan and Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent.
- A publishing assistant who wears a miniskirt and Doc Martens in Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner and Summer Fridays by Suzanne Rindell.
- Ancestors’ experience in Auschwitz in Also Here by Brooke Randel and Transgenesis by Ava Winter.
- The protagonist finds it comforting when her boyfriend lies down with his full weight on her in Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner and The Echoes by Evie Wyld.
- A woman badgers her ex-husband about when his affair with his high school/college sweetheart started (before or after the divorce) in Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner and Liars by Sarah Manguso.
I encountered an Irish matriarch who married the ‘wrong’ brother, not Frank, in The Bee Sting by Paul Murray earlier in the year, and then in Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell.
- A boy is playing in the family car on the driveway when it rolls backwards and kills someone in A Perfect Arrangement by Suzanne Berne and Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout.
- Quantoxhead, Somerset is mentioned in On Trying to Keep Still by Jenny Diski and A House Unlocked by Penelope Lively.
- Tapeworms are mentioned in On Trying to Keep Still by Jenny Diski and one story of The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff.
- A description of horrific teeth in one story of The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff, and one story of The Long Swim by Terese Svoboda.
- A character researches potato blight, and another keeps his smoking a secret from his wife, in one story of The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, ed. Lauren Groff, and Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout.
A piano gets mauled out of anger in one story of Save Me, Stranger by Erika Krouse and Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent.
- Men experiencing eating disorders in Heavy by Kiese Laymon and Heartstopper Volumes 3 and 4 by Alice Oseman.
- Black people deliberately changing their vocabulary and speech register when talking to white people in James by Percival Everett and Heavy by Kiese Laymon.
- My second book of the year in which a woman from centuries ago who magically appears in the present requests to go night clubbing: first The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, then Isabella & Blodwen by Rachael Smith.
- Characters named Sadie in James by Percival Everett, The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken, and Still Life at Eighty by Abigail Thomas.
- Creepy hares in horror: A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand and What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. There were weird rabbits in I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill, too.
- I read two scenes of a calf being born, one right after the other: in Dangerous Enough by Becky Varley-Winter, then I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill.
- I read about an animal scratch leading to infection leading to death in a future with no pharmaceuticals in Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel in the morning and then in the afternoon heard Eve Smith mention the same thing happening due to antibiotic resistance in her novel The Waiting Rooms. Forget about R.I.P.; this is the stuff that scares me…
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Easter Reading: The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade
The Holy Week opening was the excuse I needed to pick up this review copy from 2021. Amadeo Padilla is playing Jesus this year in the Las Penas, New Mexico penitentes’ reenactment of the crucifixion. At 33, he’s the perfect age for the role; no matter that he’s an unemployed alcoholic and a single father to 15-year-old Angel, who is pregnant. Looping from one Good Friday to the next, this debut novel is a crushingly honest look at family dynamics. It’s what isn’t said that might tear them apart: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, hasn’t told anyone about her diagnosis, and Amadeo conveniently covers up the fact that he’s sleeping with Brianna, Angel’s teacher at the Smart Starts! high school equivalency program.
The title refers to the stigmata of Christ, but could just as well apply to the Padillas’ five generations, from baby Connor all the way up to Tío Tíve, Amadeo’s great-uncle. Substance abuse, poverty and abandonment are generational wounds that run through this family. Quade treats heavy subjects and damaged characters with kindness, never mocking or descending into cruelty. There is even levity to failures like Amadeo’s windshield crack repair venture. Any of these characters could have been caricatures, especially Angel as a teen mother, but Quade gives them depth. Angel’s emulation of Brianna and her classmate Lizette, her grudging care for Connor and Yolanda, and her ambivalent feelings towards Ryan, Connor’s father, are just a few of the aspects that make her a plucky, winsome protagonist.
The inclusion of Lent and Advent sets up the book’s emotional palette: waiting, guilt, self-sacrifice; preparing for birth, death and the determination to forge a new life. It’s refreshing, however, that the theological content is not just metaphorical here; these characters have a staunch Catholic background, and they take seriously Jesus’ example:
Good Friday was supposed to save Amadeo. He was supposed to be past the shame and failure and the mistakes that hardly seem to be his own and that unravel beyond his control. Amadeo feels cheated. By Passion week, by the penitentes, by Jesus himself. The fact is that no one can be crucified every day—not even Jesus could pull off that miracle.
Amadeo asks himself, with no trace of irony, what Jesus would do in the kinds of situations he finds himself in.
I would have liked more closure about two secondary characters, and at over 400 pages of small type, The Five Wounds is on the overlong side. But it’s so strong on characters and scenes, from classroom to hospital, that my interest never waned. Different as their settings are, I’d liken this to An American Marriage by Tayari Jones and Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud – two novels that had me aching for their vibrant characters’ poor decisions compounded by bad luck. The authors’ compassionate outlook makes the tragic elements bearable. I’ll be catching up on Quade’s first book, the short story collection Night at the Fiestas, as soon as I can.
With thanks to Profile Books (Tuskar Rock imprint) for the free copy for review.
Bonuses:
I recently finished a limping reread of Watership Down by Richard Adams. This was my favourite book as a child, but I couldn’t recapture the magic in my late thirties. The novelty this time around was in being able to recognize all the settings – the rabbits’ epic quest takes place on the outskirts of Newbury; we’ve walked through its countryside locations. (In fact, my husband, in his capacity as a town councillor, has testified at a hearing in objection to a plan to build 1000 houses at Sandleford, where the rabbits set out from.) I can see why I loved this at age nine: anthropomorphized animals, legends, made-up vocabulary and an old-fashioned adventure narrative. But it’s telling that this time around, what most amused me was Chapter 48, “Dea ex Machina,” in which a little girl rescues Hazel from her cat.
I’m 40 pages from the end of These Days by Lucy Caldwell, a beautiful novel set in Belfast in April 1941. A long central section is about “The Easter Raid.” I didn’t realize the devastation the city suffered during the Second World War. We see it mostly through the eyes of the Bell family – especially daughters Audrey, engaged to be married to a young doctor, and Emma, in love with a fellow female volunteer. I was wary of the characterization of the lower class, and the period slang can be a bit heavy-handed, but the evocation of a time of crisis is excellent, contrasting a departed normality with the new reality of bodies piled in the street and in makeshift morgues. It’s reminded me of The Night Watch by Sarah Waters.
(I’ve also posted about my Easter reading, theological or not, in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2021.)
Lana Bastašić for WIT Month 2021 & September Reading Plans
My literature in translation statistics for 2021 have been abysmal so far, but here’s my token contribution to Women in Translation Month: Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić, originally published in 2018 and translated from the Serbo-Croatian by the author herself.
Sara has made a new life for herself in Dublin, with a boyfriend and an avocado tree. She rarely thinks about her past in Bosnia or hears her mother tongue. It’s a rude awakening, then, when she gets a phone call from her childhood best friend, Lejla Begić. Her bold, brassy pal says she needs Sara to pick her up in Mostar and drive her to Vienna to find her brother, Armin. No matter that Sara and Lejla haven’t been in contact in 12 years. But Lejla still has such a hold over Sara that she books a plane ticket right away.
Alternating chapters, with the text enclosed in brackets, dive into the friends’ past: school days, losing their virginity, and burying Lejla’s pet white rabbit, Bunny. Sara often writes as if to Lejla: “I can’t beautify those days, I can’t give them some special, big meaning. You would despise me for it. Besides, I don’t know how to write those two kids: you keep shrinking and growing in my memory, like illusive land to desperate sailors.”
In the road trip scenes, we have to shake our heads at how outrageous Lejla is: peeing in a cornfield, throwing her used tampons out the window, and orchestrating a farcical situation when she lies and tells their host that Sara only speaks English. A lovable rogue, she drives the book’s action. Indeed, Sara realizes, “both the car and I were nothing but an extension of Lejla’s will, she moved us with her words, and we followed obediently.”
This offbeat novel struck me, bizarrely, as a cross between Asylum Road and When God Was a Rabbit. I sometimes find that work in translation, particularly Eastern European, has too much quirkiness for the sake of it. That’s probably true here, and although the nostalgia element was appealing the emotional payoff wasn’t enough to satisfy me. However, I did love a late scene where Sara gazes at Albrecht Dürer’s famous Young Hare painting, and keep an eye out for how the ending connects back to the beginning.
(Simon appreciated this European Union Prize for Literature winner more than I did: his review compares the picture of asymmetrical female friendship favourably to that in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels.)
With thanks to Picador for the free copy for review.
Did you do any special reading for Women in Translation month this year?
September Reading Plans
Each September I make a bit more of an effort to read short stories, which otherwise tend to sit on my shelves and Kindle unread. Last year I managed to read eight collections for this challenge. How many will I get to this year?! Here’s my shelf of potential reads:
I’ll reread selections from the Byatt anthology (I’ve read all of her published short story collections before and own two of them, one of which I reread last year) and will otherwise focus on books by women. I’ve had good success with Amy Bloom and Helen Simpson stories in previous years, so I’ll definitely plan to read those plus Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler (from the university library).
Since I own THREE unread collections by Alice Munro, it’s time to tackle one, probably Dear Life since I’ve owned it the longest – it’s a review copy that arrived before her Nobel Prize win and I’ve (oops) never reviewed it. The World Does Not Require You is also a long-languishing review copy, so might be my one male-penned title.
What are your September reading plans? Any short story collections you’ve read recently and would recommend to me?
Easter Reading from Richard Holloway and Richard Yates
I found a lesser-known Yates novel on my last trip to our local charity warehouse and saved it up for the titular holiday. I also remembered about a half-read theology book I’d packed away with the decorative wooden Easter egg and tin with a rabbit on in the holiday stash behind the spare room bed. And speaking of rabbits…
(I also gave suggestions of potential Easter reading, theological or not, in 2015, 2017, and 2018.)
The Easter Parade by Richard Yates (1976)
Yates sets out his stall with the first line: “Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back, it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce.” I’d seen the film of Revolutionary Road, and my impression of Yates’s work was confirmed by this first taste of his fiction: an atmosphere of mid-century (sub)urban ennui, with the twin ills of alcoholism and adultery causing the characters to drift inexorably towards tragedy.
The novel follows Sarah and Emily Grimes from the 1930s to the 1970s. Emily, four years younger, has always known that her sister is the pretty one. Twenty-year-old Sarah is tapped to model traditional Chinese dress during an Easter parade and be photographed by the public relations office of United China Relief, for whom she works in fundraising. Sarah had plans with her fiancé, Tony Wilson, and is unenthusiastic about taking part in the photo shoot, while Emily thinks what she wouldn’t give to appear in the New York Times.
The mild rivalry resurfaces in the years to come, though the sisters take different paths: Sarah marries Tony, has three sons, and moves to the Wilson family home out on Long Island; in New York City, Emily keeps up an unending stream of lovers and English-major jobs: bookstore clerk, librarian, journal editor, and ad agency copywriter. Sarah envies Emily’s ability to live as a free spirit, while Emily wishes she could have Sarah’s loving family home – until she learns that it’s not as idyllic as it appears.
What I found most tragic wasn’t the whiskey-soused poor decisions so much as the fact that both sisters have unrealized ambitions as writers. They long to follow in their headline-writing father’s footsteps: Emily starts composing a personal exposé on abortion, and later a witty travel guide to the Midwest when she accompanies a poet boyfriend to Iowa so he can teach in the Writers’ Workshop; Sarah makes a capable start on a book about the Wilson family history. But both allow their projects to wither, and their promise is unfulfilled.
Yates’s authentic characterization, forthright prose, and incisive observations on the futility of modern life and the ways we choose to numb ourselves kept this from getting too depressing – though I don’t mind bleak books. Much of the novel sticks close to Emily, who can, infuriatingly, be her own worst enemy. Yet the ending offers her the hand of grace in the form of her nephew Peter, a minister. I read the beautiful final paragraphs again and again.
A readalike I’ve reviewed (sisters, one named Sarah!): A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble
My rating: 
The Way of the Cross by Richard Holloway (1986)
Each year the Archbishop of Canterbury commissions a short book for the Anglican Communion to use as Lenten reading. This study of the crucifixion focuses on seven of the Stations of the Cross, which are depicted in paintings or sculptures in most Anglo-Catholic churches, and emphasizes Jesus’s humble submission and the irony that the expected Son of God came as an executed criminal rather than an exalted king. Holloway weaves scripture passages and literary quotations through each chapter, and via discussion questions encourages readers to apply the themes of power, envy, sin, and the treatment of women to everyday life – not always entirely naturally, and the book does feel dated. Not a stand-out from a prolific author I’ve enjoyed in the past (e.g., Waiting for the Last Bus).
Favorite lines:
“the yearly remembrance of the life of Christ is a way of actualizing and making that life present now, in the universal mode of sacramental reality.”
“Powerlessness is the message of the cross”
My rating: 
Recently read for book club; I’ll throw it in here for its dubious thematic significance (the protagonist starts off as an innocently blasphemous child and, disappointed with God as she’s encountered him thus far, gives that name to her pet rabbit):
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman (2011)
I’d enjoyed Winman’s 2017 Tin Man so was very disappointed with this one. You can tell it was a debut novel because she really threw the kitchen sink in when it comes to quirkiness and magic realism. Secondary characters manage to be more engaging than the primary ones though they are little more than a thumbnail description: the lesbian actress aunt, the camp old lodger, etc. I also hate the use of 9/11 as a plot device, something I have encountered several times in the last couple of years, and stupid names like Jenny Penny. Really, the second part of this novel just feels like a rehearsal for Tin Man in that it sets up a close relationship between two gay men and a woman.
Two major themes, generally speaking, are intuition and trauma: characters predict things that they couldn’t know by ordinary means, and have had some awful things happen to them. Some bottle it all up, only for it to explode later in life; others decide not to let childhood trauma define them. This is a worthy topic, certainly, but feels at odds with the carefully cultivated lighthearted tone. Winman repeatedly introduces something sweet or hopeful only to undercut it with a tragic turn of events.
The title phrase comes from a moment of pure nostalgia for childhood, and I think the novel may have been better if it had limited itself to that rather than trying to follow all the characters into later life and sprawling over nearly 40 years. Ultimately, I didn’t feel that I knew much about Elly, the narrator, or what makes her tick, and Joe and Jenny Penny almost detract from each other. Pick one or the other, brother or best friend, to be the protagonist’s mainstay; both was unnecessary.
My rating: 
Library Checkout and Other Late May Happenings
The libraries I use have extended their closure until at least the end of July, and my stockpile is dwindling. Will I have cleared the decks before we get too far into the summer? Stay tuned to find out…
Meanwhile, we took advantage of the fine weather by having a jaunt to the Sandleford Warren site where Watership Down opens. This circular countryside walk of nearly 8 miles, via Greenham Common and back, took me further from home yesterday than I’ve been in about 10 weeks. We didn’t see any rabbits, but we did see this gorgeous hare.
My husband keeps baking – what a shame! We were meant to be spending a few days in France with my mother last week, so we had some Breton treats anyway (savory crêpes and Far Breton, a custard and prune tart), and yesterday while I was napping he for no reason produced a blackberry frangipane tart.
The Hay Festival went digital this year, so I’ve been able to ‘attend’ for the first time ever. On Friday I had my first of three events: Steve Silberman interviewing Dara McAnulty about his Diary of a Young Naturalist, which I’ll be reviewing for Shiny New Books. He’s autistic, and an inspiring 16-year-old Greta Thunberg type. Next week I’ll see John Troyer on Thursday and Roman Krznaric on Saturday. All the talks are FREE, so see if anything catches your eye on the schedule link above.
In general, I’ve been spoiled with live events recently. Each week we watch the Bookshop Band’s Friday night lockdown concert on Facebook (there have actually been seven now); they’ve played a lot of old favorites as well as newer material that hasn’t been recorded or that I’ve never heard before. We’ve also been to a few live gigs from Edgelarks and Megson – helpfully, these three folk acts are all couples, so they can still perform together.
Today we’ll be watching the second installment of the Folk on Foot Front Room Festival (also through Facebook). We had a great time watching most of the first one on Easter Monday, and an encore has quickly been arranged. Last month’s show was a real who’s-who of British folk music. There are a few more acts we’re keen to see today. Again, it’s free, though they welcome donations to be split among the artists and charity. It runs 2‒10 p.m. (BST) today, which is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. if you’re on the east coast of North America, so you have time to join in if you are stuck at home for the holiday.
Back to the library books…
What have you been reading from your local libraries? Feel free to use the image above and leave a link to your blog in the comments if you’ve taken part, and/or tag me on Twitter (@bookishbeck / #TheLibraryCheckout).
READ
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler 
- Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
- Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively
- Bodies in Motion and at Rest by Thomas Lynch
- Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
SKIMMED
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
CURRENTLY READING
- Reading with Patrick: A teacher, a student and the life-changing power of books by Michelle Kuo [set aside temporarily]
- Meet the Austins by Madeleine L’Engle [set aside temporarily]
- Property by Valerie Martin
CURRENTLY SKIMMING
- My Own Country by Abraham Verghese
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather- Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame
- The Trick Is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway
- When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
- Becoming a Man by Paul Monette
- Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
- Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin
ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP
- The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams- Can You Hear Me? A Paramedic’s Encounters with Life and Death by Jake Jones
- The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
- Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS by Azadeh Moaveni
- The Accidental Countryside by Stephen Moss
- Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
Have you run out of library books yet?
How have you been passing these May days?
Cover Love: My Favorite Book Covers of 2019
I’ve picked 26 favorite book covers from 2019, most of which are on books I haven’t yet managed to read – either they’re U.S.-only releases, or my library doesn’t own a copy. In the past I have sometimes found that the most eye-catching covers and the most striking titles end up belonging to disappointing books, but at least a few have bucked that trend.
Here are my favorite covers from books I have actually read or am currently reading:
And here are the rest:
What have we learned from this exercise? That I’m a total sucker for flora and fauna on book covers, especially birds. (Bizarrely, rabbits/hares make four appearances, too.)
What cover trends have you noticed this year?
Which tend to grab your attention?
Recommended Easter Reading
Unlike Christmas, Easter is a holiday that might not lend itself so easily to reading lists. December is the perfect time to be reading cozy books with wintry scenes of snow and hearth, or old-time favorites like Charles Dickens. Christmas-themed books and short stories are a whole industry, it seems. Lent and Advent both prize special foods, traditions and symbols, but beyond devotional reading there doesn’t seem to be an Easter book scene. Nonetheless, I have a handful of books I’d like to recommend for the run-up to Easter, whether for this year or the future.
Easter, Michael Arditti
I hadn’t heard of Michael Arditti until I reviewed his novel The Breath of Night – a taut, Heart of Darkness-inspired thriller about a young man searching for a missing priest in the Philippines – for Third Way magazine in late 2013. He deserves to be better known. Easter (2000), his third novel, earned him comparisons to Iris Murdoch and Barbara Pym. His nuanced picture of modern Christianity, especially the Anglican Church, is spot-on.
I’ve just finished Part One, which traces the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday in a fictional London parish, St Mary-in-the-Vale, Hampstead. Structured around the services of Holy Week and punctuated with bits of liturgy, the novel moves between the close third-person perspectives of various clergy and parishioners. Huxley Grieve, the vicar, is – rather inconveniently – experiencing serious doubts in this week of all weeks. And this at a time when the new Bishop of London, Ted Bishop (“Bishop by name, bishop by calling,” he quips), has announced his mission to root out the poison of liberalism from the Church.
So far I’m reminded of a cross between Susan Howatch and David Lodge (especially in How Far Can You Go?), with a dash of the BBC comedy Rev thrown in. Reverend Grieve’s sermons may be achingly earnest, but the novel is also very funny indeed. Here’s a passage, almost like a set of stage directions, from the Palm Sunday service: “The procession moves up the nave. The Curate leads the donkey around the church. It takes fright at the cloud of incense and defecates by the font.”
Lazarus Is Dead, Richard Beard
In this peculiar novel-cum-biography, Beard attempts to piece together everything that has ever been said, written and thought about the biblical character of Lazarus. The best sections have Beard ferreting out the many diseases from which Lazarus may have been suffering, and imagining what his stench – both in life and in death – must have been like. (“He stinketh,” as the Book of John pithily puts it.)
Alongside these reasonable conjectures is a strange, invented backstory for Jesus and Lazarus: when they were children Jesus failed to save Lazarus’ younger brother from drowning and Lazarus has borne a lifelong grudge. A Roman official is able to temporarily convince Lazarus that he needs to take up the mantle of the Messiah because he came back to life: he has the miracle to prove the position, whether he wants it or not. The end of the novel follows the strand of the Passion Week, though in a disconnected and halfhearted fashion.
Beard’s interest is not that of a religious devotee or a scriptural scholar, but of a skeptical postmodern reader. Lazarus is a vehicle for questions of textual accuracy, imagination, and the creation of a narrative of life and death. His unprecedented second life must make him irresistible to experimental novelists. Beard’s follow-up novel, Acts of the Assassins, is also Bible-themed; it’s a thriller that imagines the Roman Empire still in charge today.
Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean
No matter your current thoughts on the death penalty, you owe it to yourself to read this book with an open mind. I read it in the run-up to Easter 2007, and would recommend it as perfect reading for the season. As I truly engaged with themes of guilt and retribution, I felt the reality of death row was brought home to me for the first time. Many of the men Prejean deals with in this book we would tend to dismiss as monsters, yet Jesus is the God who comes for the lost and the discounted, the God who faces execution himself.
The film version, which conflates some of the characters and events of the book, is equally affecting. I saw it first, but it does not ruin the reading experience in any way.
The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan
Marcus Borg, who just died on January 21st, has been one of the most important theologians in my continuing journey with Christianity. His Reading the Bible Again for the First Time and The Heart of Christianity are essential reading for anyone who’s about to give up on the faith. In this day-by-day account, mostly referencing the Gospel of Mark, Borg and Crossan convey all that is known about the historical Jesus’ last week and death. They collaborated on a second book, The First Christmas, which does the same for Jesus’ birth.
And now for two more unusual, secular selections…
Bellman & Black, Diane Setterfield
Call me morbid, but I love English graveyards. My most enduring Easter memory is of dawn services at the country church in my husband’s hometown. In the weak half-light, with churchyard rooks croaking a near-deafening chorus, the overwhelming sense was of rampant wildness. The congregation huddled around a bonfire while a black-cloaked vicar intoned the story of scripture, from creation to the coming of Christ, as loudly as possible over the rooks – trying to win mastery over the night, and score a point for civilization in the meantime.
This anecdote goes some way toward explaining why I rather enjoyed Bellman and Black – but why many others won’t. Setterfield’s second novel is a peculiar beast, a bit like a classic suspense story but also an English country fable. Protagonist William Bellman is part Job and part Faustus. At age ten, he makes a catapult that kills a rook. Thereafter, his life is plagued by death, despite his successful career as an entrepreneur at a cloth mill. Can he make a deal with the Devil – or, rather, the sinister Mr. Black – that will stop the cycle of deaths?
Bellman’s daughter Dora is a wonderful character, and because I love birds anyway and have strong, visceral memories involving rooks in particular, I enjoyed Setterfield’s symbolic use of them. However, many will be bored to tears by details of cloth-making and dyeing in early nineteenth-century England. Setterfield evokes her time period cannily, but in such a painstaking manner that the setting does not feel entirely natural. Here’s hoping for a return to form with Setterfield’s third novel.
Watership Down, Richard Adams
This was the first book I ever borrowed from the Adult Fiction section of the public library, when I was eight years old. It quickly became a favorite, and though I didn’t reread it over and over like I did the Chronicles of Narnia, it still has a strong place in my childhood memories. Why have I chosen it for this list? Well, it’s about rabbits: a warren comes under threat from English countryside development and human interference.
I loved a little story Rachel Joyce inserts in her novel The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Taking over from another nun, a young, air-headed nurse at Queenie’s hospice resumes reading Watership Down to a patient. At the end the patient cries, “Oh, it’s so sad, those poor rabbits” and the nurse replies, “What rabbits?” (You’d think the cover might have given it away!) It’s a good laugh, but also reflects how carefully Adams characterizes – one might say anthropomorphizes – each rabbit; you might forget they’re actually animals.
Do you have any favorite books to read or reread at particular holidays?
Happy spring reading!
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 