R.I.P. Reads, Part II: Feito, King, Link, Paver & Taylor
Soon it’ll be all novellas, all the time around here. But first I have a few more October reads to review.
A belated Happy Halloween! As a kid in the U.S. suburbs, I loved Halloween. It was such fun planning costumes – pumpkin, cowgirl and picnic table are a few memorable ones that I remember thanks to photographs – and my hoard of candy would last me for months. But these days, I tend to be pretty grumpy about the holiday. It never used to be a thing in the UK, but it has been creeping in year on year. I don’t mind a creatively carved jack o’ lantern, tasteful decoration or clever homemade costume. What does get my goat is plastic tat, gratuitous gore and the dozens of sodden sweets and wrappers littering the streets after last night’s rain and wind.
Anyway, we enjoyed the stormy evening because we spent it at friends’ having delicious autumnal lasagne and parkin, playing instruments and board games and eavesdropping on the trick-or-treaters. I had to laugh when J said “Take a couple” and one little girl replied, “That’s okay, I don’t really like sweeties.” These friends were keeping some ancient traditions alive: carving a turnip, wearing one’s clothes inside out and walking between two fires to ward off fairies. They also put potatoes in the treats bowl, which definitely confused the kids. (One did take a spud!)
I really leaned into the Readers Imbibing Peril reading this year. I had a somewhat lacklustre first batch, but these five were great!
Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito (2025)
This was among my Most Anticipated titles of the year – for the bonkers blurb but also because of how much I’d enjoyed Feito’s debut, Mrs. March. Both novels go deep with mentally disturbed protagonists. The first channeled Patricia Highsmith with its stylish psychological suspense; here we have a full-on blend of slasher horror and sadistic humour, wrapped up in a Victorian pastiche. Winifred Notty (naughty girl indeed) is the new governess at Ensor House on the Yorkshire moors. She couldn’t care less about her charges, Andrew and Drusilla. No, she’s here to exact revenge on the master of the house, Mr. Pounds. But not before she’s dispatched many a random servant and baby. “Bodies pile up in the attic.” Her brutal fantasies are so realistic that at times it’s difficult to separate them from what she actually carries out. Miss Notty is also a highly sexual being whose fixations could certainly be interpreted in Freudian ways. Feito spins a traumatic backstory for her antiheroine but doesn’t make it any excuse for her gleeful reign of terror. It’s delicious fun, especially for a Victorianist, but don’t attempt if you’re squeamish. (Read via NetGalley)
Misery by Stephen King (1987)
All these years I’d had two 1989–1990 films conflated: Misery and My Left Foot. I’ve not seen either but as an impressionable young’un I made a mental mash-up of the posters’ stills into a film featuring Daniel Day-Lewis as a paralyzed writer and Kathy Bates as a madwoman wielding an axe. (Turns out the left foot is relevant!)
Paul Sheldon wakes in a fog of pain, his legs shattered from a one-car accident on a snowy Colorado backroad. He’s famous for his historical potboilers about Misery Chastain but, like Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, has killed off his most beloved character. Except now he’s in the home of Annie Wilkes, his rescuer and biggest fan, and she demands he resurrect Misery. Annie is a former nurse who left the profession after numerous suspicious deaths on her watch. She keeps Paul dependent on her – and on Novril, a fictional opiate. In a case of ‘Scheherazade complex’, he’ll be her prisoner until he’s completed a sequel that’s to her satisfaction. Compared to Pet Sematary, the only other King novel I’ve read, this was slow to draw me in because of the repetitive scenes in a claustrophobic setting, and I wearied of the excerpts from Paul’s manuscript. But eventually I was riveted, desperate to know how Paul was going to get out of this predicament and what the final showdown could be. Extremes of pain and obsession make this an intense study of the psychology of a wretched pair. (Public library)
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link (2008)
This is a reissue edition geared towards young adults. All but one of the 10 stories were originally published in literary magazines or anthologies. The stories are long, some approaching novella length, and took me quite a while to read. I got through the first three and will save the rest for next year. In “The Wrong Grave,” a teen decides to dig up his dead girlfriend’s casket to reclaim the poems he rashly buried with her last year – as did Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which Link makes a point of mentioning. A terrific blend of spookiness and comedy ensues.
“The Wizards of Perfil” and the title story are 50-some and 60-some pages, respectively, which allows a lot of space for intriguing weirdness and side plots. In the former, Onion’s cousin Halsa is purchased to be a servant to a wizard. The cousins both have the gift of foresight but can’t get the wizards to take them seriously when they beg that something to be done to prevent human disasters. It’s a brilliant allegory of the danger of waiting for an external force – God, the government, whatever – to solve everything versus getting on with it yourself. In the title story, a group of teens are obsessed with a mysterious Doctor Who-esque television show called The Library, which colours all their interactions. The main character Jeremy’s father is an eccentric sci-fi novelist named Gordon Strangle Mars who has written his son into his latest plot in a disturbing way. Jeremy recently inherited a gas station and phone box in Las Vegas and occasionally calls the phone box to air his grievances and solicit supernatural aid. My only other experience of Link was a standalone story I was once sent for review, “The Summer People,” which I didn’t get on with, so I was surprised to encounter such top-notch fantasy/horror tales. (Little Free Library)
Rainforest by Michelle Paver (2025)
I’d read all three of Paver’s previous horror novels for adults (Thin Air, Dark Matter and Wakenhyrst) and found them easy, atmospheric reading but not nearly as scary as billed. This is her best yet. Set in 1973 on an expedition to Mexico, it has as its unreliable narrator Dr. Simon Corbett, an English entomologist. Adding to the findings of the archaeological dig he’s accompanying, he’ll be hunting for mantids (praying mantises, stick insects and the like) by fogging sacred trees with pesticides. He also experiments with taking a hallucinogenic plant extract used by the Indigenous shamans, hoping to be reunited with his lost love, Penelope.
We know that Corbett’s employment is tenuous and that he’s seeing a therapist. Paver authentically reproduces the casual racism and sexism of the time and seeds little hints that this protagonist may not be telling the whole truth about his relationship with Penelope. The long sequence where he’s lost in the jungle is fantastic. Corbett seems fated to repeat ancient masochistic rites, as if in penance for what he’s done wrong. My husband is an entomologist, so I was interested to read about period collecting practices. The novelty of the setting is a bonus to this high-quality psychological thriller and ghost story. (Public library)
Bone Broth by Alex Taylor (2025)
Ash is a trans man who starts working at a hole-in-the-wall ramen restaurant underneath a London railway arch. All he wants is to “pay for hormones, pay rent, [and] make enough to take a cutie on a date.” Bug’s Bones is run by an irascible elderly proprietor but staffed by a young multicultural bunch: Sock, Blue, Honey and Creamy. They quickly show Ash the ropes and within a month he’s turning out perfect bowls. He’s creeped out by the restaurant’s trademark bone broth, though, with its reminders of creatures turning into food. At the end of a drunken staff party, they find Bug lying dead and have to figure out what to do about it.
This storyline is in purple, whereas the alternating sequences of flashbacks are in a fleshy pinkish-red. As the two finally meet and meld, we see Ash trying to imitate the masculinity he sees on display while he waits for the surface to match what’s inside. I didn’t love the drawing style – though the full-page tableaux are a lot better than the high-school-sketchbook small panes – so that was an issue for me throughout, but this was an interesting, ghoulish take on the transmasc experience. Taylor won a First Graphic Novel Award.
With thanks to SelfMadeHero for the free copy for review.
And one DNF: Saltwash by Andrew Michael Hurley. (I was warned!) It had no menace or momentum at all…
Any stand-out creepy reading for you this year?
Summer Reading 2025: Anthony, Espach, Han & Teir
In the UK, summer doesn’t officially end until the 22nd, so even though I’ve been doing plenty of baking with apples and plums and we’ve had squashes delivered in our vegetable box, I’ve taken advantage of that extra time to finish a couple more summery books. This year I’m featuring four novels ranging in location from Rhode Island to Finland. I’ve got all the trappings of summer: a swimming pool, a wedding, a beach retreat, and a summer house.
The Most by Jessica Anthony (2024)
I can’t resist a circadian narrative. This novella takes place in Delaware on one day in early November 1957, but flashbacks and close third-person narration reveal everything we need to know about Virgil and Kathleen Beckett and their marriage. I’m including it in my summer reading because it’s set on an unseasonably warm Sunday and Kathleen decides to spend the entire day in their apartment complex’s pool. The mother of two drifts back in memory to her college tennis-playing days and her first great love, Billy Blasko, a Czech tennis coach who created a signature move called “The Most,” which means “bridge” in his language – the idea is to trap your opponent and then drop a bomb on them. Virgil, who after taking their two boys to church goes golfing with his insurance sales colleagues as is expected of him, loves jazz music and has just been sent the secret gift of a saxophone. Both spouses are harbouring secrets and, as Laika orbits the Earth overhead, they wonder if they can break free from the capsules they’ve built around their hearts and salvage their relationship. The storytelling is tight even as the book loops around the same events from the two perspectives. This was really well done, and a big step up from Enter the Aardvark. (Public library) 
The Wedding People by Alison Espach (2024)
You’ve all heard about this one, right? It’s been a Read with Jenna selection and the holds are stacking up in my library system. No wonder it’s been hailed as a perfect summer read: it’s full of sparkling banter; heartwarming, very funny and quite sexy. And that despite a grim opening situation: Phoebe flies from St. Louis to Newport and checks into a luxury hotel, intending to kill herself. She’s an adjunct professor whose husband left her for their colleague after their IVF attempts failed, and she feels she’ll never finish writing her book, become a mother or find true love again. Little does she know that a Bridezilla type named Lila who’s spent $1 million of her inheritance on a week-long wedding extravaganza (culminating in a ceremony at The Breakers mansion) meant to book out the entire hotel. Phoebe somehow snagged the room with the best view. Lila isn’t about to let anyone ruin her wedding.
What follows is Cinderella-like yet takes into account the realities of bereavement, infidelity, infertility and blended families. Because of the one-week format, Phoebe’s depression is defused more quickly than is plausible, but I was relieved that Espach doesn’t plump for a full-blown happy ending. I did also find the novel unnecessarily crass in places, especially the gag about the car. Still, this has all the wit of Katherine Heiny and Curtis Sittenfeld. I’d recommend it if you enjoyed Dream State or Consider Yourself Kissed, and it’s especially reminiscent of Sorrow and Bliss for the mixture of humour and frank consideration of mental health. It’s as easy to relate to Phoebe’s feelings (“How much of her life had she spent in this moment, waiting for someone else to decide something conclusive about her?”; “It is so much easier to sit in things and wait for someone to save us”) as it is to laugh at the one-liners. “Garys are not wonderful. That’s just not what they are meant to be” particularly tickled me because I know a few Garys in real life. (Public library)
The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han (2008)
Every summer Belly and her mother and brother have joined her mother’s best friend Susannah and her sons Conrad and Jeremiah at their beach house. She’s had a crush on Conrad for what’s felt like forever, but she’s only ever been his surrogate little sister, fun for palling around with but never taken seriously. This summer is different, though: Belly is turning 16, it’s Conrad’s last summer before college, and his family seems to be falling apart. The novel kept being requested off me and I puzzled over how it could have eight reservations on it until I realized there’s an Amazon Prime Video adaptation now in its third and final season. I reckon the story will work better on screen because Belly’s narration was the main issue for me. She’s ever so shallow, so caught up in boys that she doesn’t realize Susannah is sick again. Her fixation on the brooding Conrad doesn’t make sense when she could have affable Jeremiah or sweet, geeky Cam, who met her through Latin club and liked her before she grew big boobs. He’s who she’s supposed to be with in this kind of story, right? I think this would appeal to younger, boy-crazy teens, but it just made me feel old and grumpy. (Public library) 
The Summer House by Philip Teir (2017; 2018)
[Translated from Swedish by Tiina Nunnally]
The characters are Finland-Swedish, like the author. Erik and Julia escape Helsinki with their children, Alice and Anton, to spend time at her father’s summer house. Erik has just lost his job in IT for a large department store, but hasn’t told Julia yet. Julia is working on a novel, but distracted by the fact that her childhood friend Marika, the not so secret inspiration for a character in her previous novel, is at another vacation home nearby with Chris, her Scottish partner. These two and their hangers-on have a sort of commune based around free love and extreme environmental realism: the climate crisis will not be solved (“accepting the grief instead of talking about hope all the time”) and the only thing to do is participate in de-civilisation. But like many a cult leader, Chris courts young female attention and isn’t the best role model. Both couples are strained to breaking point.
Meanwhile, Chris and Marika’s son, Leo, has been sneaking off with Alice; and Erik’s brother Anders shows up and starts seeing the widowed therapist neighbour. This was a reasonably likeable book about how we respond to crises personal and global, and how we react to our friends’ successes and problems – Erik is jealous of his college buddy’s superior performance in a tech company. But I thought it was a little aimless, especially in its subplots, and it suffered in comparison with Leave the World Behind, which has quite a similar setup but a more intriguing cosmic/dystopian direction. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury) 
Any final summer books for you this year?
Three on a Theme: Christmas Novellas I (Re-)Read This Year
I wasn’t sure I’d manage any holiday-appropriate reading this year, but thanks to their novella length I actually finished three, two in advance and one in a single sitting on the day itself. Two of these happen to be in translation: little slices of continental Christmas.
Twelve Nights by Urs Faes (2018; 2020)
[Translated from the German by Jamie Lee Searle]
In this Swiss novella, the Twelve Nights between Christmas and Epiphany are a time of mischief when good folk have to protect themselves from the tricks of evil spirits. Manfred has trekked back to his home valley hoping to make things right with his brother, Sebastian. They have been estranged for several decades – since Sebastian unexpectedly inherited the family farm and stole Manfred’s sweetheart, Minna. These perceived betrayals were met with a vengeful act of cruelty (but why oh why did it have to be against an animal?). At a snow-surrounded inn, Manfred convalesces and tries to summon the courage to show up at Sebastian’s door. At only 84 small-format pages, this is more of a short story. The setting and spare writing are appealing, as is the prospect of grace extended. But this was over before it began; it didn’t feel worth what I paid. Perhaps I would have been happier to encounter it in an anthology or a longer collection of Faes’s short fiction. (Secondhand – Hungerford Bookshop)
Through a Glass, Darkly by Jostein Gaarder (1993; 1998)
[Translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Rokkan]
On Christmas Day, Cecilia is mostly confined to bed, yet the preteen experiences the holiday through the sounds and smells of what’s happening downstairs. (What a cosy first page!)
Her father later carries her down to open her presents: skis, a toboggan, skates – her family has given her all she asked for even though everyone knows she won’t be doing sport again; there is no further treatment for her terminal cancer. That night, the angel Ariel appears to Cecilia and gets her thinking about the mysteries of life. He’s fascinated by memory and the temporary loss of consciousness that is sleep. How do these human processes work? “I wish I’d thought more about how it is to live,” Cecilia sighs, to which Ariel replies, “It’s never too late.” Weeks pass and Ariel engages Cecilia in dialogues and takes her on middle-of-the-night outdoor adventures, always getting her back before her parents get up to check on her. The book emphasizes the wonder of being alive: “You are an animal with the soul of an angel, Cecilia. In that way you’ve been given the best of both worlds.” This is very much a YA book and a little saccharine for me, but at least it was only 161 pages rather than the nearly 400 of Sophie’s World. (Secondhand – Community Furniture Project, Newbury)
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2021)
I idly reread this while The Muppet Christmas Carol played in the background on a lazy, overfed Christmas evening.
It was an odd experience: having seen the big-screen adaptation just last month, the blow-by-blow was overly familiar to me and I saw Cillian Murphy and Emily Watson, if not the minor actors, in my mind’s eye. I realized fully just how faithful the screenplay is to the book. The film enhances not just the atmosphere but also the plot through the visuals. It takes what was so subtle in the book – blink-and-you’ll-miss-it – and makes it more obvious. Normally I might think it a shame to undermine the nuance, but in this case I was glad of it. Bill Furlong’s midlife angst and emotional journey, in particular, are emphasized in the film. It was probably a mistake to read this a third time within so short a span of time; it often takes me more like 5–10 years to appreciate a book anew. So I was back to my ‘nice little story’ reaction this time, but would still recommend this to you – book or film – if you haven’t yet experienced it. (Free at a West Berkshire Council recycling event)
Previous ratings: 
(2021 review); 
(2022 review)
My rating this time:
We hosted family for Christmas for the first time, which truly made me feel like a proper grown-up. It was stressful and chaotic but lovely and over all too soon. Here’s my lil’ book haul (but there was also a £50 book token, so I will buy many more!).
I hope everyone has been enjoying the holidays. I have various year-end posts in progress but of course the final Best-of list and statistics will have to wait until the turning of the year.
Coming up:
Sunday 29th: Best Backlist Reads of the Year
Monday 30th: Love Your Library & 2024 Reading Superlatives
Tuesday 31st: Best Books of 2024
Wednesday 1st: Final statistics on 2024’s reading
A Belated R.I.P., Part III: Hand, Hurley, Kingfisher and Meddings
I meant to post on Halloween but the day got away from me, so here’s my belated third contribution to the Readers Imbibing Peril challenge (the first two are here and here). It’s rare for me to borrow from the horror section of the library and even rarer for me to read sequels, yet here I am with two purple-spotted spines and three books that count as continuations. I’m a little surprised at myself for managing eight R.I.P. reviews this year, but five of those were of very short books or graphic novels so were quick reads. With the possible exception of the dystopian final chapter of the Hurley, none of my selections scared me.
A Haunting on the Hill by Elizabeth Hand (2023)
Hand was commissioned by Shirley Jackson’s estate to write a sequel to The Haunting of Hill House, which I read for R.I.P. in 2019 (my review). As in the original, four people gather at Hill House; artists rather than ghost-hunters, but they soon grasp the place’s supernatural malevolence. Holly has written a play about a historical witch – to be portrayed by Amanda, an actress of a certain age. Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, provides music in the form of traditional murder ballads; actor Stevie makes up the quartet. Despite locals’ persistent admonitions, they take out a short-term rental on Hill House, thinking it will be atmospheric to finish the play and conduct read-throughs there. I was solidly engaged with the characters, whom Hand reinforces with traumatic backstories (Amanda’s proximity to an accidental death, Stevie’s molestation as a child actor), but couldn’t take the scary reveals seriously. A tablecloth suddenly soaked in blood? A black hare falling out of a chimney? Such moments just felt silly, plus Hand overplays the warnings versus the quartet’s blithe heedlessness. The ending is actually pretty chilling, but too much that came before strained belief. Do read the Jackson if you haven’t, though; it’s genuinely frightening. (Public library) 
Barrowbeck by Andrew Michael Hurley (2024)
I’ve read all of Hurley’s novels (The Loney, Devil’s Day and Starve Acre), the first two for previous R.I.P. events. Here again, he explores the arcane beliefs and practices of an isolated community: Barrowbeck, a fictional valley on the Yorkshire–Lancashire borders. The 13 chapters, rather like linked short stories, alight at moments along its timeline, from the medieval conflict of “First Footing” all the way through the near-future desolation of “A Valediction.” What connects the vignettes is more tonal than geographical, though, with suspicion, exclusion and the uncanny recurring. There are hints of deadly customs and communion with the departed. As is true of most collections, some stories are more memorable than others, and I felt that a few went too far towards pastiche (e.g., “Autumn Pastoral” of The Woman in Black by Susan Hill). I had a few favourites: “To Think of Sicily,” set after the 15th-century visit of an Italian man bearing mysterious olive oil, introduces the people’s seemingly congenital xenophobia. In “Hymns for Easter,” residents killed in the First World War still join their voices with the choir’s. “Sisters,” about B&B operators trying to get rid of their solitary guest before closing for the winter, was the best of all and reminiscent of the twins in Daniel Mason’s North Woods. You should like this if you’re a Daisy Johnson fan or enjoyed Private Rites by Julia Armfield, though ultimately I found more difference than continuity across the chapters.
With thanks to John Murray Press for the proof copy for review.
What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher (2024)
The second book of the “Sworn Soldier” duology, after What Moves the Dead. Easton has returned from Paris to their native Gallacia to give Miss Potter a fungi-hunting holiday as thanks for helping with the previous adventure. But the caretaker is dead and the home abandoned, so Easton hires a local widow and her grandson, Bors, to look after the property. Bors is soon troubled by the moroi, a ghost-woman who comes in dreams to sit on people’s chests, crushing the breath out of them. She also seems to take the form of moths. And next she comes for Easton. You’d think with all the world-building she’d done in the first book, Kingfisher could pack lots of plot into this novella. But there’s really not much to it. It was over before it began. The winking humour of the first book was worn-out. And the more I thought about it, the more uneasy I was with the negative nature imagery I kept encountering in horror: fungi, moths, rabbits/hares. I understand this is often harkening back to ancient legends, but in a biodiversity crisis we need love rather than fear. (Public library)
The Sad Ghost Club 2 by Lize Meddings (2022)
This teen comic series is not about literal ghosts but about mental health. Young people struggling with anxiety and intrusive thoughts recognize each other – they’ll be the ones wearing sheets with eye holes. In the first book, which I reviewed for R.I.P. last year, SG meets Socks and determines to start a society for people like them. In this sequel, Socks worries that he’s not cool enough for the club and that SG, especially after they meet Rue, will leave him behind. The message is about being there for people even when they think they just want to be alone. By the end, it looks like the club is going to grow further. This barely built on the first book and contained so little incident that it felt unnecessary. Never mind! (Little Free Library)
Rather a lackluster finish to the challenge there, but the Hurley at least is recommended.
Autumn Reads: Don Freeman, Seamus Heaney, Jo Lindley, Alice Oseman
I keep a whole box full of future seasonal reads. Winter is the largest contingent because it includes Christmas, cold, snow and ice; followed by summer, which also covers heat, sun and so on. Every once in a while, I’ll come across a spring-related book. Autumn may be great for misty canal walks, vibrant leaves and variegated squashes, but it’s the hardest of the seasons to find books for. I’ve read all the obvious ones by now. Some of the below connections are more abstract but not too much of a stretch, I hope.
Corduroy by Don Freeman (1968)
Autumn is when I wear the most corduroy, sometimes (accidentally) head to toe.
I knew I’d read this as a child, but didn’t expect individual pages to feel so familiar. It must have been on frequent rotation in my house growing up. Corduroy the bear is among the toys on offer in a large department store. One morning Lisa, a little Black girl, picks him out, but her mother says no, they’ve spent too much already – and besides, the toy is damaged. He didn’t realize until her mother said: his green overall is missing a button. That night he rides the escalator to go look for the button, thinking he’ll never be loved until he’s complete. His adventure doesn’t turn out as planned, but Lisa hasn’t stopped thinking about him. Long before Toy Story, here was a sweet book about what toys get up to when we’re not around. And the repeated expressions of the bear’s meek wonderment – “This must be home,” “You must be a friend” – gave me the warm fuzzies. (Little Free Library)
Field Work by Seamus Heaney (1979)
Harvest is a secondary theme in this poetry collection, which also has an overall melancholy tone that seems appropriate to the season of All Souls. Two poems are headed “In Memoriam” and another is titled “Elegy.” Even when they are not the stated topic, the Troubles rear up, as in the first section of “Triptych”: “Two young men with rifles on the hill, / Profane and bracing as their instruments. // Who’s sorry for our trouble?” The countryside can nevermore be an idyll when armoured cars and bombs could be anywhere. “The end of art is peace,” a late line from “The Harvest Bow,” may well be the poet’s motto (so long as “end” is interpreted as “goal”). There is a sequence of 10 sonnets and several poems devoted to animals. I experience Heaney’s poetry as linguistically fertile and formally rigorous; probably best heard out loud. (Secondhand – Oxfam, Marlborough)
Autumnal passages I marked:
“We toe the line / between the tree in leaf and the bare tree.” (from “September Song”)
“the sunflower, dreaming umber” (from “Field Work”)
“A rowan like a lipsticked girl” (from “Song”)
“the sunset blaze / of straw on blackened stubble, a thatch-deep, freshening barbarous crimson burn” (from “Leavings”)
But none of those stood out to me as much as “Oysters,” the opening poem, which I photographed here. I’ve read and savoured every line of it five times now. It’s gold.
Hello Autumn by Jo Lindley (2023)
Depicted as elfin children, the seasons take turns wearing a single crown. Autumn is a timid soul worried about what might go wrong. But when one of the others is at risk, he rushes to help even if it might take him outside his comfort zone. By doing so, he realizes how much there is to enjoy in every season. This is part of a didactic series (Little Seasons/Best Friends with Big Feelings) about coping with anxiety. I’m surprised it wasn’t classified in the mostly-nonfiction “Family Matters” section of the children’s library, which includes books on feelings, illnesses, death, divorce, siblings, first experiences, etc. It was a little heavy-handed for me and I wasn’t sure why the characters had to be elves. (Public library)
Heartstopper: Volume 1 by Alice Oseman (2019)
I’ve been rereading the series through the hardback reissue; I’m now on Volume 5 (and WHERE is Volume 6, huh?). I’ve included the first book because of the falling leaves motif on the cover, which fits the back-to-school vibe. (Public library)
What I thought this time: Just as cute the second time around. All the looks, all the blushes, all the angst! I’d forgotten the details of how Nick and Charlie met and got together. Single best page: when Tori appears out of nowhere and says to Charlie of Nick, “I don’t think he’s straight.”
Original review: It’s well known at Truham boys’ school that Charlie is gay. Luckily, the bullying has stopped and the others accept him. Nick, who sits next to Charlie in homeroom, even invites him to join the rugby team. Charlie is smitten right away, but it takes longer for Nick, who’s only ever liked girls before, to sort out his feelings. This black-and-white YA graphic novel is pure sweetness, taking me right back to the days of high school crushes.
R.I.P., Part II: Duy Đoàn, T. Kingfisher & Rachael Smith
A second installment for the Readers Imbibing Peril challenge (first was a creepy short story collection). Zombies link my first two selections, an experimental poetry collection and a historical novella that updates a classic, followed by a YA graphic novel about a medieval witch who appears in contemporary life to help a teen deal with her problems. I don’t really do proper horror; I’d characterize all three of these as more mischievous than scary.
Zombie Vomit Mad Libs by Duy Đoàn
The Vietnamese American poet’s second collection strikes a balance between morbid – a pair of sonnets chants the names and years of poets who died by suicide – and playful. Multiple poems titled “Zombie” or “Zombies” are composed of just 1–3 cryptic lines. Other repeated features are blow-by-blow descriptions of horror movie scenes and the fill-in-the-blank Mad Libs format. There is an obsession with Leslie Cheung, a gay Hong Kong actor who also died by suicide, in 2003. Đoàn experiments linguistically as well as thematically, by adding tones (as used in Vietnamese) to English words. This was a startling collection I admired for its range and pluck, though I found little to personally latch on to. I was probably expecting something more like 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le. But if you think poetry can’t get better than zombies + linguistics + suicides, boy have I got the collection for you! (Đoàn’s first book, We Play a Game, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a Lambda Literary Award for bisexual poetry.)
To be published in the USA by Alice James Books on November 12. With thanks to the publisher for the advanced e-copy for review.
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (2022)
{MILD SPOILERS AHEAD}
This first book in the “Sworn Soldier” duology is a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Set in the 1890s, it’s narrated by Alex Easton, a former Gallacian soldier who learns that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying and goes to visit her at her and her brother Roderick’s home in Ruritania. Easton also meets the Ushers’ friend, the American doctor Denton, and Eugenia Potter, an amateur mycologist (and aunt of a certain Beatrix). Easton and Potter work out that what is making Madeline ill is the same thing that’s turning the local rabbits into zombies…
At first it seemed the author was awkwardly inserting a nonbinary character into history, but it’s more complicated than that. The sworn soldier tradition in countries such as Albania was a way for women, especially orphans or those who didn’t have brothers to advocate for them, to have autonomy in martial, patriarchal cultures. Kingfisher makes up European nations and their languages, as well as special sets of pronouns to refer to soldiers (ka/kan), children (va/van), etc. She doesn’t belabour the world-building, just sketches in the bits needed.
This was a quick and reasonably engaging read, though I wasn’t always amused by Kingfisher’s gleefully anachronistic tone (“Mozart? Beethoven? Why are you asking me? It was music, it went dun-dun-dun-DUN, what more do you want me to say?”). I wondered if the plot might have been inspired by a detail in Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, but it seems more likely it’s a half-conscious addition to a body of malevolent-mushroom stories (Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, various by Jeff VanderMeer, The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley). I was drawn in by Easton’s voice and backstory enough to borrow the sequel, about which more anon. (T. Kingfisher is the pen name of Ursula Vernon.) (Public library)
Isabella & Blodwen by Rachael Smith (2023)
I’d reviewed Smith’s adult graphic memoirs Quarantine Comix (mental health during Covid) and Glass Half Empty (alcoholism and bereavement) for Foreword and Shelf Awareness, respectively. When I spotted this in the Young Adult section and saw it was about a witch, I mentally earmarked it for R.I.P. Isabella Maria Penwick-Wickam is a precocious 16-year-old student at Oxford. With her fixation on medieval history and folklore, she has the academic side of the university experience under control. But her social life is hopeless. She’s alienated flatmates and classmates alike with her rigid habits and judgemental comments. On a field trip to the Pitt Rivers Museum, where students are given a rare opportunity to handle artefacts, she accidentally drops a silver bottle into her handbag. Before she can return it, its occupant, a genie-like blowsy blue-and-purple witch named Blodwen, is released into the world. She wreaks much merry havoc, encouraging Issy to have some fun and make friends.
It’s a sweet enough story, but a few issues detracted from my enjoyment. Issy is often depicted more like a ten-year-old. I don’t love the blocky and exaggerated features Smith gives her characters, or the Technicolor hues. And I found myself rolling my eyes at how the book unnaturally inserts a sexual harassment theme – which Blodwen responds to in modern English, having spoken in archaic fashion up to that point, and with full understanding of the issue of consent. I can imagine younger teens enjoying this, though. (Public library)
The mini playlist I had going through my mind as I wrote this:
- “Running with Zombies” by The Bookshop Band (inspired by The Making of Zombie Wars by Aleksandar Hemon)
- “Flesh and Blood Dance” by Duke Special
- “Dead Alive” by The Shins
And to counterbalance the evil fungi of the Kingfisher novella, here’s Anne-Marie Sanderson employing the line “A mycelium network is listening to you” in a totally non-threatening way. It’s one of the multiple expressions of reassurance in her lovely song “All Your Atoms,” my current earworm from her terrific new album Old Light.
The Best Books from the First Half of 2024
Hard to believe, but it’s that time of year already! It’s the eighth year in a row that I’ve been making a first-half superlatives list. It remains to be seen how many of these will make it onto my overall best-of year rundown, but for now, these are my 18 favourite 2024 releases that I’ve read so far (representing the top 20% of my current-year reading). One is a bonus in that it won’t actually be published until August; six happen to be books I reviewed for Shelf Awareness. Pictured below are the ones I read in print; all the others were e-copies. Links are to my full reviews where available.
Fiction
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley: This nuanced debut novel alternately goes along with and flouts the tropes of spy fiction and time travel sci-fi, making clever observations about how we frame stories of empire and progress. The narrator is a “bridge” helping to resettle a Victorian polar explorer in near-future London. You just have to suspend disbelief and go with it. Bradley’s descriptive prose is memorable but never quirky for the sake of it. I haven’t had so much fun with a book since Romantic Comedy. A witty, sexy, off-kilter gem.
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj: Darraj’s second novel-in-stories is a shimmering composite portrait of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore. Across nine stellar linked stories, she explores the complex relationships between characters divided by—or connected despite—class, language, and traditional values. Each of the stories (four in the first person, five in the third person) spotlights a particular character. The book depicts the variety of immigrant and second-generation experience, especially women’s.
Piglet by Lottie Hazell: The protagonist works for a cookbook publisher, loves to cook, and has a history of overeating during psychological distress. When her fiancé blindsides her with a confession 13 days before their wedding, she returns to binge eating, dress fittings be damned. Food is also a sign of her education and class pretensions. Uncomfortable themes, but I kept reading in fascinated horror because Hazell writes absolutely incredible scenes. This is also about what women are allowed to want, and how they are expected to settle.
Wellness by Nathan Hill: A state-of-the-nation novel filtered through one Chicago family experiencing midlife and marital crises: underperforming academic Jack; his wife Elizabeth, a placebo researcher at Wellness; and their YouTube-obsessed son Toby. They’ve recently invested their life savings in a new condo. The addictive and spot-on novel asks questions about authenticity, purpose, and nurture. Is love itself a placebo? Hill is clearly fascinated with psychological experimentation but also turns it to humorous effect.
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim: Over 2.5 days in June 2020, a Korean American family (mother Hannah and 20-year-old twins Mia and John, home from college for the lockdown) investigates, on their own and with the help of police and tip-offs, what happened to the father, Adam, who’d been at River Falls Park with the severely disabled 14-year-old son, Eugene, who is autistic and has mosaic Angelman syndrome. Mia narrates, and it’s a pleasure spending time with her quick, systematic brain as she considers each theory and red herring.
Company by Shannon Sanders: This energetic debut novel in 13 linked stories traces several generations of the Collins clan, whose experiences at once exemplify African American gentrification and evoke timeless patterns of parental legacy and sibling jealousy. Sisters Cassandra, Fay, Lee and Suzette grew up at their parents’ Atlantic City jazz club before going their separate ways. We revisit relatives at different points in their lives, mostly between the 1990s and the present day. Celebration scenes make for memorable moments.
Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang (illus. LeUyen Pham): A super-cute teen story with gorgeous illustrations, including lots of pink and red to suit the theme. We follow Vietnamese-American Valentina through high school as she plays host to an internal debate between cynicism and romanticism. Ever since her mother left, she’s longed to believe in romance but feared that love is a doomed prospect for her family. The Asian community of Oakland, California and a new hobby of lion dancing provide engrossing cultural detail.
Nonfiction
Intervals by Marianne Brooker: An extended essay about her mother’s protracted death with multiple sclerosis and the issues it brought up around disability, poverty, and inequality of access to medical care and services. Brooker decries the injustice of the wealthy having the option of travelling to Dignitas in Switzerland for an assisted death, whereas her single mother had so such relief in sight. Brooker’s description of the vigil of the last days, like her account of her vivacious mother’s life, is both tender and unflinching.
Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley: A bereavement memoir like no other. Heart-wrenching yet witty, it bears a unique structure and offers fascinating glimpses into the New York City publishing world. Crosley’s Manhattan apartment was burgled exactly a month before the suicide of her best friend and former boss, Russell. Throughout the book, the whereabouts of her family jewelry is as much of a mystery as the reason for Russell’s death, and investigating the stolen goods in parallel serves as a displacement activity for her.
First Love: Essays on Friendship by Lilly Dancyger: Poignant interlocking essays about female friendship. Love and death coexist here. Dancyger’s first best friend was her cousin Sabina, who was raped and murdered at age 20. “Sad Girls” takes on Sylvia Plath fandom. Dancyger also maps her bisexuality and ponders whether to have a child. She is nostalgic for the freedom of being young and unsupervised in New York City and Europe. A sensitive interrogation of women’s relationships, perfect for fans of Melissa Febos and Emma Straub.
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti: Heti put 10 years of diary contents into a spreadsheet, alphabetizing each sentence, and then ruthlessly culled the results. The recurring topics are familiar from the rest of her oeuvre: obsessive cogitating about relationships, art and identity, but also the practicalities of trying to make a living as a woman in a creative profession. Heti transcends the quotidian by exploding chronology. Remarkably, the collage approach produces a genuine, crystalline vision of the self. A sui generis work of life writing.
Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children by Nicole Louie: This impassioned auto/biographical collage combines the strengths of oral history, group biography and a fragmented memoir. “Motherhood as the epicentre of women’s lives was all I’d ever witnessed” via her mother and grandmother, Louie writes, so finding examples of women living differently was key. As readers, we watch her life, her thinking and the book all take shape. It’s intimate and empathetic, with layers of stories that reflect diversity of experience.
The Age of Loneliness: Essays by Laura Marris: A perceptive, moving collection of nine braided essays linking personal experience of loss with the climate crisis. “Cancerine” is a strong example. Cancer, the sign of the crab, was her father’s cause of death; horseshoe crabs were ground into fertilizer in the 19th century, and their blood is still harvested for biomedical testing. Driven by curiosity and environmental conscience, these reflective pieces reminiscent of Helen Macdonald’s longform journalism ponder human responsibility and resilience. [Graywolf Press, 6 August]
Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie: I’ve not had much success with Rushdie’s fiction, but this is excellent, with intriguing side tendrils and lots of quotable lines. It traces lead-up and aftermath; unexpected echoes, symbolism and ironies. Although Rushdie goes into some medical detail about his recovery, you get the sense of him more as an unchanging mind and a resolute will. The most remarkable section imagines dialogues between him and his imprisoned assailant, probing his beliefs and motivations.
Poetry
Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali: In this poised debut collection by a Muslim poet, spiritual enlightenment is a female, embodied experience, mediated by the matriarchs of the Abrahamic faiths. Ali’s poems hymn women’s bodies, desire, and motherhood. She blurs the line between human and divine with her allusions to the Quran. Ambivalence towards faith is clear in the alliteration-laden verse that recalls Kaveh Akbar’s. Wordplay, floral metaphors, and multiple ghazals make for dazzling language.
Baby Schema by Isabel Galleymore: A slant-wise look at environmental crisis and an impending decision about motherhood. The title comes from Konrad Lorenz’s identification of features that invite nurture. Galleymore edges towards the satirical fantasies of Caroline Bird or Patricia Lockwood as she imagines alternative scenarios of caregiving. What is worthy of maternal concern? Does cuteness merit survival? Extinction and eco-grief on the one hand, yes, but the implacability of biological cycles on the other. Sardonic yet humane.
Inconsolable Objects by Nancy Miller Gomez: This debut collection recalls a Midwest girlhood of fairground rides and lake swimming, tornadoes and cicadas. But her Kansas isn’t all rose-tinted nostalgia; there’s an edge of sadness and danger. “Missing History” notes how women’s stories, such as her grandmother’s, are lost to time. In “Tilt-A-Whirl,” her older sister’s harmless flirtation with a ride operator turns sinister. She also takes inspiration from headlines. The alliteration and slant rhymes are to die for. (Full review to come.)
Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick: Motherhood and the body are overarching themes. The speaker experiences multiple miscarriages and names her lost children after plants. Becoming a mother is a metamorphosis all its own, while the second long section is about her husband transitioning. Bird metaphors are inescapable. The structure varies throughout: columns, stanzas; a list, a recipe. Amid the sadness, there is dark humour and one-line rejoinders. If you’re wondering how life can be captured in achingly beautiful poetry, look no further.
Two of the novels above were among my Most Anticipated books of the year. I’ve now read 10 of the 12 on that list and DNFed another (the Sarah Perry), which just leaves Memory Piece by Lisa Ko to find – though others’ responses make me think it might not be worthwhile to do so. I sometimes wonder if designating a book as anticipated or a priority is a kiss of death, as I was at least somewhat disappointed with over half of my choices this time.
In the second part of the year, I’m looking forward to new releases from Rachel Clarke, Sarah Manguso, Charlotte Mendelson, Richard Powers, Sally Rooney, Elizabeth Strout and Evie Wyld.
What 2024 releases should I catch up on? What’s in your sights for the rest of the year?
Carol Shields Prize Reading: Coleman Hill and Between Two Moons
Two last Carol Shields Prize nominees today: from the shortlist, a gorgeous tapestry of African-American family history; and, from the longlist, a likable debut novel about Muslim twin sisters navigating the febrile summer of their high school graduation in Brooklyn.
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote
Is this family memoir or autofiction? I’ve shelved it as both on Goodreads; it’s a blend, one for which Foote borrows the term that Audre Lorde coined for Zami, “biomythography.” Like Edwidge Danticat, Jesmyn Ward and Jacqueline Woodson, Foote draws on personal stories but also invokes overarching narratives of Black migration and struggle. The result is magisterial, a debut novel that feels like oral history and a family scrapbook rolled into one.
During the First World War, the Coleman family were part of a mass exodus from the segregated South to the industrialized North. They hoped for a better life in New Jersey than they’d had under slavery and sharecropping in Alabama and Florida, but in fact many of the author’s ancestors became mired in ill-paid service roles (cleaner, maid, refuse collector) and, ironically, ended up having fewer opportunities for advancement than relatives who stayed behind and enrolled in Black educational institutions in the South.
Like a linked short story collection, the book pulls together 15 vignettes stretching from 1916 to 1989 and told in different styles and voices, including AAVE – I’m reliably informed that the audiobook is wonderful for that reason. A prologue in the first-person plural introduces the women who would become family matriarchs: “We wanted to go to school but couldn’t. The walk was too long. We was needed at home to plant and harvest. And boys could get more outta schooling, folks said, so it was our brothers who went.”
Other sections alternate first and third person. I especially admired the use of the second person for passages from the perspective of Celia Coleman, who develops a dependence on Four Roses whisky after being widowed. An interlude gives two poems from the point-of-view of cotton – crop failure was partly responsible for the initial relocation. There are also black-and-white photographs heading each chapter, and a family tree at the start. When I first heard about this book through its longlisting, the idea of family history told by nine characters sounded overwhelming (and potentially worthy). But the voices are so distinct that there is never a danger of getting lost, and the scenes are so vivid that you cringe from the beatings and cheer when a woman stands up to her meddling mother-in-law. There are echoes and reversals across the generations, as alcoholism and domestic abuse recur.
The core story is about Celia’s nastiness and resistance to her son Jeb’s marriage to Bertha Grimes. Bertha, battered by Jebbie and Celia alike, escapes to a brothel where she works as a cleaner. Celia ends up raising their children, along with another set of grandchildren, earning the nickname “Gra’ Coleman” and a reputation for meanness. (One excellent stand-alone story about the younger generation is titled “How to Kill Gra’ Coleman and Live to Tell About It (c. 1950).”) The inherited trauma is clear, yet I never found the content as bleak here as in A Council of Dolls; Foote weaves in enough counterbalancing lightness and love. There are so many strong female characters – Jeb’s older sisters, Bertha’s younger ones; their daughters – and plenty of humour and spirit despite the sometimes distressing subject matter. The family home, and the objects hoarded there, also play a major role.
It’s difficult to suggest the scope, as large and various as any American family’s history. An author’s note at the end details Foote’s approach – somewhere between “channeling spirits” and fictionalizing – to a novel that was many years in the gestation. I’d particularly recommend Coleman Hill to fans of Ayana Mathis and Toni Morrison. For me, there’s no contest; this should win the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. 
With thanks to publicist Nicole Magas and SJP Lit (Zando) for the free e-copy for review.
Longlisted:
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad
This debut novel is cleverly set within the month of Ramadan, a time of abstention. In this way, Gawad emphasizes the tension between faith and the temptations of alcohol and sex. Egyptian-American twin sisters Amira and Lina Emam are on the cusp, about to graduate from high school and go their separate ways. Lina wants to be a model and is dating a nightclub manager she hopes can make this a reality; Amira, ever the sensible one, is college-bound. But then she meets her first boyfriend, Faraj, and lets Lina drag her into a reckless partying lifestyle. “I was seized with that summertime desire of girls: to push my body to its limits.” Meanwhile, the girls’ older brother, Sami, just home from prison, is finding it a challenge to integrate back into the family and their Bay Ridge mosque, reeling from a raid on a Muslim-owned neighbourhood business and a senseless attack on the old imam.
I feared that a tired terrorism plot would surface and was relieved when this wasn’t the case, although there is a passionate message about the injustice of police surveillance of Muslim communities. I agree with Laura (see her review) that it does at times feel like an adult is producing YA fiction. It’s proficiently written and I enjoyed getting a glimpse into an unfamiliar world, but the novel never truly sparked into life for me. It also commits one of my pet peeves: inserting third-person segments to fill in events that the narrator could not have witnessed (while referring to the other characters as “the mother,” “the boy,” or “the other girl”). One to put on high school curricula but not on a prize list. 
With thanks to Laura for passing on her copy.
And a DNF:
You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy – I read the first 22% of this short fiction collection, which equated to a brief opener in the second person about a situation of abuse, followed by part of one endless-feeling story based around one apartment and bodega and featuring two young female family friends, one of whom accepts sexual favours in the supply closet from most male visitors. The voice and prose didn’t grab me, but of course I can’t say whether later stories would have been more to my taste. (Edelweiss)
Overall thoughts and prediction:
I’m grateful for the chance to have read most of the Carol Shields Prize longlist this year, thanks to the library, Edelweiss, and especially the publicist providing multiple books in digital format straight from the publishers. I’ve been introduced to a number of books and authors I might never have otherwise come across, and my reactions to what I expected to love or to dislike sometimes surprised me. It was also fun to do a few as buddy reads with Laura.
Here’s a recap of what I read, from favourite to least favourite:
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote – see above
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
Cocktail by Lisa Alward
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (read last year)
Dances by Nicole Cuffy
Daughter by Claudia Dey
Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese
The Future by Catherine Leroux
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad – see above
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan (a skim)
A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power
You Were Watching from the Sand by Juliana Lamy (DNF) – see above
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (skimmed last year)
Loot by Tania James (skim/DNF)
Thus, my ideal shortlist would have been the top five: Coleman Hill, Land of Milk and Honey, Cocktail, I Have Some Questions for You, and Dances.
It’s impossible to predict what the judges will pick from the actual shortlist. I never even attempted one of the finalists (A History of Burning by Janika Oza – Marcie’s comments made me confident it wouldn’t be for me) and only skimmed two others (Catton and Ganeshananthan). Sod’s law would suggest that one of those few will therefore win! I could see the case for any of the five, anyway. But I will have my fingers crossed for Coleman Hill.
The winner will be announced on Monday, 13 May.
Will you seek out something from the shortlist (or longlist)?
Reviewing Two Books by Cancelled Authors
I don’t have anything especially insightful to say about these authors’ reasons for being cancelled, although in my review of the Clanchy I’ve noted the textual examples that have been cited as problematic. Alexie is among the legion of male public figures to have been accused of sexual misconduct in recent years. I’m not saying those aren’t serious allegations, but as Claire Dederer wrestled with in Monsters, our judgement of a person can be separate from our response to their work. So that’s the good news: I thought these were both fantastic books. They share a theme of education.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (illus. Ellen Forney) (2007)
Alexie is to be lauded for his contributions to the flourishing of both Indigenous literature and YA literature. This was my first of his books and I don’t know a thing about him or the rest of his work. But I feel like this must have groundbreaking for its time (or maybe a throwback to Adrian Mole et al.), and I suspect it’s more than a little autobiographical.
It reads exactly like a horny 14-year-old boy’s diary, but “Junior” (Arnold Spirit, Jr.) is also self-deprecating and sweetly vulnerable; Alexie’s tone is spot on. Junior has had a tough life on a Spokane reservation in Washington, being bullied for his poor eyesight and speech impediments that resulted from brain damage at birth and ongoing seizures. Poverty, alcoholism, casinos: they don’t feel like clichés of Indian reservations here because Alexie writes from experience and presents them matter-of-factly. Junior’s parents never got to pursue their dreams and his sister has run away to Montana, but he has a chance to change the trajectory. A rez teacher says his only hope for a bright future is to transfer to the elite high school in Reardan. So he does, even though it often requires hitch-hiking or walking miles.
Junior soon becomes adept at code-switching: “Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other.” He gets a white girlfriend, Penelope, but has to work hard to conceal how impoverished he is. His best friend, Rowdy, is furious with him for abandoning his people. That resentment builds all the way to a climactic basketball match between Reardan and Wellpinit that also functions as a symbolic battle between the parts of Junior’s identity. Along the way, there are multiple tragic deaths in which alcohol, inevitably, plays a role. “I’m fourteen years old and I’ve been to forty-two funerals,” he confides. “Jeez, what a sucky life. … I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That’s the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change.”
One of those joys, for him, is cartooning. Describing his cartoons to his new white friend, Gordy, he says, “I use them to understand the world.”
Forney’s black-and-white illustrations make the cartoons look like found objects – creased scraps of notebook paper sellotaped into a diary. This isn’t a graphic novel, but most of the short chapters include several illustrations. There’s a casual intimacy to the whole book that feels absolutely authentic. Bridging the particular and universal, it’s a heartfelt gem, and not just for teens. (University library)
Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy (2019)
If your Twitter sphere and mine overlap, you may remember the controversy over the racialized descriptions in this Orwell Prize-winning memoir of 30 years of teaching – and the fact that, rather than issuing a humbled apology, Clanchy, at least initially, doubled down and refuted all objections, even when they came from BIPOC. It wasn’t a good look. Nor was it the first time I’ve found Clanchy to be prickly. (She is what, in another time, might have been called a formidable woman.) Anyway, I waited a few years for the furore to die down before trying this for myself.
I know vanishingly little about the British education system because I don’t have children and only experienced uni here at a distance, through my junior year abroad. So there may be class-based nuances I missed – for instance, in the chapter about selecting a school for her oldest son and comparing it with the underprivileged Essex school where she taught. But it’s clear that a lot of her students posed serious challenges. Many were refugees or immigrants, and she worked for a time on an “Inclusion Unit,” which seems to be more in the business of exclusion in that it’s for students who have been removed from regular classrooms. They came from bad family situations and were more likely to end up in prison or pregnant. To get any of them to connect with Shakespeare, or write their own poetry, was a minor miracle.
Clanchy is also a poet and novelist – I’ve read one of her novels, and her Selected Poems – and did much to encourage her students to develop a voice and the confidence to have their work published (she’s produced anthologies of student work). In many cases, she gave them strategies for giving literary shape to traumatic memories. The book’s engaging vignettes have all had the identifying details removed, and are collected under thematic headings that address the second part of the title: “About Love, Sex, and the Limits of Embarrassment” and “About Nations, Papers, and Where We Belong” are two example chapters. She doesn’t avoid contentious topics, either: the hijab, religion, mental illness and so on.
You get the feeling that she was a friend and mentor to her students, not just their teacher, and that they could talk to her about anything and rely on her support. Watching them grow in self-expression is heart-warming; we come to care for these young people, too, because of how sincerely they have been created from amalgams. Indeed, Clanchy writes in the introduction that “I have included nobody, teacher or pupil, about whom I could not write with love.”
And that is, I think, why she was so hurt and disbelieving when people pointed out racism in her characterization:
I was baffled when a boy with jet-black hair and eyes and a fine Ashkenazi nose named David Marks refused any Jewish heritage
her furry eyebrows, her slanting, sparking black eyes, her general, Mongolian ferocity. [but she’s Afghan??]
(of girls in hijabs) I never saw their (Asian/silky/curly?) hair in eight years.
They’re a funny pair: Izzat so small and square and Afghan with his big nose and premature moustache; Mo so rounded and mellow and Pakistani with his long-lashed eyes and soft glossy hair.
There are a few other ill-advised passages. She admits she can’t tell the difference between Kenyan and Somali faces; she ponders whether being a Scot in England gave her some taste of the prejudice refugees experience. And there’s this passage about sexuality:
Are we all ‘fluid’ now? Perhaps. It is commonplace to proclaim oneself transsexual. And to actually be gay, especially if you are as pretty as Kristen Stewart, is positively fashionable. A couple of kids have even changed gender, a decision … deliciously of the moment
My take: Clanchy wanted to craft affectionate pen portraits that celebrated children’s uniqueness, but had to make them anonymous, so resorted to generalizations. Doing this on a country or ethnicity basis was the mistake. Journalistic realism doesn’t require a focus on appearances (I would hope that, if I were ever profiled, someone could find more interesting things to say about me than that I am short and have a large nose). She could have just introduced the students with ‘facts,’ e.g., “Shakila, from Afghanistan, wore a hijab and was feisty and outspoken.” Note to self: white people can be clueless, and we need to listen and learn. The book was reissued in 2022 by independent publisher Swift Press, with offending passages removed (see here for more info). I’d be keen to see the result and hope that the book will find more readers because, truly, it is lovely. (Little Free Library) 
Summery Reading, Part I: The Greengage Summer & Sunburn by Watson
Brief thoughts on a first pair of summer-themed reads: coming-of-age stories about teenage girls who trade England for somewhere more exciting – France or Greece – for a summer and awaken to the complications of sex when let down by the adults in their lives. Both:
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden (1958)
We wanted to read something by Godden in my book club’s women’s classics subgroup, and decided on this almost purely for the evocative title. Cecil is the second of five children who run amok at a French hotel while their father is botanizing in Tibet and their mother in hospital with an infected horsefly bite. Hotel staff and hangers-on are engaged in all sorts of shenanigans – affairs and casual molestation of the maids, for instance – and the children, caught up in the thrill of it, attach themselves to Eliot, the English lover of Mademoiselle Zizi. The adults get Cecil and her older sister, Joss, drunk on champagne. Joss is the belle of the ball and attracts an inappropriate suitor; Cecil gets her first period and tells Eliot, of all people. It’s a familiar message in mid-century fiction, I suppose: loss of sexual innocence leads to disaster. I found this quite melodramatic, with a sudden ending; it didn’t live up to the terrific premise. I was similarly underwhelmed by Black Narcissus. (University library)
Sunburn by Andi Watson; illus. Simon Gane (2022)
We open in suburban London in what appears to be the 1950s. Sixteen-year-old Rachel is offered a lucky escape from a summer of working at the butcher shop to stay with her parents’ friends, the Warners, at their home on a Greek island. Their life is a heady mix of languorous shopping, swimming and nightly parties. There’s a big contrast between the sophisticated expats and the local peasantry. When Rachel meets Ben, a fellow English teenager, it seems like her idyllic summer is complete, but things sour between them. Over the course of the book, Rachel realizes that not all grown-ups can be trusted. The plot took a twist I wasn’t expecting, which is always refreshing, but I should probably have been ready for it based on the depictions. The graphic novel is all in shades of blue, with white and light brown accents, as befitting the Greek flag and scenery. A problem I had was that most of the characters look the same – the artist has just the one way of drawing faces, so Rachel, Mrs. Warner and Ben have pretty much identical features. I would have catalogued this in YA. (Public library)
Both at least had a steamy summer atmosphere! My next seasonal read, picked up from the library today, will be One Midsummer’s Day by Mark Cocker, which is all about swifts. We have a pair nesting in our eaves again this year – hurrah! – and have been enjoying watching their (albeit diminished) screaming parties tear down the streets on warm summer evenings.
Any “summer” or “sun” books for you this year?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 