Wow! Not sure what happened other than post-holiday exhaustion and challenging weather, but I did a lot of reading in January. And not a lot of record-keeping about my reading. Still, I’ve caught myself up in my handwritten Reading Journal, then transcribed my notes here to post on this 18th day of February! Whew! Might be my tardiest post yet (is this become a theme? Ouch!)
So no time to dilly-dally. I’ll just get to the books, shall I?
But first: I say this every book post now, for those who are new here and as a reminder to regular readers: As usual, the numbering comes from my annual handwritten reading journal, and the italicized text below is directly transcribed from that journal’s pages (once upon a time, I simply included photographs of those pages, but too many of you found my handwriting tough to decipher, especially in the photographed format). Notes to myself, that is, so that I can remember a book and remember my response to it, rather than any attempt at a more polished, edited review.
I’ve used regular font for any additions to my journal notes and included references to any posts from my Instagram Reading account (turns out there was only a sketchbook page offered there as representation of my January reading. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” as my grandmother used to say (? sound? utter?), always shaking her head in accompaniment. I’ll try to do better soon).
1. The Mystery Guest. Nina Prose. Mystery. Hotel maid / female protagonist. Sequel to The Maid.
A perfect treat to begin the year — (especially as leaven to the book I read at the end of 2023!)
Molly is now Head Maid, living with her beloved Juan Manuel for three of the four years that have elapsed since the murder we read about in The Maid. But he’s away in Mexico as Molly prepares for a very important event — a best-selling mystery writer will be making a big announcement during a press conference at the hotel where Molly works.
But the mystery writer drops dead just before he makes his announcement . . . and just as in The Maid, the hotel’s domestic staff falls under suspicion of murder. In alternating chapters we find that Molly and her grandmother knew the author many years ago . . . and Molly knew some of his secret history.
Her grandmother’s wisdom and positive attitude live on in sayings Molly recalls and much of the mystery’s charm comes from the way her Grandmother’s lessons help Molly make the most of her neuro-divergent (very literal) perspective which hasn’t always been appreciated.
2. Normal Rules Don’t Apply. Kate Atkinson. Literary fiction; Short story collection; Fantastical realist; Fantastical domestic fiction.
A collection of short stories, unhomely/uncanny and perceptive or well-observed about the banal domestic, about human desires, relationships. . . Recurring characters form loose fairy-tale connections between the stories. Talking animals, families in which mother and daughters entrap unwitting suitors and frame them for murder of the patriarch . . . where humans and animals alike drop dead across the countryside in huge numbers at intervals that can be clocked with regularity . . . a female deity who makes repeated attempts to remake the world . . . where characters disappear into the toile-patterned wallpaper.
And Atkinson’s narrator makes those parenthetical omniscient comments in that distanced, ironic tone I recognize from her novels. Could have, should have, spent more time with these stories. Not an ideal book to borrow from the library, with a three-week limit and no possibility of renewing because there’s such a long waiting list. . .
3. The River We Remember. William Kent Krueger. Mystery/Crime novel; American history; 1950s Minnesota; racism.
So much more than “a crime novel.” A wealthy (and avaricious) landowner that no one likes is murdered in 1950’s Minnesota — his body found at a site that has long held spiritual resonance for the native Americans who first occupied this place — and who continue to live there amidst the prevailing racism.
Gorgeous writing evokes the setting in terms of landscape but also in its depiction of complex interpersonal relationships of a small town.
The retrospective and seemingly omniscient perspective of a narrator who doesn’t seem to have been involved (or even present) at the time is intriguing — and this narrative voice takes a position that’s thoughtful and biased toward fairness and social justice, sympathetic to the downtrodden — and well-informed (that omniscience!) about all the secrets these townspeople keep from one another.
The barely teen-aged boy, Scott, his mother, Angie, and Charlotte (“Charlie”) the astute, wily, and compassionate lawyer who defends the native American, Noah, who’s been accused of the crime and refuses to defend himself for reasons unknown.
Highly recommended — a very satisfying book.
4. Study for Obedience. Sarah Bernstein. Literary fiction; psychological fiction; anti-semitism; social alienation; family dysfunction; gender politics.
Short-listed for the 2023 Booker, this slim novel is not a comfortable read but rather an unsettling and provoking one. The narrator, the youngest of many siblings (by whom she has apparently been given little or no affection or appreciation despite, she says, serving their desires as if her own) moves to an unnamed northern European country to help her oldest brother at his request.
She doesn’t speak the language and is regarded with suspicion by the local (rural) community — and then shunned and scapegoated after a series of strange, unnatural, disruptive events — a dog’s phantom pregnancy, for example.
Allusions to the family’s dysfunction, to the narrator’s previous career/work life, to the Holocaust and the family’s experience as victims of anti-semitism, are nebulous within the space and time of the narration — an uncanny blend of vagueness and specificity.
The narrator’s isolation and alienation and the flatness of the plot add up to a claustrophobic tone overall, but the narrator’s thoughts about her identity, her human worth, her self as representative (Jew, scapegoat, stranger) are compelling, the writing — not exactly lyrical; that would imply something lighter, content-wise, I think — but dense, each word calculated, meaningful, necessary.
You won’t all want to read this, I know, but if you’re curious, you might also read this article or this review.
5. Demon Copperhead. Barbara Kingsolver. bildungsoman/coming-of-age; elegaic; historical fiction; protest/activist literature; American history; Appalachian setting; foster system; opioid/drug addiction; poverty.
So. . . I read this after resisting all the hype (Pulitzer-prize-winning hype, book-club hype, bestseller hype, etc.) for the last year or so. I haven’t read Kingsolver for years, although I really liked a few of her early books. I think I started to find her writing too evidently tendentious, her message too obvious.
And it is so here as well, but I was intrigued by the narrative voice, with the way this young boy coped and hoped and coped some more until it all just became too much. Perhaps because the story is all told through his voice, I found most of the secondary characters fairly flat, easily divided into good or bad.
The “love story,” the teenage hormones, and the descent into substance addictions; the horrors of a foster system that lets children be lost so early; the medical abuse of opioids; the exploitation of the poor working class; and love of one’s land, place, “nature,” as sustaining, but under threat.
Definitely some clichés, predictable tropes, but these work to repeat and reframe some hard truths. And to “tell a good story” — even if a disturbing one.
6. Black Summer. M.W. Craven. Mystery; police procedural; Washington Poe & Tilly Bradshaw series; set in Cumbria, England.
The second Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw mystery (I wrote about the first here) — again, some truly grisly scenes — and again, clever plotting, twists that surprise and convince.
Of course, what I most liked was watching Poe and Tilly’s relationship develop. Brilliant, neuro-divergent Tilly has become much more confident in mixing with others and in picking up some important social skills — and her brilliance with data management, statistical analysis, problem-solving in general, is central to detecting “whodunnit.” Blending Poe’s intuition with her binary/logical approach makes for an interesting slant on the epistemology and/or hermeneutics of detective novels (The five-dollar words have to do with the science of how we know what we know — how is reliable knowledge possible.)
7. Let Us Descend. Jesmyn Ward. Literary fiction; historical fiction; magical realism; American history; Slavery; Black female writer; Black female protagonist.
The title alludes to Dante’s inferno, and this gruelling, months-long trek a slave girl is forced to make — chained to other slaves — in antebellum US from North Carolina to Louisiana after her mother has been sold is surely a version of hell on earth. Annis is able to make that connection because she has stolen moments from her household work to eavesdrop on her white half-sisters (they share a father — her white sisters’ father married their mother and raped hers) being tutored in Dante’s work. Presumably, their father is progressive and cultured enough to allow that instruction of his daughters. Wicked irony. And no European-conceived hell could be worse than what Annis descends through.
As she trudges, swims, is dragged across the state, Annis makes connections with African ancestors, traditions, and with the spirits of earth, water, wind . . . . And as horrific and unrelenting as is the ugliness of her enslavement, she finds her own way to escape the inferno and to “view the stars once more,” echoing Dante and Virgil’s journey.
I wrote about Jesmyn Ward’s earlier books here and here.
8. August Blue. Deborah Levy. Literary fiction; Women’s lives; Female concert pianist; Adoption/identity; Melancholy/Alienation; Travel — as searching, dislocation; Athens, Greek Islands; Paris.
Elsa, a 30-something virtuoso pianist of world renown, has frozen during a performance (Rachmaninoff) in Vienna, walked off the stage and away from her career.
In Athens, she sees a woman — who strikes her as oddly familiar– buying a pair of mechanical horses which Elsa wants as her own. But those were the last two. . . and so she begins to follow the woman, loses her in the crowd, but then begins to see her as Elsa wanders through Europe.
The woman comes to seem a double or a shadow of Elsa, and the sightings punctuate or accompany Elsa’s melancholic journey — not just geographic but also back through memory to her adoption very early in life — first by a couple, then by an older man, Arthur Goldstein, single, a master pianist and teacher who molds her from child prodigy to the virtuoso who’s commanded audiences for years.
Read for Levy’s honest probing of female identity, for her comic insights as well as the wry or the melancholic. Her confrontation with Goldstein, the aged and ailing man she has considered her father. Her relationships — brief enough, but open, reciprocal, nurturing — with the few young students she takes on, alienated as they are from the adults in their lives. . . And the effects of the pandemic, the masking, which intensifies the melancholy, the sense of alienation.
Tone will put some readers off, but Levy doesn’t write to let you escape the world nor to give the characters that make us feel cozy. Her prose is lean, elegant, and yet granular — from the details of a room in a Greek cottage to the particulars of her lunch to a stream-of-consciousness accounting of her thoughts.
For example,
It is so abject to express this loneliness within me. I am not sure I can take the freedom to find a language in music to reveal it. I have, after all, learned to conceal it. The old masters are my shield. Beethoven. Bach. Rachmaninov. Schumann. Their inner lives are valuable without measure.
August Blue, Deborah Levy, p. 53
and also,
There was still one urchin spine in my finger as I listened to world news on my laptop. The salty feta. The sweet juicy melon. The butterflies settling on the loquat tree in the garden. The robotic voice of the presenter reading the news. Cicadas. Figs falling from the trees. Laughter in the garden below.
August Blue, Deborah Levy, p. 54
9. The Transit of Venus. Shirley Hazzard. Literary fiction; Domestic fiction; Historical fiction; Class; Immigration; Women’s lives; London; New York.
I hadn’t heard of this brilliant Australian writer and then came across a recommendation somewhere online (I blame the Internet for my never-diminishing TBR list!)
A book to savour and reread and puzzle over. Right away, sentences full of details, metaphors that gesture and sketch deftly whole personalities:
The woman who opened the door was old, he thought. Had he himself been older, he might have promoted her to middle age. Age was coiled in smooth grey hair, was explicit in skin too delicate for youth and in a tall if unmartial stance. She drew him in over the paving of what had been a fine hall. Her eyes were enlarged and faded with discovering what, by common agreement is better undivulged.
The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard, pp. 4-5
The young man, Ted, a scientist, has arrived at the house to work with an old man, a retired professor. On the novel’s first page, we learn that he has seen something on his walk to the manor, but we won’t understand its significance until the novel’s last pages. ( Apparently, Hazzard’s husband, biographer Francis Steegmuller, once remarked that no one should to read The Transit of Venus for the first time, presumably because their frustration at the ending would drive them to a second reading in search of better comprehension! )
In the large and once impressive house in rural England — post-war, and it’s evidently seen much better days — Ted meets two young women, sisters who have immigrated to England from Australia (where they’d been orphaned in childhood) Class asserts itself along with gender roles and with relationships and patterns that will play out across decades of change and through cities of the world: Sydney, London, New York, Stockholm.
This is one of those stop-me-in-my-tracks books, although many will find it too slow-going, too detailed and descriptive, the plot too slight (and/or too prolonged) the characters both too flawed and, perhaps, too-constrained. . . Almost 19th-century in its density, but then the narrative voice, its tone, so very modern. The retrospective knowingness, for example, in the description of all the young women making their way in the big city: “Girls were getting up all over London. In striped pyjamas, in flowered Viyella nightgowns, in cotton shifts they had made themselves and unevenly hemmed, or in sheer nylon to which an old cardigan had been added for warmth, girls were pushing back bedclothes and groping for slippers. . . . they were putting the shilling in the meter and the kettle on the gas ring.”
Honestly, my biggest problem with this novel is that I know it deserves to be read again (like so many other readers, the ending changes what I thought I knew) — but it’s due back at the library and I haven’t left enough space in my life at the moment to do that re-reading.
Which, in itself, is worth pondering . . . .
A Paris Review article you might find interesting. . .
10. So Shall You Reap. Donna Leon. Mystery; Police procedural; Guido Brunetti series; Venice; Refugee/ immigrant life.
Once again, I enjoyed wandering through Venice with Guido Brunetti — I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, I believe, and through an astonishing 32 novels.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that I found this most recent title both slight in some ways and yet quite satisfying overall. I have expectations by now — of Paola’s cooking, of the Brunetti young adults and their arguments with each other and with their parents, of Paola’s occasional spikiness (which works to keep Brunetti honest), of Signora Elettra’s entertaining absolute impunity in complete unruffled defiance of her presumed role as secretary (never mind her fabulous wardrobe!). . .
Yet despite a familiarity that might seem to have potential for boredom, Leon takes Guido and I this time to another unexpected hidden space in Venice — and reaches back 40 years to — literally — unearth some secrets from Italy’s 20th-century history. What an example she is of what an octogenarian can do!
There we go! I had this written up until here and then had to go meet out-of-town friends for a long lovely catch-up dinner in a restaurant we like. Perfect walking distance (and walking dinner) from our place, and we’ve just got back in. Almost 9:30 which is a good shake-up from our winter pattern of staying in of an evening . . . But I need to click “Publish” on this post before another day rolls off the calendar.
So let me know if you’ve read and enjoyed (or not) any of these titles, or if you’re planning to. Anything to add to what I’ve said about my January books? Disagreements with my take on them? Also, please tell us what you’ve been reading lately, what titles you recommend we add to our TBR lists. I’m looking forward to our book chat.
But now, it’s time for bed and a book.
G’night,
xo,
f
Your reading is impressive and inspiring. I read The Transit of Venus many years ago (as you know, I’m Australian) and enjoyed it very much but it’s overdue a revisit. Hazzard wrote other books which should be added to my reading list. Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is currently featured on the Queen’s Reading Room. A recent IG post showed Kingsolver talking about the writing of the book. Another one for my reading list along with Demon Copperhead. I also like the sound of Donna Levy’s August Blue.
I’m currently reading Emboldened by Belinda Alexandra, another Australian of Russian and Australian heritage, who has written several historical novels (I escaped into a few during the pandemic e.g. The French Agent and The Mystery Woman). Emboldened in non-fiction and draws on her own experiences and those of her ancestors, along with other women who’ve recovered from great loss and despair. I’m enjoying her insights on historical events of the twentieth century.
Author
I suspected you would have read The Transit of Venus, Maria! You Australians have a treasure trove of good writers!
Belinda Alexander’s Emboldened sounds like an intriguing blend of memoir and biography, and history — and from what I saw on her website, her historical novels are the kind of sags that would have been satisfying to sink into during a pandemic, or a long winter. I see she has one set in Tuscany . . . tempting 😉
What a wonderful reading January-such a nice list,Frances! We had some overlapping,too 🙂
I’ve read also D. Leon’s and W. A. Craven’s books you’ve mentioned here
Mine list is much shorter:
Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting (shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize) is a novel about unhappy lives of the Barnes family in Ireland,father,mother,daughter and a son,written in their own voices,full of poor choices that have led to more bad choices-almost all of them were mistakes and all of them led to a catastrophe. Financial difficulties, blackmailing,toxic friendships,going down all kind of rabitt holes…..you name it. One wants to shake things up,while reading. It is reviewed in a couple of sites as ” a tragicomical saga”- sorry,I’ve found only tragical part. And the end! But,it was so good as well
Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience (also shortlisted-2023.was such a good year in Booker choices) is an extraordinary unsettling novel,as you’ve written (and I’ll keep all of my journaling about this book here,although there are some duplicate thoughts ),narrated by a woman who moved to “a remote northern country” to be housekepeer to her eldest brother,and than strange things started to happen and suspicions,prejudices and hostility in a closed community ensued. The narrator presented herself as humble (but very passive-agressive and unreliable) and abused woman. Is it the truth?It is dark and very opaque but an excellent book,agree with you
Nite Prose’s second book in Molly the Maid series,The Mystery Guest, didn’t disappoint-I’m glad that you liked it,too Molly is established in her hotel work,happily in love,with good friends,but some ghosts from the past reappeared….and it is a little bit dark not only entertaining, isn’t it?
Alex Pavesi’s The Eight Detectives is a set of stories in a novel,dedicated to some well known detectives and novels from the past
I follow (and like )Angela Marson’s Kim Stone series in a translation -Fatal Promise was the last one I’ve read
Dottoressa
Author
We had quite a bit of overlap this month, K! I agree with your characterization of the narrator of Study for Obedience. . . and yes, “dark and very opaque but an excellent book” (I’m not sure how many will choose to read it after your review and mine, but it is “extraordinary” . . . and “unsettling”!
I hope that Nita Prose writes another Molly book — interesting to see her character develop — So much of reading mysteries, for me, is about the chance a character gets to develop, especially in series. Sounds as if you would recommend the Kim Stone series for that?
Not sure I’ll tackle The Bee Sting — and 600 pages makes that project even less likely! No wonder you read fewer books than usual last month! (But it does sound worthy — I just skimmed The Guardian review after yours).
Well, this didn’t happen in January and I haven’t read them yet 🙂 but in the spirit of discussing books, I went on a little spree in an Italian bookstore yesterday and now have Lessico familare (my beloved Natalia Ginzburg, I want to read her as she wrote), Gli innamorati (Peppe Fiore, a Strega prize proposal), and a little stack of Rocco Schiavone ‘gialli’ (Antonio Manzini and on recommendation from F Sprout!…the first three novels and a volume of five short stories that apparently provide some backstory).
So I’m set…I think I’ll start with Ginzberg as she’s familiar. Once my brain settles down after eleven months away from language class. Piano piano.
Author
You know I’m envious! And what a good way to make your temporary home in Italy your own — stacking up books to read in between classes and art galleries and people-watching. . .
I really must read Ginzberg — would you recommend Lessico Famigliare to start with?
Hope you enjoy the Rocco Schiavone books as much as I do — he’s not so easy to love in the first few, but you will be entertained, I’m quite sure (and learn a good supply of parolacce).
I had to think a bit. There’s a caveat. I would start by reading about her (and maybe you’ve done that already); understanding her life adds depth to the reading. Then I’d read the poem Memoria. But! It’s a gut-punch. If you are feeling tender, put it off. It harkens back a bit to your post on ageing (and loss). It’s easy to find an English translation online but the Italian words are beautiful, beautiful. Then (once recovered), I’d start with Lessico Familiare. I’m eager to hear what you think.
Author
Thanks for this! I’ll see how I can fold it all into “the list”!
I am afraid to reread The Transit of Venus (and anything else I have admired for that matter.) What if time has rendered the book less good? It could never be a change in my perspective, could it?
Author
I don’t often reread these days, just because there are so many new books to discover. But I used to do that regularly when teaching, and generally it’s surprisingly agreeable — the perspective shifts in interesting ways. (It’s been odd, though, trying to read certain well-loved children’s novels to my grandkids, and stopping to explain why people used to behave a certain way — casual body-shaming and gendered assumptions, particularly.. .
Agreed! My beloved Babar series was an eye-opener the second time around (and an opportunity to discuss why some awful conventions persisted.)
Author
Oh yes, Babar! That was an Ugh moment. And a learning opportunity, as you say. . .
During recent Covid reading saved me. I follow your list and often have read a book based on your description. I’d like to suggest 2 novels that I just finished. Don’t remember how I learned of them but loved both madly and devoured them quickly. The author is Frances Liardet. Both involve some of the same characters so read them successively. The first is We Must Be Brave and the second is Think of Me. Set in England beginning just prior to WWII and continuing into the 70s. I gather she may write a third and so look forward to that.
Author
Thanks for suggesting these — I think they might have been recommended by Sue (High Heels in the Wilderness) recently.
Think of Me was wonderful. One of the best I read last year. Recommended by Sue.
It’s been good reading weather here. very cold and snow. So many tempting choices Frances, I have always liked Kate Atkinson and will seek out this collection. I have often seen William Kent Kreuger’s books displayed but was not familiar with his work so passed them by. Now I really want to give this author a try. I also did not like Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead as much as previous, earlier works by the author .And agree that even when Donna Leon is not in top form I do enjoy her. I recently attended an author night at my local library. two writers, on live and one on zoom. one writes thrillers and the other supernatural novels which often feature werewolfs. What struck me about these two authors was how much writing was a business to them, with much talk of publishers and deadlines. The book a commodity, a product. Not how I usually think of books but I suppose a reality. I did end up purchasing the thriller, which I am currently reading. This same library will host Lyn Slater next month, with her new book” How to be Old” which I am looking forward to.
Author
Very cold and snow — yep! that would be perfect reading weather for me (some might think it’s good skiing or skating weather or whatever, but I’m going to be fireside with tea or hot cocoa and a good book).
I agree with you — so much of writing and publishing depends on marketing and distribution — and it’s been my understanding that much of the support for that has been cut and then downloaded to writers. At least until they prove themselves and find their readers. (Lyn Slater, for that matter, did a great deal of marketing of her persona, if you will, before she decided to write a book. That will be an interesting talk to attend — guessing you’ll have to get there early to get a seat!)
Whoops! My first comment box disappeared … 2nd try
I enjoy your posts so much. Each time I note new books, nod in agreement at books I’ve appreciated, or congratulated you on drilling down to value when I haven’t. And I’m growing ever more comfortable posting here and ever more fond of your faithful commenters here.
I adored William Kent Krueger’s The River We Remember!
Slightly more ambivalent about Demon Copperhead than you. My wait for Normal Rules Don’t Apply is more than four months.
Now on the library waitlist for Donna Leon’s latest.
Donna Hazzard library options are non-existent. I’ll have to check Powell’s shelves when I meander there.
I find myself grabbing popular well-reviewed crime/mystery books, the equivalent of junk food reads that fill a space but leave no trace of nutrients.
I’m a bit curious about A J Finn’s 2nd. His great unmasking in The New Yorker after the wild success of Woman in the Window seemed a dive from rooftop to pavement, yet, here is the king of the book jacket blurb, his 2nd book published (four years late), many shameless mumbo jumbo flimflamflummox interviews, and a coast-to-coast book tour. I won’t buy it and I won’t waste one of my six library holds on it, but I’m betting I will find it in the discount bin in a few months. Yup, I’m curious and cynical, but will read it one way or another.
Back to the topic at hand. Like you, I love reading so much, and admire writers to the nth degree, even those whose particular charms elude me. When I spend time with a writer like Krueger, I’m enchanted and want to read everything they touched. Last month, I discovered Lily King, and her writing—her imagination, skill, genius for storytelling—knocked me out. If you haven’t … give King a whirl.
Love your blog! Cheerios, Deborah
Author
Thank you Deborah! You’ve directed me to SO many great books. . . e.g. it was on your say-so that I read The River We Remember. So good, and I’ll be looking for more from him.
I’ve tempered some of my Demon Copperhead ambivalence, tbh. . . been thinking about it a bit since. Did you ever read Shuggie Bain?? Different geographical/cultural setting, but some of the same elements, narrative arc, theme, etc. and imho, a much better book for so many reasons. . .
I noted your discovery of Lily King and she’s on my list now. . .
I’m chuffed you find some of my recommendations appealing! Shuggie Bain failed to ignite for me. Finding Lily King made me ravenous for skill and dead eye detail … and I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole for writers and editors of that golden intersection of travel/outdoor adventure/gonzo journalism featured in the early days of Rolling Stone, Outside, Esquire, etc. Big names that have faded (may not be on the radar for younger readers), heavy on the alcohol and drug-fueled testosterone but some of the writing stops me in my tracks, e.g., P. J. O’Rourke, and a lyrical appreciation for the West demonstrated in feature writing. Cheerios, d
Author
Lily King, noted!
And I’m always glad to see attention being paid to “the backlist.” Our TBR lists are so often filled by trying to keep up with all the new releases, but so much good writing down those rabbit holes!
I too read Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus years ago. Wonderful book. I have a vaguer memory of her “The Great Fire”, which is set in World War II, but I remember liking it.
I haven’t read Demon Copperhead. Your comments are exactly right. Her early books are better than her later ones, where she becomes preachy and obvious. I also agree on your comments on Donna Leon. Her mysteries are both repetitive and charming.
I recently read “The Unseen” by Roy Jacobsen. It is the story of a poor family barely surviving on an isolated Norwegian island. It isn’t the kind of book I usually read – the characters are all so dour that they rarely speak. Yet, it drew me in. All the characters are treated with compassion and respect. And the prose is clean and compressed. Each word counts. This also true of Claire Keegan’s prose. I just finished “Foster” which I loved almost as much as “Small Things like These.” I have introduced the latter book to all sorts of people, and everyone has been bowled over by it. Claire spends up to ten years on each of her (short) books. She obviously does not see her books as commodities.
Author
I’ve just gone off to read The Guardian review of The Unseen which corroborates and expands on yours. I’ve put a Hold on it (we’re SO lucky in our library here in Vancouver!).
I must get a copy of Foster. I saw the film which was poignantly beautiful, tender, painful. And yes, her Small Things Like These. A book that can be read and reread. Deceptively slight in appearance. . . a “small thing.”
Yet again Frances you’ve given me a tour d’horizon of books I won’t read but feel much better informed as a result of your post!
My reading so far this year has been Shadowlands by Matthew Green, about Britain’s abandoned villages/sites; Watling Street by John Higgs, about the ancient, long distance route diagonally across England from Kent, and still called by that name today; So Much To Tell, by Valerie Grove – a biography of the founder and editor of Puffin Books for children; The Bletchley Girls, by Tessa Dunlop, about the WW2 women working at the secret German code-breaking HQ in England; Channel Shore, by Tom Fort, a contemporary journey by bicycle along the English coast from Kent to Lands’ End; Women of WW2, by Lucy Fisher, as the title says; and just starting today and will need to finish by Monday for my online Café Littéraire, La Fille Qu’on Appelle, by Tanguy Viel.
Author
Yours is a great list for someone planning to travel through England and wanting to know more of its cultural history and human geography. I can imagine dipping into the stack for some rich armchair travel!
Wonderful list!