February was not as short as it is three out of every four years, but it did leave me less reading time than usual — and I started with a long-ish read. A page-turner, not hard to read at all, but it’s a big book, Babel. Another novel I read last month, Edenglassie, also dealt with colonisation, albeit in a different setting and different approach. There was also a book of short stories; a collection of humorous personal essays; a light, comic work of domestic fiction featuring a gay uncle and his niece and nephew all working through their grief in Palm Springs, and, as you should expect by now from my monthly posts, a satisfying mystery novel. Something for everyone? Perhaps, perhaps not, but I hope you might find something here for your TBR list. And perhaps you’ll leave us a recommendation for ours.
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
11. Babel: or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. R. F. Kuang. Speculative fiction; Historical fantasy; Coming-of-age narrative; Academe; Language; Translation; Oxford Setting; Colonialism.
A genre-crossing novel set in an alternative Oxford of 1830s/1840s England, an imperial centre whose economy depends on magical silver bars — and those bars, in turn, depend for their magic on the gap between differences in the meaning of a pair of words — the pair taken from two different languages — that point to the same signified. To continue generating this magical power requires exploitation of children who are taken from their colonized homeland and then given — as if it were a privilege — an English upbringing.
Young Robin, for example, “rescued” from a cholera epidemic in Canton which left him orphaned (although he comes to believe that his mother was deliberately allowed to die, beside him, as one not valuable to his rescuer, Richard Lovell). Brought up in Lovell’s London house, Robin’s childhood and adolescence is devoid of warmth or affection other than from his housekeeper, although he wonders occasionally if the man who has “saved” him and brought him to England might be his biological father. Not until he gets to Oxford does he have any friends. Although they’re marked as outsiders (race, gender,) he and his three new friends enjoy their scholastic life, the freedom and privacy of their new accommodation and even the challenge of their studies in linguistics.
But gradually, they begin to see the faults in the socio-economic system which has exploited their linguistic abilities — and simultaneously made them feel lesser for not being native English (or, in one friend’s case, for not being male). Further, they see that this feeling of inferiority is manipulated to encourage them to a complicity with the patriarchal, colonial system that effectively enslaves them.
A Harry Potter-esque battle of good and evil, but much more sophisticated for its theme of language and translation and its examination of how academic knowledge (and structures) can be corrupted in service of a fantastical version of industrial capitalism. — the magic of silver, powered by translation, makes a neat analogy with the binary magic, the algorithmic sleight-of-hand on which we’ve become so dependent.
I worried at times that the message might become too heavy for the plot, setting, and characters to carry, but each time my hackles were raised slightly against this danger, they relaxed quickly as I was swept up again within a paragraph or two.
Instagram: Here, a few words about the book, and Here, my sketch of it.
12. The Angel of Rome. Jess Walter. Literary fiction; Short stories; Coming-of-age.
Short stories (the eponymous story is a long-ish short story, set in Rome)
Full of humanity, these stories, and of complex characters. I found some veered dangerously close to sentimentality, but they managed to twist away from that fault (I was most resistant to one story in particular — as much as I wanted a young girl to have “the good stepfather” who might redeem her bad fortune and barely avoided trauma). Overall, the stories made me think of an incident in Jess Walter”s Beautiful Ruins that I referred to here — trigger warning; that post includes the passage narrated by the soldier who realizes he’s been indulged by the beautiful young Italian woman because she’s had to develop a tactic to ward off rape. Complexity. . . Walter writes it convincingly, and movingly.
I borrowed this from the library as an e-book; I’m not keen on reading a collection of short stories this way, having to finish them in 21 days. I prefer to leave space between each story. As with the Kate Atkinson collection I read last month, I’m giving The Angel of Rome, short shrift. Mea culpa!
13. The Guncle. Steven Rowley. Domestic fiction; LGBTQ+ fiction; humour; bereavement/grief; Palm Springs setting.
I read this for a family book club, but we haven’t yet met to discuss it, so I’ll keep my response here to a minimum.
“Guncle” (gay uncle, for those who may not have heard this term) is asked to care for his niece and nephew while his brother goes to a substance-abuse rehab centre for 90 days, after their mother (Guncle’s best friend from college days) dies following a prolonged illness (cancer). He brings them back to Palm Springs with him, and tries to entertain them in this new environment and make room for their grieving.
Honestly, didn’t entertain me much nor tell me much about grief, gay life, children, etc. that I couldn’t have imagined myself, but if you’re looking for something light and would enjoy recognizing the Palm Springs neighbourhoods, you could tuck this in your beach bag.
14. Edenglassie, Melissa Lucashenko. Literary fiction; Indigenous Australian writer; historical fiction; colonial history; colonization; Edenglassie/Brisbane.
Another one recommended by my daughter. In this novel, an elderly indigenous woman falls and ends up in hospital — and is made into a headline as “Queensland’s Oldest Aboriginal” by an opportunistic white journalist.
Granny Eddie is equally opportunistic in her own way, and although her account of her family’s colonial history is too positive and too optimistic to suit her feisty activist grand-daughter Winona, even Winona finds a way to use Granny’s newfound celebrity to forward her goals of rewriting colonial history.
There’s also a potential romance between Winona and Granny’s handsome young doctor — who presents and was raised as white, but who claims indigenous ancestry. His hope that Winona will see him, thus, as a potential “suitor” is met with her scorn at his “wannabe” research. . . This narrative strand supplies much of the novel’s humour but also teases out some of the complexities about indigenous identity.
This present-day story is interspersed with a narrative set in the 1850s which tells a horrific story of settler brutality, racism, harsh and unfair so-called justice, and environmental exploitation and destruction.
The tension between Granny Eddie’s optimism and desire to get along and Winona’s frustration and anger keeps the narrative point-of-view complicated and interesting. As does having the narrative switch to focus on different characters and time-lines.
Hear and see Melissa Lucashenko reading a short but moving excerpt from Edenglassie in this video and speaking about the book in this one— where she describes it as being, among other things, “about staying human in the face of colonization.”
15. The Curator. M.W. Craven. Mystery/Crime; Police Procedural; Washington Poe & Tilly Bradshaw series; Setting Cumbria, England.
As did the previous two volumes, this book in the Washington Poe – Tilly Bradshaw series begins with a horribly graphic description of violence. And once again, the rest of the novel is much more muted in its representation (although it doesn’t hold back on tension). There is also more of the clever plotting and puzzle-solving pleasures Craven offered in the earlier two books — and the Cumbrian setting becomes more compelling with challenges set by snowstorms and by the small island which can only be safely reached with careful attention to tides.
Unlike in either of the earlier titles, Poe’s supervisor is now pregnant, heavily so, and stubborn in her refusal to make significant changes to her policing duties and activities.
And Tilly goes from strength to strength — one of the solutions she comes up with, in particular, raised a gasp from me. . . The big twist at the end — very satisfying!
16. Happy-Go-Lucky. David Sedaris. Essays; Humour; Personal Memoir; LGBTQ; Family Dysfunction; Relationships.
If you don’t know David Sedaris’s work, you could do worse than begin with Me Talk Pretty Some Day. . . I have laughed so hard, reading aloud from this book and some of his others, that I couldn’t get words out, had tears in my eyes. The endorphins!
Or read this one, about which I jotted a few notes in my Reading Journal:
More funny, sad, shocking, insightful essays from Sedaris — as in earlier collections, he writes about his family’s idiosyncrasies and its dysfunctions (a disturbing essay about accusations his sister made, which he sees retrospectively with his trademark mix of insight, stark honesty, and humour — a strange combination for a reader to process). Much of his observations about family in this collection are centered around or shadowed by his father’s cognitive decline, his incipient death, and then the aftermath. . .
I know, I’m not making these essays sound very funny, but even the most sombre of these will have sentences, paragraphs, pages, that will cause you embarrassment for having laughed out loud in the waiting room of your doctor, dentist, lawyer or candlestick maker. Or on a bus or Skytrain full of sleepy commuters. . .
He also writes about Covid, masks, celebrity, American politics during “those” years from 2016-2020, Americans at home and abroad, New York City, and beach culture in North Carolina where he and his French partner have a home.
I marvelled again at the way he can turn emotions on a dime, one sentence encompassing an astonishing range.
His speech to the graduates — hilarious but also resonant in so many ways, that generational shift, the challenges in offering advice to a group of young people facing what today’s college graduates must.
The delicacy with which he handled his gay adolescent neighbour’s wildly inappropriate (the age difference, to start with!) crush.
Okay, that’s it for the books I read in February — perhaps you’ve read one or two of these as well and we could compare responses. And maybe you’ve got a recommendation — for or against — a book or two you’ve read recently. I’m looking forward to our monthly Book Chat in the comments below.
Happy Reading!
xo,
f
Frances: it’s always stimulating to have your monthly reading notes. Having – almost! – retired at the beginning of last summer, I assumed I’d have seen the pile of books on my bedside table diminish. However, there’s always something new to distract and acquire. Most recently I’ve enjoyed My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor. Set in Rome during the German occupation, it’s based on the true story of an Irish Catholic priest based in the Vatican and his attempts to assist Jews, allies and escapees from prisoner-of-war camps. With the help of brave and ingenious locally based men and women, he hides many in the buildings of the Vatican and in the surrounding streets. But the SS controller of the city is determined to put an end to this priest’s work – and life.
Knowing your links with Rome, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this.
Elizabeth
Author
Thanks, Elizabeth. I’m always interested in books set in Rome.
As for retirement and the possibility of working through that pile of books — I’ve been retired for 9 years now (I can scarcely believe it!) and my piles seem only to have grown taller! 😉
I read this post quite early in the morning and perhaps that explains my “fresh eyes” because I was struck by how generous you are to prepare your well-written book posts each month and how much work each one represents. Your reports on each book are highly engaging and provide considerable information but never so much as to discourage anyone from reading the books you feature. While I understand the value of the reports as a personal record, they are, nevertheless, a remarkable service to your readers.
I recently read Jennette McCurdy’s memoir I’m Glad my Mom Died with my book group. McCurdy was a child star with leads in Nickelodeon’s iCarly and Victorious about 15 years ago. My daughter was a fan and I saw snippets of both shows. McCurdy writes movingly and without self-pity about her abusive mother and her traumatic acting career, which she walked away from as a young woman. The grim realities of McCurdy’s childhood career were not a complete surprise to me, but the details she recounts were shocking, as was the behaviour of the truly horrible mother. Not an easy read, but a compelling and well-written one.
Author
Thanks for your very kind comments, Maria. I will admit that the book notes and their transcription into the posts do take a fair bit of work. I’m pleased to hear that you find value in them.
That memoir does sound compelling — and difficult for some to read, I’m sure. I see that some reviews of it refer to it as “heartbreaking and hilarious” — an very tough combination to pull off, but always impressive to read or hear someone who manages it.
I did not read this month.
Ha ha I had to leave that on its own line because it surprises even me. But I could not spare one speck of brain power to addressing the vocabulary from my little pile of Italian books and I was not going to cave in and read the one English book I have with me. My classes finished yesterday and I had thoughts of a book and a park today but it’s raining right now. We’ll see.
But I can draw a little circle for you. I see A.S. Byatt in your bookshelf sketch. She wrote a book called Babel Tower which I think of when I see something about Kuang’s Babel (which I am interested in but my library does not seem to have in ‘paper’). Byatt is also the sister of (much admired by me) Margaret Drabble and Drabble’s book The Dark Flood Rises is an excellent, unsentimental, look at ageing from various persepectives. Maybe more of an amoeba-shape lol.
Author
I cannot imagine a month without reading. . . until I imagine doing an intensive course in another language during which I was determined not to allow English to intrude. . . I’d so love an IRL chat with you about the entire experience — and what the results are, how it’s boosted and/or changed your Italian. . . .
And I love the amoeba! This is a fun game!!
Oh,Frances! I’ve just started to go through D. Athill books (love her!), and now you are here with so many new books I want to read!
Ok,I’ve read The Curator (love M.W. Craven) and Babel is waiting near my bed for a couple of months……..
A Family Book Club!? Lucky you!
My February reading:
I loved Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility,his first novel,very,very much. It is about Katey,a young girl,finding (and fighting for) her place and way through New York society during late 1930-ties, and her friends and love and Manhattan…..it is sad ,it is sometimes emotional and resigned at the same time,sometimes very Great Gatsby-esque, with a bit of Hemingway (although one critic wrote: “only because young people drink and party in both of them”- but no,no….it is this sadness,elegiac passing of time), very atmospheric-I love it
Than there was Croatian author Igor Beleš with his novel “Listanje kupusa” (not translated yet-the title is something like Shedding/ Scroling the Cabagge) -it is great,great book about childhood in Vukovar (Vukovar is one of the holy symbols of War in Croatia), coming of age just before war,in rank of all of the best and most loved and famous books about this topic (and there is a river -Dunav -and some Tom Sawyer like scenes)….. and pre-war friendships,there were a couple of boys and a brave girl,where it wasn’t important who is who,who is Croat,who is Serbian or something else or both….till it was,till there were killings and robberies and cruelties of war………He could make a wonderful,wonderful,interesting young adults book,a worldwide bestseller(and it is, for a first three quarters of a novel)
…..but he didn’t,he stayed true to himself…..and it is a wonderful,wonderful and very sad (and funny and very sad) book about war,everytime,everywhere,but it was here….and no,he doesn’t take sides (a lot)….reading includes a lot of crying and a lot of memories
I’ve listened (and enjoyed the irish accent) to Dervla Mc Tiernan’s two books: The Good Turn and The Sisters. I prefer reading to listening,and was waiting for books but there were no books,so….
Henning Mankell’s The Pyramid is a selection of short stories,when his Inspector Wallander was young,and it follows Wallander (and his complex personality) to his later novels
Lucinda Berry’s The Best of Friends deals with a complex and tragic situation after a party (or sleepover) with fatal consequences. She is a clinical psychologist specialised in childhood trauma and the book deals with a lot of trauma
Nina George’s sweet The Little French Village of Book Lovers speaks about books and love (or the lack of love) and lovers and a little bit of supernatural….
Dottoressa
Author
Dottoressa! You really need to have your own book blog! But I’m so glad you offer your reading summaries here for me and for the readers who meet here.
I would love to read Igor Beleš’s novel — I hope it will be translated some day.
I think they made a series (Netflix?) of The Young Wallander. I haven’t read The Pyramid but I would imagine it must be the base for that series. (Kenneth Branagh was very good as the older Wallander, imho)
I can think of exactly the days when I’d like to read Nina George’s Little French Village (I remember enjoying The Little Paris Bookshop — a perfect escape!)
Still haven’t read Amor Towles — but I see my brother has recommended it for a book club possibility, so I might be getting there eventually — one of the last to discover it!
One of my recent reads was a biography of Rudyard Kipling which got me thinking . He’s kind of disparaged now for racism & this book by Charles Allen , though very fair , does reinforce that view . I’ve always had an interest in India . At school we were encouraged to feel proud of our ‘empire’ but it was waning then of course . Nevertheless we were told how fortunate they were to be one of our colonies . We gave them railways after all ! There wasn’t any mention of what we took from them . We’ve visited a few times & India is the most fascinating country . They soon shrugged off the Raj as if they were just passing through . The culture of India was too strong to be taken over . Perhaps I’d feel more pangs of guilt if I’d had ancestors involved in the Raj but , having researched my family , I know they were having a pretty miserable existence in Victorian times . It was all dark satanic mills , tilling the soil for a pittance & the grimy London underworld . The power of books to get us thinking .
Author
This is a very thoughtful comment, Wendy. It’s not easy to come to terms with all the damage caused by systems, culture, countries that we were raised to be proud of. Britain’s map-drawing had horrific consequences on the Indian sub-continent that continue to play out today (I can’t agree that the country was able to shrug off the Raj, or not, at least, its long-rippling after-effects). But it’s so hard to entangle our own responsibilities where we stand now, especially in countries where my own, where I live as descendant of both settlers and (generations ago) indigenous ancestors. . . The power of books has done much to help me thinking this through.
I am always impressed not just for he number of books you read but also the time you take to review them for us without giving anything away. I have read a fair number of books this month but I will keep my comments to two. I saw that Kristin Hannah had a new book out when I went to my library, The Women. I got part way through the first chapter but the writing style seemed too overblown so I put it down. meanwhile I read perhaps two other books for book club. I thought I w0uld give The Women another try and was glad I did. Whatever one might think of her writing style the story was so compelling. Yes, it was hard to put down. I can see how it quickly became a best seller, at least here in the US. The other book I loved was The Five Wounds, by Kristin Valdes Quade. I had not heard if this book or it’s author, in fact it is her first novel though she had previously written a book of short stories. My good friend recommended it. It is about a family, their relationships, their dysfunctions, how they go about living their ordinary life, an alcoholic, unemployed father, his estranged wife, their pregnant teenage daughter, a grandmother with a secret, an uncle and a well meaning teacher in particular. They could be any family, in this case a mainly Latino family living in New Mexico. They make mistakes, terrible ones at times yet we root for them and see their innate and complex humanity. Love and grace shine through.
And if course on my nightstand is How to be Old by Lyn Slater. Personally autographed. Upon signing she remarked that we both have the same hair. Made my day.