Books Read, March 2024

Five days ago, I began writing this post with this jauntily confident paragraph: “Surprised to see my book post so early in the month — April 8th? Me too! But I’m off on a solo trip next week, and when I get back at the beginning of May it will be time to start putting together a “books read in April” post. In fact, I’m currently trying to load some of those books onto my Kobo for plane, train, and hotel-room reading, so I’m motivated to stay caught up with the bookchat here.”

Saturday, April 13th today, and it’s evening. I’m almost packed and ready for Monday’s flight, but I’ve been busy, distracted, and more anxious than I like about the solo travel ahead. As I check items off my list, though, I’m doing my best to switch from anxiety to excitement and happy anticipation. So as I’ve finished loading my Kobo with reading for planes and trains, it’s time to click “publish” on this post and hope I’ve caught most of the typos.

As usual, I’ll begin with this little proviso:

 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.

17. The Unseen. Roy Jacobsen. Trans. Don Bartlett and Don Shaw. Literary fiction; Books in translation; Norwegian literature; 1st volume in Barrøy chronicles; coming-of-age; domestic fiction; historical fiction; rural island life.

As hermetic and quiet as this little novel first appears — set on a small island off the Norwegian coast, occupied and farmed by one family (father, mother, daughter, plus aunt and grandfather) — it slowly, inexorably, yet gently, reveals itself to be somewhat mythic, expansive in its exploration of humanity.

Set, we might begin to compute, as WWII is gathering in Europe, and changes begin to arrive, challenging, disturbing, and enriching the islanders’ lifestyle, the scope of their imagination.

Seductive, precise descriptions of setting — somehow spare yet satisfying, pared down to what truly sustains, the necessary and the sufficient.

Coming-of-age of the daughter; passing of the torch across generations; revelation of strength of the ‘strange’ or ‘simple’ aunt who breaks the social code(s) and thus brings new life to the island; the two children from town (and the commerce, the travel back and forth, interaction with townspeople — what plot there is has gentle curves, so that there is a profundity in what continues in tension with what changes.

And I know nothing of Norwegian, but I had to agree when my husband commented (knowing no more Norwegian than I do), after he finished reading this, that the translators seemed to have done a beautiful job– they’ve captured, in English, that feeling of the way language was spoken 90 years ago, and also of the way a family might evolve its own usage in small ways, especially in the hermetic conditions of an island isolated from a mainland by the vagaries of the weather.

My Instagram post here. And click here for a very brief review and the link to an extended interview with Jacobsen by Eleanor Wachtel (on CBC’s Writers and Company).

18. The Secret Hours. Mick Herron. Thriller/suspense; Espionage/politics; Slough House series prequel; Cold War Berlin; MI5; London.

I picked this up when Paul finished it shortly after Christmas . . . and just couldn’t get into it. Too much action that I wasn’t engaged enough to follow, characters not developed enough for me to care about by 40 pages or so.

Not promising, right? And I put it down for a while but then picked it up again a few weeks later because, so far, Herron has not disappointed me, and I thought anything he wrote deserved a better attempt. And it took perseverance still, for another while . . . until I thought I recognized one character from the Slough House series . . and then gradually saw the outlines of another, although much younger and under a different name . . . and in Berlin?

And as a few more elements began to coalesce, a fragile narrative arc inched toward the events that are told in that series . . and The Secret Hours begins to reveal a backstory, a prequel . . .

Obvious need not to risk spoilers here, but by the time I’d turned the last page I had no regrets at all about persevering. Very satisfying ending and much amusement — and insight — in seeing certain key characters as they once were. For me, though, the book wouldn’t have worked well as a standalone — much of its pleasure comes from the way it fills in the blanks sketched throughout the series (I mention the first two in this post — and you’ll find my mentions of Herron’s other titles by entering “Mick Herron” in this blog’s search feature, the magnifying glass icon to the right above the header.

19. Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside — Finding Home in an English Country Garden. Marchelle Farrell. Literary memoir; gardening memoir; horticulture and colonialism; women’s lives; health and wellness; Caribbean-British writer; Black female writer;

A thoughtful and moving exploration of Farrell’s relationship with her “English country garden.” A psychiatrist who’s taken on the full-time care of her young chilrdren shortly after they’ve moved to an idyllic (but aging, in much need of repairs) home with a sprawling garden (also in much need of TLC — but with enticing potential, even a stream running through it). Covid shuts everything down soon after the family moves in and the garden offers a focus, respite — but also stirs doubts about the colonial history represented in horticulture, especially in England.

Farrell remembers the Caribbean flora of her childhood and youth — missing these ever more intensely as the family’s visits there are curtailed by the pandemic. And she is more conscious than ever, in their new village home, of her status as “racialized other.”

I loved watching her garden take shape as she learned what she wanted it to express — as she made space for wildness, learned what to grow and what to harvest for wellness, moving beyond the constraints of what she’d learned through her medical training. She writes beautifully — a roughly chronological approach, moving from Dormancy to Awakening to Blossoming to Harvest, with chapters within those sections organized around the plantings, e.g. wisteria, crocosmia, hellebore.

I mentioned the book (and got a couple of enthusiastic comments about it) in this Instagram post.

And if it appeals to you, you might consider that it #readswellwith Kyo Maclear’s Unearthing which I posted about here (it’s title #57).

20. Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted. Suleika Jaouad. Literary Memoir; Coming-of-Age; Women’s Lives; Cancer; Survival; Creativity; Road Trip; Romance.

First, we watched the Netflix documentary American Symphony and loved it. So when I saw that Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad were speaking at the Chan Centre I jumped to get tickets . . . and there I learned that Suleika had written a memoir and, of course, I immediately ordered a copy at VPL.

One of the best memoirs I’ve read recently — and perhaps just what we need right now. Jaouad was diagnosed with a formidable cancer just as she had begun to realize some of her potential as a journalist — and what is so striking about her illness narrative is her decision, in the face of a devastating setback in the medical treatment, to bring creativity to bear in her healing and in her life.

A love story — two, actually, both old and new loves; a story of loss; a story of discovery; and a story that culminates, in the last third of the book, as an astonishingly brave road trip. Highly recommended! (Also, watch their documentary!)

My Instagram post about this one.

21. The Hunter. Tana French. Mystery/crime; Rural Ireland; Cal Hooper series.

I couldn’t resist buying this on my Kobo because I didn’t want to wait — I mean, seriously! A new Tana French?!

This mystery features Cal Hooper, the retired Chicago PD detective we met in French’s last book, The Searcher — in rural Ireland where’s he’s moved in hopes of a quiet peaceful life. In that last book, he learned that quaint Irish villages can reveal surprisingly dark secrets and a capacity for violence . . . As well, he befriended a young teen whose family life and status in the community is difficult. And he began a relationship with a local woman, a widow, Lena.

Both these relationships continue in The Hunter, and again, it’s the teen-aged Trey Reddy whose family background poses a disruption to village life. When Trey’s father returns after a years-long absence, he brings with him a scam in which he hopes villagers will invest. And although Trey despises her father, she sees in his plans a chance to avenge her dead brother. Cal and Lena know she’s embroiling herself in trouble, but they’re hard-pressed to know how to steer her in a safer direction.

Humour, tension, setting, compassion, and several strong female characters — satisfying plot and resolution. Recommended! (But do read The Searcher first).

22. Elizabeth Finch. Julian Barnes. Literary fiction; psychological novel; philosophy; stoicism; elegiac.

I’ve just finished Anne Enright’s The Wren, The Wren, in which a celebrated (fictional) Irish poet says, in an interview, that “all poems . . . are of love unrequited” and further, that he’s “not sure there is any other kind of love.” Elizabeth Finch, the novel, is 1st-person narrator Neil’s account — ostensibly a memoir — of his relationships, arguably his unrequited love, for the woman who teaches an adult-education class he takes in his 30s, a class in Culture and Civilisation.

We learn that in the background of the decades-long relationship Neil establishes with Elizabeth Finch — a relationship that primarily comprises a conversation about culture, history, philosophy over lunch or dinner several times a year — he has been married and divorced twice and has several children. I would have to reread the novel much more attentively to remember (or discover) how Neil earns his living. His sole focus in this narrative — and, it seems plausible, in his life — is Elizabeth.

After her death (she is at least a decade, perhaps two, older than he is) he meets her brother, Christopher, who tells him that Ms. Finch has left Neil her files, her research papers, personal notebooks, etc. These reflect very little of what her personal life might have held beyond her intellectual pursuits. But they deepen Neil’s understanding of Finch’s admiration of Julian the Apostate and of her own commitment to stoicism.

And Neil writes an essay about Julian as a way of honouring Elizabeth Finch, so that a good portion of this slim novel is taken up by that work of non-fiction, a history of early Christianity and of a long sequence of responses for and against the apostate emperor in subsequent centuries. Which will not, assuredly, be what many readers are looking for. . . But those of us who have enjoyed Barnes’ earlier work (I mentioned a couple of titles in this post, his always lucid and erudite prose, will be fascinated by the way he makes Neil’s probing of so much arcana reveal aspects of himself — and of Elizabeth Finch — and their mutual admiration, elegiacally tinged of Stoicism.

I found this thoughtful and cogent review of the novel which captures the rich layering of ideas and arguments that can be teased out of what appears at first to be the novel’s limited or odd structure. Readers would do well to heed other characters’ responses to Elizabeth Finch, to Neil, and to their fixation on a long-dead apostate philosopher and an philosophy unsuited to modern life.

My Instagram post here.

23. Standing in the Shadows. Peter Robinson. Mystery; Police procedural; Inspector Banks series — final volume.

The last book Robinson wrote before his death in October 2022. I’ve been reading his Inspector Alan Banks’ series since the first was published in 1987 (might have taken me a year or two to discover this on a New Fiction shelf at the library, but I’ve looked forward to each one since for almost 35 years).

I will miss Banks, his neat, well-organized cottage in the Yorkshire countryside (restored and rebuilt after a fire set by one of the criminals he brought to justice). I’ll miss his wide-ranging taste in music, often esoteric – rock, classical, jazz . . . . and I’ll miss his colleagues and friends whom I’ve got to know over the decades. As with Reginald Hill’s series featuring Dalziel and Pascoe (Hill died in 2012 after writing the series for almost 40 years), these books have accompanied me through my adult reading life. Their arrest, at the death of their creators, feels significant. . .

24. The Windsor Knot. S.J. Bennett. Mystery; Series featuring Queen Elizabeth II as amateur sleuth; palace culture; ageing.

Running out of time to get this posted before my trip, so I’ve copied the following verbatim from my Instagram post:

I so enjoyed this mystery featuring the late Queen Elizabeth II as amateur detective. Bennett has captured a tone that conveys character and heritage without ever becoming tedious or contrived. My knowledge of palace culture is, admittedly, limited to what I gleaned from watching The Crown, but Bennett’s representation seemed credible to me — and I loved the connivance down the line of former private secretaries.

Also most entertaining and easy to relate to were the Majesty’s (suppressed but strongly felt) thoughts on being underestimated and/or patronized because of her advanced age.

A total delight and I’m looking forward to reading more in this series.

Okay, that’s it for my March reading — it was a good month for books! What about you? Have you read any good books lately? (Or any you’d care to warn us away from!) Anything to add to what I’ve said about the books in this post? I will be busy or in transit over the next few days and unlikely to respond to your comments, but I’ll be reading them and I encourage you to chat among yourselves. And if someone wants to pass around a bottle or two of rosé, do make yourselves at home.

xo,

f