Books Read in May 2025

I don’t know how many of you subscribe to The Guardian‘s free weekly Bookmarks newsletter, but before I summarize my May reading, I thought it would be worth sharing a few quotations from the June 1st edition, an article on “The Truth about Fiction.” It begins with a reference to what Elif Shafak wrote in the Guardian earlier and goes on to quote what she said at the Charleston literary festival: “I think it’s a bit unfortunate that in the English language we use fiction as the opposite of fact,” she said. “Fiction brings us closer to truth, and it does it in its own gentle and profound way.” (the bolding is my emphasis)

The article continues to quote Shafak: “A novelist’s job is to not shy away from questions, including difficult questions, and to open up a space of freedom and nuance and pluralism. And then you take a step back, and you leave the answers to the reader.”

The article also quotes musician Brian Eno, speaking at the Hay Festival, on the importance of stories. In accessing stories, the journalist further cites Eno, “what you’re doing is you’re encountering all these simulations in order to have a sense of how you might feel about those things in real life and what you might do about them if you encounter them in real life . . . .The rehearsal process that is going on when you’re reading something or watching a film or whatever you’re doing is a preparation of a certain kind.”

The article also refers to a panel at the Charleston festival when the writer Eimear McBride, on a panel at Charleston with the actor Denise Gough, spoke about how fiction can “give you some space” between fiction and reality. Experiencing something difficult via a story, she said, can make issues easier to process. The article goes on to note that actor Denise Gough, on the same panel as McBride, agreed with her, and it quotes Gough as saying that it can be “easier to empathise when it’s fiction . . . Sometimes the onslaught of reality, it’s a bit like, ‘oh, I can’t take that.’” But reading a book or watching TV and film can help to “open yourself up.”

The article also offers thoughts about the value of fiction from English artist Grayson Perry and American financier and former (very briefly) White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. It closes with more from Elif Shafak speaking at the Charleston festival:“It makes me sad when some readers say: ‘I don’t read fiction,’” because they want to prioritise reading about “important stuff.” “Someone who says, ‘I don’t have time for fiction’ is telling us, ‘I don’t have time for my own emotions,’” she said. “That is not a good place to be in. So I hope we can read across the board: fiction, nonfiction, east, west, and keep this childish curiosity alive.”

And now that I’ve made a long post even longer (while preaching to the converted, I know!), onward to my May reading, right after this regular reminder: 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. (But hmmm, just realized I haven’t posted on IG about any of my May reading, except for a photo of my book stack!)

22. Christine Falls. Benjamin Black (aka John Banville). Mystery/Crime novel; literary fiction; Quirke series; Dublin, 1950s; sociological critique; Catholic Church in Ireland.

I’ve belatedly gone back to read the first in the series — and Wow! Quirke is really a miserable sod. By now, of course, because I’ve read books from much later in the series, I know more about his relationship with the young woman whom he believes to be his niece . . . no spoilers but again, Wow!

And I do give him credit for persisting in his determination to track down the truth about a young woman whose death has been too quickly signed off under circumstances that the surly, heavy-drinking pathologist is determined to investigate. The corruption he is tracking in 1950s Dublin, involving the Catholic church and its wide influence, leads him across the sea to wealthy Irish-Americans in Boston.

And throughout we get to know more of Quirke’s own beginnings, the desperately unhappy childhood in a rule-bound, stingy orphanage. Which perhaps makes the reader somewhat more sympathetic to him, redeems him slightly, but he’s still not particularly likeable.

Curious now to keep reading forward from this first Quirke novel (published in 2006 under Banville’s pen name, Benjamin Black) to April in Spain (2021) which is where I jumped into the series (although I’d met him very briefly in Banville’s Snow, the 2nd St. John Stafford published in 2020. And earlier this year, I read the most recent Quirke book, The Lock-Up.

23. Raising Hare. Chloë Dalton. Memoir; creative non-fiction; nature writing; eco-crit.

I loved this memoir! Dalton finds a leveret (a very young hare) apparently abandoned/orphaned after she’s heard aggressive barking in the vicinity. With some misgivings and taking thoughtful precautionary measures, she ends up taking it home. Despite being told that it will not survive now that she’s removed all posibility of its mother returning, she researches and she gets help and advice from her sister, a smallholder farmer. Not only does the leveret survive, but it grows to be a hare and . . .

No spoilers here, but the memoir includes beautifully observant nature writing and a fascinating study of the human perception and representation of hares throughout history and across (mostly British/European) culture. Dalton also shares her concern about the loss of wildlife habitat to modern farming technology which favours larger and larger fields with fewer hedgerows.

Very different from Edward de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes (which is also a memoir but is about the ceramicist-artist-author’s tracking the five generations through which his family built a fabulous collection of art. The collection comprised at least forty important Impressionist works, but most significantly for the memoir’s title, it also contained 247 pieces of Japanese netsuke, including the eponymous ceramic hare. When the family was dispersed as Jews during the Third Reich, the collection was stolen and dispersed, and part of the author’s quest in the book is bringing it back together, at least within the memoir’s pages.

I wrote about de Waal’s memoir here, if you’re interested in learning more about it. And while Dalton’s memoir is memoir/natural history, much different, admittedly, than de Waal’s memoir/cultural history, the two seem to call across my bookshelves to each other. Perhaps together they would make a thoughtful gift package to a reader who likes memoirs and cultural history and nature writing and making connections. I highly recommend both!

24. The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Amy Tan (writer and illustrator). Memoir; Bird-watching; Nature writing; Drawing and sketching.

Recommended by Suon, I think. Thank you!

Charming development of the journal Tan kept in “real time” of the birds that came to the many, many feeder(s) in her backyard overlooking the San Francisco Bay. A fine example of how attentive, repeated observation can inform us — in this case even more so because Tan puts in the “pencil miles” (she credits her naturalist/artist teacher John Muir Laws for the term. And those miles have paid off — lovely, often amusing, drawings and watercolour sketches throughout. Then she’s taken the original sketch journal pages and amplified them, using her critically acclaimed writing skills to build narratives that engage readers, involving us in the daily ornithological drama.

And guess how many live mealworms she handles daily? Sorry, you’ll have to read the book!

25. Those We Thought We Knew. David Joy. Mystery/crime novel; Police procedural; US history; US racism.

I ordered this from the library after seeing a brief video clip in which the author, a white, 12th-generation North Carolinian, spoke about his family’s Confederate history, about discovering that they had been slave-owners, and, especially, about learning that Alexander Stephens (first vice-president of the Confederate States) said that the cornerstone of the Confederacy was the negro’s inferiority to the white man and that the negro’s natural condition was slavery to the “superior” race.

This novel — part literary fiction, part crime novel, if we are pressed to use such labels — makes its readers confront America’s racism directly and honestly. But it also does what Toni Morrison said a writer must do while delivering painful, necessary truths: it rewards our reading. It does this by offering a variety of complex and interesting characters, flawed (but also often noble) in their humanity; we’re also rewarded with compelling plot; and the setting (both geographical and historical) is richly detailed, well observed, and convincing — and prompts readers to consider the relationship between place and individuals, and of both to community.

Highly recommended as an important way to understand more deeply what Ibram X explains about “how to be an anti-racist.” And be entertained by a compelling mystery while you get there.

26. Meet Me at the Museum. Anne Youngson. Literary fiction; epistolary novel; domestic fiction; romance; epistolary friendship; women’s lives; interesting 60+ characters.

Thank you to Mary S. for recommending this book in the comments on my February reading post, and to Wendy in York, Christine, and another Mary for seconding that recommendation.

A “farm wife” in rural England writes a letter to a professor who had, 50 years earlier, dedicated a book about “the bog people” to his daughter and to 14 schoolmates, of whom the letter-writer, T. Hopgood (Mrs.) was one. She’s not sure why she’s writing, but it has something to do with wanting her life to have more significance than it has.

In return, she receives a letter from the curator of Denmark’s Silkeborg Museum, who tells her that Professor Glob died some years ago and who suggests that she come some day to see the Elling Woman, Tollund Man, and an exhibition about Iron Age life. Thus a correspondence begins, formal at first, with both writers using “Dear Mrs. Hopgood” and “Dear Mr. Larsen,” signing off with “Best wishes” or “Sincerely” or Regards.”

But gradually as the letters go back and forth, these two lonely people (she’s married, but any romance or even mutual interest seems gone, she feels more like a necessary worker in a family business; and his wife disappeared decades ago, leaving him to raise their two children) begin telling each other more and more about their lives. In fact, they seem to be revealing these lives to their own selves, as they narrate, as much as to the addressees. As well, gradually, they begin using using first names, more informal (and, we notice, sometimes more intimate) salutations. At the same time, the letters indicate that both begin to take small steps to change their individual lives with the encouragement and support of the other.

You’ll have to read this to find out if these two epistolarians ever meet and whether or not a romance develops between them. But there’s so much more to their exchanges than flirtation, in case I should leave you with the wrong impression. The novel is satisfying in so many ways — I found the exchange of ideas, thoughts, and feelings between two new friends so hopeful and affirming. They speak of poetry, music, anthropology, farm life, parent-(adult) child relations, about what matters most in life, how to identify and hew to one’s values. A substantive and sustained conversation that demonstrates, as well, the wisdom of life beyond 60.

Finally, worth noting that Anne Youngson was 70 when this book — her debut novel — was published.

27. Fatal Grace. Louise Penny. Mystery/Crime; Police procedural; Detective-Inspector Gamache/Three Pines series; Eastern Townships, Quebec.

I enjoyed this second in the Three Pines series as well, while beginning to be curious about how the author sustains the Three Pines connection and community throughout the series. She’s added interesting new elements this volume: the curling, the New Age spirituality, and then a few new characters. The focus on art and music continues, definitely an attraction for me. And there’s a foray into Montreal, a consideration of social problems such as homelessness and mental illness. The continued exploration of older characters — Penny gleefully smashes stereotypes of “little old ladies,” for which I’m entirely grateful.

And a long narrative arc begins to be seen with references to a moral decision Gamache made in the past which has impeded his career ever since and seems likely to threaten it in the future.

28. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. Elizabeth Taylor. Literary fiction; Women’s lives; Old age; Social critique; Domestic fiction; Spring-Winter friendship-with-a-twist; Set in late 60s London.

I saw this recommended on the Booker Prize website on a list of Booker-nominated books for fans of the TV series White Lotus. And it’s been included in The Guardian’s “100 Best Novels Written in English” (#87 on Robert McCrum’s 2015 list) with this comment: “Elizabeth Taylor’s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life — facing the changes taking shape in the 60s.”

All true, and McCrum doesn’t even mention the (bleak!) black humour. I think the novel is probably easier to admire if the reader is a decade or two younger than I am. I found the social isolation, the teetering-on-dependence-and-precarity of these characters disturbing, but even more so, the narrative tone describing them. Ouch! Is that how I will soon be seen? Times change, certainly, and the critique here is aimed at a specific time and place and, especially, class-conscious, gendered social structure. But still. . .

Recommended with that proviso. Also, I’d say this #readswellwith Magda Szabo’s novel Iza’s Ballad which I wrote a bit about here.

30. The Bullet that Missed. Richard Osman. Mystery/Crime novel; Thursday Murder Club series; Elderly protagonists; amateur detectives.

I read this volume in the series out of order, so that now I see more clearly the narrative arcs for three of the series’ main characters’ romances. Three couples are shown here in the early stages of their relationship, and there’s some light exploration of how to recognize love, how to accept it, trust a partner, etc. The ages of the six people in these new relationships runs from early midlife to elderly, and it’s refreshing to see how much is the same across the generations. As well, one of the Murder Club’s main characters, deeply in love with her husband, is experiencing the changes in their longstanding relationship as he loses some of his cognitive capacity.

And the depiction of this early dementia, the cognitive decline, is as thoughtful and nuanced as Osman’s overall treatment of elderly characters — the husband who is becoming aware of gaps in his recall, lapses in his thinking, is nonetheless the one who provides a central clue.

Having already recommended the first in this series, I really needn’t have said another word about any of these — if you weren’t hooked after finishing that book, I doubt I can do a better job of convincing you to read the rest!

31. Long Island. Colm Tóibín. Literary fiction; domestic fiction; women’s lives; marriage; emigration; Ireland and Long Island 1970s.

I dug out what I’d written about Brooklyn (to which this is something of a sequel) on the blog back in 2009, and that refreshed the earlier book a bit for me, but I really need to go back and read it again. And now I want to read Nora Webster as well (another character that appears in these pages).

This novel starts with Brooklyn’s Eilis Lacey, 20-ish years after she went back to Ireland to be with her family as they mourned the death of her sister, Rose. On that visit, she had just secretly married her Italian-American husband, Tony, but back in Enniscorthy, she settled back into a community and culture that she had missed. And a relationship had developed between her and a certain Jim Farrell.

Since then, returning to Brooklyn and then moving to Long Island, Eilis has been happily married to Tony, raising a daughter who will soon be off to university and a son who’s likely to enter the family plumbing business. The large extended family — Tony’s parents and his siblings’ families — live in neighbouring houses, and this proximity complicates the choices she and Tony must make after one of Tony’s plumbing clients comes to tell Eilis that the client’s wife is pregnant with Tony’s child. Further, this client tells Eilis, when the baby is delivered, he refuses to have it in his house, but instead will bring it to Tony’s house for he and Eilis to raise.

When Eilis confronts her husband — a good father to her children, with whom she has thought she had a happy marriage — she realizes that he and his extended family intend to accept the baby. Further, they expect she will help raise it as her own.

So for the first time since before her children were born, she’s returning to Ireland to visit her mother and brothers. Determined that she will not have the expected baby raised in her home — nor is she willing to have it raised by her mother-in-law, in which case she would have to see the child and be reminded daily of her husband’s betrayal — Eilis plans this time away as something of an ultimatum to Tony and also as a way to bolster her commitment to herself. And during this time-out, inevitably in small-town Enniscorthy, she encounters Jim Farrell.

A thoughtful, gentle, and compassionate novel — and despite the central structuring drama, slow, quiet, and brilliantly observant of human nature. Of small communities and the way we are (or try not to be) constrained within them. Of how we make difficult choices, how we weigh consequences, and of how much agency, really, do we have? and why? and how use it responsibly? About love, marriage, parenthood, friendship (does Eilis have any real friends?), community, national identity, displacement . . . And about place. So much about place and who a person is in that place. How much different can (or must) they be elsewhere. . . .

And that’s all she wrote. . . about all she read, in May . . . (“she” being me, but you got that, right?)

Now it’s your turn, if you would like to share responses on anything I’ve written here (have you read any of these books? Agree, disagree, or want to add to what I’ve written about them?) and/or, perhaps you’d like to respond to the excerpts I’ve shared from that Guardian Bookmarks article on “The Truth about Fiction.”

And, of course, as always, I’m keen for readers to share recommendations from your recent reading. We’re in that transitional time between seasons, right now, with some of us getting the “beach/hammock” books ready for summer’s lazy days, and others piling up a stack on the table next to our favourite armchair, basket full of kindling next to the fireplace. . . Let’s chat books and reading. Comments open below.