Rentrée Reading. . . September’s books. . .

With this post, I’ve turned the page on three of the reading year’s four chapters. I’m restraining myself from reciting the usual platitudes about Time, but I can’t stop those phrases whispering to me from the calendar on the wall here. . .

I read a mix of genres last month, with some very satisfying mysteries dominating, numbers-wise, at least. As usual, I’ve numbered the titles to accord with their entry in my handwritten Reading Journal, which is the source of these responses; what’s written in Italics here is transcribed directly from my scribbled notes, which are not meant to be comprehensive reviews but just sketchy memory aids to help me recall impressions, overall plot and character and setting. Often fragmentary and elliptical, I hope they might help me retrieve something from an ever-growing library of books shelved in a cluster of brain cells that aren’t getting any younger!

No further ado, then. . . Onward!

63. Thin Paths: Journeys In and Around an Italian Mountain Village. Julia Blackburn. Memoir; Travel; Italy; Nature Writing; WWII / Italian history.

I can’t remember which reader commented to alert me to this title, but Thank you! What a gem this is!

I loved this book and will keep an eye out for a secondhand copy — and maybe even buy a new one to give to an Italophile friend. Lyrical and observant nature writing — frogs, toads, salamanders and beetles, bats and boars and all sorts of flowers. And Blackburn’s descriptions are often illuminated by inventive and surprising metaphors — never overwrought or precious, simply fresh and entertaining and somehow yielding a precise image.

And her gradual accumulation of the stories of those who have lived in this remote mountain village since before WW II obviously reflects the trust she slowly gains from them and the respect and love she holds for them. And such stories! Resilience in a hard-scrabble existence in the semi-feudal pre-War days when the villagers owed half of any harvest to one of the three padroni who owned the land. And then the horrors wrought by the Italian fascists and then by the Germans. This particular village was spared having people burned in their homes, but they had homes burned, saw sons and friends killed in front of them as warning to other partisans.

But even in those tough times, the villagers found much to love about their harsh, steep places — and knew how to find and celebrate its bounties, raising sheep, cultivating chestnuts, collecting musrooms, building houses from the stones around them, warming themselves with wood from the slopes, drinking the mountainside’s clear cold water.

And Blackburn shows us the seduction of living so intimately with and in a place. Her writing stirs that same yearning I feel lately when I watch Martin Dooljard’s YouTube videos about restoring stone houses in a somewhat similar Italian mountainscape.

My Instagram post for this book.

64. The Locked Room, Elly Griffiths. Mystery; Female protagonist; Ruth Galloway series; police procedural + amateur detective; forensic archaeology; set in Norfolk, England (during Covid-19.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted this volume in the Ruth Galloway series to have been more tightly edited or not. Pacing seemed too, too slow for perhaps the first third of the novel, so very long setting up any action at all, although we knew there had to be something up with the friendly new neighbour. On the other hand, this novel is set (and must have been written) during the worst days of pandemic lockdown, and it captured the strange forced inertia of that time. The slow recognition — painfully arrived at via the illness and even loss of loved ones — that Covid was not “just another cold or flu” virus.

And without giving away any spoilers, I can say that the murders that are (eventually) investigated are interesting ones, and the frustrations involved in apprehending and then bringing to justice the murderer are convincing.

As for Ruth and Harry Nelson, I think my impatience is justified. Their daughter, Kate, is moving into her teens now; Harry’s two daughters with his wife are in their 20s and the son who kept him with her is now walking and talking, albeit from a distance during the early weeks of Covid. The book closes with a clear sign that something will change (or stay the same, via an ultimatum?) . . . and I’m more than ready. Dare I say, though, that it’s tough to imagine Ruth happily cohabiting with a man as set in his ways as Harry?

65. Il Barone Rampante, Italo Calvino. Read in Italian, but available in English as The Baron in the Trees (1959, translation by Archibald Colquhoun; 2019 translation by Ann Goldstein). Literary fiction; historical fiction; fairytale or magical realism; conte philosophique; Set in fictional village of Ombrosa (on the Ligurian Riviera), late 18th / early 19th century.

Thanks to Marcie, who asked me back in the comments to my July Reading post whether I’d read Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees. I hadn’t yet, despite having had it recommended several times by one or other of my Italian teachers. Marcie’s comment prompted me to request the book from our fabulous public library, and I had a copy of the Italian paperback in my hand within a week. And, thankfully, was able to renew it at least once. . .

I read this completely in Italian, no English translation alongside to help, as I had for Calvino’s In una notte d’inverno. . . I looked up quite a few words and just accepted the small comprehension gaps left by the ones I didn’t. Mostly, the context made the meaning clear enough and also, as I read, the words I didn’t know seemed fewer. I find I start to acquire a lexicon over the first few chapters that makes the rest of the book easier to follow.

I loved this story of a young teen, frustrated with his family’s allegiance to tiresome traditions and expectations of their aristocratic inheritance, climbing spontaneously into the trees during a particularly horrid lunch and never again setting foot on the ground. His adaptation to life in the trees, his integration into Nature (cultivated nature, of course, in that landscape).

The many tree names Calvino includes through Cosimo’s eyes, Cosimo’s awareness of other animals, his growing ability to find food, water, to hygienically “do his business” (the Italian text is similar in its euphemistic tone).

The young girl he meets his first day in the trees — doesn’t realize the lifelong place she will hold in his heart and mind.

His awareness of class, his other allegiances that defy his upbringing, his intellectual growth through readings in philosophy, literature, and economics. The wonderful chapter recounting Cosimo’s friendship with the notorious “brigand” whom he encourages to read — probably my favourite part of the book. And what fun to see his correspondence with various intellectuals of the day . . . and even his meeting with some historic luminaries who must peer up into the foliage to chat with him.

There’s the Turkish uncle (Cosimo’s father’s half-brother) who manages the estate, does its book-keeping. . . and shares with Cosimo his passion for hydraulics and for bee-keeping. . . but has his unhealthy connection to pirates. . .

And finally, the environmental criticism that forms an important part of the work, the lament it raises for a rich forest eco-culture that had long been destroyed by the time of Calvino’s writing (1950s) — and thus, also, a warning to protect what we have. In fact, Il Barone Rampante or The Baron in the Trees reads well with a number of books about (or featuring) trees that have been published recently: Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass; Susanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree; Peter Wohl’s The Hidden Life of Trees; Elif Shafak‘s The Hidden Life of Trees; Richard Power’s The Overstory. . . . I could go on, but you get the idea. . . .

My Instagram post here

66. The Good Turn, Dervla McTiernan. Mystery / Thriller; Police procedural; Cormac Reilly series; Set in Galway, Ireland.

Unfortunately, I see that I mistakenly have read the most recent in this series without having read the previous two. So I’ll clearly have to go back and start again with The Ruin. . . .

Meanwhile, though, here’s what I wrote about The Good Turn in my Reading Journal:

Someone saw a young girl being punched in the stomach and pulled into a truck by an older man. But the police in Galway are understaffed, and at first the call is dismissed as the imaginative extrapolation of a bored schoolboy. By the time it’s recognized as credible, Peter Fisher (Garda) has to make tough decisions, unable to get authority from higher-ups who’ve “left the office.”

Desperate to rescue the girl in time, he makes a bold move that has dramatic consequences. Backed up by his immediate superior, Detective Cormac Reilly, in the aftermath, he’s nonetheless banished to a small seaside town where he has to answer to his over-bearing (and morally lazy) father. And his superior is fired, so can do little to help. . .

No spoilers except to say that tugging on a few threads leads both Peter and Det. Reilly to suspect corruption deeply embedded in the police force, and they follow those threads from their different directions.

Knowing now that this is the third book in the Detective Cormac Reilly series, and not yet having read the first two volumes, I’m amused to see that I assumed Garda Fisher to have been the one to follow, so to speak. In fact, looking back I can see that Reilly’s personal life is developed at least as much as Fisher’s and that Reilly has a better sense of the big picture . . . although Fisher has stubborn determination on his side and we get a rich sense of his background and ongoing challenges as well. McTiernan manages an engaging balance between the two characters, and I’ll be curious to see how the first two books build up to this. Setting, plot, characters: all effectively drawn; I hope to read more from this author.

67. Voroshilovgrad, Serhiy Zhadan. Translated from Ukrainian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Wheeler. Literature in translation; Ukrainian writer; Set in Donbas region, Ukraine; picaresque; post-Soviet Ukraine; road trip.

Read this after my daughter in Rome asked if I had read Zhadan’s The Orphanage or knew any Ukrainian writers to recommend for her book club. I hadn’t, and I didn’t, but kept an eye out and eventually spotted a review of Voroshilovgrad and found that our library had a copy and that the waiting list for it was quite short. As the book’s cover blurb says, Zhadan is “Ukraine’s best-known poet” — and the novel is marked by the concentrated language and expressive figurative language of a poet. (I’ve included one brief excerpt in my Instagram post that exemplifies this.)

But it’s also a picaresque novel, and it verges on the apocalyptic at times. First published in Ukraine in 2010, it’s set in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine (the main focus now of Russia’s invasion) in the post-Soviet period. Herman, the narrator, has been living in the city, working as an “expert” in marketing and politics. He gets called back to his hometown to sort out problems at the gas station his brother owns after his brother has disappeared, ostensibly in Amsterdam.

Thinking he’s only going to spend a few days there, Herman instead gets caught up in old friendships, in a familiarity with the countryside, as well as in threats and extortion and violence by various parties, and he throws in his lot for a while with gypsies and shtundists (oh yes, I Googled this word. . . .In an apparently “Wild West” environment, there is a foreboding sense of laws one can unwittingly run afoul of, but at the same time no clearly protective justice system or policing to turn to.

Yet Herman feels a nearly atavistic connection to the land, the customs, the people . . . and there’s an overpowering sense of community and solidarity, if tinged with a sense of the hopelessness of dissent.

I said this about the novel over on my Instagram post: “A picaresque road-trip novel, set in the Donbas region we’re hearing so much about in the news, I found it a compelling way to get a sense of the geography and culture of this contested area. Not a light read, often difficult, but also entertaining—often funny—and despite scenes of desolation, it illuminates possibilities of hope found in solidarity. Raises questions, too, of how such solidarity is formed…so thus of regional (perhaps national, perhaps divided) identities and their formation, strength, and worth. Throughout, Zhadan’s poetic chops are evident. Swipe left for an example of an unexpected metaphor that witnesses powerfully.”

And you might want to read this very good review by Marci Shore in The New Yorker, late 2016.

68. A Change in Circumstance, Susan Hill. Mystery; Police Procedural; Simon Serrailler series; Aga saga; Southern England, cathedral town setting.

Spotted by chance on the shelf at Vancouver Public Library — couldn’t resist! I wasn’t the only one who thought this series was flagging considerably in the last volume or two, but I’d say it’s back on track now. (I also wonder how much the flagging reflects some big zigs and zags in Hill’s personal life, but that’s another story. I only hope she’s get many more writing years ahead. Both she and her contemporary, Donna Leon, have created families, characters, settings, and relationships I would miss following).

Simon Serrailler is investigating a death that seems to lead to drug trade which ropes young kids into service, entrapping them ruthlessly. And he’s increasingly restless in his personal life. Meanwhile his sister is as stretched as any family physician in the current disarray of the British National Health system, brought low by disastrous budget-cutting. And her son Sam is trying to work out the best career direction (should he continue training in midwifery) and deal with a blow in his romantic relationship.

A satisfying blend of mystery and exploration of family life, ageing, etc.

69. A Foreboding of Petrels. Steve Burrows. Mystery; Police Procedural; Birder Murder Series; set in Norfolk; birdwatching; eco-fiction.

It’s true: I’ve been reading so (too?) many mysteries lately . . .

This one is the latest in the Birder Murder series. Dominic and Lindy are working out the effects and consequences of the drama that dominated the last volume, A Dance of Cranes, one of which is that Dominic is on suspension and forbidden to muddle in any way in active cases. But an old friend of his is found dead after a bird hide is burnt, apparently arson, and Dom begins probing a possible connection with the work of a climate change institution funded by a billionaire. And there’s another suspicious death in Antartica where that institution has a research team collecting data.

Always interesting, in this series, to find out more about different birds — here, the pelagic petrels (unfortunately confused by plastics in the ocean which they ingest as algae). And setting is another enjoyable element. There are some big shifts in the lives of several characters we’ve come to care for. . .

That’s it for another book month, then. Or rather, that’s it for my report on September reading. But our literary conversation has just begun — let me know if you have any comments about the titles I mention above. And catch me up on what you’ve been reading lately or what you’re hoping to begin soon. I look forward to chatting with you and to listening (reading) to you chat with each other. I’ll wait to see who chimes in and then pour myself a cuppa . . .

xo,

f