What I Read in December, 2022: Rounding out the Year. . .

Even with the busy days of Christmas preparations and celebrations, I seem to have found ample time to read last month. Might have had something to do with that snowfall, the cold temperatures, the dangerously icy sidewalks. My cosy leather couch cushions and a beloved cashmere throw had more appeal than ever, and I snuggled in to close the year with a rich selection of books, which I’m happy to recommend.

I was transcribing my entry for Book #87 (Annie Ernaux’s Les Années) when I realized the post had become ridiculously long — so, as I did with my August Reading Post, I’m splitting December’s in two. I’ll post this one today, and wait a day or two before posting Part II. Let me know if you prefer having the post divided into more manageable lengths this way or if you would have been happier having only one long reading post (especially applicable, I think, to those who get the posts sent to their emailbox).

As usual, the numbering comes from my annual 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). I’ve used regular font for any additions to my journal notes and included references to any posts from my Instagram Reading account.

81. The Mermaid of Black Conch. Monique Roffey. Literary fiction; Magic Realism; Fairy Tale; Historical Fiction; Caribbean Writing; Postcolonial Writing; Feminist Writing; Love Story; (Trinidadian-born) British writer.

My friend Jennifer gave me this when we visited her in Paris, but I didn’t get to it until we got home — and it was well worth having carried around.

Set on a Caribbean island, where an American father and son have hired a local crew to take them out fishing . . . . and the son hooks something immense and powerful. When they manage, with great difficulty and some father-son conflict, to haul it on board, their catch turns out to be a mermaid. Instead of releasing her, the (very obnoxious, arrogant) father insists on binding her and beringing her to shore, intending to make a fortune from her.

But she’s rescued and protected and, as her humanity is revealed and restored, and she’s guided back to language by her rescuers, the society around her is revealed in all its racism, classism, and sexism.

There’s a love story here, but it’s complicated and it will demand sacrifice and some serious self-examination on the part of several central characters. Listening, hearing — communication in general — are among this magical tale’s important themes. An enthralling and delightful and tragic fable for our times.

Instagram post here.

82. Small Things Like These. Claire Keegan. Literary Fiction; Novella; Irish setting; Christmas; Irish writing.

This title! because the book itself — novella? long short story? — is one of those “small things” that are yet so important.

A story set in a small Irish town, Christmas week, 1985. A man who had grown up as the only son of an unwed mother and knows too well the judgement his Catholic community places on women like her. He also knows that both he and his mother were protected from the worst effects of that judgement by the kindness and moral strength of her employer.

So as a happily married father of daughters and the owner of a successful small business in that same community, he has a decision to make when he discovers the conditions of the young unwed pregnant women sheltered — or imprisoned (depending on who’s describing their so-called care) — at the local convent.

The story is so economically told, details and examples so precisely chosen to build clear images of Bill Furlong’s wife, his five daughters, the simple comforts of their home. His wife’s inherent goodness and practical sense — but also her warnings to him of the costs to their business, their daughters’ futures, of him going against the community’s unspoken rules.

This is not at all a “preachy” book, albeit it crystallizes the demand on individual morality, the stark truth about the cost of “doing the right thing,” and thus a recognition that many of us fall short. It’s quiet and beautiful and clear. It tells us, finally, what we know, but so often would prefer to ignore. As Hilary Mantel’s blurb on the front cover says, “Powerful and affecting and very timely.”

83. Mercury Pictures Presents. Anthony Marra. Literary fiction; 20th-century historical fiction; American immigration; 2nd World War; mid-century politics in/and Hollywood.

I let this big book interrupt the progress of my TBR list when I saw it on the New Fiction shelf of our local library branch and remembered how much I’d loved his A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (wrote a bit about that way back here. This is quite a different book, and that’s okay. Lighter and more entertaining, but still much to think about after the last page is turned.

A young woman, Maria, an Italian who’s left her country of birth for America with her mother in difficult circumstances during the rise of fascism. Resisting her mother’s and great-aunts’ urgings to marry, she instead finds work assisting a movie producer and becomes central to his company’s success — albeit without receiving the billing she deserves. Her story is caught up with that of another immigrant, one who was rescued as a boy by Maria’s father in the small community to which the older man was exiled and confined.

These two meet on the movie production lots with other European emigrés who have been integral to the success of the Hollywood film industry — but who become enemy aliens as soon as Pearl Harbour pulls their adopted country into WW II. So that Maria now experiences something of what her father has lived, although the censoring of his letters makes it impossible for her to learn much of this from him. The reader knows. however, as the story follows his life until the boy he rescues is grown and aided in his escape (rescued again, in fact) by the older man, his father figure.

The censorship of her correspondence with her father, ironically, has had a benefit: it has taught Maria how to navigate the demands of the Film Censorship Board. For me, much of the novel’s interest came from watching the play between what someone wants to stay — through a letter, a photograph, a work of art, a Hollywood film — and what the social, political, and cultural context will allow. And once having found the space to express as much as possible of what the creator(s) want(s) to communicate, how much can that representation contribute to a changed construction of what stands for reality? Constant questions, of course, but they become much more urgent during wartime, when artists — poets, scriptwriters, actors, scale-model miniaturists, photographers — and movie producers find the space to create by lending their services to the War Office.

I hope I haven’t made the novel sound pedantic by lingering on these questions. In fact, it reads like a gorgeous big-screen Hollywood movie, but one with the ability to slyly skewer itself while nonetheless keeping the story lively , the characters interesting, the stakes high and credible, and the repartée sparkling and deadly comic. Watch, for example, for the Italian aunts and the undertaker who courts one of them. Also for the paper-pushing, Sherlock Holmes fan, the Italian police inspector, Rocco Fernando.

My Instagram post includes snapshots of a few favourite passages (and check the comments — one of them was generously left by Anthony Marra himself!)

84. Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Emma Fick. Illustrated Travel Memoir; Train Travel; Beijing to Moscow through Mongolia.

I can’t remember which reader suggested this for me, on the basis of its combo of text and sketch illustrations to recount a train voyage, but I’m very grateful. I was able to get a copy from Vancouver Public Library quite quickly, despite it being a 2022 publication. Timely in one way, awkward in another — the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes me want to boycott all things Russian, but Fick’s account humanizes the country, or at least the part of it the railroad passes through — humanizes it and places it in the context of a long history

Observations about travel in general are thoughtful, often resonating with my own experience although Fick and her partner’s trip is more challenging that any travel I’ve done. The bureaucratic hassle they underwent at the Russian border, for example; I would have been in tears long hours before she was (which, given the result her tears eventually obtained, might have been a good thing).

Charming, lively, informative illustrations throughout complement the handwritten text — the combination is aesthetically very pleasing, but also gives a sense of intimacy and immediacy. I also enjoyed, during my Covid fogginess, being able to pick up the book and read a few pages. If I didn’t pick it up again for a few days, I could easily rejoin the journey.

Instagram post here, with a few more examples of illustrations.

To be continued, then . . . feel free to comment on any of the books I’ve mentioned here OR hold your comments, if you prefer, until you’ve seen all my December reading accounted for. Whichever you choose, I’m looking forward to a lively conversation about our winter reading.