What Did I Read in February, You Ask?

It was a good month for reading, February was. Lots of “reading weather,” one might say, euphemistically. So I complied. Turned those pages as the rain and the snow did their thing. Last month those pages included one blockbuster of a big novel; a collection of weird and wonderful short stories; a visit to rural Italy (travel / farmhouse renovation memoir); and four mystery novels (one for Italian readers; another for lectrices/lecteurs).

Let me quote from last December’s bookpost to remind old readers and explain to new ones: “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.”

Here we go, then . . .

8. To Paradise. Hanya Yanagihara. Literary fiction; speculative historical fiction; American; dystopia; pandemic; LGBTQ.

A good friend and very discerning reader recommended this to me — we both read A Little Life a few years ago, and she said she liked this new book much better. It’s certainly much easier to read in many ways (although it does include extended time in a dystopia!)

I might have deepened my appreciation of the novel if I’d read Henry James’ Washington Square first (referred to at least obliquely throughout; each of To Paradise‘s “books” is partially set in a house in Washington Square). . . but at a minimum, I recognize the connection. That will have to do.

3 time periods:

Book I, 1893, takes place in New York (Washington Square), in a (speculative historical) period when New York formed part of the “Free States” (homosexuality and gay marriages are commonplace; gay couples adopt easily from many orphans available; Black people are tolerated as they move through to the North or West, but they aren’t offered citizenship). A wealthy family with the protagonist a yet-unmarried son, his younger siblings both in homosexual marriages with adopted children as is legal and very much normalized — decidedly not the case in other states at the time. Also normal: marriage brokers and arranged marriages. Instead, however, the wealthy scion falls in love with a completely inappropriate choice who may or may not be a con artist.

Book 2, 1993, Manhattan, AIDS epidemic, a young man lives with wealthy older partner — of stylistic interest here is the recurrence of names and places from Book I. Not the same socio-political structure from Book I, nor do the current inhabitants refer wistfully or mournfully to such an idyllic historical period. The US is the same 1993 US I remember from media representation.

Also in Book 2, an interesting Hawaii section — the young man spent his childhood there, and we see a recurring character trait in his family tree that suggests connections with Book I characters if we could only untangle them.

Book 3, 2093 — In NYC again, but one where decades of plagues, of epidemics threatening to become pandemic have led to totalitarian governance, constant surveillance, rationed goods. Again, connections through generations since 1893, 1993 — in this Book made more evident by a series of mid-century letters between the grandfather of the protagonist (a young woman who survived a plague but has some disabilities as a consequence) and an unknown correspondent who lives in England where the politics are apparently much different, more open.

Notable throughout all three books: Relations between grandparents and grandchildren, often because of death or supposed shortcomings of parent; A nexus of Love, obligation, expectation, desire, yearning, caution, risk of being hurt; Responsibilities of wealth and power — dangers inherent in wealth and power . . .

and an overall emphasis on Ethics. It’s a huge novel that poses so many ethical questions, nuanced and interesting ones. I have some reservations (as I did with A Little Life) with the writer’s politics in writing the novel, but I found the book compelling and thought-provoking.

Here’s an excerpt

Also see my Instagram post here.

9. The Left-Handed Twin. Thomas Perry. Thriller/Mystery; Jane Whitfield series; Native American (Seneca) female protagonist; wilderness survival.

In retrospect, I can’t understand why Perry’s appropriation of Seneca culture for his character Jane Whitfield didn’t get in the way of my reading and enjoying every title in this series over the last thirty years. I know I was attentive to the problems of appropriating a voice or a culture. Perhaps because 30 years ago, female protagonists in mystery/thriller novels were thin on the ground. Jane’s intelligence, ethics, self-defense and wilderness skills appealed to me immensely (she uses them to help people — she chooses carefully who might be worthy of her help — escape and “disappear” from a dangerous pursuer). And Perry is a good writer (who seems respectful of the culture and who at least acknowledges the effects on it of colonization) who builds compelling plots and intriguing characters.

I found this latest volume — which may well be the last, as suggested by a twist in the final pages — very satisfying.

10. A Small Place in Italy. Eric Newby. Memoir; Travel Memoir; Restoring Old Farmhouse; Vacation Home; Italy.

Before he was a travel writer, Eric Newby fought in WWII, was captured in 1942, and remained an Italian prisoner-of-war until 1945 (I’m condensing: there was an escape, a prolonged hiding-out, and a re-capture). He met his wife, Wanda, in Italy during that period, and in 1967 they returned to the Italian countryside for much happier reasons, buying a decrepit farmhouse and restoring it as a vacation home whilst getting to know and gradually becoming part of the community.

I liked, especially, reading about them helping with the vendemmie (the grape harvesting and crushing) and the huge meals that were part of that communal effort. Various characters — such as the old fellow who occupied one of their spare bedrooms — by virtue of his many handyman skills and by having been occupying it when they first viewed and then bought it. The images of a way of life that Newby was aware was already disappearing as more convenient (but less sustainable) products became available.

#Readswellwith partner would be Julia Blackburn’s Thin Paths, which I wrote about here.

11. The Ruin. Dervla McTiernan. Mystery; Police procedural; Cormac Reilly Series; Set in Dublin.

The first in the Cormac Reilly series — which series I mistakenly began last year The Good Turn (in which Reilly seems almost a secondary character). Satisfying to get a sense of his backstory here and to see the problems he’s walking into with corruption in the force.

In this first volume of the series, Reilly is introduced mid-career — he’s been ambitious and successful but has taken what seemed a logical lateral move that’s got him in an inimical work environment. Working cold cases, he confronts a file from his rookie year — a young boy and his protective teen sister whose mother has apparently overdosed in a ruin of a house, in conditions that testify to the children’s neglect.

Somehow, this old case becomes relevant to a more topical case — murder or suicide? Overlapping concerns about a fellow officer’s missing sister, about domestic abuse . . . complicated by Cormac’s concern about who he can and can’t trust as he tries to help the girlfriend of the current victim . . .

I especially like how many strong and credible female characters there are, even while the main detective-protagonist is male. Nuanced and well-written.

When I posted about this book on Instagram, a number of other readers chimed in to agree with me. It’s a popular series!

12. Ossigeno. Sacha Naspini. Literary fiction; Crime novel; Contemporary Italy; Read in Italian, Available in English as Oxygen (translation by Clarissa Botsford).

I bought this in a wonderful bookstore pub in Rome, Altroquando, at the recommendation of the sales assistant to whom I explained my level of competence in reading Italian and asked for suggestions of gialli (mysteries/thrillers) I might like. (He also recommended Lello Gurrado’s Assassino in Libreria which I wrote about last year).

A disturbing and fascinating approach to the genre of crime novel in which a man kidnaps and holds captive a victim, in this case a young girl. For fourteen years, a respected archaeology professor keeps her locked up in a small rural hut, as the professor’s son finds out the night they’re interrupted by police at dinner and his father is arrested (and consequently tried and sentenced).

What’s interesting about Naspini’s treatment is that we don’t spend much time at all exploring what Professor Balestri did or — more pertinently — why? Instead, we learn about his apparently loving, if somewhat reticent, relationship with his son. Their shared grief after the wife / mother dies. The ways the father tries to urge his son towards life, out of that grief.

But then we follow the son’s desperate and painful attempts to come to terms with a new perception of his father with some support (his father’s lawyer; a therapist; another therapist) but with limited success. He tracks down and begins to follow Laura, the victim, now in her 20s, trying to find her own sense of what happened. And then we switch narrative point-of-view and we’re reading Laura’s thoughts, moving through Milan with her. . .

And with another switch, we see through the eyes of Laura’s mother who has tried to dull her pain, guilt, and confusion with sex and alcohol. We see the cost to Laura’s father and to the mother’s new partner. We pop into the life of the best friend who’d left Laura alone in the park that day.

All of these secondary victims who are boxded in, caged, oxygen-deprived, not in the same way nor with the same intensity as Laura but nonetheless. . .

And in the book’s startling final twist, a young boy hides as a prank . . . in a metal box . . .

Read in Italian — some of the most difficult reading I’ve done, just because it’s stylistically challenging, and for a second-language reader, establishing context takes more work with so many switches in point-of-view.

13. The Cursed Bunny, Bora Chung. Translated from Korean by Anton Hur. Literary fiction; Short Story Collection; Speculative Fiction; Horror; Feminist.

A collection of short stories by a contemporary young female Korean author with a brilliant and often devastating imagination. Weird stories, ranging between horror and something like a cautionary or morality tale. Contemporary folk or fairy tales that feature uncomfortably corporeal images — body parts and body waste products that take on a life of their own and / or are fetishized. Curses that punish greed. Most indicted throughout is the patriarchy and its collusion with capitalism, but human cupidity in general is punished throughout these pages. Awful and hilarious and enthralling. Thanks to my daughter in Rome for recommending this one!

Said a bit more about this in my Instagram post, where you can catch some of the book’s flavour from his cover design.

14. L’Eau Rouge. Jurica Pavičić. Translated from Croatian to French by Olivier Lannuzel. Mystery novel; Croatia, 20th-21st century history; Croatia, Civil War; Prix Le Point du Polar Européen 2021 — best roman policier (detective novel).

So good, although it was a bit strange reading about the Croatian — specifically, the Dalmatian — geography, culture, community, through a French-language screen. Glad I had that option because Pavičić’s book isn’t yet available in English, and when “Dottoressa” recommends a writer, I pay attention!

As with Naspini’s Ossigeno, there’s an interesting structure here that emphasizes all the many secondary victims and long-term ramifications of the disappearance of a girl — although in this case the girl is 17 when she’s seen for the last time.

I hope to be able to read more of Pavičić’s writing because he seems to be another mystery / crime writer who exploits the wider possibilities of the genre, in this case, by using it to reflect on the changes in Croatia over the 27 years following the girl’s disappearance: so, the fall of communism, the ensuing civil war, and then the changed politics and lifestyle as capitalist development takes over.

I highlighted many passages in my Kobo, examples that show what Pavičić does within the structure of a crime novelHere are a few excerpts:

“La caméra glisse son oeil inquisiteur dans un mur éventré. On découvre les restes d’une salle de concert défoncée: des sièges renversés pêle-mêle, un lustre écrasé. Un piano sur lequel un morceau du plafond est tombé. Et partout du verre, beaucoup de verre.” My rough translation: The camera slides its inquisitive eye into a gutted wall. We discover the remains of a demolished concert hall. A piano on which a piece of the ceiling has fallen. And everywhere, glass, a lot of glass.” Context: Vesna, mother of the missing girl, comes across a crowd of neighbours watching a news report on a television screen and she feels only anger at the others who respond with horror to these images of war’s destruction, having been numbed by the loss of her daughter).

“Adrijan a été bon à la guerre, mais la guerre aussi a été bonne avec lui. Il a aimé l’anonymat, le respect qu’il induit. Adrijan aime ce nouveau moi qu’il s’est construit durant ces trois années de guerre. Il l’aime plus que l’ancien.” My translation: Adrijan was good at war, but war was also good with him. He loved the anonymity, the respect induced. Adrijan loves the new “me” that he built himself during the three years of war. He loves the new me more than the old. Context: A suspect in the girl’s disappearance (and beaten during police interrogation), Adrijan and his family were vilified and badly treated by the community until war broke out and he volunteered to fight.

“à l’arrivée à l’aéroport Pearson, elle donne au chauffeur un pourboire généreux et remercie en anglais. Dalibor Jukić la remercie à son tour en anglais — pas excellent. Son accent sonne dalmate. Elda se dit que c’est curieux: ces deux compatriotes qui vont se séparer, plonger dans l’immensité de la grande ville et ne plus jamais se rencontrer. Ils ne se seront vus qu’une seule fois à l’autre bout du monde, là, maintenant, pour la première et la dernière fois.” Context: A woman who has lived in Toronto for years, built her career there, is returning to Croatia for business purposes.

My rough translation: Arriving at Pearson airport, she gives the driver a generous tip and thanks him in English. In return, Dalibor Jukić thanks her in english — not excellent. His accent sounds Dalmatian. Elda tells herself how curious it is: that these two compatriots (she and the taxi driver) who are going to separate, plunge into the immensity of this big city and never meet again. They will only have seen each other a single time at the other end of the world, there, now, for the first and the last time.

Sadly, I’m still looking to see if I can find Pavičić’s books translated into English . . . or more in French . . . or Italian. I suspect our Dottoressa will be able to tell us. . .

And now we’re at the part where I turn the microphone over to you. Let’s chat books — Has our reading overlapped at all? Do we agree or disagree or want to ask questions of each other? What have you been reading that you loved? or that disturbed you? or that you decided wasn’t worth finishing? Thrown any books across the room lately? Or picked up one you’d put down, unfinished, months ago. . . and found this time that it suited you very well? All of this and more we could talk about. Tea, coffee, and an olive oil- citron cake over on the table there — Help yourself and then come back to your chair and we’ll Talk Books!