Books I Read, August 2023

This is probably the latest I’ve ever posted my monthly reading post, and next post I’ll tell you what’s delayed me. Meanwhile, let’s just say that once again, particularly in regards to travel, “The best-laid schemes . . . .gang aft agley . . . (It seems to be a manageable problem, I will quickly reassure you, but has consumed some time and energy).

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.

49. An Unnecessary Woman. Rabih Alameddine. Literary fiction; senior/elderly female protagonist; Beirut; Lebanon; Lebanese history, culture; women’s lives; Lebanese-American writer.

Once again, I’m copying what I wrote on Instagram earlier: The title’s “Unnecessary Woman” is “a feisty, brilliant translator, a septuagenarian in Beirut, contending with all the chaos of that city, educated in so much of its literature, art, and culture, impatient with much of Western assumptions and perspectives. She spends her days (and nights!) translating novels NOT originally written in English or French into Arabic . . . working from an English or French published translation. What a glorious premise for a novel!. Rich, rich, rich in philosophical and bibliographical and literary references and brilliant on the complexities of translation — which, as septuagenarian Aaliya laments, too few of us read anymore anyway.”

I was only about a third of the way through the novel when I wrote that. I’d add now that Aaliya is an auto-didact. Her childhood was not a very happy one, and the marriage arranged for her doesn’t improve her lot, but at least she frees herself from that and learns to live alone. We do learn gradually about one friend, towards whose loss the narrative leads, inexorably.

Otherwise, Aaliya’s solitude and loneliness is mitigated by literature and, I’d say, about thinking critically about what she’s read. Erudite and sad, redemptive and inspiring. I can’t remember where I first was prompted to read this — did one of you readers recommend it? Thank you! — but since then, I’ve come across numerous mentions of it throughout Alba Donati’s Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop (see entry #52).

Note: The front cover blurb by Yiyun Li (author of The Book of Goose): “No words can express my gratitude for this book.”

50. This Is Happiness. Niall Williams. Literary Fiction; Rural Ireland; Coming-of-Age; Arrival of electricity; Cultural change; Masculinity; Male friendships; Grandparent-grandchild relationship.

Set in Faha, a small rural parish/community in County Clare, Ireland — at the moment in the 1950s when electricity, after years, decades even, of procrastination, is bringing unretractable change. 17-year-old Noel Crowe is staying there with his grandparents, having left the seminary — and his faith.

At his grandparents’, he spends time with a new boarder, Christy, 60-something, ostensibly in Faha to set things in motion for the installation of electricity. But as Noel gradually learns, Christy has a larger purpose, wanting to make amends for something in his past.

The unlikely friendship between these two, Noel’s appreciation of his grandparents, the rich simplicity of their life, the clear vision he has now, retelling this story in his late 70s of what was precious then, of how much was lost to the conveniences electricity brought. Further, his memories of falling in love with One, Two, and then all Three of the slightly older daughters — all unattainably beautiful — daughters of the town’s doctor. . . the alcohol-fuelled midnight bicycle rides, he and Christy searching out pubs where Junior Crehan, legendary musician, might be playing…

And all of this told in the most engaging, lyrical, thoughtful prose — lilting, playful descriptions to read aloud and to savour.

“The known world was not so circumscribed then nor knowledge equated with facts. Story was a kind of binding. . . . Because there were fewer sources of where to find out anything, there was more listening.”

Instagram posts here and here (both posts include excerpts I particularly liked).

51. The Bitter Taste of Murder. Camilla Trinchieri. Mystery; Tuscan Mystery / Nico Doyle series; Set in Tuscany.

Part of the stack I put together at Tanner Books (in Sidney, BC, a great little book town!) while killing time before my ferry back in June.

Book 2 in the Tuscan Mystery Series featuring ex-NYPD homicide detective Nico Doyle who’s moved to his deceased wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, gradually becoming part of the community and indulging his amateur chef aspirations by cooking and serving — gratis — at his in-laws’ restaurant. Oh . . . and helping to solve a murder, again. I missed the first book in the series — Murder in Chianti — but apparently in that volume Nico earned the trust and gratitude of the local maresciallo.

To be honest, I was slightly irritated in the first few chapters by what felt like too much explanation of words, customs, and foods, but by the fourth chapter I was caught up and enjoying the characters, setting, and descriptions of food. Good armchair travel to get me dreaming of our time in Tuscany this Fall.

52. Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop: A Memoir. Alba Donati. trans. Elena Pala. Memoir; Books in translation; Bibliophile content; Bookshop; Rural Italy; Women’s Lives.

Imagine starting a bookstore in a town (Lucignano) with only 180 inhabitants. And then imagine that just as you’ve launched this improbable venture, the store suffers a serious fire. Overcoming that setback with the financial aid of crowd-funding and one very generous benefactor, the poet and book publicist Alba Donati restocks, repairs, and re-opens — only to be hit by all those Covid lockdowns in a country shocked by the devastation which the virus wreaked.

But by January 20, 2021, Donati has begun a six-month diary which I found so charming that I wish I’d discovered the book earlier, early enough so that we would have had time to detour there from Lucca this fall.

I love all the musing about books — and I’m planning to go back and work my way through her daily book orders. She’s mentioned numerous books I’ve read recently or in the past . . . and some new-to-me Italian authors whose work I’d like to try — Pia Pera in particular.

And I love the descriptions of the village, all the characters she describes, the wonder of her mother and father meeting each other again when her mother is 90, after decaades apart. . .

Erudite and engaging — Recommended! (See my Instagram post here — includes a passage I like regarding back lists)

53. Exiles. Jane Harper. Mystery; Aaron Falk Series; Set in Australia.

Another Aaron Falk mystery — in this volume, Aaron’s taken a few precious days from his busy work schedule to attend the christening of his closest friend’s toddler son. The christening was to have happened a year ago, but was postponed after the shocking disappearance of another baby’s mother — part of Aaron’s friend’s extended family. She hasn’t been seen since.

And as Aaron begins to question what he knows about the case and begins making connections with the disappearance of another community member years earlier, he also begins questioning his life choices, comparing his busy work schedule and almost non-existent social life with his friend’s rich social and family life in a small rural community. Well-written, thoughtful, entertaining . . . and the last we will read of Aaron Falk, according to his creator Jane Harper. Pity . . .

54. The Librarianist. Patrick de Witt. Literary fiction; humour; Coming-of-(OLD)-age; men’s lives; living alone; retired life.

There’s a scene in this book where the protagonist — “librarianist” Bob — is coerced, directly after his mother’s funeral, into having dinner with her boss, who turns out to have been much more than that. The paragraph in which Bob, sickened by the man and left speechless, leaves the table, leaves the restaurant, leaves Mr. Baker-Bailey crying and waiting for another drink. It’s a precise and striking scene, disturbing, and it reminds me of a scene in deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers.

In that other novel, the scene I’m thinking of is ostensibly about how the younger brother got his freckles, but it follows immediately upon an account by the older brother of how (not much more than a child at the time) he had killed their father. In both novels — although so very different are the lives of those brothers from Bob’s constrained trajectory — there’s a compelling tension between the fable-like parts of the narrative and its perspicacious observations of human psychology.

Bob has almost no social life beyond that which he conducts at work (at the library), but then somehow develops a romance — followed by marriage — and a close male friendship within a year. And then let’s just say complications ensue. . .

That year of love and marriage and friendship is followed by a year of awkwardness and acrimony and disbelief and then divorce. And that’s the most drama Bob’s life has featured since he ran away from home at 12 and spent three or four days with a travelling theatre troupe of two eccentric elderly women and their two trained performing dogs. After the divorce, his life subsides back into solitary quietude until, now retired and post 70, he walks himself into drama and relationships again, volunteering at a local retirement home after helping a lost and disturbed woman find her back there.

Quirky and meandering and rich, melancholy and comic in about equal parts. Reading and living and the relationship between the two . . . I loved this and am happy to have my own copy!

55. The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World. Laura Imai Messina. Trans. Lucy Rand. Literary fiction; Books in translation; Grief and mourning; Based on “real-life” events; Set in Japan.

Once again, I’m mostly quoting my IG post here.

A beautiful book — about grief, pain, love, joy, and the healing power of the imagination. A young Japanese woman who lost her mother and her daughter to the March 2011 tsunami makes a pilgrimage to the so-called Wind Phone — an old, disconnected phone booth in a garden on the edge of a hillside, a phone through which people speak to their dead. While Yui can’t bring herself to lift the receiver, she forms friendships and finds solace and love in the community of other grief-stricken bereaved.

The novel is much more delicate than my quick sketch suggests . . . the prose is limpid and lyrical, gentle and observant. And the reader is offered relief from the grief in sweet, short chapters between the narrative ones. Chapters that describe which paper book cover Yui chose in a bookshop, for example; or that record the Japanese dictionary definition of family; that list the chocolate treats Yui buys with the young daughter of the widower she’s got to know as they travel together on regular pilgrimages from Tokyo to the WindPhone garden (yes, the novel is also a love story).

I loved this book and highly recommend it. Thanks to Dottoressa for another great addition to my reading list. Worth noting that it would read well with Valerie Perrin’s Changer l’eau des fleurs (available in English as Fresh Water for Flowers) which I wrote about in this post.

Also want to note that the Italian original of The Phone Booth, Quel che affidiamo al vento (That which we trust to the wind), is mentioned often in Alba Donati’s memoir, among the lists of books sold/ordered each day. The kind of synchronicity che mi piace. . . that pleases me. . .

56. Down Cemetery Road. Mick Herron. Thriller; Oxford Series; Female protagonists.

This is from Herron’s “Oxford series” which predates the Slough House books by a year or two. Spook territory in this first volume, at least: a house explodes in a residential area, and so-called Bored Housewife Sarah Tucker is stymied in her determination to find out where the surviving child has ended up. She hires a private detective to help her pull at any loose threads that might lead to answers . . . but someone seems to be following her . . . and then her PI is killed and her own life is in danger.

Help comes from unlikely quarters, but will it be enough against some truly frightening and unscrupulous characters with surprising immunity from government intervention? Herron’s Sarah Tucker and Zoë Boehm are great female characters, and there are some well-plotted surprises along the way. I’m surprised, actually, at how well Herron writes from a female perspective. And his wit is as evident here as it is throughout the Slough House books. .

57. Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets. Kyo Maclear. Memoir; Women’s Lives; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Grief/Bereavement; Fathers; DNA search; Roots and Identity; Botany, Gardening, Ecology.

Once again, I’m going to resort to copying out what I wrote in an Instagram post (in case you’re curious, yes, first I copied my Instagram post into my handwritten journal (by hand), and now I’m transcribing those handwritten notes here. I know, not very efficient 😉

Wanting to know more about her paternal grandmother after her father’s death, Kyo Maclear does a DNA test hoping to contact extended family members. What she finds instead (the father she has just lost is NOT her biological father) destabilizes her and shifts her relationship with her mother. This is already a complicated relationship; her mother’s sometimes erratic and/or prickly personality is exacerbated by her limited command of English, her preference for speaking Japanese with her daughter (whose fluency in her erstwhile “mother tongue” is also limited), and the alienation she often feels as a racialized Japanese-Canadian.

But even as their relationship is complicated by the results of the DNA test, the two are brought together by the (academic) daughter’s growing interest in plants, gardens, especially in the context of ethnicity and colonialism. Her mother is an instinctive gardener who eschews many of the strictures of formal horticulture as well as received notions of landscaping — she becomes an inspiration for Maclear’s un-earthing.

A thoughtful and provocative memoir of roots and identity, gardens and ethnicity and archives, culture and colonialism. Intimate and fascinating.

That’s it for the books I read in August. I’d love to stay and chat, but oh, I have to-do lists. So long, the lists, which means So long to you, my friends. . . But I’ll be back to read any comments you leave. Book recommendations or queries or intentions. Book conversation in general. Let’s chat!

xo,

f