I was either travelling or preparing to travel through April, so you may notice a certain on-the-fly, slapdash, or catch-up quality to my responses to the month’s books. Honestly, I even thought I might just list the titles, but I do like a few notes to refresh my memory later. So here we go. . .
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 (as it turns out — see above note re travelling this month — I didn’t post any of my reading on that IG account last month. Will try to get back on track there soon.
25. The Wren, The Wren. Anne Enright. Literary fiction; Bildungsroman (Coming-of-Age); Generational narrative; Absent fathers; Father-Daughter; Women’s lives; Set in Ireland. Irish writer.
A poet-father who leaves his wife and two daughters when things get difficult. Decades later, his daughter finds an old televised interview in which he says, before he “glanced up with wet eyes,” “She got sick . . . . Unfortunately, and the marriage did not survive.”
His daughters are divided in their responses — Imelda, the older sister, martyrs herself in care and defence of the mother (the sickness: cancer), angry at her father and both angry at and scornful of her younger sister Carmel’s attempts to excuse her father, to hang onto a few precious memories of him.
When Carmel chooses to have a child — a daughter, Nell — she does so without any complications of relationship beyond biological. So the full force of her personality is brought to bear on her relationship with Nell, who admires her mother but also finds her overwhelming.
Then when Nell seeks love in a romantic relationship, she is seduced (by her own projections of this romanticized love) into an extended period in which she tolerates ongoing emotional abuse — finding it preferable to the void of her (so-called) lover’s prolonged absences.
These three primary characters — father / husband / poet Phil; daughter / mother Carmel; and grand-daughter / daughter Nell — are, in turn, foci of the novel’s different sections. Nell’s are told in first-person; Carmel’s in third-person; and Phil’s, again in 1st-person. Thus there’s a link between Nell and Phil, and although she never met him in real-life, she’s got to know his poetry, has long been aware of having a “well-known Irish poet” for a grandfather.
As well, interspersed throughout the chapters are Phil’s poems, including the one he wrote for his younger daughter, Carmel.
But I’ve flattened the novel into plot, chaaracters, structure, and given too much weight to the absent patriarch. Left out the wry, fierce brilliance of Enright’s prose, her insights into domestic life, to women’s lives, to sex and sexuality, to mothers and daughters. . . .
Nell, at the table describing her mother:”Carmel has a high-elbow cutlery style. She wings those arms right out, cuts, folds, skewers, fit, chews.”
Also Nell, about her abusive boyfriend: “I realised that every stupid, small thing I said that first night we got together had landed somewhere wrong in him, and it rose up now as a taunt. He wasn’t listening to me, he was storing it all up. Despite which I kept talking. I kept offering him the things I loved: a joke, a meme, a dream I had. I told him which people could hurt me, and all my hopes. It was like a song: Love me! Love me!“
And also Nell, as the novel closes: “One sunny Sunday in my mother’s garden, the bird looked at me and I saw the bird and I wanted to undo language and let him be. The bird just was. Long before any of us were here and long after we are gone, he did and will exist. When our lipsticks, our servants, our bleached and plundered coral are all dead or buried in landfill, he will perch on top of the lot of it and sing. At least I hope so. If we are very lucky, the bird will always be the bird.”
26. The Eternal City. Domenica de Rosa. Domestic fiction; Romantic fiction; Armchair travel; Rome.
I reserved this at the library when I found that Elly Griffiths (whose Ruth Galloway and Harbinder Kaur series I’ve written about here — enter “Elly Griffiths” at the search icon) is a pet name for de Rosa, who uses her “real name” to write domestic/romantic fiction. The novel tells of three sisters, their husbands and children — the youngest sister, the novel’s 1st-person narrator, has just had her first child — accompany their mother to Rome where their beloved father (who died suddenly the day his youngest grandchild was born) has asked to have his ashes scattered.
Memories of many childhood visits, of rivalry between the sisters during adolescence (the youngest often left out) . . . and meanwhile the challenges of adapting to life as a new mother . . .
There’s a dangerous flirtation and a reckoning and some self-examination — insights and resolutions, and all against the background of Rome. . .
27. C’mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Darkness. Ryan Knighton. Memoir; Humour; Fatherhood; Disability; Blindness.
I found this copy in a local Little Library box and remembered reading his earlier memoir Cockeyed with my 1st-year students a decade or so ago.
Very funny but also often moving and illuminating account of Knighton’s life with retinitis pigmentosa and the ways that changed with fatherhood. He grapples with cultural constructions of fatherhood that he fears not being able to live up to. And how will be bond with and care for his daughter when he can’t see her, when he worries that not only will he not be able to protect her, but that he might even inadvertently harm her.
28. My Garden (Book). Jamaica Kincaid. Memoir; Horticulture; Essays on Gardening and Life; Racism; Colonialism/Imperialism; Antiguan-American writer.
A collection of essays (many of which appeared earlier in The New Yorker, I believe) which constitute a memoir of her gardening life and also an exploration of her life overall, of her self — and which are propelled both by Kincaid’s passion for gardening (and for collecting plants). The essays are also shaped by Kincaid’s perspective on the complicity of the horticultural world with colonialism and racism and patriarchy. She’s funny — often bitingly so — and sly, slipping in her accusations so that the reader is caught unawares, realizing midway through an account of a plant’s arrival or narrative of its collection and nurturing at what costs — and at whose cost — it grows where it’s planted.
Reading this, I went to my book shelves for my copy of Annie John which I read (and wrote an essay about) for a course in “post-colonial literature” several decades ago. It wasn’t there! No idea where it is now, with all my underlinings and post-it-notes and marginalia. But then, astonishingly, I saw a copy of it in translation in a gorgeous bookstore in Lisbon!
I will never stop being impressed by other countries’ and culture’s willingness to read books in translation. Every European bookstore I’ve lingered in front of or popped inside for a browse has sections devoted to these — so much rarer here in North America (where we have significantly fewer independent bookstores as well).
Jamaica Kincaid’s The Garden (Book) reads wonderfully with Marchelle Farrell’s Uprooting. I’d love to hear these two in conversation about their experiences as gardeners with roots in the Caribbean. . .
29. All the Queen’s Men. S.J. Bennett. Mystery novel; Queen Elizabeth II detective series; palace culture; female detective; elderly detective.
A second volume in a series featuring the late HRH Elizabeth II as a closeted amateur detective. Although the book begins with one of the Queen’s senior advisors discovering the bloody corpse of a female palace cleaner at the side of the swimming pool, the Queen herself is initially puzzled by her own discovery of a favourite painting somewhere it doesn’t belong. While Prince Philip wonders why she cares about a nautical painting he calls “horrible” and “awful,” Her Majesty has always loved it and is troubled that it was removed from her quarters without her knowledge.
The dead woman and the “displacement” of this painting and, it turns out, a list of other palace furnishings, seem at first to have little to do with one another as the death is tentatively assessed as accidental. But then there are more bodies and a series of nasty poison pen letters directed at women, and the queen once again develops some theories and puts her trusted assistant to clandestine work researching possibilities — which she then feeds surreptitiously to the official investigators. Very clever.
And very satisfying, again. Also, the reason for the Queen’s fondness (and the Prince’s distaste) for that “misplaced” painting turns out to be quite sweet. . . .
30. La vérité sur l’affaire Harry Quebert. Joël Dicker. Read in French; Published in English as The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair, trans. Sam Taylor; Adapted for a TV series (featuring Patrick Dempsey); Mystery; Novel about writing; Romance; Bromance/mentorship; Set in New York and New Hampshire.
Recommended as an accessible French novel on the Inner French podcast (which featured an interview with the author). I read it while travelling to help me ready my French for Paris as I moved from Lisbon by train through Madrid and Barcelona! 😉 My poor confused brain!
The novel won a number of notable French-literature prizes and sold over a million copies in the original French, three million copies if the many translations are included. Accessible enough to have been chosen by high-school students for the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, it is, however, long at 670 pages. But you will keep turning those pages for the clever plot.
Set in the US — between New Hampshire, where a 15-year-old girl disappeared without a trace in summer, 1975 — and New York where, in 2008 Marcus Goldman’s first novel was hugely successful . . . but also where Marcus is running through his huge advance and now facing serious writer’s block and facing a deadline for delivery of a second novel.
Goldman visits his former college professor and longtime mentor, celebrated writer Harry Quebert, in small town (Aurora) New Hampshire, where he is encouraged and coached to keep writing, to put in the work and trust to the process. Back in New York shortly after, Marcus is shocked to learn that the body of that 15-year-old girl, missing for over 30 years, had been discovered on Quebert’s property and the writer has been arrested and charged with murder. Even more shocking, Quebert’s book, a powerful literary romance, long lauded as a/the great American novel, appears to have been based on his love affair with this teen-aged girl (Quebert would have been in his mid-30s at the time).
The book is structured in 31 chapters, numbered in decreasing order and moving between the different time frames, narrated from different perspectives, often comprising written material discovered during the investigation or excerpted from either of the two writers’ books — because Marcus is now writing a book about “La Vérité.” He’s doing so, it should be noted, against his scruples about profiting from Henry’s situation — solving his problem of writer’s block and assuring himself of another bestseller. In fact, he has to be convinced to write the book as a way of exonerating Henry; he’s sure of Quebert’s innocence, confident that his research will reveal the true killer.
I’m uncomfortable with some of the novel’s basic premises (the Lolita aspect in particular!) and some of the characterisation of women. But I found the mentoring relationship interesting and the “meta” aspect, the emphasis on what it takes to write a good novel, what to give the reader — the advice that Henry passes onto Marcus and the way Marcus puts that into practice — especially so. And there are twists — compelling and credible ones — right until the last page.
31. The Burning. Jane Casey. Murder mystery; Police Procedural; Maeve Kerrigan series; Female detective; London Setting.
A good start to a series, and I’m always interested to see female police detectives as protagonists. Maeve is sorting out relationship problems as a case reveals complications and happy to spend time away from home, despite the sexism she often fields at work. She’s part of a team assigned to catch a serial killer, but it seems the latest victim of “the burning man” may be a copycat.
Solid enough plotting and character-building that I would read more of the series.
And that’s it for my April reading.
As usual, I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading as well, and welcome any comments on what I’ve shared here.
Thank you, once again, for putting so much time into these reading posts. I always find something to interest me.
Husband and I are both fans of Jane Casey.
I’ve recently been listening to Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, by Shankari Chandran, it’s a story about an aged care home in Western Sydney, but also about the war between the Sinhalese and Tamils. That’s a very simplistic overview, but I found it both interesting and educational.
You are always welcome in my in box,
Jules
Author
Aw, thanks for letting me know you find the posts worthwhile, Julie! And thanks for your contributions to TBR lists.
Our library doesn’t have any of Chandran’s books, but I’ll keep an eye out — sounds interesting!
As always, I’m intrigued by how different our reading tastes are. I feel that I expand my reading horizons nicely and painlessly through your summaries, in genres that I would never gravitate towards. Also delighted to find on a quick search that Ao Farol is indeed To the Lighthouse. My very different list for April: The Oaken Heart, by Margery Allingham. Diary of the early years of WW2 in an English village, written for a North American audience to understand what daily life was like. Paris, Impossible City, by Simon Kuper. Life in contemporary Paris. Interesting enough, but I was very conscious that it was a male view, with rather tediously detailed descriptions of taking children to Saturday football training. Or rather taking his sons. The daughter wanted to play football but found it too sexist an environment so stopped. No word of efforts made to find her another sport or hobby to pursue. I also wanted to know how the writer’s wife found family life in Paris. Notes from a Small Kitchen Island, by Debora Robertson. UK cookery writer now moved to the south of France. I subscribe to her weekly Substack and enjoy it. A nice read but glad it was from the library. In Order to Live, by Yeonmi Park. Young woman escapes from North Korea. An okay read, of its genre. The Story of China, by Michael Wood. Massive and hugely interesting tome, going a long way to explaining why China is as it is today. The Depression Years (1930s) – lots of contemporary photos. We Danced All Night, by Brian Monaghan. Attempt to show that the 1930s were not all doom and gloom in Britain. Partially succeeds. Northerners, A History, by Brian Groom. About the North of England. Lost patience with it when the author situated the Battle of Culloden north of Inverness. As a former editor of a major Scottish newspaper he should know better! D-Day Girls, by Sarah Rose. British female secret agents in France in WW2. Got very annoyed with it – didn’t gel with the style, and multiple historical inaccuracies. Very sloppy. Mail Obsession – A Journey Round Britain By Postcode, by Mark Mason. Author sets out to travel to most UK postcodes and to find interesting things about all of them. Often hilarious, nicely quirky. I did not know, for example, that the left leg of Scottish hero William Wallace is buried in St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen. I spent the first 2 years of my degree at Aberdeen in the hall of residence next door to the cathedral.
Author
Yes, our lists are very different (for another male expat dad’s perspective on life in Paris, I enjoyed John von Sothen’s Monsieur Mediocre a few years ago, wrote about it in this post.
I love to see you and Wendy chatting . . . just the kind of conversation I hope for in this space!
Books are good companions while solo travelling,your list is very interesting,as always. I’ve read all of S. J. Bennett mysteries and watched The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair series
During April I’ve struggled with Paul Harding’s This Other Eden,shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 (now I’ve read all of shotlist). Apple Island in the book is fictionalized Maine’s Malaga Island,it is a novel based on the hystory record when “Maine forcibly removed all residents of a mixed-race fishing community on a small island” in 1912. Poignant,sad,a lot to think about….
I’ve had to binge-read all of Tim Sullivan’s Cross series after that
Kimberly McCreight’s debut novel Reconstructing Amelia,story about suicide of fifteen year old Amelia,told through three alternating points of view. Dark story…..
Sophie Hannah’s The Monogram Murders ,first of her series featuring Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot,approved by Agatha Christie Estate, was very interesting,I’ll continue reading her books
As much as I like M.W.Craven,I’ll stick to Washington Poe and Tilly after first in his Ben Koenig series situated in US, Fearless. Too much killing for me
I’ve read also Lyn Slater’s How To Be Old
Dottoressa
Author
Curious to know what you thought about the TV series. . .
Well done reading that entire shortlist! Quite a commitment!
The suicide novel would be difficult but it seems this is increasingly a reality we need to understand and confront . . .
I should probably try one of Sophie Hannah’s books, having read my way through Agatha Christie’s various detectives decades ago. Would be interesting to see a contemporary take on them.
I’m intrigued by how much you say when you don’t 😉
🙂
Thank you Frances. It’s always such a pleasure to read your post. So nteresting and good for me to improve my English ! You know what it’s like don’t you? ! (I mean practicing another language)
Here is my April/May reading
Le Royaume désuni by Jonathan Coe
Le Code Rose by Kate Quinn
La Dame de l’Orient Express by LindsayAshford
La Brodeuse de Winchester by Tracy Chevalier
I read the French version, but they are so good!
Sylvie 🇫🇷🇫🇷😘
Author
I do know what it’s like. And choosing “genre fiction” or popular fiction is a good way to do this, usually much more accessible, I find.
Thank you for sharing your reading list. I just borrowed Eternal and The Wren from our friend Libby. I put some of the others on hold. I’ve been book greedy lately. I have so many books to read that I have recently returned a couple that I didn’t find engaging. I have never done that before but I’m finding so many books to read. As a long ago Literature student, abandonment of a book was not an option so I feel quite guilty.
Author
Eternal City is very light, but enjoyable and an inexpensive way to visit Rome 😉
I find the same thing happening here — I order books that I’ve read about or had recommended and there have been so many lately that I’m returning them unfinished if they haven’t hooked me after a few chapters. Instead of feeling guilty, I’m thinking maybe we should congratulate ourselves for being willing to try a recommended title . . .
Thanks for your list and notes about the books! I’m looking forward to trying the detective series you mentioned.
I just finished reading Her Side of the Story by Alba de Céspedes. I asked my husband to get it for me for Christmas after I saw an interview in the New York Times where Elena Ferrante said it’s a book she likes to keep on her bedside table. It is set in early 20th century Italy, and more than half takes place immediately before and during WWII. Really it’s about the inner psychological life of the narrator as she copes with her world. That sounds lame but it’s fascinating and I think you would like it.
Author
Well, if it’s good enough for you and Elena Ferrante, I’m going to have to give it a try! Now on hold for me at my library, thank you!
I have to be careful with my holiday reading . If I’m really engrossed I can tend to switch off from my surroundings, not good , & it isn’t kind to ignore your travelling partner . So I tend to read books I can dip into or sometimes short story collections . When I was away recently I read Anne Youngson’s short stories , The Six Who Came To Dinner . She had her first book published in her 60s & hasn’t written many . I’ve enjoyed them all . At the moment I’m enjoying A Life Of Anne Tyler by Anne Wellman . I imagine it was a difficult book to write as Tyler seems to be a very private person but Youngson has gathered together lots of information from different interviews etc & it’s quite a rounded picture . Tyler fans will enjoy the way she picks through each of Tyler’s books & relates them to her subject . I feel I’m getting to know Anne Tyler a little better now .
I’m a Jane Casey fan too & looking forward to her latest . I’ve just downloaded the quirky postcode book recommended by Linda in Scotland , that’s my kind of holiday reading & I’m wondering what he has to say about my postcode .
I have to caution, Wendy, that since some of our postcode areas are huge (by UK standards), he doesn’t get to all areas of them. And I think he misses out several eg the Outer Hebrides, Perthshire. Since he takes the ferry from Aberdeen to Shetland and then inter-island ferries all the way up to Unst I think he feels that he’s “done” Scotland with that epic trip!
Might have to wait for book 2 then ? I also like the sound of The Oaken Heart & was pleased to find it on the Canadian Guggenheim site . So thanks for both recommendations.
Wendy
Author
As I said to Linda, I love that you two are having this book conversation.
I appreciate the way you curate your holiday reading to avoid getting caught up in the fictional and missing what’s in front of you (and also your consideration for your partner). I find I need the opposite for me on a plane (or a train with windows whose lower edge is at the level of my forehead such as the one I rode on in Spain, evidently designed by someone with no soul!!) — a book that really engrosses to distract me from too many hours in a seat!
I’m looking forward to reading the next Maeve Kerrigan mystery. Not quite hooked yet but definitely see the possibility.
Once again some good suggestions from you and followers. I began the month with None of This is True by Lisa Jewel. thriller. I saw this in the new releases and wanted something entertaining. I found it addicting. Not a literary masterpiece but it filled the bill. two women with the same exact birthday meet by chance. what could go wrong? after finishing it seeking a similar high I found another earlier novel by the author. I did not realize it was a sequel until after I read it and found it not nearly as fun. I found the characters sometimes confusing and in general not so engaging overall. Moving on I read All the Flowers In Paris, Sarah Jio, a book club selection. historical fiction. Set in Paris, duh, both during the Nazi occupation and modern day. The WWII timeline is the more creditable and emotional, the modern storyline not so much. Still, it led to a lively discussion. Finally, Broken Verses, Kamila Shamsie , British/Pakistani author. I had previously read another novel by this writer, Home Fires, which I loved. family saga, historical and maybe a bit of thriller. She writes beautifully but I had some trouble getting into it. a young woman who’s mother leaves her husband and often this daughter for a famous but politically divergent poet. the poet has been brutally murdered, the mother missing, Or perhaps not? also throw in some romance. complex, looking forward to the discussion. I have been a fan of Anne Tyler for years and did not know about the biography, will have to seek this book out. also, mu brother has been described as a character out of Anne Tyler, so there’s that.
Author
And more connections between you commenters, with you learning from Wendy about the Anne Tyler biography! Yay!
Thanks for your book descriptions — more possibilities for TBR lists.
I’ve been dipping into my new Emily Wilson translation of The Odyssey and, what are the odds, a short while after purchasing online I got a recommendation for the sensationally named Ecstacy and Terror – From the Greeks to Game of Thrones (Daniel Mendelsohn). A series of essays loosely arranged around the connection between today’s (western) culture and ancient Greece/Rome. From the library…just interesting enough for bedtime reading.
And thank you Murphy for recemmending Alba de Cespedes…I have now officially revived my ‘buy in Italy’ book list!
From this year’s list I have a nice little pile of Rocco Schiavone gialli waiting for sunny days on the lounge chair (or rainy days in the screen room) so that’s summer afternoon reading taken care of.
Sometime in the past month of two I read a lovely novel Held (Anne Michaels). Also from the library and it must have been recommended by someone, somewhere but I cannot find any trace of who that was. Thought it was a podcast and could actually hear the host raving about it but no, all in my imagination. If it was some one here, thank you. So beautifully written I may one day buy a copy.