May Reading, 2024

After being away in April, I have enjoyed settling back into my life here in Vancouver, only a two-minute walk from a well-stocked library. And despite May being very busy, I took full advantage of that library — I had no choice, in truth, as the books I’d put on hold came tumbling in almost as soon as my plane landed. Plenty to read this month — I hope you may find a few titles here that appeal.

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 

32. The Raging Storm. Ann Cleeves. Mystery; Police Procedural; Matthew Venn/Two Rivers series; Set in Devon, England. LGBTQ+ detective.

Another in the Matthew Venn or Two Rivers series (I wrote about the first here). In this volume, we beegin in a remote seaside village in Devon where a local man — poor kid become celebrity sailor — returns to his natal home claiming to be waiting for a mysterious visitor, a woman. Even as the community is speculating about the possibilities, the man is found dead — clearly murdered, his body found in a dinghy anchored just offshore, requiring retrieval by the local rescue team during the eponymous storm.

Matthew Venn, called in to investigate, remembers childhood visits to the village, and it still has a sizeable population of the religious cult he left when he came out as a gay man years earlier. As more murders and mysterious disappearances follow, Venn has to work past his own prejudices and presumptions as well as untangle secrets that have nothing to do with the case from those that do. The village is replete with both kinds, or at least with rumours of same. Those born here, those who’ve gone away and come back — and an intricate hierarchy that involves wealth and employment, friendships and reversals.

Character and setting as satisfying as we expect from Cleeves’ writing.

33. Sur la dalle. Fred Vargas. French mystery novel; roman policier/ police procedural; Inspector Adamsberg series; set in a small village in Brittany; read in French, not yet translated into English.

Vargas’s first Inspector Adamsberg novel in six years (she’s been writing instead about climate change) was published in France last year; I gleefully picked up a copy in Paris’s BHV store last October, then reluctantly replaced it on the display table, admitting to myself that there was not enough room for its heft in my case and I already had an overloaded TBR list.Back home, I tried to order an e-copy , but it’s not yet authorized for sale here. So I was determined to get it on my Kobo as soon as I set foot in Europe, and Reader, so I did!

This is the 10th book in the series, and it weighs in at 512 pages — juicy! This volume takes Adamsberg and his team to a small (fictional) village in Brittany (his deputy, Danglard, stays behind in Paris to oversee investigations there). Once again, there’s a touch of the supernatural and of the odd, or quirky. A serial murderer who seems to play cat-and-mouse with Adamsberg and his team. Violette Retancourt shines in this book, and I’m almost tempted to go back through the series to see when she was introduced and how her character was developed.

So many changes in Adamsberg over the years I’ve been reading these books (about 20 years now) — his relationships with women have become less and less an element over the last few books and they’re not even a glimmer in this one. As well, although Adamsberg’s thought process is still inscrutable to his team, they trust his intuition now, for the most part — and he listens carefully to their ideas. Further, during the week or so that his team is lodged (literally) in Louviec, they develope a real working camaraderie with some of the locals. Wonderful food descriptions here — and of meals, music, local traditions, linguistic particularities.

If you’re interested in reading this series in English, you could begin with the first one,The Chalk Circle Man. This wasn’t an option when I first discovered Vargas’s writing (that first Adamsberg book was written in 1991, but not translated into English until 2009, after later volumes in the series won prizes that brought her to the attention of English readers); I read her Three Evangelists books first, then probably Seeking Whom He May Devour before I decided to tackle one (Un Lieu Incertain) in French.

If you’ve read this or try one on my recommendation here, I’d love to know what you think. They’re decidedly quirky, but so interesting — and many of them are set, at least partially, in Paris.

34. Nothing to Be Frightened Of. Julian Barnes. Literary memoir; aging; death and dying.

Sorry, but this was a DNF for me (Did not Finish). Interesting and entertaining, and if I owned the copy, I’d probably have finished eventually but — and perhaps because I’d too recently read his Elizabeth Finch — it was too academic or intellectual or philosophical / theoretical for me right now. I was looking for more directly personal experience, the kind of writing Barnes did about his grief after his wife died. Here the feeling is too often distanced by reference to writers and thinkers on death and dying. . . and from a very particular (and limited) intellectual background, or so it seemed to me. Finished about 120 pages.

35. Absolution. Alice McDermott. Literary fiction; historical fiction; women’s lives; Vietnam; Americans in Vietnam.

I really enjoyed this novel. Structured, we realize gradually, as letters exchanged in the near-present between two American women — a generation apart — who were in Saigon in the early 60s as, respectively, the wife and the daughter of American men there on assignment. The older woman, Tricia, was a shy newlywed, married to an up-and-coming lawyer working in navy intelligence. Trying to fit in with the other wives, she gets pulled into the projects of Charlene — another corporate spouse, but anything except shy. Mother of three, determined to make a life beyond her husband’s sphere and to right the wrongs she sees manifest in the poverty and illness the husbands try to screen from their wives’ view.

60 years later, after a life mostly spent back in the US as a well-loved school-teacher, Tricia gets a letter from Charlene’s daughter, Rainey, a young child when they last saw each other. Rainey has had a coincidental encounter with a veteran who was a friend of her mother’s so long ago, and she’s reaching out to Tricia with questions about what happened during that pivotal year — before they all got out “just in time.”

Most resonant for me was the depiction of Catholicism during those years. North American Catholicism, at least. The cultural Catholicism, yes, but also what I see and remember (from my father, my grandfathers, my uncles) as a profound belief, moral convictions, a commitment to goodness. And also, of course, the way that was caught up with patriarchy, with a mistrust of the left , an absolute perception of Communism as evil to be battled. Part of my bedtime prayers as a child, in fact, was praying for the Communists, that they might believe in God. . . .

Wondering why I’ve never read anything by Alice McDermott before . . .

Have you?

I wrote even more about this book over on Instagram.

36. Save Me the Plums. Ruth Reichl. Memoir; Women’s Lives; Restaurant Critic; Food; Publishing; Gourmet magazine.

I really enjoyed this memoir. I’ve not read much/any of Reichl’s writing although I’ve long been aware of her as a food / restaurant critic — just as part of a peripheral cultural awareness. And indeed, for me her memoir evokes and captures a cultural history of a time and place . A woman with a passion that she hones so that her knowledge, skills, and natural talent break barriers.

As well, the memoir shows us a world of privilege — and of levels and layers of privilege . . . of a certain (limited) democratization of that privilege, a shift in the magazine Reichl edits — Gourmet — from foods and recipes that are aspirational rather than accessible to those that appeal to a different, broader, demographic. And finally, that this change didn’t protect the magazine from the exigencies of capitalism (and its vagaries, for that matter, the whims of one very wealthy man).

So interesting to see Reichl’s values confronting those of the market for so long, fiercely guiding the magazine she’d loved since childhood — and the team which produced each issue — through good times and then not so good, and finding a way, finally, to survive its demise. . .

Wonderful food descriptions — and I loved the chapter describing her re-discovery of what Paris still offers the frugal visitor . . .

37. It Is Wood, It Is Stone. Gabriella Burnham. Literary fiction; Women’s Lives; Marriage; Domestic Fiction; Ex-pat life; Set in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Wish I could remember where I saw this recommended. . .

Linda, at the point of telling her husband she needs a break from their marriage, instead agrees to move to Sao Paolo with him after he accepts a yearlong professorship in that Brazilian city (where, in fact, he grew up). Once there, she finds herself even more alienated — from herself, and, not speaking Portuguese (which her husband does) from those around her. She tries to establish a relationship with Marta, the maid, and her only daily contact except for her husband, Dennis, who has quickly got caught up in his academic life. But Marta keeps a firm employee-servant boundary and simultaneously intimidates Linda. (I had a flash of Magda Szabó’s brilliant book, The Door. — scroll down to #84)

But one day, out walking, then wandering into a bar, Linda meets a woman — an actor and artist — who intrigues her; she surprises herself after that meeting with a strange compulsion to purchase art supplies and by sustained and increasingly successful attempts at capturing the woman’s likeness on canvas. They become friends and Linda is introduced to the woman’s friends and activities, all of which she keeps secret from Dennis.

And then one day she leaves him a note and is gone for days and days. What transpires will bring her back to a ruptured marriage, and she and Dennis have to decide what they want to do about that.

Well-written. Characters are interesting enough (Marta’s back story, especially, when she finally opens up to Linda). And the glimpses of Brazil, although these are mostly slices of life from a certain sub-strata of a comfortable class. In the end, I realize I’m fatiguing somewhat of stories of women this age with enough privilege to do a bit, well, better. . . The voyage she goes on is necessary and worthwhile in Linda’s life, but I find myself past the point to benefit much from reading about it.

Addendum to what I wrote in my Reading Journal — as I transcribe these notes here and I think back to what I read, I see that more has stuck, more has intrigued me, than I gave credit for at the time. Especially when I think of the relevance of the title, taken from the song “Waters of March,” written in both Portuguese (Águas de março) and English by a Brazilian composer) Hmmmm. Perhaps this could be a novel that would grow on me, revealing more on a second reading. . .

38. Wandering Souls. Cecile Pin. Literary fiction; Refugee/Immigrant narrative; Vietnam; Family/Siblings.

Three siblings leave Vietnam for Hong Kong at the end of 1978, with the promise that their parents and younger siblings will follow shortly. Instead, they’re orphaned through one of the tragedies that too often befall refugees and 16-year-old Anh must care for her two adolescent brothers through years of refugee camps and resettlement. The narrative is movingly written from several perspectives, through different voices — and is supplemented by excerpts from, or interpretation of, historical research.

I’ve just gone back to reread the opening pages — a rich, beautiful description of the life of the large family in their small home, the warm and lively interactions, the school lessons rehearsed around the table, the prayer at the altar of the ancestors, the father’s care-worn eyes. the pork and rice of their frugal household savoured in companionship — all that the children must leave behind and then remember for the rest of their lives, far away.

39. What You Are Looking for Is in the Library: A Novel. Michiko Aoyama. Trans. Alison Watts. Books in translation; Set in Japan; Books/Library; Creative Self-Help; Linked short stories.

My sister L recommended this one, and I bought a copy for my Kobo. We’re all readers in my large extended family, and reading each other’s book recommendations is another way to connect. I imagine some of you do the same?

A charming and thoughtful collection of connected short stories. Each features a character who is stuck in some way, unhappy with their life but with no sense of how to change it. And each, in turn is directed to or arrives serendipitously at the community library where an unusual librarian not only finds a book or more that fulfils their research request, but also includes a title that puzzles them. This seemingly irrelevant book, however, in each case proves to be just what the character taking it home didn’t know they needed. Each character gradually discovers, as well, the significance and relevance of the small felted toy made and given to them by the librarian .

Very different from Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, but would read well with that book (which I wrote a bit about back here).

40. Prophet Song. Paul Lynch. Literary fiction; Speculative fiction; Dystopic fiction; Civil War; Dublin; Domestic fiction; Refugees; Displacement; Booker prize-winner, 2023.

I saw this on the Fast Reads shelf and grabbed it, knowing Dottoressa had recommended it (in a comment on this post). I had no problem finishing it in the allotted week, it’s so compelling, but I will carry it with me for much longer.

Set in Dublin of the very near future. A new political party is in charge, far right, and has imposed emergency measures, suspended many rights. Habeas corpus, for example, no longer seems to apply.

An educated (she’s a scientist), middle-class (he’s a teacher and a labour leader) woman’s husband is taken from their home for interrogation the night before a big labour rally. That’s the last she and their four children (the oldest 17, the baby about 6 months) hear from him. When she makes enquiries, she is not only stone-walled but also sent on Kafkaesque wild-goose chases and soon realizes that she and her family are being punished for their association with their husband/father as well as for being too noisy and non-compliant.

As restrictions increase — line-ups for food, requests for passport for an upcoming trip denied, a curfew imposed; as many friends and neighbours choose to align with the new government in self-preservation; and as it becomes more and more difficult to visit and care for her elderly father who refuses to leave his home but is clearly experiencing some dementia, the woman’s sister in Canada urges her to leave, provides funds, offers clandestine ways to get the family across the border.

Meanwhile, the 17-year-old is punished at school and advised by the government that he will be drafted into the army at his next birthday. Instead, his mother finds a hiding place for him, putting plans in place to smuggle him across the border. But he chafes at the restriction of hiding and channels his anger at the State by joining the rebel forces.

Because yes, now the country is in full civil war, and the woman observes her children’s fear, their anger, and her diminishing ability not only to keep them safe but also to maintain her authority and thus to keep order against the chaos. Horribly credible in its incremental and then increasingly rapid pace of change. Homes destroyed, systems of communication, power, water, food distribution in disarray, thousand on the move but no longer any public transit.

This is a book that argues against our (the so-called “Developed World”) confidence in our differences from refugees in “other places.” Hard not to think of Palestinians, Ukrainians, Somalians, Syrians, Vietnamese, so many peoples who have lost their homes — even in this century. Imagining this through the eyes of a mother with children, in a country where rights to security and access to “rule of law” rather than subjection to “rule by law” have been taken for granted, at least by the middle and upper classes, is a powerfully effective choice in confronting the barriers we maintain to bolster a sense of our own (illusory) impunity.

Recommended.

There we go, my reading for May and I’m managing to get the post out in the first half of the month following — it’s been a while since I’ve done that. Applause not necessary (but don’t let me stop you 😉

Now it’s your turn — I’d love to hear what you thought of any of these books you might have read. And although there’s really no room on my To Be Read list (no more than there is on yours, I know!), I’m always keen to know what you’ve been reading and what you’re recommending (or, perhaps, warning against). Mic’s open in the Comments section below.