Books I Read in July ’24 (feels so long ago!)

As you know if you’ve been reading my recent posts, I’ve been in Rome for a few weeks (part of a 50th-anniversary, start-of-the-next-decade, travel-while-we-still-can celebration), and we’ll be back there in a few weeks for most of the fall. Right now, though, we’re in London pivoting here for a walking adventure–not only did we want a break from Rome’s intense heat (and considerable humidity!), but we also needed to put in some non-Schengen days so as not to wear out our 90-day Schengen welcome before our flight home. . . .

And this morning, I’m realizing (perhaps belatedly!) that as much as I’ve enjoyed staying in touch with you here and on Instagram throughout a busy summer, I think I’d better take a blog break from the blog for a few weeks, although I’ll continue to post occasionally over here.

Before I decided this, I’d already put together most of my July Reading post, and I’m going to do a very quick edit this morning before we walk to the National Portrait Gallery from our little (SO little, this room is a Compact Double and wow! this bed is so, um “cosy”?) nest in Paddington / Kensington. . .

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.

51. Mr. Loverman, Bernardina Evarista. Literary fiction; Domestic fiction; LGBTQ+, Ageing protagonist; Gay protagonist; Immigrant’s lives; Set in London.

A 70-year-old immigrant to London where he has lived, prospered, and raised two daughters with his wife of 50 years, tries to gather courage to come out, finally, as a gay man . . . so that instead of living with a woman who is always unhappy, angry with him, convinced that he is constantly out cheating on her with other women, he might spend the rest of his life with his true love (of a duration even longer than his marriage), Marcus.

Most of the novel is told in 1st-person from Barrington’s perspective, but his wife offers her version in several intervening chapters, so that we can see the harmful effect Barrington’s closetedness and his conformity with genered heteronormativity has on her. Her desire to be loved, emotionally and physically, the depression she’s suffered, the outlets she’s sought for relief.

So much humour here but also thoughtful and compassionate observation — not only of two couples, a family’s history — but also of the changing social mores over Barrington’s lifetime.

I read and wrote a bit about Evaristo’s Booker Prize-winning Girl, Woman, Other back in January 2020.

52. The Forbidden Notebook. Anna de Céspedes. Trans. Ann Goldstein. Foreword by Jhumpa Lahiri.

I have to speed up these entries [in my handwritten reading journal, which I’m transcribing in this post] because it’s July 19th, and I’m way overdue for writing up June reading on the Blog, I’m heading to Rome in a week, and I need to get books back to VPL.

So . . . another astonishingly forward feminist novel by Cuban-Italian de Céspedes (1911-1997).

A married mother of two young adults (son and daugher) herself barely 40, is moved to buy a notebook, compelled to have somewhere to write down thoughts, ideas, observations. But she doesn’t have even a drawer of her own where she can be sure no one else can discover her notebook, read what she’s written. And to find time and private space for that writing, she must write at night, clandestinely, and at the expense of sleep. Especially as her writing leads her to articulate her dissatisfactions with her situation, even as she quickly backs awy from those, horrified by her perceptions.

She finds herself being hard on her daughter, insisting the younger woman orient herself toward marriage and family life, even as she recognizes gradually her own engagement in, and satisfaction with, her work life — which was assumed by herself and others to be undertaken only to help out with the family budget.

And while she behaves as though she favours her son’s path, is more lenient with him, she finds herself irritated and disturbed by what she doesn’t know to call sexism — and she’s too confused, lacks the language to defend her daughter against it.

So much in this one that I shouldn’t be rushing over, but I need to get this desk cleared and my packing done.

53. Held. Anne Michaels. Literary fiction; Historical fiction; Memory; Time; Love; Generations; War.

This one I finally bought for myself, in hardcover — such a beautiful, thoughtful novel (as were her Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault).

A generation-spanning (4 of them) narrative that connects points in time and space in ways that the reader will puzzle and ponder and delight to connect. I’m rushing to write this before I have to pack up for a flight to Rome in a few days and thus very much giving the book short shrift here. But I can say that there is an emphasis — or perhaps more a gentle insistence? an unveiling — of liminal spaces that transcend our understanding of life and death, the persistence of energy. Photography as a medium for glimpsing and perceiving this. DNA as well, perhaps, children exhibiting character traits of an earlier generation. Memory, of course. The uncanny boundaries of love, of war. And stories, and friendship.

Beautiful, lyrical, ghostly, brilliant.

54. When in Rome. Liam Callanan. Travel fiction; Love story; Woman at mid-life; Religion; Rome.

Another interloper — pushed onto my list when I spotted it in a prominent, cover-out, shelf-talking position at my branch of VPL. Couldn’t resist since I will be in Rome very soon.

The premise: a single mom (daughter, 30, they’re good friends but daughter lives in another city, has her own life, a partner) is in Rome as a realtor who specializes in selling properties that served religious communities — desanctified churches to restaurants, convents to spas, etc.

But as soon as she sees this property — a convent which encloses several stunning acres not so far from Trastevere, she wants to save the convent for the dwindling number of nuns who still live and work there. And her adolescent inspiration to beome a nun is rekindled.

Complication: her best friend, Marcus, for whom there has always been a (reciprocal) love, passion — always kept at bay for various reasons, timing — has come to Rome hoping to work up the courage to declare his love and propose marriage.

And throughout this narrative of love, friendship, self-discovery, we are treated to tours of Rome, with peeks behind closed doors, quirky information about fountains, secret passageways, personalities, etc. If I’d bought it as an e-book, I’d be tempted to use the chapters as guides to the city.

Recommended as armchair travel and for a look at the possibility of mid-life re-direction.

55. The Drowning Woman. Robyn Harding. Psychological fiction; Women, friendship; homelessness.

Again, led astray by my eyes at the library. I was in the mood for another light, distracting book. Spending three weeks on my own will do that, I guess. Thriller — two women form an odd friendship. One, homeless, trying to find a safe place to park her car and get a night’s sleep, wakes by the beach and hears a woman crying. She ends up saving her from suicide by drowning.

Turns out both women have secrets and dangerous lives. But not all is as it seems. . . Absorbing enough to distract me, which is what I was looking for. The ending, though, seemed forced and unlikely. Maybe 7/10?

56. Vers d’autres rives. Dany LaFerrière. Literary memoir; Graphic memoir; Artist coming-of-age; Immigrant narrative; artistic heritage; Haiti/Haitian art and literature/Haitian culture; Canadian literature; French-Canadian literature. Haitian-Canadian writer/artist.

Posters on the Pont des Arts in Paris this spring — reproductions of pages from La Ferrière’s books — inspired me to request this from the library. A gorgeous, vibrantly illustrated book, text appears handwritten, emphasizes the act of writing and its appearance as complement to (or integral with) the illustrations.

Descriptions of island life in his childhood — people in his community, animals he knew, food — its getting, preparation, eating.

The wealth of Haiti’s culture, especially — he traces his artistic lineage, writes out poems by Haitian poets, describes encounters with various artists, writes about their “discovery” by the artistic world beyond Haiti.

57. Deaf Utopia: A Memoir and a Love Letter to a Way of Life. Nyle Di Marco and Robert Siebert; Memoir; Coming-of-Age; Growing up Deaf; Deaf Culture; Cultural History; Educational History; American Sign Language.

My sister recommended this memoir by American model, actor, deaf activist Nyle DiMarco (who won America’s Next Top Model and also, more remarkably, won Dancing with the Stars with professional dance partner Peta Murgatroyd).

It’s an entertaining and illuminating account of growing up as one of three deaf brothers born to deaf parents. DiMarco’s mother was a remarkable force — she pushed hard for her sons’ education within a public school system that favoured/insisted on lip-reading as a way to be better integrated into society than ASL supposedly allowed for. But as DiMarco argues from experience and research, lip-reading in a classroom, in a system, that favours the hearing students profoundly disadvantages deaf students and reinforces a stereotype that links inability to hear with low intelligence.

By contrast, as DiMarco’s mother taught him — and taught his teachers whenever she could — learning in an educational culture that honours and nurtures ASL as a truly functioning language capable of expressing ideas with richness and subtlety (and humour!) allowed deaf students to reach their potential more fully and thus benefits greater society by allowing them to contribute.

And perhaps the best recommendation for this book is that of my “baby sister” whose own hearing challenges weren’t recognized (by herself, by my parents, by her teachers) until her 20s, a bright little girl who likely taught herself to lipread and otherwise “filled in” those gaps in her hearing. (I share a much milder version of the same hearing pattern — hence her recommending the book to me). Her immediate response on finishing this memoir? She texted me: “I think I want to learn ASL now!”

Of particular interest to those with compromised hearing, but also with an interest in languages or education.

Ok, that’s it for my Way-back-then Books Read in July . . . I’m going to post a Chiuso Per Ferie sign here now — Closed for Holidays — but I will still be reading your comments, and eavesdropping on the lovely conversation that usually evolves here around your reading (or non-reading, if that’s your current situation). Beach books? Fireside books (as my Other Hemisphere readers turn towards Spring)? Recommendations (or the opposite)? All grist for our Book Chat mill . . .

And if you want to see where I’ll be reading next (heading out soon to find a book for tomorrow’s train journey), I’ll post photos on Instagram.

Back soon,

xo,

f