Still Reading

I mentioned in a recent post that I struggled with reading while I was sick, but I did still, of course, read. Here’s a few things, literary and literary-adjacent, I would like to recommend.

I got read Lily King’s early novel, Writers and Lovers, after so enjoying her short story collection Five Tuesdays in Winter. The collection was a book-club book and it was in in the club discussion that I realized that some of the stories were a little bit artificially structured, or tied up a bit abruptly and tidily when the charming conceit of the plot had been exhausted. Those are exactly the kinds of flaws in fiction that don’t bother me at all, to the extent that I struggle to even notice them—once they were pointed out to me, I saw them as weaknesses, but I still did not care much. I really liked the stories. For a large swath of Writers and Lovers, I thought it was pretty pitch perfect, if fairly plotless—a young woman, struggling to write a novel in the wake of her mother’s death. She has a mountain of student debt, is estranged from her father, hates her waitressing job, and everyone she knows seems also to be a writer. It’s sad, funny, relateable, honest. Bits of plot creep in—the protagonist’s dating dilemmas, medical problems, troubled history with her father—and it all made sense, though at time seemed piled a bit high. I was completely enraptured by this 31-year-old that in many ways reminded me of myself at 31—wryly funny, easily overwhelmed, deeply committed to a job she doesn’t like, adores her friends. And then—poof—[SPOILER] in the last 20 pages—everything is solved. All the problems just evaporate in a rainbow candy cloud and life becomes a dream for the protagonist. Oh dear. I enjoyed it—I would have liked it if that happened to me at that point in my life, and it is fun to dream—but even I saw the flaw this time. Still, a smart funny read up until that point, I would recommend it to anyone who knows writers, but you kind of have to squint at the end.

I got an advance reading copy of Songs for Wildcats by Caitlin Galway, a strange and gorgeous collection of short stories forthcoming from Dundurn in May. It’s only 5 stories and they are rich and long and meandering—you really have time to sink into them. And they are all very different from each other—a kid sent away from boarding school summers along on a French island during the Paris protests in the 1960s has a strange love affair; an orphaned kid goes with his aunt, a former concert pianist during the Irish troubles, and the final enormous tour-de-force, two largely abandoned girls live out a sort of fantasy life almost entirely alone in the wilderness in Australia after WWII. It’s a book like no other and not a fast read, but it does suck you in, and unnerves while it enraptures.

Just because of the name twinning, I’ll interject a movie here, the very good Wildcat about the life of Flannery O’Connor, interspersed with bits and pieces of her stories dramatized. It’s a bit heartbreaking to realize how difficult her life was, but the story pieces are as wild and unsettling as they ought to be, and they provide a good balance to the sadness of the main story, as does the character herself—O’Connor was not one to be wept over. The film is a bit of a nepo baby extraganza, directed and co-written by Ethan Hawke and starring his daughter Maya Hawke, but what can I say, I thought she was very very good (Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, also turns up and and is also excellent). The film truly gave me the same grim, unsettling, mysterious feeling that reading an O’Connor story does, and that is no small feat.

Back to books, I also read Daniel M. Lavery’s Women’s Hotel, which was just charming, except for the ending, which I hated (what’s with endings lately?) I don’t want to say too much about this one because there will be an upcoming co-review with Linguist in Chief Anne-Michelle Tessier, but just a little light foreshadowing: think EB White, but more focused on what there was to eat.

Also in book news: if you read French, I was pleased to hear recently that Le Monde en Bas by Phyllis Rudin is now available in France and Quebec from Mecure de France. This is the French translation of Tucked Away, one of the titles that was published during my time at Inanna and which I sold during my first ever (and now, possibly only) rights fair. You can’t sell a book that isn’t excellent and the right fit for the buyer, but even then, it’s something of a coup to have done so my first time out and I’m very proud and happy that Phyllis’s work is getting a second life in French.

RIght now I’m in the middle of Kate Gies’s poignant memoir It Must Be Finished to Be Beautiful and just starting (due to intense peer pressure) Mick Herron’s universally beloved Slow Horses. And I continue to snack away at the anniversary Journey Prize collection.

To be honest, though I’m not sick anymore I have a bit of an exhaustion hangover getting past the flu/bronchitis and this pulled rib muscle is not getting any better, which makes it hard to lie down. But thank goodness for books!