Tuulikki Pietilå and Tove Jansson on Klovharun
I’ve taken a break for the past few months—to move, to parent, to pick up some slack while my spouse worked on the Harris campaign—and to phone bank, canvass, write letters and generally try to be the Very Best campaign volunteer I could be. (Type A personality much?) I’m in a fog now, but I’m back.
Here’s everything I’ve read in the time I’ve been away—just in case you’re interested—not counting the books I put down because I didn’t want to waste my time with them. Asterisks* indicate books I’m writing about. I’ve left commentary on some, but not all. That’s the way these things go.
Next week I’ll be back with a new little enterprise, so stay tuned.
Read
This poor book was bulldozed by the election (it was published in mid-October), and ought to have had a proper reception. It’s a political treatise housed in the body of a murder mystery, told from the point of view of a Chilean housekeeper being held in police custody after the death of her employers’ child. The trick to its allure is the housekeeper’s compelling narration of life inside the home of the wealthy, cold, and inscrutable couple for whom she works—and the clear creep of Chile’s post-dictatorial politics into the domestic lives of its citizens.
Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler
I wrote about this one—and how therapy-speak has addled our Millennial minds—for The Atlantic.
William Trevor short stories are always worth your while. He’s where you turn when you’ve exhausted your supply of Alice Munro and Shirley Hazzard.
A totally enthralling story of two English boys who find one another at boarding school and are then sent off in two different directions during World War I. Some of the most arresting and disturbing accounts of trench warfare since All Quiet on the Western Front. Very worth it.
Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas
Savas writes so cleanly and smoothly that her novels can feel like a coat of fresh paint over the whole idea of fiction. The Anthropologists is about a couple, Asya and Sanu, and their days spent searching for a new home (in an unnamed foreign-to-them city that reads like London). It artfully sketches out the small perils and pleasures of everyday life, but my favorite parts hinted at how adults feel they must carefully manage their parents so as to preserve their childhood identities while still maintaining their independence.
The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carre
A back way into the life of Marie Antoinette, told more like a whimsical biography of Versailles itself than a novel about the bejeweled-and-then-beheaded Queen of France. It was recently reissued after being out of print and I love the way Davis’ mind works, in swirls and gusts instead of straight lines.
Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes
At an extremely difficult moment, I needed something extremely human, and a good friend reminded me that Hadley always delivers on that front. Free Love is about Phyllis, a housewife on the outskirts of London in the late 1960s who has an unexpected encounter with a young man and then flips her life upside down. That’s too bland a summary for this novel—but Hadley’s warm, empathetic style and firm handle on the lurching and leanings of postwar England make Phyllis’ plight far more than a cliché.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
Gliff by Ali Smith (forthcoming on February 4 from Pantheon)
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
Shattered by Hanif Kureishi* (forthcoming on February 4 from Ecco)
The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker* (forthcoming on February 25 from Random House)
Audition by Katie Kitamura* (forthcoming on April 8 from Riverhead)
Notes from an Island by Tuulikki Pietilå and Tove Jansson
Every summer, Jansson and her partner Pietilå (called Tooti)(see them above) headed out to a rocky island in the Finnish archipelago on which they’d built a rudimentary house. This is their charming account of how the house on Klovharun came to be and a love letter to practical artistry and creative abundance.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
A group of women are crowded into an underground cage: they once lived normal lives, but for years have been kept prisoner, though they don’t know who holds them or why. Only one among them doesn’t remember life before the cage—the narrator, who was brought there as a child. Transit Books recently republished this 1995 novel, and even though it’s narratively shaky at times, it’s precisely the kind of speculative fiction that the feminist canon ought to keep reviving. It begins when the narrator is a teenager and follows her until she finally sees sunlight and begins to learn what civilization might look like. If you loved Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, this is for you.
Universality by Natasha Brown (forthcoming on March 4 from Random House)
Currently Reading
Flashlight by Susan Choi (forthcoming on June 3 from Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Look Before You Leap: Black Mountain College 1933-1957 by Helen Molesworth
The Loft Generation: From the de Koonings to Twombly: Portraits and Sketches, 1942-2011 by Edith Schloss
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