“Memorial Days” by Geraldine Brooks

Don't let this immediately put you off, but Memorial Days is a grief memoir. Until his untimely death in 2019, Geraldine Brooks was married to Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author (sounds like he was quite famous, though I'd never heard of him--not that there's any significance to that). What with the bureaucracy of death, and her own career, not to mention a global pandemic, Brooks never found the time to truly grieve her loss until she managed to escape to a remote island off the coast of Tasmania in 2023 to feel her feelings and write a book about it. 

The result is beautifully crafted and quietly heartbreaking. Brooks delves into her memory of Tony's death and its aftermath, and interleaves this with her experience on Flinders Island. The story is bittersweet and universally relatable (at least for anyone who is in a relationship that they want to be in). As I read I couldn't help but put my feet in Brooks' shoes and feel her grief right along with her, as I imagined and dreaded going through the same kind of loss in my life. In fact, I assumed that this is what everyone always does when confronted with death, so I was surprised to read in this book that three months before Tony died, his childhood friend had died suddenly at age 60. At that time, Brooks felt sympathy for the man's family but didn’t even think about what it would be like if the same thing happened to Tony . . . until it did. 

Another thing that stood out to me was that Tony used to scribble his thoughts all over the pages of the books he read. Brooks states, “I am glad of this now. If I pick up one of his books that I haven’t yet read, I can know what he thought of it.” I tend not to write in my books (well, other than cookbooks!) but this book blog fulfills that same purpose. My main reason for this blog is to keep track of what I've read and what I thought about it; but it is also a gift to you, Sam.

What I want to remember most from Memorial Days is the advice. Not because it's the most poignant or emotional part of the book, but because death is a fact of life and though no one ever wants to think about it, someday I will be glad to have this guidance. 

• First, the incredibly practical, and something that can and should be done as soon as possible: Jot down all the tasks you do to keep the household afloat. Brooks suggests creating a document called Your Life: How It Works and periodically updating it. 
• Very soon after Tony's death, a friend approached her with what he described as advice that couldn’t wait. There were three things:

1. Make it safe for others to talk about the loved one you have lost by talking about them first. 2. Don’t come home to a silent house; leave the radio on. 

Brooks couldn’t remember the third thing! Which is going to drive me crazy. What if it was the most important thing?? (I try to tell myself if that were the case she would have remembered it, but that's not working for me.)

• Make more time for the beauty. I don't think this is necessarily something that would be helpful right away, but it's what Brooks did on Flinders Island more than three years later.
• Accept the fact that the future you had expected is gone and there is no getting it back; make the life you do have as vivid and consequential as you can. 

I feel like Sam and I already do a good job of squeezing all the juice out of life, but this book was a good reminder of the importance of doing so; it brought it to the forefront. 

“My Lover’s Lover” by Maggie O’Farrell

I am becoming convinced that there are two different Maggie O’Farrells: one who has written amazing books like After You’d Gone, Hamnet, and The Marriage Portrait, and one who is readable but doesn’t quite measure up (The Hand That First Held Mine, and now this one). 

Am I being too harsh? There were parts of My Lover’s Lover that really shone. Like, true O’Farrell-level writing. And even in the parts that didn’t have the same gleam, I found myself really getting into the story. But there was a surprising amount of this book that struck me like the product of a creative writing course. Showing off? Trying too hard? Whatever it was, those parts didn’t ring true for me. 

The story starts with pretty but impulsive Lily, who has a meet-cute with handsome but impulsive Marcus, and suddenly they’re flatmates (along with the also-handsome but less impulsive Aiden). Lily quickly realizes she has replaced Sinead, who was until very recently Marcus’s girlfriend, but Lily is not quite sure of Sinead’s fate. All she’s gotten from Marcus is “Sinead is no longer with us.” 

So far this sounds like a relatively silly romantic comedy, right? Which you know is not exactly my thing. But you also know that not finishing a book is also not my thing. And I have O’Farrell Faith. So I kept going. 

And then it kind of became a ghost story, and I followed all sorts of red herrings. What had happened to Sinead? Did Marcus kill her?? Or maybe she wasn’t actually dead? I even took a crazy leap: Aiden is an anagram for Sinead (if you take away the S). Maybe Aiden was a trans man who used to be Sinead! (Spoiler alert: I was way off track.)

All of these parts of the book were disappointing but readable. It’s only when we get to go back in time and learn about the relationship between Sinead and Marcus that it stopped seeming like a creative writing effort and started seeming like a book by Maggie O’Farrell (the real one). Maybe this was just what Sam would call a “difficult second novel”? Anyway, it’s not going to stop me from reading her books. Six down, three to go. 

“Last Things” by Jenny Offill

This is my dream world: reading all the time. 

Before our vacation in May of 2022, we treated ourselves to a handful of new books to bring with us. (Pretty much the opposite of what we did in April 2025.) This year we decided it was time for another treat. Last Things is the first of five. 

Though new to me, this book was published a quarter of a century ago! I’ve already read Offill’s other two books (for adults) and really loved them, but somehow I’d totally missed the fact that this one even existed. Not surprisingly, I liked this one just as much as the others. I really enjoy Offill’s writing. 

Last Things encompasses the life of Grace Davitt at the age of 8. Her father Jonathan is a science teacher at the local school and her mother Anna works at the raptor rehabilitation center. Family life is eclectic but idyllic. But bit by bit, cracks appear. Jonathan loses his job. Anna decides to homeschool Grace. Jonathan temporarily leaves town for a new job. And all throughout, Anna’s behavior seems increasingly erratic. For a man who proposed to a woman because she never bored him, I would not be surprised if Jonathan found himself wishing for a more boring wife. 

And now, time for the next book!

“The 7th Function of Language” by Laurent Binet

After how long it took me to choose this book, I decided to take a surprising new tack: I asked ChatGPT to choose my next four reads. The 7th Function of Language was one of the four. 

This is a book I probably should have read years ago (though aren’t they all, to some extent?) but better late than never, right? I must admit a lot of the delay probably came from the fact that I felt a bit intimidated by the subject matter. I mean, I’m not sure I’d even heard of semiology before I became aware of this book, and I am not familiar with any of the writings of Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, et al. 

Binet weaves a story around the death of semiotician Roland Barthes in 1980. History tells us Barthes died as a result of injuries sustained when he was run over by a laundry van in the streets of Paris. Binet tells us this death was no accident: Barthes was in possession of a document describing the “seventh function of language”, one that allows the speaker to persuade anyone to do anything. Just think how dangerous such a skill could be if it fell into the wrong hands. 

While it’s entirely possible (maybe even likely) that my reading experience was a more superficial one than it might have been if I had any sort of foundation in linguistics, I am living proof that such a foundation isn’t necessary for reading (and even enjoying) this book. It’s basically a spy novel, and (despite, I’m sure, missing many references) I enjoyed reading this more than I enjoyed reading The Tailor of Panama. I’m sure this was due at least in part to the impeccable translation! I’m obviously not surprised, but I did find myself amazed on more than one occasion; this must have been a very difficult book to translate, but somehow it has the appearance of effortlessness. 

“Mr Salary” by Sally Rooney

I guess I knew this was only a short story when I bought it, but I was surprised when it arrived by how tiny it is. It’s hardly bigger than my hand, and more of a pamphlet than a book. But I moved on from the slight initial disappointment as one does when one can’t get enough of Sally Rooney. 

I started reading yesterday evening during a small gap in our schedule; I spent maybe five or ten minutes with it, and I was sucked in from the very first paragraph. I picked it up again at breakfast and had another small shock when I turned page 33 and saw the remaining pages were blank. How could it be over already??

This could have been a full-length novel, and it would have been just as great as Rooney’s others. But even in this tiny format, it’s a good read. It’s really amazing that in only a few dozen pages Rooney was able to develop the characters of Sukie and Nathan, and juxtapose them in a compelling relationship. It’s like magic.