"Flaubert's Parrot" by Julian Barnes

Before reading this book, all I knew of Flaubert was Mme Bovary and all I knew of Julian Barnes was Arthur & George, although I do have a copy of The Sense of an Ending that I fully intend to read someday. Even considering my minimal knowledge, Flaubert's Parrot was kind of a shock to my system. 

This was not a story to sink into. Instead, it was a weirder but somehow deeper and more clever biography than any I’ve ever read. The writing reminded me of Milan Kundera (although all I know of Kundera is The Unbearable Lightness of Being) and I appreciated the dry, wry humor.

In this book, somehow Barnes gathers up everything that can be known about Gustave Flaubert and forms it into a sort of novel-like expression. It's the farthest thing from your typical encyclopedic biography, and yet I feel like I came away with a better sense of who Flaubert was as a real human than I could have otherwise. 

How…?

How can I possibly choose which one is next?

Help!

“The Marriage Portrait” by Maggie O’Farrell

 

I have always loved Maggie O'Farrell's books (...always? ohhhhhkay there was one exception), but for some reason I initially put off reading this one. Despite my love for Italy, and despite knowing there is a wealth of intriguing stories to be found in its renaissance era, the synopsis of this book made me drag my feet. It just sounded a bit . . . dull.

I don't know what I was thinking.

This book was so good! Based on actual historical characters, it tells the story of Lucrezia de'Medici and her short-lived marriage to Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara. I think part of my resistance to reading this book stemmed from the fact that you go into it already knowing that Alfonso ends up killing his teenage bride. How can the story be anything but hopeless and depressing? Well, that's where Maggie O'Farrell comes in to work her magic. Whereas Sam said the first half of the book felt too claustrophobic to him, steeped in the foreknowledge of the impending murder as it was, I was gripped from the first page. 

Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings

I have been reading this book little bit by little bit over a number of months (YES, okay, if you must know, I kept it in the bathroom. This is one of those books that I felt obliged to read because I knew it would make me a better person, but it is also one of those books I knew I would never actually read unless I was forced to.)

I'm sure this is a case of stating the obvious, but Benjamin Franklin was a pretty impressive man. Maybe I've always known these things but forgot? But it's amazing how many institutions Franklin had a hand in creating. Lending libraries? Check. Fire departments? Check. UPenn? Check! And all of this squeezed in between creating a successful printing business, being a US ambassador to France, running a postal service that I can only imagine must have been more efficient than the current USPS, and flying a key on a kite string into a thunderstorm. 

I don’t think I was left with a super clear overview of Franklin's life (but of course that was not the intent of this book). I feel like it zoomed in on a number of interesting aspects but left the remainder vague and amorphous, and I might have found a biography more balanced. But what I had really wanted to get from the book is a sense of the man himself in his own words, and I think I did. I found Franklin to be pithy, witty, humble and wise.   

“Saturday” by Ian McEwan

I have really liked other Ian McEwan novels I've read (particularly Atonement; I haven't read all of his work, though eventually I would like to). But I found this one slow going. It describes, in great detail, one single day in the life of London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne. It starts early in the morning as he looks out his bedroom window (so nicely reflected by the book cover!), watching an airplane as it crosses his field of view, and ends--you guessed it!--late that night as he looks out his bedroom window. In between, it's not exactly your usual, run-of-the-mill weekend day, what with protests in the street, a mild car wreck, a tense family dinner party, and late-night neurosurgery. You would think that would be enough to maintain my interest, but somehow it was not.

It did, however, make me think of Mrs Dalloway. Not to the extent that I think this story was inspired by Woolf, but how could I help but be reminded of a book that takes place all in one day and follows a main character who is preparing for a dinner party?

Sam says Saturday was controversial when it came out, due to its stance on the invasion of Iraq (the protests were against it while Dr Perowne found himself ambivalent) but why? Because the central character did not soundly denounce the invasion of Iraq? Even if he had been solidly in favor of it, can't we have a nuanced discussion of a complicated topic without the discussion itself being controversial?

“Very Cold People” by Sarah Manguso

I actually read this book between Scent of Flowers and The Fell but then completely forgot to blog about it. I'm not sure I would have found much to say about it at the time, but now that it's three weeks later, I'm going to have a really tough time coming up with anything to write. 

I do remember that my overarching feeling about this book was that it was weird. The characters were weird--a little inscrutable, kind of hard to relate to, not very open or easy to understand . . . in general, I guess, what you would expect Very Cold People to be like. And the story itself was a bit weird, in a plotless and meandering way. It's written like a memoir (although I assume it's not) and strikes me as an attempt to record every retained memory, with no effort to highlight the transformative or gloss over the mundane. But it was also, I think, nicely written and intriguing; otherwise I would have hated it. 

I also remember that this book stirred up a particular sort of nostalgia in me. It describes a very American childhood with many links to my own very American childhood, from Lite Brite to friendship bracelets. 

“The Fell” by Sarah Moss

With The Fell, Sarah Moss has created a novella that is very evocative of the pandemic we are only just now finding our way out of. It's the story of Kate, who is on the tenth day of a two-week quarantine at home after exposure to a coworker who tested positive for COVID. She's been very good about not breaking the self-isolation rules, but she's accustomed to hiking through the heather on a regular basis and she's been nearly driven crazy with restriction. She finally decides she can't live without stretching her legs and getting her lungs full of fresh air, so she heads out into the countryside without telling anyone. 

This book does not have a complicated plot--in fact, not a whole lot happens--but that doesn't mean it's boring to read. Viewpoints switch between Kate, her teenage son Matt, their neighbor Alice, and a rescue team worker named Rob (because of course Kate's simple, solitary walk turns out to be nothing of the sort), and we get a front-row seat to all their thoughts.

Unfortunately, having finished this book, I am now in the unenviable position of having one more week left of vacation with only one more book left to read…

“The Scent of Flowers at Night” by Leïla Slimani

This slim little volume is beautifully written and impeccably translated, though this is no surprise based on the author and translator. In it, Slimani spends one night alone in the Punta della Dogana museum in Venice and reflects on her life as a writer. It's a little slip of a book, but powerful. 

I read half of this book while waiting for a flight, then slid it hurriedly into the front pocket of my suitcase when they called our boarding group. I ended up having to check my suitcase at the gate (something about it being overstuffed? surely not) and only remembered they’d also taken my book away from me when it was too late. (Luckily I’d packed four other books in the backpack I kept with me, so I survived the flight.)

I think the thing about this book that will always stand out to me is the way that writing takes over Slimani's life when she's in the middle of a book, almost as if she were in a prison. I am glad that writing is not a prison for Sam.

“Writers & Lovers” by Lily King

I loved this book and I hate that I put off reading it for so long. And when I did read it, I started by gulping down more than half of it on a flight, but then I skipped a few days and read the rest of it on a train journey. 

This is the story of Casey, a grieving, anxiety-ridden waitress whose life has seemingly gone nowhere due to her desire to write novels. We hear about her past loves and are introduced to the new ones she is just now meeting. Funnily enough, it struck me on page 91 that I was reading a first-person female narrator--just like the last (terrible) book I read--but THIS was real writing. It's funny to think that this novel and my previous read are both books . . . they can't really be in the same category. 

I must admit that I did become annoyed at the end of Writers & Lovers due to the fairy tale book auction. It's like I was jealous or something, which makes no sense because I haven’t written a book, nor am I planning to. 

“A Stranger in the House” by Shari Lapena

I bought this book by mistake. Well, maybe mistake is not exactly the right word, but here’s what happened. We were browsing in Half Price Books and this title caught my eye. I enjoy a well-written suspense novel, and this one sounded intriguing. I knew I’d heard of the author before, and I even vaguely remembered I’d read a book of hers previously. I figured I must not have hated it or I would have remembered. (Ha.) Did I skip my dip test? I can’t remember that either. 

But now that I’ve read the whole thing, I find it hard to believe that it would have passed my dip test. And of course I have found and re-read my blog post about The Couple Next Door, which I really should have done prior to purchasing this book, because if I had done that I would not be writing this blog post right now and that would be an entirely good thing. 

At my age, I am sure I have already lived half my life (if not more). Lord save me from wasting any more of it on books like this.  

“Babel” by R F Kaung

I started reading this book back in January and never really got into it. I have no idea why, but it just did not grab me. Then I started reading the Game of Thrones books, and ended up leaving Babel untouched for months. I knew I wasn’t permanently abandoning it, but I wasn’t in a huge hurry to get back to it. 

I finally picked Babel up again last weekend and ended up really enjoying it! It's well-written, with an interesting story that makes you think. 

Babel is an alternate history of 1800s England, specifically Oxford University and its Royal Institute of Translation. In this fictional world, England is a global empire due to its wealth of silver bars and its expertise with the magical power derived from the matched pairs of words inscribed on the surface of each bar—one word in English and one in another language. The words vary according to the power desired: fortifying an old building, keeping a carriage safe from accident, causing an explosion. The words are paired by the scholars in Babel, the Institute’s headquarters. 

The newest students at Babel are Robin (who is Chinese), Ramy (Indian), Letty (English) and Victoire (Haitian), and they become fast friends. But it isn’t long before they begin to see the vast disparity between those living with the benefits of the silver bars and those without. 

“Jane Austen: A Brief Life” by Fiona Stafford

Yep I picked this one because it's brief. It’s right there in the title. 

It makes me feel virtuous to read a biography. This one was little bit dry at times (which I find to be typical) but it was still interesting enough to read (once). Much of Austen's life story here seems to be speculation based on analysis of her writing rather than real knowledge of her life, but I assume that's out of necessity. 

And I know more about Austen now than before I read the book, although some of it I already kind of knew without knowing, like the fact that she had six novels published. Have I read all of them? I think so, but I really can't remember for sure. I mean I am SURE I have read some, if not all, of them; and I am SURE I enjoyed reading them, and I am SURE I find it odd that my husband doesn't like Jane Austen. 

I didn't know exactly when her books were published (I just knew they were old) but it turns out they're all more than 200 years old, as she died in 1817 (two of her books were published posthumously, but very soon after her death). I like the fact that people still know and love her work centuries later, and their humor and human element can still be enjoyed.