“Look Alive Out There” by Sloane Crosley

After a brief foray into Sloane Crosley's novel-writing, I'm back to her essays, which is where I started (with I Was Told There'd Be Cake). And this one was every bit as good as that first one. In fact, it was so equivalently good that I can't help but wonder if I was mistaken about her second book of essays. (I didn’t like the second one as much. Looking back now, I have decided surely I was wrong.)

In reading this book, my consistent experience was an amalgamation of fun and of wondering just exactly how one person can get herself into so many unique situations. Biting off way more than she could chew in a decision to climb a volcano in Ecuador? Check. Playing herself in a cameo on Gossip Girl? Check. Depending on hippie pot-smoking swinger neighbors to keep from starving to death while house-sitting? Check, check and check. I assume it all really happened, though. At least mostly.

My only real complaint about Look Alive Out There: on page 122, during the story "The Grape Man," Crosley mentions "a glossy photo book called Designing with Books." Like, how to decorate your house (or at least your bookshelves) with books, right? Like, basically, bookshelf porn (but classy), right? So of course I immediately stop reading and pick up my phone and Google "designing with books book." And what does the AI summary tell me? "There is no single book titled Designing with Books." Ugh! I did, however, find Books Make a Home and Elements of Timeless Style, both of which are currently heading my way, so hopefully those will help me scratch that itch.

“Severance” by Ling Ma

Weekend before last, we had the opportunity to go to a cute little bookshop in Atlanta's Ponce City Market: Posman Books. I guess there were more customers in the store than I prefer, but the shelves were full of lots of good books, along with fun bookish appurtenances. As we browsed, the title Severance caught my eye (along with the cover's pretty pink color!), and I wondered if the book had anything to do with the Apple TV show that has so baffled me (it doesn’t). But then I ended up standing there and reading the entire prologue in the store, oblivious to anything going on around me. And I did not want to stop reading. 

But by the time I actually sat down to read the book several days later, I had already forgotten what I learned from the prologue, so I just had to start over again. And weirdly, I did not find it so compelling the second time around, which made me worry for the rest of the book. But now, having reached the end, I've decided that this was just an effect of re-reading the prologue after having read it so recently.

This is the story of Candace Chen, a young-ish Chinese-American woman living in New York City in 2011 and working in a publishing consulting firm (specifically, the Bible production division). But it's also the story of her childhood, from the age of four when her parents immigrated to the US without her, to the age of six when she moved to the US to join her parents, to her older, teen-aged years and the loss of her parents. AND it's the story of a devastating global pandemic and its aftermath. 

It was, of course, the pandemic part of the book that stood out to me the most. In fact, this book brought back so many not-so-fond memories of 2020 that this fact blows my mind: Severance was published almost two years before the term "COVID-19" even existed. How could this book NOT have been based on our real-life pandemic? Yeah, maybe the fictional pandemic was fungal instead of viral, but it even originated in China. Quarantines, travel bans, wearing masks, working from home, arguments over the ethics of allowing people to mass together to protest . . . it's like Ling Ma was predicting the future. 

Was anyone else a little unsatisfied with the ending? Kind of like this one?

“What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan

I haven't read all of Ian McEwan's books, and he has written quite a few of them (like, enough that I may not get around to reading them all), but a new one is kind of an event. So when I heard about What We Can Know, I pre-ordered it without really knowing anything about the story. When the book arrived, I spent a moment reflecting on the cover (is that a mirror pictured? I wondered if the title could have been continued with "about ourselves." But as I read, I decided that didn't apply). 

I'm not quite sure whether going in blind was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe if I'd known a bit about where the plot was heading, I would have been quicker at finding my bearings. As it was, I was continually distracted by how weirdly like a David Mitchell book this seemed to be. Even weirder, I wasn't really enjoying it (which I don't think has ever happened to me before with David Mitchell. Or with Ian McEwan. Except maybe with Saturday). 

The majority of the Mitchell-ness came from the timeline (although the characters and the setting fit right in as well). The narrator, Tom, is an academic and a university professor whose area of expertise is the famous poet Frances Blundy. It's said that in 2014, Blundy wrote a poem as a gift for his wife's Vivien's birthday. He recited it at her dinner party, gave her the only copy, and then no one ever saw or read it again. In 2119, the mysterious poem still eludes the world, and it is Tom's holy grail.

Yeah, that's right, I said 2119 (which seems to me like a very David Mitchell plot point). And the world is no longer the world as we know it (there's Mitchell again). It was uncomfortably different: not different enough to be a fantasy, but different enough to be depressing. But somewhere around the time that Tom and his quasi-estranged wife Rose were digging holes, I started to get into it. 

There are two different timelines (one for Tom and Rose, one for Blundy and Vivien), thus two different groups of characters. And I think what I will remember most about this book was the way one of the main characters goes through the sad and depressing ordeal of watching her husband disappear into early-onset dementia. It's a particular kind of loss, when the body is still present but the person you loved no longer exists. (New fear unlocked, by the way.) But before his disappearance, she had this to say about him: "What's so lovely is that basically, in a quiet way, he's simply glad he exists. Whatever the difficulty, the baseline isn't disturbed. Then that line becomes mine too." A worthy aspiration if ever there was one. And I also want to remember this gem, as one of the characters explained why she kept a journal: "...most of life is oblivion. To rescue fragments of the past would be to claim a bigger existence."

Do you want to know what I decided about the title in the end? I'll try to explain it without any spoilers. Basically, Tom knows all that it's possible to know about Frances Blundy (which is a lot, given his life in the Information Age; a multitude of his papers have been preserved, along with myriad emails and text messages). Despite that, there were multiple layers to Blundy's story that Tom could never have uncovered from Blundy alone, despite his deep scholarship.

“Cult Classic” by Sloane Crosley

I’ve already read three different books by Sloane Crosley (two books of short stories that I assumed were autobiographical, but I could be wrong, and one grief memoir). But somehow the fact that Crosley has also written two novels had escaped my notice until very recently. This discovery surprised me. Somehow I'd gotten the idea that Crosley was a young, debut writer. (This is probably because I just stumbled upon her in 2022 and didn't realize the book I was reading had come out nearly a decade and a half earlier. I mentioned my surprise to Sam, explaining that I'd thought Crosley was young--too young to have already written so many books; then I looked up her age and said, "Well, she is quite young," which made Sam laugh, because she was born in 1979. Funny what constitutes young these days.) But as usual, I digress. The point I wanted to make was that, of course, as soon as I became aware of Crosley's novels, I had to buy them. 

I started with Cult Classic (published in 2022). I found it a bit disconcerting at first, because I kept trying to figure out where the story fit into the author’s life, and then remembering that this was a novel and was therefore unlikely to be autobiographical. Even once I got to the point where I felt I was regularly recognizing the story as fiction, I found the voice of the protagonist was quite similar to Crosley's voice in her other books. And New York City looms large, as usual. 

Lola, newly engaged to Boots (which is, thankfully, a  nickname), is out to dinner in Manhattan (Chinatown, specifically) with former coworkers when she unexpectedly runs into an ex she hadn't seen for years. They have a pleasant enough conversation, then they go their separate ways. The next night: same song, second verse. This time it's an ex from ten years ago. And the next day, you guessed it--she sees another ex. On one hand it was starting to seem like a literary device allowing the author to describe a handful of different relationships--like a bunch of short stories all linked to the same character--but as an actual plot point, it felt a bit contrived. Granted, I am not George Strait (because only one of my exes lives in Texas), so who knows what it would actually be like if I'd had a decade-long, extremely active dating life in NYC? Maybe running into an ex a day wouldn't be as implausible as it sounds. 

But then it turns out it actually was contrived. In a really quirky and unexpected way. That twist was both welcome (because we see it wasn't just a parade of exes for the sake of anecdotes) and a bit surreal. But it also allowed for more depth, bringing interesting introspection on love, commitment, and letting go of the past--all in a witty and stylish package. (The Classic, of course...)

“Ask Again, Yes” by Mary Beth Keane

Oops... I did it again. 

I don't even remember when I finished reading this book, but it was probably close to two weeks ago. I had intended to blog about it while sitting around at the airport on my way out of town on Friday the 12th. But when the time came, I realized I had forgotten to take a cover photo, which threw me off enough that I decided to wait until I got back home. But I didn't manage to squeeze it in until this evening. While I'm sure I never had anything profound to write, I'm also sure that if I had, I would have lost it to the mists of time by now. 

So you'll have to settle for whatever synopsis I can scrape from my brain, plus a brief verdict. This book starts in July 1973 with two rookie cops in NYC: Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope. They end up as next door neighbors in a small (fictional, I think, but idyllic) town north of the city, where they are friendly enough, but definitely not friends. Brian's wife Anne certainly never warms up to Francis's wife Lena, anyway. But eventually there are children in the picture, and Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope establish a strong bond despite the lack of connection between their parents. 

This is one of those really complicated family dramas. I honestly did not expect to like it that much, but it was very engrossing. At least I think that's what I thought. But I may need to read again, yes?

A realization

Postcard from Artillery in Savannah, GA

I was just taking a moment to admire the way my page views have increased recently. Not as if my book blog is going viral by any means, but individual post readership has gone from (high) single digits to (low) triple digits, which is nice to see. I’d like to say I have Bookstagram to thank for this, though I fear it’s more likely due to web crawlers and automated browsing from the likes of ChatGPT. 

But here is what I realized. I have been getting comments! Not lots and lots of them, but some--from this year!!--that I was not aware of. My blog used to be set up to email comments to me, but it appears that system must have failed somewhere across the years without me noticing (until now). 

I need to pay closer attention to this and maybe try some responses. 

“The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox” by Maggie O’Farrell

It isn’t often that I have five  uninterrupted hours to sit and read. But solo air travel  does have its benefits! I started reading this book while waiting for my (delayed) flight, and turned the last page while my eager fellow travelers were still clogging the aisle waiting for the doors to open at our destination.

TVAOEL gets off to a running start with Iris Lockhart in her vintage shop in Edinburgh. She is an intriguing character in her own right, but the real story centers around Esme, the great-aunt Iris never knew she had. We soon find out that Esme had been committed to an institution more than sixty years ago, but at first we don’t know why. We spend most of the book learning the details, skipping between past and present. 

I’ve decided I should have read this book years ago. I don’t know why I put it off, really. It piqued my interest from the moment I first heard about it (though of course I don’t remember exactly when that was). But it’s one of the good O’Farrells. Not the best (I still hold After You’d Gone in highest esteem, and Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait were both excellent), but I rank it as fourth best. I probably don’t even need to mention that the writing was excellent. But the characters were also solid and real. And while I guessed at a major reveal pretty early on, the ending took me by surprise. That’s generally a good thing, and definitely so in this case.

“Abyss” by Pilar Quintana

*Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman

This is the second of four books that ChatGPT chose for me from my TBR (and I have just now realized s/he—it?—must not have made it very far down the alphabetized list: the four books include one whose title starts with a number, and three whose titles start with the letter A. Lazy much? . . . says the girl who outsourced the choosing of her next books to read).

But I digress. I must confess that I was not super-excited about reading Abyss, as evidenced by the fact that we bought it more than two years ago and I hadn't touched it yet. In 2023, it was one of the five finalists for the National Book Award for Translated Literature and while on one hand I do believe this honor is bestowed on high-quality works, on the other hand I have the (possibly mistaken?) feeling that the finalists for this award are often so . . . worthy. (Yes, worthy of renown, but that's not what I mean in this case; what I really mean is too worthy: maybe a bit pretentious, maybe taking itself a little too seriously, maybe just too earnest. Maybe not very fun). 

I should not have had these fears about Abyss. This book was worthy only in the good sense. This is the story of eight-year-old Claudia, living in Cali, Colombia. She's the only child of her older, hard-working father and her young, beautiful, bored mother. Claudia watches the adults around her, half-understanding some of the things she sees and hears; she's more oblivious to other circumstances, but feels the undercurrents of tension anyway.

This tension is definitely passed on to the reader. The tightly-wound narrative gave me a near-constant feeling of dread (but the good kind). Without even meaning to, I read half the book the first night I picked it up. 

*I should be more diligent about noting information like this on my blog. I obviously have not read the book in Spanish so I can't compare the two versions, but I was impressed by the natural way Dillman preserved the childlike voice of the narrator.

“My Good Bright Wolf” by Sarah Moss

My Good Bright Wolf is a deeply personal memoir by Sarah Moss, who also wrote several other books I have enjoyed. I didn't know what to expect ahead of time (other than good writing!)--this is one of the books I bought as a vacation treat for myself in July, and the only recommendation I needed was the author's name. 

I was right, of course, about the good writing. But I was a bit blindsided by the intensity of Moss's story. I had no idea that she has been battling anorexia for most of her life, to the extent that she has been at death's door more than once. Now I think back to the mother character in Summerwater, running through the woods, with the hint of impending heart failure that I didn't understand. At the time I thought, Why would a fit young mother be nearing heart failure? Now, having read MGBW, I think that mother was the author: also a runner, also with a damaged heart.

There are two kinds of people in the world: there are those who, like me, will find this book very eye-opening; it's a window on a harrowing disorder that I have (fortunately) never had to deal with, whether in myself or in any of my loved ones. And there are those who will find solace in it, because it helps them to understand the struggle they have witnessed in others--or even in themselves. But no matter which group you are in, I think you will find this a powerful and engaging read. 

(Maybe it's not necessarily a vacation book, though?)

Sarah Moss is very brave, not only because she has opened herself up and shared her story with the world, but also because she endured and survived her story.

“This Must Be the Place” by Maggie O’Farrell

I'm not doing a very good job of reading my four ChatGPT-selected titles from my TBR pile. One down, three to go, and this was not one of them. But it felt like it was time to test my two-Maggie-O'Farrells theory, and I already had a copy of this book. 

To start with my overall verdict as relates to my theory: I have decided there are not two Maggie O'Farrells, because this book belongs somewhere between the categories of "Amazing" and "Doesn't Quite Measure Up." There's obviously more of a continuum than a bimodal distribution. 

This Must be the Place tells the story of Daniel Sullivan, starting in the remote countryside of Ireland in 2010 where he lives with his beautiful, spunky (though O'Farrell would never use that adjective to describe her) wife Claudette and their two young children, but it spreads its tentacles into the past, the future, and the minds of others: the two children from Daniel's first marriage, his roommates when he was a postgrad in London, Claudette herself, and even her son from her first marriage. In 2010, Daniel and Claudette are happy and in love, but their complicated pasts make their future complicated as well. 

Overall, it was an enjoyable if imperfect read. I think my main complaint is that Daniel's character seemed like too many different people. Throughout it all, he has piercing blue eyes, but other than that he's all over the place. I guess there's a fine line between a complex persona and one who just isn't cohesive. And my secondary complaint is that Daniel's son Niall and Claudette's son Ari seem like they could have been one and the same person. Not that they don't each have distinguishing features, but that they seem to serve the same purpose in the narrative.

Even if this book doesn't belong in the Amazing category, I'm not done with Maggie O'Farrell. I've been meaning to read her Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox ever since I first heard about it, which was all the way back in 2010. But for whatever reason, I had never bothered to get myself a copy of it. So you'll be happy to know I've just ordered it. Hopefully I'll read it before another decade and a half goes by. 

Speaking of the passage of time, this reminds me: it's been quite a while since I had the realization that I don't have enough years remaining to read all the books I want to read. I remind myself of this every now and then in hopes of becoming one of those people who is able to stop reading a book that they're not enjoying (though so far this has had no effect). But I had an idea the other day. Right now, while I'm still working full time, I obviously can't read all day long. But what if, after I retire, I make it my life's goal to read All The Books? Could I possibly read a book a day? (Probably not. But I could certainly read more than one a week, if my vacations are any indication.) By my calculations, I could read all the books on my TBR shelves in anywhere from 1.5 years (at the rate of one per day) to 11 years (at the rate of one per week). Only problem is, I keep buying more . . .

“The Bradshaw Variations” by Rachel Cusk

Next in the lineup of Book Treats for our July vacation (even though the vacation has now ended), an old-but-new-to-me book by Rachel Cusk. (I did read most of it on the plane on the way home, for what it’s worth.)

Unsurprisingly, this book isn’t plot-heavy; it’s more descriptive about family relationships and the thoughts of the individuals in those relationships. It starts with Tonie and Thomas Bradshaw, who have recently made a change that flips the dynamic in their lives: Tonie is now working full-time while Thomas stays home with their young daughter Alexa. Then we move on to Howard (brother to Thomas) and his wife Claudia and their three children. We also see Leo (a third brother), his wife Susie, and their two kids, and we even meet Mr and Mrs Bradshaw, the parents of the three brothers. The book is written almost like a group of short stories with a strong Bradshaw thread running through them all. 

So the title obviously refers to the various Bradshaws—how they are similar, what makes them different. But it also refers to the subtle shifts that occur within the group of relationships. We are given less about what the Bradshaws do than about what they notice (or fail to notice) about themselves and each other, but the hidden tensions are palpable. And in the end it seems the old cliché is true: the more things change, the more they stay the same. 

But did I like it? Yeah, I liked it. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed in Rachel Cusk’s writing before. I wouldn’t name this as one of my favorites of hers, but I still want to (eventually) make my way through all of her books. 

“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. 

3. 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.