Summer Reading Project, 2021

 

Recently, I moved to a new home. Throughout my life, I have lived in close to two dozen dwellings; this latest is notable for being the first home purchased on my own. Houses matter quite a bit to some people, don’t they? Our sense of success and achievement, our identity, even a sense of inner peace—all can be influenced by the particular four walls we find ourselves within. To me, moving isn’t the dramatic affair it is for many. As I get older, the mechanics of it certainly have become more arduous but I’ve always enjoyed a new perspective, new surroundings. Having lived in so many homes, I find that some stand out and others fade from memory, and this isn’t always connected to the length of time spent in the place. Some homes have an unforgettable quality that plants them firmly in the consciousness, some are more beloved because of the events that occurred while living there, and some take on a dark hue for the same reason.

 

For some fiction writers, a story begins with setting, and houses often become a starting point. In creative writing, houses can be an important element, rising up to assert their presence alongside other, human characters. Perhaps you’re already thinking of a book that features a house as an ominous, reassuring, steadfast, or other type of entity. Here are some I won’t be reading this summer, either because I’ve already read them, or because I chose otherwise:

 

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Room by Emma Donoghue

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Turner House by Angela Flournoy

The Past by Tessa Hadley

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

The Door by Magda Szabo

 

Yes, I know there are many more! These are some that were mentioned or occurred to me. Please do comment with your favorite books that feature a notable house. My first novel would certainly fall into this category, that story about a young couple sorting through the belongings inside an old, country house. And certainly my next novel, Starling (coming soon!), has much to say about homes and how they can comfort and confine.

 

What is my purpose for ruminating about houses in books? Faithful readers of this blog know that over the summer months, I become happily obsessed with a theme. Two years ago, I read books all about trees and last summer while we were shut down, I read books connected to France in some way. For 2021, my reading project will be Summer of Houses, books that feature a house as a key element. I have chosen four, which I’ll read in the order shown. As always, I welcome readers who would like to join in! My choices are:

 

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

It could be said that my entire summer theme started here, with this well-known book I’ve never read! You may know it from the 2018 Netflix series, but if you don’t know the novel, join me in reading this classic written by a force of nature, Shirley Jackson. Published in 1959, it’s the story of four protagonists who arrive at Hill House, seeking evidence of its haunted nature. They get that, and much more.

 

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

The house in question in this 2009 novel is Silver House, a family home now converted to a bed-and-breakfast in Dover, England. The house has always been occupied by generations of Silver women like Miranda, who begins to suffer strange ailments after the death of her mother. The book is hailed as “boldly original, terrifying, and elegant,” and its author is often compared to Shirley Jackson so it’s the perfect follow-up to my first choice.

 

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

This book is a less obvious choice for my theme, but one that jumped out to me when scouring lists. Marya Morevna watches from the window of her upper middle-class home in Saint Petersburg as suitors arrive for her sisters. But the suitors are first birds who transform before her eyes into men. This 2011 novel combines the Russian fairy tale, "The Death of Koschei the Deathless," with the events and aftermath of the Russian Revolution, in what the publisher calls “a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death.” I’m very excited about this read.

 

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

This memoir, winner of the 2019 National Book Award in Nonfiction, is ambitious in its scope: it spans one hundred years of the author’s family history and relationship to their home in New Orleans. The Yellow House magnifies a segment of the city unseen in tourist guides “to demonstrate how enduring drives of clan, pride, and familial love resist and defy erasure” through natural disasters, class inequality, and other challenges.

 

As always, I’ll be posting to report on my progress. In the meantime, enjoy your summer, your own reading choices for the warmer months, and the comfort of your current dwelling.

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Stories and Memories, Flashes and Forms

 

When I wrote my second novel, Bellflower, I was thinking about the end of a life, making sense of events and memories. I had seen loved ones lose their sense of time and place. At the end of my grandmother's life, she sometimes thought my mother was her sister; once, she asked about a place she hadn’t been for decades. I was contemplating that phrase—"her life flashed before her eyes"—and imagining the flashes of memory that might be playing on the screen of my grandmother’s mind during those last weeks of her life.

Bellflower is a “novel-in-moments,” the story of three families told in interconnecting flashes from their lives. The method is not unlike a novel-in-stories, books like Olive Kitteridge and The Things They Carried, and a novel that was one of the fundamentals for me as a youngish undergraduate: Winesburg, Ohio. 

If life is but a series of moments we’ll remember in flashes near our end, why shouldn’t memoir take a variety of inconsistent forms? Reader, it does! And for the past several years, I’ve been seeking out both novels and memoirs that experiment with methods of storytelling. Often, the line between genres is blurry, or filtered through a questionable lens. As memory itself is. There are novels that seem to be hardly veiled autobiography, memoirs so considered in their creative approach that they seem only partially true. Writers attempting to make some sense of their own life (or to distill and express some of what they’ve experienced into a fictional story) stretch, process, and create, and the myriad of forms for memoirs (and novels) continues to expand like the colorful feathers of a peacock’s tail.

A few such books made my list of Favorite Reads, 2020—things like Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl, a memoir that imbues the natural world into Renkl’s mediations on life, love, and grief, and Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill, a novel that reads like a series of journal entries (basically, a memoir). But you can read about those at the link.

Here are some recent reads.

Constellations, by Sinead Gleason, is a study of the female body in general and specifically, it’s about Gleason’s body—illnesses, losses, and other physical changes and experiences. By telling the story of her corporeal self, she explores the intangibles of her "self."  The topics in this collection of essays  vary as much as the methods Gleason employs writing them. She writes about things like pregnancy and breastfeeding, leukemia and blood transfusions, hair and loss. Despite a lifetime of bodily trials, an appreciation for the body—with all of its imperfections—emerges.

Wife / Daughter / Self: A Memoir in Essays, by Beth Kephart, is bold where form is concerned, a read that feels very accurately like being dropped directly into someone’s consciousness. In sections that consider her relation to her husband and her widowed father, Kephart contemplates how these relationships have contributed to her life and development. Often, the result is unflinching. Uncomfortable questions are posed; self-doubt and questions remain as much as answers are found. There is little continuity in form from one section to the next and often, following the thread of Kephart’s thoughts requires a fair amount of effort. There are whole sections told in dialogue, lyrical passages brimming with visceral details, short, pointed revelations that sometimes feel apropos of nothing. As I said, it reads, perhaps, similar to how the mind functions: circuitry firing away, colors and light, flashes of a life.

 

The Suicide Index, by Joan Wickersham, is a memoir centered around the suicide committed by the author’s father. She recounts memories and attempts to make some sense of this incomprehensible loss. This searing look at a particular brand of grief is touching, contemplative, and strikes universal chords about love and loss.

 

Would you like more reading suggestions in this vein? Check out this recent Lithub post, "7 Autobiographies and Memoirs That Remind Us of the Messiness of Memory."

And watch this space for information about my summer reading project for 2021. Regular readers may recall that each summer, I choose a theme and build a reading list around it. Last summer, I read books tied together by association with France, and in 2019, I learned an awful lot about trees. Here's a hint about the focus of my reading for this summer, in the form of a quote from the first book I'll read:

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are suppose, by some, to dream."

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Favorite Reads, 2020

 

What can we say about 2020 that hasn’t been already said (and continues to be said, as we fight our way through the dregs of it)? Well, how about…I read more books this year! There’s one positive outcome. Through this endless expanse of homebound months, I read 44 books, up from 30 last year. In my finished pile this year: 29 novels, 4 short story collections, 5 memoirs, 3 poetry collections, and one autobiography. Last year, I said I wanted to read more biographies this year, which I did not do, and more young adult fiction, which—in part, thanks to my teaching job—I did. It should be noted that one of the books I read this year was a graphic novel, and I expect to have that as a new category in 2021, considering the eagerly anticipated stack on my shelf right now. I also expect to continue reading memoirs in the coming year, particularly those that experiment with form. From time to time, I work on my own strange-form memoir. And I’m beginning to formulate my summer reading project, which will have something to do with place as character—specifically, with houses. If you favor a book in which a house is one of the main characters, kindly send me your recommendation.

So many of the books I read in 2020 struck a deeply personal chord with me. Perhaps my antennae were open and receiving to emotionality during this unprecedented year; perhaps those were the type of reads that caught my eye and attention. In the end, it doesn’t matter. So many books were a balm for me this year. Of my ten favorite reads, most had some sort of autobiography or memoir element, whether it be direct, poetic, auto-fictional, or something else. As always, I enjoy reads that inspire contemplations about genre although in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Feeling in writing is what breaks through, at least for me. 

In no particular order, my favorite reads of the year:

 

 Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Winik (2010)

After a discussion about writing memoir, my friend and colleague (thanks, Jessica!) said I would love this slim memoir, and I did. In chronological order throughout short chapters, Winik reminisces about people she has known who died. Each section is titled (i.e. The Eye Doctor, The Bon Vivant, The Graduate); some are people quite close to her and some are known through others. All left an imprint on her and as she writes about these losses, much more is revealed about Winik herself, life in general, and the times we live in. A unique, surprising—and ultimately, touching read.

Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill (2014)

This novel reads like a series of journal entries, short observations from the point of view of a mother, a wife. When the marriage falters due to an infidelity, she retraces the events of their relationship, trying to find a way forward. She talks about the isolation and fulfillment of motherhood, and about striving for a creative life amidst life’s demands. She notices patterns and brings up things she’s read and learned, all in a concentrated effort to make sense of life, her life. I loved this book. Like the best poetry, I often wanted to take my eyes from the page after reading a section and lean back, enjoying the ripples of association. Another unique, contemplative and beautiful read.

The Carrying by Ada Limón

How does one speak about poetry, about a collection that speaks to so many deep truths? In this stunning book of poems, Limon shows the range of human experience, the burdens and joys we carry from beginning to end. Maybe it’s best if I share my favorite.

After the Fire

You ever think you could cry so hard

that there’d be nothing left in you, like

how the wind shakes a tree in a storm

until every part of it is run through with

wind? I live in the low parts now, most

days a little hazy with fever and waiting

for the water to stop shivering out of the

body. Funny thing about grief, its hold

is so bright and determined like a flame,

like something almost worth living for.

 

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

This National Book Award winner garnered many more accolades in the year it was released and it’s been on my shelf for some time. Written as a series of letters to his son that touch on the history of African Americans in this country, Coates describes his own life experiences within the framework of racial inequity. In describing what it’s been like for him to survive and make his way as a black man, he also he expresses his fears and hopes for his son. Toni Morrison called the book “required reading,” and CNN named it one of the most influential books of the decade. I only wish I had gotten to it sooner.

 

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl (2019)

This captivating, introspective book marries grief with hope, and reminds us that humans exist within the folds of nature. Renkl has experienced many of the life changes we all experience: marriage, children, aging parents and loss. In chapters that alternate between memories of family stories, episodes of love and grief, and observations of the plant and animal life outside her back door, a narrative emerges: we are all part of the world, good and bad, bloom and decay, happiness and pain. For me, reading this book was akin to having your hand held. A wise, comforting, and beautifully written book.

 

Based on a True Story (2017) by Delphine de Vigan

The only end-of-year entry from my Summer of France reading (I wrote more about it here), this international bestseller is a surprising and wholly entertaining read. It’s fiction (or is it?), a suspenseful read that follows the friendship between Delphine (the character), who is a writer, and the mysterious woman who reemerges from her past (or has she?). The suspense lies, in part, in figuring out which parts are true, might be true, couldn’t be true. It’s a compelling read with a dark undercurrent. As I said, a great diversion for the elements of the story, but it managed to be an exploration of literature too, and how we determine what is true/real and what is fiction/imagined. And if you’ve been paying attention to the books on my 2020 list so far, you will know that this is a current exploration of mine as well.

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (2018)

Another National Book Award winner (in this case, for Young People’s Literature), this novel-in-verse tells the story of Xiomara, an Afro-Latina teen who finds her voice through spoken word and poetry. Acevedo says she wrote the book to shed light on the experiences of girls who aren’t often the protagonists of novels. This coming-of-age story addresses religion, the first spark of sexuality, family pressures, and the powers of creative and self-expression. An engaging read, it’s beautifully crafted and packs much emotional resonance.

 

The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdoch (2018)

This middle grade novel takes place in the Middle Ages. Boy is a child who has survived the plague but lives in a village desiccated by not only disease, but generations of war as well. When a mysterious pilgrim arrives and chooses Boy to accompany him on a quest to collect the relics of St. Peter and return them to Rome, the adventure of his life begins. It’s a quest story, but so much more, because Boy has much to learn on this pilgrimage—about true spirituality and morality, about the bonds that join people, and about his own true nature. I loved this book for its unique setting, and for the surprising layers in this lovely story for young people.

 

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2018)

The main character of this novel, Eleanor Oliphant, is somewhat of a misfit. Her social skills are questionable, she often says the wrong thing, and she doesn’t spend time with people all that much. When she meets Raymond, a similarly eccentric type, their relationship is the catalyst for her journey back into life and love. This book is funny and smart and full of unseen twists, introducing a character you will remember for a long time. It may seem strange for me to compare this book to the last one on my list—The Book of Boy—but it strikes me that they are similar in many ways. Both are about the redemption available when two unlikely hearts meet.

 

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (2019)

One of my most anticipated books in a long time, and now, one of my favorite reads of the year. Strout picks up the story of Olive Kitteridge, the character from her 2008 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel of the same name. When you love a book as much as I loved the first, you worry about a sequel living up to your expectations. In this case, I was not disappointed. Strout has a way of imbuing life’s ordinary events with gravitas—because, of course, it is exactly life’s most ordinary events that have the most impact. Like Eleanor Oliphant, Olive is a character who is as large as life, and Strout surrounds her with a cast who reveal themselves to be as people are: confounding and endlessly complicated but also, opportunities for warm connection.

Looking back over my list of the year, I would say that what all of these books—whether novel, memoir, or poetry—have in common are that they somehow, in some way, highlight the importance and redemption of human connection. Isn’t that what the best stories are about? I hope your year of reading sustained you somewhat through the challenges 2020 threw our way. As always, I’d love to hear about your favorite reads of the year!

 

 

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Adventures in Memoir

A couple of weeks ago, I finished the first draft of a YA book I didn’t intend to write and so, it comes as no surprise to me that the next project vying for (and currently winning) my attention might be some sort of memoir, another unexpected project. One of the things people often tell us when they find out we’re writers is that they, too, have an idea for a book. Frequently, this idea involves telling—in full or part—the story of their lives. Why? Because this life—its successes and failures, joys and heartaches, fateful events and surprises—is all we have, really. And when things happen to us, they seem full of meaning because they are, right? Or at least, isn’t that why we’re alive, to find meaning in the things that happen to us?

Reader, I have no answers! Only questions.

• I’ve been thinking about the roles we play in life, and how they change from season to season, year to year. I’ve been thinking about the different phases that sometimes, go along with these roles. Sometimes, not.
• I’ve been thinking about how these chapters of life line up, shoulder to shoulder, hyper-aware of each other.
• I’ve been thinking about family and how it’s defined by intent, sentiment, and presence. And the strongest of these is presence (literal and imagined), which proves the other two.
• Related: I’ve been thinking about DNA, the imprints in our very machinery.
• I’ve been thinking about reportage as a way to honor yourself (myself!).
• And...I’m interested in finding ways memories can be translated into words. How can we relay our experiences in a form that feels like life?

Lately, I’ve been reading more in the memoir lane: traditional memoirs and other books that don’t look and sound like traditional memoir, and yet... I share some of them with you here.

The Glen Rock Book of the Dead by Marion Wink (2008)

Shoutout to Prof. Danger for pointing me towards this book. Basically, Wink writes short pieces about people she knew who died; in these snapshots, an autobiography of sorts emerges. I keep thinking about this book, and thinking about it…

The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography by Deborah Levy (2018)

The author writes about her life, post-divorce, touching on universal themes relevant to all women: the conflict between nurturing your creative self and others, feminism's goals and failures, the death of parents. From the Guardian review: “Instead, what Levy gives us is an account of her internal world, a shape-shifting space where past and present coexist, where buildings are not so much bricks and mortar as extended metaphors and where identity is in a radical flux of unraveling and remaking.” Yep, this book hit close to home in topic and in method, was probably the turning point from which I had no choice about writing something memoir-ish.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee (2018)

I wrote about these powerful essays in my Favorite Reads of 2019 post.

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell (2018)

The author recalls seventeen occasions in her life that brought her near death. I found some of these quite poignant, others less so. I’m not sure the book had the cohesiveness I would have liked, but the form and intent were interesting.

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro (2019)

One of the traditional memoirs I’ve read recently. Shapiro was in her mid-fifties when her Ancestry.com DNA test pointed out a startling truth about her family. I also heard the author speak about the experience, and her story is personal and moving but also raises all sorts of ethical questions for our times.

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung (2018)

Another story of biological family lost and found. When Chung was pregnant with her first child, she began a search for her Korean birth parents. This memoir explores ideas of family, identity and culture.

In the works for 2020 reading:

And more:

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (2019)

Constellations: Reflections from Life by Sinead Gleeson (2020)

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl (2019)

I’d love to hear your ideas for memoirs, especially the non-traditional sort. By all means, point me in the right direction as I begin this journey.

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Final Installment, Summer of Chabon: Moonglow

 

I chose Moonglow as the final novel for my summer of reading only books by Michael Chabon. Dutiful readers of this blog will recall that I took a break to cleanse my palette with some short stories somewhere in late August, but mostly, these four Chabon novels were the only fiction I’ve ingested for the past several months: Wonder Boys, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Telegraph Avenue, and Moonglow.

 

To start. It’s amazing to me how different each of these books were, and how varied my reactions could be to writing by the same author. I suppose experiencing an author’s oeuvre, in broad view, is much like looking at a person’s life: a series of changing influences and expressions, many years divided into sections, one person seemingly many different people at different times.

 

So. How would you begin to tell the story of a life? What if that life was inextricably tied to yours, while you were growing and changing and becoming new versions of yourself all the time? What if you love the person, and that colors your perspective? What if you’re a writer of fiction by birth, and your world is further colored and texturized by your impulse to create and find meaning? What if the person whose story you want to tell is leaving you, and you must face the abyss that will follow your telling?

 

This seems to be the task Michael Chabon set for himself with Moonglow, after he spent a week with his dying grandfather, who, in his last days, told many anecdotes from his life. Spending these final moments with his grandfather became the spark for this novel, which reads in many ways like a memoir and which has inspired endless debate as to its genre. People want to know: Which parts are true? Why didn’t he just tell the story from his grandfather’s point of view? How could he possibly know or remember some of those details?

 

My book club was no different; they had questions. I chose this for our September read and we discussed it last night. Being a writer, I think I have more patience than perhaps others do for matters of genre. I’m usually content to let a book be whatever it is. I don’t really care what a book might be called, and while I was reading Moonglow, I didn’t really care what was true and what wasn’t. I was happy to follow along with whatever Chabon intended. It was full of tender, relatable moments and vivid details that resonated and in the end, it struck me as a work of incredible love, of conscientious reverence, of grudging and precocious creativity. And what memoir is entirely true anyway? We tell our own stories from the limits of our singular viewpoint, perspective and memory, and telling the story of someone else introduces more levels, more gaps, more subjective interpretation.

 

As for plot, Moonglow unfolds as a narrator, “Mike,” spends time with his grandfather near the end of the old man’s life. The grandfather tells about his time in the war and brushes with the law, his intellectual obsessions, and the complicated marriage he shared with the narrator’s grandmother. If anything, it’s an exercise of speculation, as the narrator expands the stories into realms he cannot have witnessed. The story has a timeline of sorts, but it jumps around in time and place. With this, the book club also took issue. Perhaps in this regard, the novel could be considered a bit messy. But again, I have more patience with that, I think. Life strikes me as a very messy business, not always lining up in an orderly queue of experiences. Even in this occasional haphazardness, I felt the deep chord of truth. What can I say? I got the feels from Moonglow and I found myself thinking about my relatives who have passed and the stories they told, and the pictures and memorabilia that remain, and the deep, deep grooves they left in the road of my life, my story. If I were to try to tell the story of any of them—of my recently-passed mother, say—I think it would be much like this: things she said, things I remember, things I make up in my head. It seems to me all fiction may fall into this very category, one universal genre, and I’ll be thinking about Michael Chabon’s contribution to it for a good, long while.

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