'Flowers in my Studio (Always a delight)' by Milton Grubert; acrylic on canvas board
This month was another good reading month with plenty of enjoyable books and two outstanding novels and a history. There was a strong collection of eerie stories perfect for the winter months, an interesting look at a great artist, a fascinating history of different ways people use needlework to tell a story, the gentle story of a driver of a bookmobile in Quebec, the tale of a long walk taken in NYC on New Year's Eve in 1984, the story of a decision made by a man in the Deep South, another about the life of a schoolmaster in the steppes of Russia, and a classic detective story set in Buenos Aires after the war.
In October the winner of the second Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction was announced, and I was very pleased to see that Rebecca Campbell won for her outstanding book of linked short stories Arboreality. I wrote about this book back in July and was struck by the way Campbell combined a bluntly honest look at what climate change is in the process of doing to the Pacific Northwest while showing the role community, creativity, and interconnectedness could play. The announcement of the prize can be found here.
If a title is linked it will take you to the full review.
Autumn Rounds - Jacques Poulin (tr. Sheila Fischman) The stunning landscape of the North Shore of the St. Lawrence river is the setting for this gracefully gentle story of a man known as the Driver who works for the Ministry of Culture. He drives a converted milk van that he and his father turned into a traveling bookmobile and three times a year he leaves home in Quebec City and travels throughout the North Shore distributing books, picking up those that have been read, and throwing open the doors for the public and tourists to browse the shelves.
After all this the magic still worked: the moment the door was shut you were in another world, silent and comforting, where the warmth of the books prevailed, with their secret scent, their many colors — sometimes bright and sometimes as sweet as honey.
As he's about to leave on his summer tour he meets the members of a little performing group from France and he ends talking with Marie, the organizer and a bit of a mother figure to the others. After a festival appearance and other performances in Quebec City the group ask if they can travel part of the way with the Driver during his summer trip so they can give performances throughout the North Shore while they explore it. They buy and fix up an old school bus and off they set with the bookmobile leading the way. At times they travel together, at others they go their own way; Marie sometimes travels with the group and sometimes joins the Driver on his route.
This particular trip is a momentous one for the Driver, he's made a decision about his future, but with the unexpected addition of Marie and the performing group he begins to ask himself if it's the right one. The group explores the landscape and sights of the North Shore and the Driver does his rounds making contact with the people who circulate books they choose among a small number of locals. He comes across his novelist friend, Jack, who is just beginning a new book.
As usual, when he had just published a novel, he was incapable of beginning another until he'd started to hate the one he'd just published.
The Driver and Marie slowly and carefully develop their friendship as they travel along the river and find much in common. The tone of the book is tender and a little melancholy, and though it doesn't seem as if much happens, by the end lives have changed. A thoroughly enjoyable and charming book.
Archipelago Books, 2021
Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington - Joanna Moorhead A look at the life of the Surrealist artist and writer with a focus on the places she lived in and how they influenced her work. The book is lavishly illustrated with Carrington's art and photographs of fellow artists and places. A beautiful book to spend some time with.
Princeton University Press, 2023
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk - Kathleen Rooney It's New Year's Eve in 1984 in New York City and Lillian Boxfish plans to partake in her usual celebration of dining at a local restaurant she has been going to for years then tucking herself up in bed with a book. But the octogenarian's evening takes a different path. Ever since she arrived in the city in 1926 she has been an indefatigable walker and still is. This evening's walk takes her from her apartment in Murray Hill to Delmonico's in the financial district downtown with several other stops and finally ends up at a New Year's party of a young artist friend on the West Side.
During her peregrinations she meets various people and finds out about their lives, walks past buildings that bring back memories of her life, and observes what has changed since she first arrived in the city and what hasn't. The character is loosely based on the life of Margaret Fishback, who wrote witty ad copy for R.H. Macy's in the 1930s and was the highest-paid woman in the business. She was also a poet and had several volumes of her verse published. The city and the people in it are Lillian's muse.
My funny old brain, like those of many poets, has always done its best work sideways, seeking out tricky enjambments and surprising slant rhymes to craft lines capable of pulling their own weight. Taking to the pavement always helps me find new routes around whatever problem I'm trying to solve: phrases on signs, overheard conversations, the interplay between the rhythms of my verse and the rhythm of my feet.
But Lillian fell in love with Max Caputo, the head rug buyer for Macy's, married and had a son. When she was pregnant she lost her job although continued to do freelance work. When her marriage falls apart, she does too and goes through a rough patch.
The author has created a wonderful character in Lillian who changes over her life, but fundamentally remains the same. She's someone who reaches out and appreciates others, knows what she wants, and thrives in the creative energy of the city. And I enjoyed going along on the walk with her, having walked through those neighborhoods myself at a later time when they had changed yet again.
St. Martin's Press, 2017
The Haunting Season: Eight Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights A collection of eight stories by eight award-winning authors to enjoy during the dark, cold months. Several of them take place around the holiday season and includes one of my favorites, Natasha Pulley's The Eel Singers. It is set in a memory-snatching Fens village around Christmas when the unconventional family of Keita Mori, Thaniel and Six leave London because Mori is feeling overwhelmed by memories.
Keita Mori could remember the future, and if he was being honest, which he wasn't often, he did not enjoy it.
A chess-loving bully comes across a house that reminds him of a chessboard and has topiary shaped as chess pieces. When he realizes it is available to rent, he takes it immediately, but finds out chess might not be his game after all in A Study in Black and White by Bridget Collins. Imogen Hermes Gowar's Thwaite's Tenant is a frightening tale of a woman with a young son who is trying to get away from her abusive husband and learns that her father is not on her side, but something else is. In The Chillingham Chair by Laura Purcell an old mechanical invalid's chair is provided to a guest at a country house when she breaks her foot in a riding accident. She and her family are there to attend the wedding between the host and her younger sister, but the chair seems to be haunted and she's convinced it's trying to kill her. A top-notch collection to enjoy for a little shivery eeriness while tucked under the blankets.
Pegasus Crime, 2021
A Different Drummer - William Melvin Kelley This superb novel was first introduced to me by my mother years ago and was a re-read for Karen and Simon's 1962 Book Club week. It takes place in a fictitious Deep South state where the actions of one man to free himself from his history inspires others to do likewise, and that action has profound and unexpected consequences. Very highly recommended.
Anchor Books, 1990
A Volga Tale - Guzel Yakhina (tr. Polly Gannon) The author's second novel after the excellent Zuleikha, this is a book set in a village of Volga Germans and tells the story of the schoolmaster Jacob Ivanovich Bach during the momentous years of the early 20th century. Bach is a wonderful character and through his story the author also tells the story of the community and what happened to it during those years. Highly recommended.
Europa Editions, 2023
Death Going Down - María Angélica Bosco (tr. Lucy Greaves) A drunk Francisco Soler returns home to his apartment in Buenos Aires around 2AM after a night out on the town and finds a dead woman in the elevator. Soon Dr. Adolfo Luchter arrives and he notifies the caretaker and police. No one in the small building admits to knowing who she was and there's a general feeling among the police that it was suicide by poison. But Inspector Ericourt and his assistant Blasi have their doubts and when they uncover links between the tenants and another death takes place, the investigation goes into high gear.
First published in 1954 this classic detective story features an interesting cast of characters, many of them immigrants from a postwar Europe. Their histories haunt them. They include the awful Bulgarian Boris Czerbó and Rita, the sister he mistreats and who keeps house for him; the Iñarra family, ill patriarch Agustin, second wife Gabriela, independent daughter Beatriz or Betty; the murdered woman's husband, Gustavo Eidinger; non-entity Soler; and dependable doctor Luchter.
The two main investigators, Santiago Ericourt and Ferruccio Blasi, are an intriguing duo, Blasi is young and learning, but he's not a Watson, he will become an able investigator in his own right. Somehow Ericourt reminded me just a little of Maigret. Perhaps it's the tenaciousness he shows in chasing down what seem like irrelevant details. This was another wonderful entry in Pushkin's imprint that specializes in international crime fiction.
Pushkin Vertigo, 2016
Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle - Clare Hunter So often dismissed as a women's pointless pastime, needlework has been used around the world throughout history as a way of telling emotionally charged, often untold stories. It's been used as a way to effectively protest and to document abuses, and to communicate what is happening under tyranny to the outside world. It's used to carry on cultural traditions and to recover traditions and community when they have been destroyed by war or other forces, to document history and people's lives. Some have used it to tell a story that is untellable in words, others to incite action from those who are not listening.
The author, a Scottish needlewoman who has been deeply involved in community arts, takes us to France, England, China, Ukraine, Palestine, Poland, India, America, Peru, Chile, and other places to show how different cultures, groups, and individuals have expressed themselves with fabric, thread, and needles. She weaves her own story in too.
She covers the history of how needlework was gradually devalued from an art to a craft, from being so highly valued women were no longer permitted to practice it as a profession to being dismissed as mindless amateur women's work. It wasn't until the late 1800s that creative needlework started to be acknowledged again as an art form using thread instead of paint as the medium. The medium may still be undervalued, but it's a potent artistic language and with this book the author has given readers a powerful look into the fascinating history of thread art. Highly recommended.
Abrams Press, 2019
I've been reading Robyn Schiff's marvelous book-length poem Information Desk, about the time when she was a young woman and worked at the information desk in the grand entrance hall of the Met Museum in NYC, and dipping into a collection of Ursula K. Le Guin's essays. The cataract of fall release books keeps adding more and more to my TBR wishlist and I'm looking forward to finding out what books my November reading will bring. Are you finding any especially enticing titles in the new autumn releases?
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