May 29, 2023
Books Round-Up
Some books I’ve been reading lately that you deserve to know about!
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You can never have too much of a good thing, especially if the good thing in question is an extension of @alikbryan’s smart and hilarious debut novel ROOST. Its follow-up, COQ, is set a decade later as Claudia’s father has just remarried , now it’s her brother’s turn to have a marriage fall apart, Claudia’s ex husband is displaying peculiar symptoms of wanting to get back together, all of this against the backdrop of an epic family trip to Paris to remember Claudia’s late mother. COQ is a romp, deeply felt, a delight.
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In her new memoir UNEARTHING, Kyo Maclear’s achinging personal experience—after the death of her father and a chance encounter with a DNA test, she discovers that her father was not her biological father after all, and any attempts to understand the true story of her origins are obscured by her complicated mother whose diagnosis of dementia only makes clarity harder to find; or does it?—turns out not only to be a fascinating mystery to unravel, but also a meditation on the possibilities of story and family itself, about what it means to relate to or be related to some people and not others. It’s also a story of seasons, and gardens, what can be found in the fog, and the importance of leaving room in your list for strange and unexpected things to happen. It’s so good.
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I loved this book, a novel that was everything it’s beautiful cover had led me to suppose it might be. A novel that author Margie Taylor wrote with a specific audience in mind, women over sixty who are imagining their lives are set, children are grown, marriage established, when along comes a series of new seismic shifts that change everything. For the eponymous Rose, it all begins with her husband’s abrupt announcement that he’s retired from university teaching, and then her daughter moves home, and then Rose invites a charismatic young man into the family fold who’s nothing like what she thought he was, and suddenly Rose Addams’ comfortable life is turned upside down. A novel about family and friendship and the limits of what a wife and mother can control, ROSE ADDAMS was smart and funny, a delight to encounter, and reminiscent of Carol Shields’ fiction.
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This Bird Has Flown, by Susanna Hoffs
Susanna Hoffs wrote a novel…and I love it? Which shouldn’t be so surprising, because Susanna Hoffs also wrote “Eternal Frame,” which is a work of art that’s moved me more times than most works of art I can think of. But you know what? I’ve been disappointed by fiction by ’80s superstars before, so I went into this novel carefully, cautiously. The story of a one-hit wonder 33 year-old-old singer whose failure to launch is getting her down…when she is seated next to an impossibly attractive Oxford English Professor on a flight to London, and sparks fly (and then some!). If you’ve got a thing (and I sure do!) for fiction with a lot of swearing and nearly as much masturbation, then this book is for you. It was funny, fresh, and surprising, managing to blend rom-com and Gothic tropes (JANE EYRE! REBECCA!) in bizarre and splendid ways. What smart, smart fun.
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At first I wasn’t really sure I NEEDED to read an updated version of THE PURSUIT OF LOVE, by Nancy Mitford, but it turns out that India Knight’s modern day spin is very funny, perfectly delightful. As good as that cover.
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Song of the Sparrow, by Tara MacLean
I remember Tara Maclean’s “If I Fall” playing on the radio when I was 20 and full of angst, and I remember writing the lyric “It looks like a good place here/ so I think I’ll stay for a while” in the margins of my Norton Anthology while thinking about boys who I wished would love me. (And in my mind, that song on the radio would always be followed by “Love Song,” by Sky. Oh, how music is a time machine.)
I first heard about her new memoir, SONG OF THE SPARROW, from my friend @marissastapley who was blown away by MacLean’s story of her unconventional childhood on Prince Edward Island, born to practising Wiccans who’d become Evangelical Christians who filled her world with meaning and magic and music, but who also left her vulnerable to abuse and neglect. A devastating low point of her peripatetic childhood was when MacLean and her siblings were nearly lost in a house fire that made national headlines.
In a story that recalls the essays in Sarah Polley’s acclaimed memoir RUN TOWARD THE DANGER, Tara MacLean bravely faces down the darkest corners of her history and shows how trauma doesn’t have to be the end of a story. With exceptional grace, generosity, wisdom and faith in her own power, MacLean shows the possibilities of going beyond mere survival and creating a rich and vibrant life of one’s own.
Her stories in 1990s’ music success are also really wonderful to read, filled with familiar names, and perhaps the best kind of namedropping, because each one includes an anecdote or detail about what that person taught MacLean and just how generous or exceptional they are. (Special shout out to Tom Cochrane and his wife Kathy who invited MacLean to give birth in their house!).
A beautiful memoir about what it means to stay steady on ever-shifting ground and even rise above it to fly.
