The past month has included brown (October) and black (November) books. Similar to last month, the first half of this month has focused on some longer books (Tipping the Velvet, which I finished, and Empire of Pain, which I'm still working through), so the balance of colors is tilted toward last month's brown :)
A Place for Us by Fatima Fahreen Mirza: This was my Best of the Bunch for October. This is a lovely family drama tinged with sadness that shows beautifully how the same exact moment can be experienced differently by different members of a family.
From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke: This was a bittersweet memoir that opens with Locke trying to sneak into a Sicilian orchard to scatter some of her late husband's ashes. From there we alternate between hearing about their life together and seeing Locke try to navigate grief, single parenthood, and her relationship with her late husband's also-widowed mother in Sicily. I'm not sure I was quite as deeply moved by the story as many readers, but I did appreciate being on the journey with Locke.
H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: This ended up being a surprising slog for a book under 350 pages. It's three stories in one: Macdonald's grief over the loss of her father, her journey of training a goshawk, and T.H. White's own life experiences that included attempting to train a goshawk (badly). I found aspects of the hawk training very interesting, and her writing is dense and evocative, but the braiding together of the three threads didn't work as well for me.
The Resurrection Appearances: Fragments of a Daybook by Jay Aquinas Thompson: Thompson's experience as a poet shines through in this fragmented memoir of the year their mother died. Like grief, there is not a linear story here; we occasionally jump back in time to the day of their mother's death (or before) while seeing in flashes how they're coping with her death in the present and also trying to make sense of the relationship they had with their mother in the past. The language is beautiful and evocative and most sections less than a page, which made it a great bedside book to read a few pages of each night and marinate in.
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo: This was a sweet book, probably most appropriate for older middle grade readers, about a horse who grows up alongside a boy on a farm and then is taken off to serve the English cavalry in World War I before his beloved boy is old enough to enlist. As an adult reader, I found the level of suspension of disbelief to be a bit distracting, but I can see how this could be a decent introduction to the horrors of war for a younger audience without being too scarring.
Eleven Stolen Horses by Robin Somers: This one was a definite mixed bag. Somers does a great job with descriptions, especially when evoking the feel of different places, but unfortunately, I spent most of the book disoriented and tripping on inconsistencies. I genuinely wanted to like this more because the sentence-level writing was so good, but I was far too distracted by the dire need for better developmental editing.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw: I'm famously not a fan of short story collections, but this was one of the better ones I've read. Each of the narrator's voices felt authentic, like a real, unique woman sharing about her life. The last few stories were less strong, but on the whole I can see why this collection is frequently recommended, and I'm glad to have finally read it.
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters: This was quite the ride! I didn't know where the plot was going from one point to the next, and while I didn't always understand the choices the protagonist made, I found myself entranced by the story and wanting to know how she'd handle each new situation. The ending didn't quite land for me, but it's clear that Waters is a talented writer, and I'd be glad to read more of her work.
Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: Who Deserves Your Love, The Hero of Ages, and Tell Me More
Five years ago I was reading: Wholehearted Faith and An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
Ten years ago I was reading: The Girls, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, and Friendship at the Margins
