November in Review — Lit Chat, Vol. 14
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Hi friends,
We made it to December! For me, this means that my brain has started craving hibernation mode: I don’t want to work, or think, or move my body any further than from the bedroom to the kitchen and back. I want to sleep in and eat grilled cheese and play Stardew Valley on the couch under a pile of blankets.
I’m even feeling lazy about reading: I’m nowhere near my original lofty Goodreads goal of 72 books in a year, so I’ve decided that I’m going to take December to indulge in the last 600 pages of the Outlander book I’ve been reading off and on since October. If I finish it and get around to something else this month, great! If not, I will simply enjoy the all-plot-no-thoughts vibes for as long as they last.
However! To atone for this laziness, I’ve decided to do a little end-of-year bracket, pitting the top books from each month against each other to see which one will officially be crowned my favorite book of the year. Start placing your bets now, folks! You’ll be hearing from me a bit more often in the coming weeks as I work through my completely subjective rankings.
One final housekeeping note for my local friends: I’m thinking of starting an informal reading club in the new year, where instead of all reading the same book at a time, everyone just brings one book/story/poem/article they’ve read and loved recently and we all take a turn to show and tell while eating snacks/drinking wine. If that sounds like fun and you’re in the NYC area, reach out!
Okay, okay, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, we still have November to discuss. Let’s get into it.
THE FOUNDATION:
Tom Lake — Ann Patchett
My first Ann Patchett, and I think my first official Covid-19 novel? Tom Lake is the name of the summer stock theater where young actress Lara Kenison falls for soon-to-be movie star, Peter Duke. Decades later, Lara is now retelling this story to her three adult daughters, who have all come home to help work their family’s Michigan cherry farm during the pandemic. The escapism of a nostalgic summer fling works to soothe the pandemic-related anxieties of both reader and characters, but personally, I realized I’m not quite ready to revisit this time in fiction just yet. That said, I think a lot of the moms in my life will relate to Lara’s conflicted happiness over having her family all unexpectedly under one roof again. A good book club book; Reese is onto something here!
Starling House — Alix E. Harrow
Regular readers of this newsletter know that I am simply a sucker for a mysterious, potentially magical old house! In this case, Starling House is the historic home of an eccentric children’s book author, whose eerie stories of a realm called Underland have fascinated orphan Opal McCoy since childhood. When Opal gets offered a job as a cleaner at the now derelict Starling House, it’s more than just an opportunity to support herself and her teenage brother in an unfriendly and unlucky Rust Belt town; it’s the answer to a calling she’s felt her entire life. Throw in a brooding love interest, a cursed family of greedy oligarchs, and a shady corporate antagonist, and you’ve got a perfectly vibey, gothic mystery to curl up with on the couch this winter.
The Sorrows of Others — Ada Zhang
I was first introduced to this collection when I read “Julia” in Electric Lit’s Recommended Reading, a barbed yet beautiful story about a woman preparing to leave the city and reflecting on the breakdown of a once-treasured friendship. I was initially drawn in by Zhang’s emotional precision, particularly the spot-on representation of the grief that comes from reckoning with the past selves you’ve outgrown. This reckoning is a recurrent theme in Zhang’s debut collection, which hops between China and America to feature the tangled stories of immigrants and the children of immigrants: husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, sisters and granddaughters, each of them struggling to reconcile their sense of self against their needs and desires and those of their families. “Julia” is a fantastic entry point to Zhang’s work, but the entire collection is one to be savored, each story sharper and more poignant than the last.
SOLID SUPPORTS:
The Book of Goose — Yiyun Li
This is a little weirdo of a book, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed. In a small provincial town in the post-war French countryside, childhood best friends Fabienne and Agnès decide to play at writing a book together inspired by their lives. With Fabienne as the creative mastermind, Agnès’s name on the cover, and a little help from the local postman, the book captivates the French literary world—catapulting an unprepared Agnès into the spotlight.
It sounds so much simpler than it is. The narrative is told in the present day by Agnès, now an adult living in America, who feels free to tell her story in her own words only after learning that Fabienne has died in childbirth. Even then, the voice of Fabienne’s ghost is ever-present in Agnès’s mind. The Book of Goose is an intricate portrait of female friendship and an insightful exploration of fame, power, influence, and the fleeting nature of it all. @CB, you have redeemed yourself with this rec!
So Late in the Day — Claire Keegan
I read Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These around the same time last year, and I’m thinking of making reading her work something of a seasonal tradition. This slim little volume is a compilation of three previously published short stories: the first, about a man on his would-be wedding day, reflecting on where he went wrong; the second, about a woman on a writing retreat forced to host an unwelcome guest; and the third, about a married woman who decides to have sex with a stranger and gets far more than she bargained for.
I really wrestled with whether or not to give this one the top spot because the last story in particular, “Antarctica,” has positively haunted me. The other two stories are masterful, don’t get me wrong, but “Antarctica” is a whole masterclass in character, pacing, and atmosphere. I’m obsessed with the way Keegan lulls you into a false sense of security alongside the protagonist, denying the instinctual sense of dread steadily creeping in around the edges until the danger becomes chillingly obvious. A week later, it still gives me shivers just thinking about it.
THE TIPPY TOP:
Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro
Surprise, surprise, the Nobel Prize winner comes out on top! As I said, it was a real struggle between this and So Late in the Day, but ultimately, this one has managed to haunt me longer and more completely as a novel rather than a single story in a collection.
Most of Never Let Me Go takes place at Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic English boarding school where its students are cloistered from the broader world while learning everything they will need to one day go out into it as (organ) “donors.” Kath, a former student, narrates the book as an adult reflecting on her childhood while she cares for other donors in preparation for becoming one herself.
What struck me the most about this book is not the ultimate revelation, unsettling as it is (no spoilers!), but how successfully Ishiguro manages to shield us from the disturbing truth for as long as he does. In this way, we are as sheltered as the Hailsham students—we always know there is more to this story, something that likely has broader and more sinister implications for our understanding of this alternate future, but it feels so far removed from the routine of daily life at Hailsham and the intimacies of Kath’s relationships with the other students that you can easily bury the niggling suspicion that something is not quite right.
For such a quiet book, it’s a fairly scathing take on how easily society can become inured to human rights abuses when those being abused are perceived as less than or unhuman, especially when this abuse becomes accepted as the norm. (Sound familiar? It should.) Never Let Me Go was published in 2005, and yet Ishiguro’s warning to society is as timely as ever. He offers no panacea to Kath’s and the other students/donors’ plight, but he does force the reader to bear witness, with full knowledge of the wrong that is being done. It’s up to us to decide at what point we look away.
All right friends, that’s all for today! If you need me, I’ll be in Revolutionary War-era America with Jamie Fraser for the foreseeable future, so don’t call or text (unless it’s to talk about any of the above books or to give me a rec for my 2024 TBR—those texts are always welcome).
Until next time, happy reading!
❤ Catherine
Catherine Thoms 