"Skinship," by Yoon Choi

As it turns out, I have read several books by Korean American writers lately. One that I just finished is a collection of short stories titled “Skinship” (Knopf, 2021), by Yoon Choi. Most of the stories are set in the USA, with brief visits to Korea. The main characters are generally either first or second generation immigrants, and there are often painful misunderstandings and tensions between generations, as is true for immigrants from many other countries as well. Many of the stories are written from the point of view of children of immigrants, and of the many, often delicate, sometimes debilitating balancing acts they learn to perform. Their conflicted relationships with their parents are palpably fraught with both pain and tenderness. Of course the same is sometimes true of non-immigrant families, but there are particular cultural, historical, linguistic, and other factors associated with immigration. The stories are suffused with specific, sharply drawn details about language, food, family, expectations, relationships, silences. Although the stories are embedded in “the immigrant experience,” each story has its own identity, and is about, but also about more than, “just” immigrants’ lives and feelings.

The Fiction of English Author Elizabeth Taylor

During difficult times, I often find myself revisiting old friends: authors and books that I have loved and admired greatly, and that I have frequently re-read. One such author whose books I have turned to again lately is the mid-20th century English writer Elizabeth Taylor. I have read and re-read almost all of her fiction, and have written here before (2/23/10, 6/27/15, 7/31/15), highly appreciatively, of her novels and short stories. I just re-read Taylor’s first novel, “At Mrs. Lippincote’s” (1945), and read for the first time her last book, completed while she was dying of cancer, and published posthumously, “Blaming” (1976). I won’t repeat all that I have written about Taylor’s work before, except to say that it is low-key in plot, highly focused on character, especially of women, and meticulously observant of the daily lives, thoughts, and feelings of her characters. Taylor does not shy away from portraying the less admirable aspects of her characters’ thoughts and behaviors, but always makes us understand them. She does not sentimentalize or dramatize, yet we readers are drawn in, mulling over and savoring each passage, each minute revelation.

"Small Pleasures," by Clare Chambers

Being something of an Anglophile, I regret that some fiction published in the UK is not published in the U.S. But when a really good novel published only in the UK makes its way into U.S. book reviews, and/or libraries or bookstores, it feels like a gift. My latest “discovery” of an author is a case in point. Clare Chambers’ 2020 novel, “Small Pleasures” (Weidenfeld and Nicolson) received glowing reviews in several U.S. periodicals. Don’t be put off by the main plot catalyst, that the protagonist, London-based journalist Jean Swinney, is investigating a woman’s claim that her daughter was the result of a virgin birth. I was almost put off myself, reading the reviews that revealed this unlikely plot point. But when I got a copy of the novel, I was completely seduced by the book blurbs (I know, one can't always trust book blurbs, but sometimes they are helpful in getting a general sense of a novel), partly because so many of them made comparisons between Clare Chambers and some of my very favorite authors: Barbara Pym in particular, but also Anita Brookner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Dorothy Whipple. I did read the book, and enjoyed and admired it thoroughly. Plot, character, originality, and the high quality of the writing drew me in. It turned out that “Small Pleasures” was Chambers’ first novel in ten years. Of course I then looked for her earlier novels, which were not easily accessible, but I did find some in my local library and online. The other two I have read so far, “Learning to Swim” (Arrow Books, 1998) and “The Editor’s Wife” (Century, 2007) are also excellent. I will keep looking for more of her fiction.

"By the Book" Column in The New York Times Sunday Book Review

I always thoroughly peruse The New York Times (Sunday) Book Review, and jot down titles that are reviewed there that I want to read, or at least to further investigate. One feature of the NYTBR that is always fun to read, and sometimes surprising, even provocative, is the column “By the Book,” in which an author or other prominent person (scientist, politician, actor, etc.) is interviewed about what she/he reads. Questions usually include, for example, “What books are on your nightstand?”, “What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?”, “Which writers…working today do you admire most?” “How do you organize your books?”, and “Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t?” Naturally I tend to especially like reading the answers of authors that I like and whose work I have read. But I also enjoy pushing my own literary boundaries by reading the replies of authors whose work I have not read, or have read and not particularly liked. I also note the tone of the answers, which is sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes humorous, sometimes charming, sometimes self-deprecating, and sometimes critical and even a little cranky. No matter the tone or content, “By the Book” is consistently rewarding and entertaining.

"What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction," by Alice McDermott

Sometimes I am so struck by a book, so thoroughly impressed, and so enchanted, that I put off writing about it here, for fear of not doing it justice. Such is the case with Alice McDermott’s terrific book “What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). I have thoroughly enjoyed several of McDermott’s novels (e.g., “That Night,” “After This”), so I was drawn to this current book, read it a couple of months ago, and basically fell in love with it. Today I realized that if I put off posting about it any longer, I might just not do it. So although I have lost the immediacy of writing about this book just after I read it, and the clear memory of the specifics therein, now I simply urge any writer or reader of fiction to read this book. It is wise, helpful, entertaining, and full of wonderful advice, personal stories, and beautiful writing. McDermott tells of her own writing experiences, her teaching of writing, her feelings about writing and reading, and much more. Specific authors whom she discusses include (in no particular order) Welty, Faulkner, Woolf, Roth, Cheever, Naylor, James, Olsen, Tolstoy, Melville, Morrison, Nabokov, Porter, Joyce, Hellman, Robinson, Forster, Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, O’Connor, Cisneros, and so many more. She is generous with passages from the novels of these and other authors, and her analysis of the passages is precise, insightful, and revelatory. “What About the Baby?” is utterly engaging, and although I know I am not doing it justice here, I again beseech anyone interested in the world of fiction to seek out this book.

"Fiona and Jane," "The Last Bookshop in London, "The Mission House," and "Oh William!"

I have gotten behind with posting here, so today I will briefly describe four of the books I have read lately. The novel “Fiona and Jane” (Viking, 2022 – the first 2022 title of the year mentioned in this blog!), by Jean Chen Ho, is an engaging story of two close friends, both Taiwanese American, growing up together in Los Angeles, and then living disparate but still connected lives in other places. The portrayals of female friendship, of family interactions, and of what it is like to grow up Asian American, are all compelling. “The Last Bookshop in London” (Hanover Square Press, 2021), by Madeline Martin, is an absorbing, very close-up story of what it was like to live in London during World War II. It is also about a young woman who starts working in a bookstore there, and gradually becomes drawn into the world of books and people who love books. You can see why I loved this novel! “The Mission House” (Scribner, 2020), by Carys Davies, was recommended to me by my fellow MK, Mary L., and I am so glad she drew it to my attention. It is the story of a rather emotionally broken-down man who has come to India almost on a whim, after he lost his job as a librarian in England. He ends up at a formerly British hill station in South India, one which is based on a real hill station called Ootacamund, popularly known as “Ooty,” and is very happy there. Indian hill stations are refuges in the cool hills from the intense heat of the plains during the summer months. It happens that when I lived in India as a child, my family spent some time in Ooty, and although I was very young then, I have fond memories of the place. I later went to boarding school in another hill station in India, Kodaikanal, an important and wonderful part of my life. But in addition to that connection, I was bowled over by the writer’s perceptive character portraits, the interactions among the characters, the cultural issues revealed, the descriptions of Ooty, the remnants of British presence still apparent there, and the crisp, precise, and evocative writing. Finally, I am a real fan of Elizabeth Strout’s novels, which include “Olive Kitteridge,” “Olive, Again,” and “My Name is Lucy Barton,” so of course I read her most recent novel, “Oh William!” (Random House, 2021), and I was not disappointed. As in most of Strout’s fiction, the emphasis is on characters rather than plot. The main character and main narrator, Lucy Barton (yes, the same one), tells of her first, now ex-, husband William and her ongoing (platonic, complicated, exasperating but loving) relationship with him. The main events of the book have to do with Lucy’s accompanying William on a trip to find out more about a mysterious family secret. But the book is really about their relationship, and their relationships with other characters, and their history, and the small and large matters of daily life that add up over years of common history. I strongly recommend all four of these varied, terrific novels.

"The Sentence," by Louise Erdrich

When Louise Erdrich’s wonderful novels started coming out in the 1980s, I read and was impressed by those early novels: “Love Medicine,” “The Beet Queen,” and more. Erdrich was one of the first Native American writers to be widely read, thus creating a major representation of Native Americans, and a major contribution to diversity of literature in the United States and beyond. The author herself is of mixed Native American and European heritage. Many of her novels take place on or near reservations. For some reason, after reading the early novels, I stopped reading Erdrich’s work. I can’t remember exactly why. But this month, I read enough positive reviews about her new novel, “The Sentence” (Harper, 2021), that I bought and read it. One of the big draws for me is that the novel largely takes place in an independent bookstore (in Minneapolis) that focuses on Native American literature, as part of its wider variety of books. It happens that Erdrich also owns and runs a bookstore in Minnesota. I also like the idea of the wordplay around the title. The “sentence” refers to the main character’s time in prison for a strange incident that was not really her fault. It also refers to the main character's (Tookie’s) sentences – mostly from the many books that this character reads – that are meaningful to her. The main thread in the story is that there is a ghost in the bookstore whose noisy presence seems to be aimed at Tookie, and is increasingly distressing for her. (According to the author bio, Erdrich’s real life bookstore also has a ghost.) Tookie is a great character, vivid and unique, and she is surrounded by other wonderful characters: her husband, her stepdaughter, her colleagues in the bookstore, the store’s regular customers, and more. Since “The Sentence” takes place in 2019-2020, it also addresses the COVID pandemic and the demonstrations related to the George Floyd murder. Although the book deals with serious topics regarding the oppression of Native Americans through history and currently, as well as regarding the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, this novel has many humorous moments as well. And throughout, there are so many mentions of books that are important to the characters, and to history; books are a powerful presence. After reading this novel, I may be going back to some of Erdrich’s novels that I missed over the past three decades.