Catherine House, by Elisabeth Thomas: I find myself very intrigued by how archetypal the narrator of this novel felt, how similar to the protagonists of other books I’ve read recently, and how difficult it is to spell out exactly why she feels that way. I find myself thinking “they’re all the sort of hot messy girl who is detached and doesn’t care” but then recognizing the ways in which half of them actually care deeply about something or everything and don’t fit that trope. There’s a certain feeling of detachment I get from all of them, a sense that nothing can faze them. I’m thinking of the narrator of Blue Ticket by Sophie McIntosh, but there are other echoes I can’t quite recall. Catherine House is a sort of cross-breed between cloistered, debaucherous academia (eg Secret History) and dystopian mind/body alteration through science. I didn’t love it overall, but I admired the writing, and the author was so adept at creating sadness that I might rank one element of the plot up there with the other saddest things I’ve ever read, like Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” a particular scene from Jesus’ Son, or Kathryn Harrison’s scenes about trying to help kittens open their eyes before they were ready. The ending, though…I’ve recently read a few books whose endings have been just perfect, and this one was unsatisfying.
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, by Laura van den Berg: I loved Find Me and then inexplicably never read van den Berg’s second novel, The Third Hotel. Why! Must remedy. These are excellent stories. I feel a perpetual sense of sadness about short stories, though, because I feel lacking somehow (or lacking of something) when, long after or even immediately after finishing the collection, I don’t remember half of the stories – not what they were about, not individual lines, not plot points. I suppose there are a very few exceptions to this – the exceptions tend to correspond to extremely memorable plots or surprising lines, though, not necessarily to the short stories that have stunned me the most (for example: Deborah Eisenberg and Lorrie Moore are two of the greatest short story writers and I can only tell you that Eisenberg’s most recent collection had the best description of a puppet show that I’ve ever encountered and…actually, I can recall the general feeling and multiple lines from Moore’s “Like Life.”) Now I’m trying to recall each of the stories from some of the best collections I’ve read recently – Sabrina and Corina, Blacklight, Man v. Nature – and I do find that I can give a pitch of at least three stories from each. There’s still something gently disconcerting, though, about not being able to pull up each short story, examine it briefly, and put it back. I know that I’m leaving out half of the experience of a short story collection, ie the experience you have during the actual time you’re reading the stories. And I know that fuzzy or nonexistent memory of stories past could be perceived as a boon, because it means you can reread your favorites anew again! but it gives me the empty feeling of a winter Sunday. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (which is a brilliant title) is amazing with place; most of the stories triangulate around Florida, Boston, or Italy, though there’s one set in Mexico.
A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry (reread): And I loved it just as much the second time. There are many 600-page books that feel like a slog, and a good number that feel enjoyable but long, and then there are those that read too quickly and end too soon. The ending breaks me, but clearly I went back in to be broken again. Mistry is incredibly adept at using words I’ve never heard before without any sense of pretense or deliberate erudition, and his ratio of astounding images to straighter narration is perfect. I assigned A Fine Balance to one of my students and, though I try not to take responses to novels personally, I was elated when she loved it right from the prologue. The structure, the expansiveness balanced with detail…one of my oldest friends recommended this to me years ago and now I pass that recommendation on universally.
The Third Rainbow Girl, by Emma Copley Eisenberg: The author’s journalistic take on story of a double murder, single disappearance; also the story of the history of a part of Appalachian West Virginia; also the author’s personal narrative of living and working in that part of West Virginia; all compelling.
The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin: This was so good but I just finished it and don’t think I can describe it without crying/continuing to cry. Instead I’ll just say that Chloe Benjamin is, to my knowledge, one of the only residents of the Venn diagram center of “successful writer” and “people who follow all of the same gymnastics competitions/commentators/twitters that I do.” One final note – other than to reiterate how much I loved this book – how is “immortalist” not a recognized word?
