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FOSTER by Claire Keegan

It is tempting after you enjoy a book by a new author to immediately read another. I know this is a big mistake, and I have a rule never to do it. I broke my rule, and indeed: it was a mistake.

I loved SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE, a very brief novel about a moral decision faced by a middle aged man in a small Irish town. It’s a miracle of brevity and impact. This next one, FOSTER, is similarly very brief. And maybe it’s also a miracle; but somehow I didn’t get it. It just seemed short. Maybe it’s not as good as the other, or maybe, which is what I suspect, the first time you read a writer you don’t see their ‘tricks,’ and the second time you do. I don’t know.

WHAT I READ IN 2022

Every year I enjoy this last post of the year, where I tot up everything I’ve read. It makes me feel like whatever else has been going on, at least I have not been totally wasting my time. I like looking at the pictures, which remind me where I have been physically, but even more looking at the titles, which remind me of where I have been not-physically. Greenland in the 1950s? Italy in the 1250s? Ohio in the opiod crisis? Stockholm in the middle of someone’s insane crush? I counted up and 15 countries are represented. To my surprise I also read a large majority of female writers (43 of the 69), and for the first time ever a big chunk was memoir or non-fiction. Best of the year was:

MY FIRST THIRTY YEARS by Gertrude Beasley, a mild-alteringly angry and inspirational memoir about overcoming poverty and the patriachy (before they catch up with you and throw you in an insane asylum)

MY PHANTOMS by Gwendoline Riley, which is a lacerating examination of a woman’s relationship with her mother. Small talk has never been so excruciating. Deservedly on many best-of lists this year

MRS PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT by Elizabeth Taylor, a wonderfully funny and sad novel about the steely optimism needed to face old age

MICHEL THE GIANT: AN AFRICAN IN GREENLAND by Tete-Michel Kpomassie, a book about how you can live the life of your wildest and most eccentric dreams. Written by someone who should be considered an African ICON.

WILFUL DISREGARD by Lena Andersson, which shows how love can be madness, and not in a cute fun way. Shows how easy it is to slip into mania, be it a about the second coming, hand washing, or, as in this case, about a boy

That’s just the short list, not even getting into THE MERCHANT OF PRATO (most complete documented account of a Medieval life) I’M GLAD MY MOTHER DIED (memoir of child star), or GIOVANNI’S ROOM (being gay not easy).

That was 2022. I’m surprised I didn’t read more, given how long I was sick with Covid. But I guess reading takes a certain kind of focus. Here’s to a better 2023.

Full list:

BEST YEAR YET by Jenny Ditzler

Read for the third time for making of new year’s resolutions

BURMESE DAYS by George Orwell

Here is a novel about the British Raj in Burma in the 1920s. You would think if you are going to go to the trouble of colonizing a place you would at least enjoy yourself. Here, they do nothing but bitch. It’s too hot, we don’t like the food, there aren’t enough sidewalks and etc. I just finished THE GREAT FIRE, where they did some similar whining, but about Australia. I don’t think this happened as much in Southern Africa (e.g., ‘Happy’ Valley), possibly because it’s just a better place. SHOUTOUT TO THE SUBCONTINENT!

The story is around a man named John Flory, who particularly suffers with the narrow-mindedness and (though he does not call it this) racism of his colleagues. He falls madly in love with a young woman who is as narrow-minded and racist as any of them, but he is frankly desperate. Meanwhile, his only real friend, an Indian doctor, is at risk from a corrupt Burmese official. Unsurprisingly, it all ends badly.

It’s in that ‘unsurprisingly’ that my issue with this book sits. The whole thing drips with doom from the beginning. It’s like a morality story, in which the good die young, told very slowly. I don’t know too much about the British in Burma, but it also strongly has the vibe of being written by someone who wasn’t there for very long but still has a lot of opinions. And yet, I still enjoyed it. Orwell’s a good writer, and this was an interesting window into a certain kind of (thankfully) lost life.

THE GREAT FIRE by Shirley Hazzard

I nearly gave up on this book multiple times. I found the style kind of hard to read, and the dialogue fake-y. And then at some point I sort of clicked into it, and it started to fly by. I worry that the older you get, the less wiling you are to enter into things on their terms, rather than your own. Anyway, I managed it on this one.

The main interest of this story was the setting, which was post WWII Japan/China/Australia. It drips with loss and longing. This is not to say the plot was not interesting: barring some side points about polio and Hiroshima, the main story is about a 16 year old girl and a 32 year old war man who fall madly in love. The girl’s parents, totally understandably, think this is not a good plan, and move her to New Zealand. He eventually follows her there and the novel ends with them having sex.

I did wonder why the girl’s parents were painted as such villains, and some Googling reveals that this story is pretty close to Hazzard’s own life. She too fell in love with a much older man right after the second World War, and was also removed from him. However, in her real life, they eventually broke up by letter, and never actually hooked up. This novel was written some forty years later, after she had gone to visit this guy on his Welsh farm. I guess there is a lot of comfort in fixing history, even if only in the imagination.

SMALL THINGS LIKE THIS by Claire Keegan

I read this 110 page novel in almost a single sitting. It has featured on a lot of BOOK OF THE YEAR lists, and I can see why. It’s remarkably densely packed, creating a whole world of snowy working-class Ireland. I read it on Christmas Eve, and luckily it was also set on Christmas, which added to the charm. However the story is not very Christmas-y. It’s about guilt and what you should sacrifice for people you’ve never met. Okay, maybe it is kind of Christmas-y.

It tells about a man who while making a delivery of coal to a Convent gets some sense of what is actually happening to woman in it’s Magdalen laundry. This deserves a googling, if you’ve never heard of these institutions. Essentially they began as places for sex workers to be ‘saved.’ They were saved by working for free fifteen hours a day as laundry workers. This worked so well (for the church’s bottom line) that soon all sorts of women were interned, including orphans, the flirtatious (?), and in general any woman who it was convenient to get rid of.

This poor coal delivery guy is then faced with a very specific moral problem, as it is made very clear to him how little he can do to help, and what the consequences will be for him if he tries. It’s gripping, I recommend it.

EAT PRAY LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert

I don’t know why this bestseller has such a terrible reputation. I quite enjoyed it. It is a memoir of a woman whose marriage, and then affair that ended that marriage, both explode spectacularly. She decides to heal herself by going on a year long holiday. What is really impressive about this is she sells a book proposal about this and so funds it upfront.

It is maybe a little obvious that this book was written off the back of a book proposal, and not one for a very sophisticated audience. She plans to travel to three countries: Italy, to explore pleasure: India, to explore religion; and Indonesia to explore balance (?). I’m amazed in 2006 someone could with a straight-face describe whole countries as representing things, but here we are, and it was a bestseller. Let us just be grateful she did not get around to Africa.

I was very interested by her time in the Indian ashram, and her sincere attempts to meditate for hours every day. I try for ten minutes and that is tough enough. I liked this as an explanation of silent retreats:

The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendance emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I’m a failure . . . I’m lonely . . . I’m a failure . . I’m lonely . . ) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.

Now I just need to find a way to fund my holidays with book proposals.

MY FATHER’S DIET by Adrian Nathan West

I bought this book because Andrew Martin (whose book EARLY WORK I adore) recommended it. I can see why he likes it. I liked it too. But I can’t say I really understand it.

It is written from the perspective of a college aged man, who tells us about his father’s efforts, after a divorce, to win a bodybuilding competition. That’s it: that’s what it’s about. A really detailed account of watching his fat, 55 year old father engage in this probably impossible undertaking.

Some readers might think the father a sort of pathetic figure (and indeed the Guardian review thinks this book is about failure), but I did not. I rather admired him. At least he was out there, taking the big swings. The son, on the other hand, mostly sits in his room and tries to skate through college doing the least work possible. He’s a classic narrator of the modern novel, directionless and annoying. Go to therapy already! Or become a drug addict. Enter a body building competition.

I did really admire the super careful use of language in this book. It must have taken huge work. There were many moments when I stopped to admire the specificity of the writing. One time he mentions ‘a procession of eighteen wheelers entering and exiting the pale radiance of a service station.’ Pale radiance! I love it

THE PURSUIT OF LOVE by Nancy Mitford

Just a re-read for comfort while I was sick

EILEEN by Otessa Moshfegh

It is often a mistake to read a second book by an author you enjoy, because you start to be able to see their tricks. Such is the case with EILEEN. I enjoyed it, and I especially enjoyed her deeply unpleasant female narrator, but I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t just read MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION, which has the same ingredients but done better.

But who cares, I guess. As long as something is still fun. Most of this book is about the many ways the main character is unhappy, and how much she makes it worse for herself. Eventually, she makes a friend at work. This sounds like a positive development but in fact it ends in murder.

One thing I did not especially like was the inclusion of child abuse. Not that this can never be written about, of course it can, but in this case it seemed to me a little too much of a plot device – as if it was included just to ramp up the tension – which I did not think was needed, or earned. Eileen was capable of murder without anywhere near that much motivation.