Exteriors by Annie Ernaux

Exteriors by Annie Ernaux
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Trenchant observations of people and thoughts while on the subway, in the mall, at the grocery. Occasionally funny, always astute and empathetic.

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The Spare Room by Helen Garner

The Spare Room by Helen Garner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I started with Helen Garner Everywhere I Look and read Claire Fuller's review which is hard to top. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I was also reminded of the plot of the Sigrid Nunez What Are You Going Through about friendships under strain. Engrossing story and a refreshing Australian setting.

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Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Everyone is right. Why did I postpone it for so long? Beautiful book, the writing, the tale, the imagination. Thanks to all who kept recommending it to me.
The author's exposition of grief is extraordinary bringing a tear to my hardened eye.
So many quotations to savor, i.e. this of his pregnant wife: "His mind is traversed for a moment, by an image of her body in its current astonishing shape, as he saw it last night; limbs, neat rib cage, the spine a long indent down the back, a cart-track through snow, and then this perfectly rounded phere at the front. Like a woman who had swallowed the moon."

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The Promise by Damon Galgut

The Promise by Damon Galgut
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pleased that this family story of apartheid and beyond in South Africa won the Booker Prize this year. Absorbing tale with a surprising thread of humor running through it.

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My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Enjoyable story of a mother-daughter and their often strained conversations, told in spare prose by the daughter who is a writer. I wanted more about Lucy at the end, but am pleased to see there's another volume Oh William!.

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The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I lollygagged through the initial book (Childhood), then gave up on this dense memoir. Recently, I tried again by going straight to Youth and goose-stepped to the end through the German occupation of Copenhagen, Tove Ditlevsen's four marriages, three kids, her intense devotion to writing numerous poems and novels, her appallingly realistic descriptions of addiction to Demerol, the cravings and trials of getting clean. Her craving never stops as she describes in Dependency, while she's at the mercy of her mentally ill medical researcher husband for her injections: "Hell on earth. I'm freezing, I'm shaking, I'm sweating, I'm crying and yelling his name into the empty room." I was continually aware of how much better the Danish medical system is than ours (doctors actually came to the house and answered calls at unlikely hours), she spent months in a rehab facility at state expense under a caring doctor). Her specificity is part of her writing skill. A very good book.

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Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I just read the Booker nominee Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi in which the narrator describes her fraught love-hate relationship with her mother who is sliding into dementia, and retraces the mother's neglect of her daughter growing up in an ashram in Pune, and the lover the two shared after the daughter grew up. The girl's American-born husband, Dilip, "was handsome and tall in a way that let everyone know he'd grown up abroad. Baseball caps, good manners and years of consuming American dairy," struggles to accommodate her foibles, her inexplicable repetitive art, her relationships with her family. The writing is lively and interesting. Much attention is devoted to smells (the bakery, the smoking rickshaw engine, fried cumin and garlic, armpits, food (dal, pakoras, samosas, koftas), memories and anger, and time in the book is askew. I read it with interest, occasional amusement, and a longing to revisit India. The character of the daughter is not sympathetic, but she is not dull and her reactions and thoughts are insightful as she struggles to do her duty by her mother.
"The habit of waiting has already been instilled...deeply ingrained. I wonder if, when I'm old and frail and can see the shape of my end in front of me, I will still be waiting for the future to roll in."

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