Heat Wave by Penelope Fitzgerald

Heat Wave by Penelope Lively
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What pleasure it is to be in the hands of a virtuoso writer. The pacing, sentences, descriptions, vocabulary, contribute to a thoughtful story of legitimate characters with a surprising ending. Pauline, a book editor, is spending the long, hot summer editing a novel while her daughter and grandson live next door. She says to her two-year-old grandson: "Oh, books, books...Terrible things, books. Cause nothing but trouble. You keep out of the book business, my lad. Commodity dealing for you. Or heart surgery. Or the construction of oil rigs." Occasionally, they are joined by her writer son-in-law whose philandering reminds Pauline of her own ex-husband. As the book jacket reveals of the ending, "a stunning and unexpected development changes the order of things irrevocably for this family."

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Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Narrator's title is apt as she describes her depression and mental breakdown while a literature professor. My interest was more geared to what she read, books by Toni Morrison, Helen DeWitt, A. S. Byatt and Anne Carson, and interesting exploration of her traumatic response to these, but I struggled to relate to her obsession with reading and suicidal ideation. Indeed, different readers need different things from the same book and reader responses can differ over time, but my bent is bibliophilia.

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Loop by Brenda Lozano Loop by Brenda Lozano
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The narrator of Loop is a Mexican writer living in Mexico City, recently recovered from a serious accident, visiting friends and family, keeping a notebook (Ideal brand) of her activities and thoughts while her newish boyfriend, Jonás, is traveling in Spain. She fancies herself a Penelope reweaving a shroud to discourage suitors while Ulysses is off to war for twenty years. Jonás is only gone a matter of weeks, but his absence is uppermost in her mind. She ponders literary success, goes off to festivals, listens to music, reads books and wonders about her lover's fidelity, his grieving his mother. She concocts a chapter of proverbs on stories and writing, i.e. "Seek words, and there are none; no longer seek them and they shall come." She is alert to her neighborhood, to a dapper dwarf she keeps seeing on her block, to music (David Bowie) and to art, philosophy, authors Proust, Pessoa, Walser, Vila-Matas, Lispector, Kafka and poets. I found the easy literary chat, the discursive format, perfect bedtime reading. She reminds me a bit of Claire-Louise Bennett, perhaps Kate Zambreno, both favorites.
Another winner from Charco Press, translated by Annie McDermott - translator

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In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger

In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian Junger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife starts off like a thriller as the author is rushed from home to the hospital for what is eventually diagnosed as a ruptured aneurysm in a pancreatic artery and internal hemorrhage. The bulk of the book is about his time in the hospital, including a "near death experience" vision of his late father, and alternates with other perilous experiences in his life as a war journalist. The latter part of the book hopscotches between physics, death and spirituality and my interest waned.

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Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg

Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg is an apt title for the strained relationship of the mother and daughter in this prize-winning novel from Norway. The mother is a divorced woman of around fifty who enjoys the noncommittal aspects of online dating and sex, appreciates her drink, is uninterested in her job managing a jewelry store, and only occasionally sees her daughter and grandchildren. Most of the narrative is from her perspective. The daughter invites her to a "girls weekend" in London and reveals her purpose once they are in the plane. She is stalking her husband's mistress and wants moral support from her mother. They proceed to meet up with her daughter's old friends, become separated and drink too much. Extraordinary detail is provided of each bleak scene in this almost plotless novel which moves along at a sure pace with precise descriptions and skillful characterization. Each time I picked up the book, I remember thinking there is nothing happening here, yet I kept reading. I recommend it for its excellent prose and portrayals as well as Wendy H. Gabrielsen's superb translation. One reviewer described it as reminiscent of early Ian McEwan which fits.

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Daddy's Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer

Daddy's Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thoroughly depressing story of a woman's breakdown in a bad marriage with unsympathetic children in 1958. I loved it. Penelope Mortimer is a skilled writer with superb attention to detail and a real empathy for her main character. The adulterous husband is almost textbook awful. The dialogue is spot on, funny at times, accurate always. I was reminded of Ex-Wife, another sad tale of women's lot in the 1950's which I relished.

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Jacob's Room is Full of Books

Jacob's Room is Full of Books: A Year of Reading by Susan Hill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The inscription to Lynne Hatwell at the front of the book tickled my soul. For years, I followed Hatwell's blog, Dovegrey Reader which is no longer extant, but I had the pleasure of talking books with her in her Devon home in 2018. She gave up book criticism to our great loss.

Susan Hill has written the kind of book that I reach for first, not unlike my book conversation with Lynne, a discussion of what she's reading over the course of a year. This is the second such treasure from Hill, the first was Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home where she forsook all purchases and borrowing of books for a year to read what was on her shelves. These books put such fantasies to rest for me. She's listed dozens of titles I've yet to read and had to order at once. Best of all, her opinions are forthright and firm: May Sarton's best book wasThe House by the Sea: A Journal ; Alexander McCall Smith has written an illuminating little book on poetry, What W.H. Auden Can Do for You; Martin Amis' early books such as London Fields and Money are his best; good fiction on gambling at the tables: Casino Royale (the only one of the films she likes), Daniel Deronda, Can You Forgive Her? and Dostoevsky's The Gambler. She also writes about the weather and birds in Yorkshire where she lives and the South of France where she summers. She talks about being a controversial judge for the Booker Prize in 2011, writers with whose books she is unable to get along (Patricia Highsmith or most of Iris Murdoch with the exception of The Bell and her essays), geese, the Reformation, notebooks, Edith Wharton, and all titles and authors are indexed. A treat.



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