Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper

 Operation Heartbreak was fetching and fascinating, exactly the sort of brief, immersive unfolding into a life of hopes, dreams, resentments, and resolutions that I needed.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow

I loved everything about this book.

Portals, stories, the story of the self, self-determination and self-discovery, the crafting of a life of meaning.

It’s beautifully written and, as El-Motar said, “unbearably beautiful.”

I love stories about the power of stories, and I think story is somehow inherently linked to the idea of freedom, and how we write the stories of ourselves, and how we reclaim that space and power when we have let others write that story, and why and how that matters.

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

 Turning the last page of A Prayer for the Crown-Shy while sitting under a darkening sky, the waves lapping their way up the abandoned shore on the last night of a week spent on this small patch of sand between islands, was just perfect. 

The second in the Monk and Robot series somehow managed to worm its way into my soul even more so than the first. 

I don’t know how to be, most days, and Chambers manages to weave that up into whole persons with deftness. I really liked this book.

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín

 

Brooklyn is the magnificent tale of a woman coming into herself. It’s a journey of discovery, and I love that it begins in a small village with its landscape of familiarity. I hear it’s been made into a movie, but I can’t imagine how it could be possible to translate this novel to the screen. The entirety of the novel in the interior, personal reflections, hopes, and fears in the moment, and the people and events that happen seem removed, as though they are happening to our heroine, and that’s largely the point of the whole novel. 

This is the story of a woman coming into herself, a story of identity, and of how we shift with the landscape of possibilities, community, and our own affections and fears. I really liked this book.

The Keeper by Tana French

In her third and final installment in the Cal Hooper series, French unspools the ways of being that create community ties, identity threads, and the fabric of life in a place. The result is the antithesis of the oft-overused and too-hip idea of “placemaking;” French shows how the community bends us to it, and all the ways that bending around a community is what makes it real, and how we, in turn, are made real by the effort. This is a picture of co-constructed reality. It’s an anthem against fast-anything, corporate profit-grabbing, and the idea that a place can be for sale. 

I’ll miss Trey and Lena even more than I’ll miss Cal. 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

There’s something deeply powerful about this book, and Tartt writes it beautifully and well. But the power of what Tartt has captured goes beyond the story of five friends and what happened to their sixth, and how secrets become a sickness. Tartt published this in 1992, and her canvas for the portraits she paints is the small college campus, an world away but also one so completely a world and culture to itself that it could be interchangeable with another one a coast—or even a nation—away. 

What happened in higher education in the early 90’s—largely through the early years of the S&L crash in the States, but through so many other factors as well—rendered this a last picture of the way things were. By the time contemporary readers meet Richard, our narrator, and his erudite fellows of the Classics, this will seem as though it was written in a culture that is not merely a few decades ago, but from a time of ancient history. The chronology of this work renders the whole even more compelling, though Tartt doesn’t need any help. The Secret History brings friendship and loyalty, identity and inclusion all to the fore, shining a light on the ways in which we build who we are and craft the scaffolds that support our narratives of self. 

The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens

House of Anansi Press, 2006

I was fetched by The O’Briens, so I jumped at the chance to take a journey with Fergus O’Briens from an earlier time. Behrens didn’t disappoint. 

Isolation, and the conditions which create it, are on full display as Fergus makes his way across seas, oceans, and continents, doing the best he can in the moment, and frequently wondering how he ended up in this or that particular state, only to decide quite boldly that the only thing for it is to do something completely different. 

I loved everything about this work, but I especially loved the writing. Behrens gets me.

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Published by Gerald Duckworth, 1978

I needed more books about books in my life, so I turned to The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald. Books themselves have very little place in the overall plot, and that’s all to the good, as well cheer our heroine on as she explores widowhood as an outsider in a tightly-knit, and often closed-minded, small community. 

The book is dryly funny, witty, and compassionate. It’s a fantastic romp while also being a treatise of the power of having enough gumption to follow a dream, even when that feels like an act of resistance.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Published by Tor, 2018

The second in the Murderbot series, Artificial Condition brings us more deeply into the issues of identity, autonomy, and friendship. 

These novels are jaunty and light, and yet they deal with some of the most important, and timely, themes of our day. Each of the volumes I’ve read so far has been the perfect book to take with me on a vacation, and the situations and mishaps—and personalities—that populate each offering have stayed with me in a meaningful way. 

Pack this in your suitcase and enjoy the ride.

The series has been brought to the small screen by Apple TV+, and I hear that’s delightful too.