Still struggling a bit with my reading. It's been ages since I read something that I couldn't put down - those books where you keep sneaking off during the day to read a few more chapters.
I read an article in the Guardian where people talk about what they have been reading recently and the novelist Megan Nolan said this, which makes me want to go to the library and get out ALL the Maeve Binchys (I feel they may be what I need right now)
In fiction this month I binged Maeve Binchy, who died 10 years ago. I reread Tara Road, whose punishingly rendered romantic betrayal left me winded in a way it did not when I first thumbed through as a teenager, and then read four more in the space of two weeks, and now I’m not sure I’ll ever really enjoy another non-Binchy novel again in my life.
8. The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
A gently terrible novel (terrible in the sense that it contains awful heart-breaking things, not that it's badly written) set in 1950s North Dakota, and winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Price for Fiction. The book follows two main characters. Thomas is a husband and father, night watchman at a jewel factory, and a member of the Chippewa Council. He receives notice that the US Government are considering a new "emancipation" bill which, despite being couched in reasonable and progressive language, will remove the rights and freedoms of Native American people. He is part of a group who set out to Washington to represent themselves to Congress in opposition to the bill.
Alongside Thomas, the novel follows Patrice, a young Chippewa woman. Patrice is a smart young woman, not ready to weigh herself down with a husband but curious about love. She and her mother live in fear of her alcoholic father who returns to their home from time to time to bully them and ask for money. Her beloved sister has disappeared after moving to the big city, and Patrice sets off to find out what has happened to her.
Much of this book is ordinary and domestic, following the characters in simple settings - their homes, the factory at night, driving through the countryside. But it quietly and devastatingly paints a life blighted by poverty and oppression, the dangers and violence that threaten the community, the traditions, family history and religious beliefs which the characters hold sacred despite the encroachment of the modern world (and hostile government).
I've read Erdrich before but don't remember being as impressed those books as I was with this one. She tells this story so simply but so powerfully, her characters utterly believable in their own right but chosen skilfully to make up the bigger picture, which unfolds with subtlety and great richness as the story goes on. It also sent me away to research further into the Termination era, the laws that were changed and how this affected the tribal nations.
9. A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood
A short book describing a day in the life of George, a gay man living in early 60s California. George has recently lost his partner, and is struggling with grief as well as the difficulties of living in a not-entirely-accepting community as a gay man. Isherwood described his character as a "widower who doesn’t present himself as one". George struggles to feel a sense of connection with the outside world, looking at himself and others with a strange sense of distance, while often being hyper-aware of his body. It's interesting to read that this book was inspired by Mrs Dalloway, and that it was first envisaged as a screen play - you can definitely see both of those influences. I admired this more than I enjoyed it, but it's short, often funny, and beautifully written.