I have been a little self-indulgent when it comes to buying and borrowing (though, now that I think of it, is there ever a time I am not--only sometimes I have better excuses for it than others). I have been adding to a list of books I want to peruse and look over and maybe read or buy. The never-ending-list of book wants. Here are some of the highlights from that list.
Summer of Reckoning by Marion Brunet (translated from French) -- "A psychological thriller set in the Luberon, a touristic French region that evokes holidays in magnificent pool-adorned villas. For those who live there year-round, it often means stifling poverty and boredom. Two teenage sisters have grown up in a world where the main distractions are hatred of Arabs and booze. When Celine, 16, discovers she is pregnant and refuses to divulge her lover’s identity, her father embarks on a mission of revenge. A dark and upsetting account of an ailing society, filled with silent and murderous rage."
The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda (translated from Japanese) -- "The Aosawa Murders takes the classic elements of the mystery genre but steers away from putting them together in the usual way, instead providing a multi-voiced insight into the psychology of contemporary Japan, with its rituals, pervasive envy and ever so polite hypocrisy. But it’s also about the nature of evil and the resonance and unreliability of memory."
Free Day by Ines Cagnati (translated from French) -- "In the marshy, misty countryside of southwestern France, fourteen-year-old Galla rides her battered bicycle from the private Catholic high school she attends on scholarship to the rocky, barren farm where her family lives. It’s a journey she makes every two weeks, forty miles round trip, traveling between opposite poles of ambition and guilt, school and home. Galla’s loving, overwhelmed, incompetent mother doesn’t want her to go to school; she wants her to stay at home, where Galla can look after her neglected little sisters, defuse her father’s brutal rages, and help with the chores. What does this dutiful daughter owe her family, and what does she owe herself?"
I decided to renew my NYRB subscription (despite the dire number of books I read that I got this year--thankfully books don't expire!). This is the December book that I will get and am looking forward to. And I will have another dozen or so forthcoming I can't wait to be surprised by!
And a couple of recently published books from Persephone Books which I am currently lusting after and will likely eventually order (well, at least one of them as a treat).
Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim -- "The theme is faintly shocking, or was in 1929, since the book is about adultery: a 'happily married' woman has, it transpires, for years been meeting her lover once a week. (This is not a plot spoiler as the reader learns this early on.) And, although nowadays we read the novel as a satire, at the time the characters and their milieu may have seemed rather tame.
The Second Persephone Book of Short Stories -- Loved the first one and read every single story, so of course this is a must have for me as well. "Our proofreader wrote: ‘VERY ENJOYABLE, though some of the stories eg. “Monkey-Barges” by Emma Smith are exceedingly painful. It seems to me the common themes are grief over the two World Wars. This is stronger in the earlier part of the book, how to cope with a new order being stronger in the latter."
Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders by Tessa Arden -- Since I am in the thick of things with other WWII (mostly mystery) stories, here is another new one and the start of a new series). 'Summer 1942. The world has been at war for three long and desperate years. In the remote English village of Little Buffenden, Poppy Redfern’s family house and farmland has been requisitioned by the War Office as a new airfield for the American Air Force. As the village's Air Raid Warden, Poppy spends her nights patrolling the village as she tries to ease her neighbors’ fears about the 'Friendly Invasion' and what it means to their quiet way of life."
Trace of Evil: A Natalie Lockhard Novel by Alice Blanchard -- Another first in a series that looks quite promising. "Natalie Lockhart is a rookie detective in Burning Lake, New York, an isolated town known for its dark past. Tasked with uncovering the whereabouts of nine missing transients who have disappeared over the years, Natalie wrestles with the town’s troubled history – and the scars left by her sister’s unsolved murder years ago."
Letters from Tove edited by Boel Westin -- I love Tove's writing. It has been a while since I picked up one of her books (must rectify that) and I have several unread books by her waiting. I think I need to add this book of letters to my pile--a perfect pairing with a biography of her I have! "Penned with grace and humour, Letters from Tove offers an almost seamless commentary on Tove Jansson's life as it unfolds within Helsinki's bohemian circles and her island home. Spanning fifty years between her art studies and the height of Moomin fame, we share with her the bleakness of war; the hopes for love that were dashed and renewed, and her determined attempts to establish herself as an artist."
Maybe, as a matter of fact, I will look at my pile this weekend? . . .
Violet by Sji Holliday -- "Carrie's best friend has an accident and can no longer make the round-the-world trip they'd planned together, so Carrie decides to go it alone. Violet is also travelling alone, after splitting up with her boyfriend in Thailand. She is also desperate for a ticket on the Trans-Siberian Express, but there is nothing available. When the two women meet in a Beijing Hotel, Carrie makes the impulsive decision to invite Violet to take her best friend's place. Thrown together in a strange country, and the cramped cabin of the train, the women soon form a bond. But as the journey continues, through Mongolia and into Russia, things start to unravel - because one of these women is not who she claims to be..."
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated from Japanese) -- "In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time." What would you change if you could go back in time--now THIS is the book for me as I think of it more often than I should!
The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women by Mo Moulton -- "Dubbing themselves the Mutual Admiration Society, Sayers and her classmates remained lifelong friends and collaborators as they fought for a truly democratic culture that acknowledged their equal humanity. A celebration of feminism and female friendship, The Mutual Admiration Society offers crucial insight into Dorothy L. Sayers and her world."
Beheld: A Novel by TaraShea Nesbit -- "With gripping, immersive details and beautiful prose, TaraShea Nesbit reframes the story of the pilgrims in the historically under-recorded voices of two women of very different status and means. She evokes a vivid, ominous Plymouth, populated by famous and unknown characters alike, each with conflicting desires and questionable behavior. Suspenseful and literary, Beheld is about a murder and a trial; but it's also about the motivations--personal and political--that cause people to act in unsavory ways. Whose stories get told over time, who gets believed--and subsequently, who gets punished? Beheld is an intimate, personal portrait of love, motherhood, and friendship, and an exploration of what people lose and what they struggle to maintain."
And to round things off--a baker's dozen and this one not released until next summer!
The Lying of Adults by Elena Ferrante -- Better get moving on the rest of the "Neapolitan Quartet"! "Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath, in the apartment that my parents, newly married, had bought in Rione Alto, at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri. Everything—the spaces of Naples, the blue light of a very cold February, those words—remained fixed. But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while in fact I am nothing, nothing of my own, nothing that has really begun or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knot, and nobody, not even the one who at this moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption."
Good things to look forward to.