Reading the 20th Century discussion

Oh good! I wasn't sure if it would be quite your thing so delighted to hear this.

Nigeyb wrote: "I’d go Strangers On a Train or The Talented Mr Ripley for the start of your PH journey


Lots more PH chat and ideas here Anubha…..

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/......"

Thank you for the suggestion Nigeyb. I actually discovered the Patricia Highsmith thread after posting the question here and realized the Strangers on a Train was a group favorite. So I'll start there.

Roman Clodia wrote: "I'd second Talented Mr Ripley."

Thank you Roman C. I'll pick this up right after Strangers on a Train. I've already watched the movie version of the Talented Mr. Ripley and quite liked it.

Roman Clodia wrote:


"Oh good! I wasn't sure if it (The Vegetarian by Han Kang) would be quite your thing so delighted to hear this."

Most definitely my thing

Our book group discussion is next week

I'll report back

Anubha wrote:


"Thank you for the suggestion Nigeyb. I actually discovered the Patricia Highsmith thread after posting the question here and realized the Strangers on a Train was a group favorite. So I'll start there"

Hurrah - please report back

I've also replied on the PH author thread

I finished Nanae Aoyoma's A Perfect Day to Be Alone which won an Akutagawa Prize. A beautifully observed coming-of-age story centred on a woman in her twenties sharing a house with an older woman in the Tokyo suburbs.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Not much reading time for me this past week but I've finally finished an ARC of Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán, a book with a slowish start but which became increasingly powerful from about halfway through.

If you like women in translation, fiction from Chile or Latin America more generally, and are interested in domestic/gendered politics and how they feed into wider systems of power and repression (yes, yes, yes!), this is a good one to pick:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/6488506261

I have just finished an immensely powerful novella, Cecilia by K-Ming Chang.

This is the first of her books I've read though the last few have been on my TBR- even keener to get to them now.

My review: www.goodreads.com/review/show/6496603957

Roman Clodia wrote: "I have just finished an immensely powerful novella, Cecilia by K-Ming Chang.

This is the first of her books I've read though the last few have been on my TBR- e..."

That's interesting, I gave up on Bestiary so wasn't sure about this one.

Reading the blurb of Bestiary, I can see clear thematic links with Cecilia especially around mythology and metamorphic bodies - sometimes we just click with a book for some reason, though, and that was me and Cecilia.

The style of 'Bestiary' was the problem for me, the writing put me off, but the themes definitely appealed.

I finished the debut novel from British-Cambodian writer and Penguin editor Kaliane Bradley The Ministry of Time I raced through this although I thought it didn't quite come together and I ended up scratching my head over some of the later plot developments. I enjoyed the genre mash-up and the central characters: a member of the doomed Franklin Arctic expedition brought into the future and his handler who narrates their story. Interesting mix of speculative fiction and Greene-style mystery combined with reflections on climate change, race, identity and Britain's possible responses to future mass migrations.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

If the style is like Cecilia, I can understand that it would either work or definitely not.

Glad to see you enjoyed Ministry of Time too - I thought it was a blast! Your 'escapist-but-thoughtful' is exactly right. I gave up trying to follow the time-travel plot towards the end and just enjoyed the humor, characters and wit. I was in the Waterstones bar a couple of weeks ago and there was either a mini book launch for this or their staff book group were discussing it - either was with much hilarity.

I listened to an ARC of the audiobook and can highly recommend it.

I was wondering about Cecilia because it sounded a lot more disciplined and sometimes I've disliked an author's work but then enjoyed one or more of their other novels.

I did enjoy the Bradley, more in the earlier sections than the later, the tone shifts quite considerably towards the end. I also felt the central sections were overlong, and the later ones too fast and furious. But it was an interesting concept, and like you I responded to the characters and the humour.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "... with the Lee there's the added annoyance of the 'white saviour' storyline."

Line me up with the anti-Mockingbird brigade! I loathed that book for all the reasons Awynne mention..."

I waded all the way through Crawdads, because I found that there were beautiful passages about the marsh mixed in with the dreadful writing and unwieldy plot. My father's family is from the Mississippi coast, so the writing about the marsh evoked the bayous of home for me.
I thought Crawdads managed to combine the worst of Lee's white savior complex with a like condescension toward white people living on the margins. I needed a shower by the end. The marsh was what kept me going.
I saw the movie. Dreadful, as I expected, but again, I went for the scenery (it was filmed in Louisiana, less than 25 miles from where some of my family once lived), and that was worth the price of admission and the time spent watching the dumbing down of an already problematic narrative.

I just finished Memento Mori in audiobook, and found myself thinking of the Osman Thursday Murder Club series as I listened. Really, I guess I was thinking how little I have run across that takes an unflinching look at old age. Also, how very different books, read adjacent to each other in time, cross pollinate. This is one of the reasons I always have multiple books in progress.

G wrote: "The marsh was what kept me going"

I enjoyed reading your post and how your family circumstances interacted with that book. I had no connection to the landscape so not even that was a positive for me.

G wrote: "... how very different books, read adjacent to each other in time, cross pollinate."

Such an important point, I completely agree. We always read books in so many contexts, a kind of relational matrix and individual to each of us, and not just as standalones.

On unflinching looks at old age, I wonder if you've read Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont or Quartet in Autumn?

There must be quite a few books looking at old age, one that springs to mind for me is

G wrote:


"I just finished Memento Mori in audiobook, and found myself thinking of the Osman Thursday Murder Club series as I listened. Really, I guess I was thinking how little I have run acros..."



I'll reply over here G....

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

All the discussion on Keun reminds me I meant to read After Midnight but haven't yet got to it.

I finished a commercial biography of Taylor Swift Taylor Swift: Era by Era: The Unauthorized Biography I'd prefer a more analytical discussion of her life and work particularly in relation to American culture. But it's a well-researched piece, so useful in terms of detail/overview of Swift's career - think it would be a welcome gift for many Swift fans.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I'd love to read a more analytical book about Swift too but might check this out if it's still on NetGalley.

My next work book group choice is The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin - waaay out of my comfort zone!

I've only read one of her famous short stories and Lavinia but I know there are plenty of fans here - so thoughts or comments on Word for World would be welcome.

Roman Clodia wrote: "My next work book group choice is The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin - waaay out of my comfort zone!"

Yep, just not for me: www.goodreads.com/review/show/6534698747

I've started and abandoned Prophet Song. Worthy subject, but I couldn't bear the writing and the narrator's naïveté. Am I missing something?

Ben wrote: "I've started and abandoned Prophet Song. Worthy subject, but I couldn't bear the writing and the narrator's naïveté. Am I missing something?"

Not in my view! The self-conscious writing grated on me from the first sentence and the whole premise of taking so many experiences from other countries and transferring them to the Republic of Ireland which has an entirely different system of government, intellectual tradition, trajectory etc. never worked as a concept for me. Seems well-meaning in trying to understand why people become refugees and might try to seek asylum but I literally never got beyond the 'look inside' 🤮

Ben wrote: "I've started and abandoned Prophet Song. Worthy subject, but I couldn't bear the writing and the narrator's naïveté. Am I missing something?"

Didn't appeal to me, but it has just been serialised on BBC Sounds, so may give the abridged version a listen. It has also been uploaded to the Internet Archive.

I felt the same Ben . it was the writing style I couldn't get along with and the relentless driving plot ..but the narrator's denial was believable to me , a common human response and one that we all seem capable of ....but have to say I can think of a few better novels that depict this in much more depth ...Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai , The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen , The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz to name three I've recently read ....it naked me think of this small poem I heard quoted by David Constantine in a podcast ..couldn't catch the author if anyone knows it I'd be very grateful ..

What a capable race
The humans
Their bad memory
Makes their existence possible

written in 1931.....

made not naked !

Brian E wrote: "Funny, but I was on Goodreads where I saw I had Kindle points expiring, so I just ordered a Kindle edition of Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion.
I have read Faulkner's 4 bi..."

I just saw the Ethan Hawke film Wildcat and highly recommend it to anyone who has read Flannery O'Connor, or who wants to understand her better. Her writing has haunted my imagination for 45 years, ever since I first encountered it in college (at a time when she'd fallen into obscurity, and there were no secondary sources to help me understand her or to cite in writing my paper), but I cannot say I've quite grasped what she was doing. The film is brilliant. It brings her development as an artist together with her life experience and a visual realization of some of her significant (and significantly disturbing) stories, using passages from letters and her prayer journal as sources of some of the dialogue, in a way that finally gave me some deeper understanding.

For fellow readers who enjoy women in translation and/or Latin American or Argentinian writing, I've just read the gorgeous Forgotten Journey, short stories by Silvina Ocampo:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/6431153654

G wrote: "I just saw the Ethan Hawke film Wildcat and highly recommend it to anyone who has read Flannery O'Connor, or who wants to understand her better. "

Thanks for the recommendation G. I'll have to check it out.
Here's the IMDb link to "Wildcat": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26442871/

Me too . For me too, Flannery O'Connor has a voice that won't let me alone . She has the gift , like Shirley Jackson , of being able to blend comedy and dark tragedy into stories that are so compressed they have you gasping for air. Looking forward to the film .

Hester wrote: "Me too . For me too, Flannery O'Connor has a voice that won't let me alone . She has the gift , like Shirley Jackson , of being able to blend comedy and dark tragedy into stories that are so compre..."

Last year I watched a quirky independent movie on Shirley Jackson that I anticipate is similar to the O'Connor indie movie.
Both movies get similarly mediocre ratings and reviews and are probably only of interest to bookies like us. The movie stars Elizabeth Moss and is called SHIRLEY.
Here's its IMDb page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8430598/...

Thanks Brian . Your probably right about the bookish thing . I'm trying to think of films where real writers have been the subject of films that were successful .... Capote springs to mind ...I suppose it's a challenge to build a dramatic plot line about someone whose life is about sitting behind a desk on their own for long periods .

That said I'm in another Goodreads group where I encountered Lafcadio Hearn for the first time and his biography is simply astonishing . Born of a Greek mother and Anglo Irish father in the island of Lafcadio in the mid nineteen century , abandoned by his family after his mother's death and send to school in France then to USA . He was penniless and homeless in Cincinnati , where he became a journalist , specialising in stories about the city's underbelly . He married an escaped slave then found his way to New Orleans where he created a mythology around creole culture , Voodoo and mystery that persists to this day . Next stop Martinique then Japan which was just opening up to the world . He delved into the folklore and culture , sharing his impressions with an avid American audience , married and took a Japanese name , dying there in 1904 . That is some story ..I'm trying to get hold of The Sweetest Fruits/ Monique Truong which explores the story of the women in his life ; his wives Alethea Foley and Koizumi Setsuko and his mother Rosa Cassimati.

( apologies if you are familiar , but I'd never heard of him not being a huge fan of ghost stories from Japan )

Hester wrote: "Thanks Brian . Your probably right about the bookish thing . I'm trying to think of films where real writers have been the subject of films that were successful .... "

"The Life of Emile Zola" won the 1938 Best Picture Oscar with Paul Muni winning Oscar for best Actor.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029146/

But that movie had Zola's heroic Dreyfus Affair involvement to have an important public interest issue to add the needed level of Hollywood drama. And "Capote" and "Infamous" had both the national talk-show guest celebrity level personality of Capote and his creepy relations with the infamous Clutter family murderers to add public interest issues as their dramatic tension. The biopics of Jackson and O'Connor only have very personal issues in the lives of writers the viewing public barely, if at all, know about for their dramatic tension; issues that don't arouse the public's interest.

I enjoyed a biography of Shirley Jackson: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life - as well as the fascinating personal issues, she was more politically active than is perhaps generally recognised.

If I were a film maker, the biopic I'd make would be on Patricia Highsmith: such a complicated woman (after reading her diaries), with added kookiness... and those snails!

Hester wrote: "Thanks Brian . Your probably right about the bookish thing . I'm trying to think of films where real writers have been the subject of films that were successful .... Capote springs to mind ...I sup..."

Well, I never knew that about Hearn. I've not read his work, but I remember running across references to him in some detective novels from the 20's or 30's. Possibly in Sayers?

Yes G . I'm constantly surprised at the hugely popular writers , past and present I've never heard of ...Hearn, especially his ghost stories, are still widely read and he has become a sort of national icon in Japan , as his benign valorisation of the past became woven into the idea of the nation , at a time when modernity was sweeping through the islands . These days his nostalgia is seen as strictly cultural , of course , distancing it from the perils of political nationalism and where that led ..

As for films thanks for the suggestions everyone . Pat Highsmith would be good to see in film . I've just remembered Emily Dickinson ....And Maeve Brennan would be a terrible portrait too ...

I am hoping someone can give me some help.
Later this month I will be attending a first in person book discussion. With people I do not know. The leader will be my hostess and cousin.
The book is (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting) Author: Milan Kundera published on.
I eventually got a handle on, and liked, His The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

In Laughter, I get that the man writes well, in terms of use of language, but I came to hate the book. Take your pick
from misogyny, to overly sexualizing children (In large numbers)
There are numbers of philosophical points that do not make sense.

Much of this book is about the legitimate trauma of the author having to survive as an unperson thanks to the Russian invasion of his country.

If you have read Laughter, can you tell me what I missed of got wrong?

I haven't read Laughter, but picked up some of those same issues from The Unbearable Lightness of Being which left me disinclined to read more Kundera.

But I don't think anyone should ever go into a book thinking there is a 'correct' or wrong way of reading and understanding it: literature is a democratic art and anyone's readerly opinion is valid. I'd say take your questions to your book group and have fun exploring the different ways that people have understood and created meaning from the text.

I've finished The Voyage Home by Pat Barker:

www.goodreads.com/review/show/6548056362

Sorry Phrodrick , can't help you with that novel . It can feel daunting joining a new group of mostly strangers but, as RC says your opinion about the novel is as valid as anyone else's . It should be fun and respectful with no " right " answers and it's perfectly acceptable to disagree without rancour .

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

This memoir took me a long time to read as it just wasn't a good fit for me.

I explain my reaction in my review --

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan

I had been approved for this Netgalley ARC months ago but saved it to read while on vacation -- a perfect pairing.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Phrodrick wrote: "I am hoping someone can give me some help.
Later this month I will be attending a first in person book discussion. With people I do not know. The leader will be my hostess and cousin.
The book is [..."

If it helps at all, my impressions of Kundera are not dissimilar. I think that part of that though is not to do with him individually but with a particular strand within Eastern European literature by men of his generation or roughly equivalent - that may be to do with what's been translated into English and not necessarily representative. I had similar issues with Josef Skvorecky - although I much prefer his work. There's a definite misogynistic strand, although Skvorecky is less egotistical, more interested in literary devices/intertextuality, and is also more tender in his portrayal of women. So, I imagine there will be others in your group who've had similar reactions - and be relieved they aren't alone in that. In many ways the attitudes are not dissimilar to ones found in the work of the so-called 'great' American writers like Roth and Bellow.

Woman Reading wrote: " Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan

I had been approved for this Netgalley ARC months ago but saved it to read while on vacation.."

That sounds a perfect pairing indeed - I like Kwan too for some light and fun reading

I'm so excited to have got my hands on an ARC of The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, Olga Tokarczuk's take on The Magic Mountain 🥳

Roman Clodia wrote: "I'm so excited to have got my hands on an ARC of The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, Olga Tokarczuk's take on The Magic Mountain 🥳"

That's on my pile too, look forward to your thoughts.

I finished Molly Aitken's Bright I Burn which draws on Celtic myth and Irish history to recreate the life of Alice Kyteler the first woman in Ireland to be condemned for witchcraft. Nicely observed, well researched and Alice is a pleasingly complex character.

Link to my review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...