I regret to not be able to keep my commitment of writing weekly, two posts for each book. Now is the time to write a year in review – a bit in advance.
The first quarter of the year was instrumental in conceiving this project – thanks to the depressingly short days and bleak winter landscape where I live, when I could – and I am grateful for the privilege to be able to – stay home all day.
The second quarter started and set the momentum of keeping up with this space of pondering, sharing, and learning.
The third quarter, when this space has been deserted and gathering dust, I found incredible joy in reading novels, mostly family sagas, and turning to them again for intellectual nourishment and emotional support.
And now, I have to come to terms with the fact that the year has arrived at its final quarter. In some traditions, families would begin to flip open the first piece from an advent calendar; I am here to write a year in review reflection.
I have come to realize that looking back in retrospect can be blurred by abstraction and nostalgia. That said, the heart of this post is gratitude – to the stories and their creators who have given me more than an escape, but usually more of a deep, inward look into what I did not manage to register, or had been avoiding.
I have also come to realize that new year resolutions do not work for me, for they are places of disillusionment and discouragement. This solid-virtual space of a blog, however, gives me something as good as a resolution to look forward to a new year of reading and writing.
Perhaps I will conflate both and write a tribute to the books that I had the pleasure (and a salad of many more emotions) to read but did not have the courage, or patience, or both to write about. This tribute is titled All Our Relations, a nod to the many posts previously published here under the same tag, for I seem to be drawn repeatedly to the many forms and configurations of human relations.
Celia’s Song by Lee Maracle
Stó:lōh storyteller Lee Maracle is an important and respected matriarch of Canadian indigenous literature. She passed on this November. I intended to write about her last published novel, Celia’s Song, but did not have the courage to. She wrote about intergenerational trauma, brought to the surface by a brutal assault on a five-year-old girl, and how a family – a community – came together to help her survival and healing. As an immigrant to Canada, I have and continue to learn about the devastating systemic damage to the indigenous people. Through this novel, I gained a powerful experience of the gift of storytelling when a master storyteller knows exactly when and how to tell painful truths beautifully. This is a tribute to a matriarch.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
This is another beautiful, powerful, and important book that I am thankful to have read, though it left me too haunted to be able to write about, yet. Some imagery is too much to revisit, but a masterpiece is always more than the sum of its parts. I wanted to pay tribute to the mother figure, Sethe. This is as much as I can articulate for now.
Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis
A more recent novel by a relatively younger writer from Uruguay. This novel sings of friendship among women – romantic friendship to be precise, but also an encompassing solidarity in harrowing times of social injustice and political oppression. The mysterious character Malena stays long after I finished the book.
Summer by Ali Smith
Ali Smith is one of the two Smith’s from the UK whom I admire, whose work I adore. Smith is so prolific, I tried not to trouble myself too much to decide on my first novel – her most recent. How she picks up on contemporary issues, and how she articulates the core of humanity that we share across time and space move me beyond the seasons – physically when I read her book a little past the titular summer, and the metaphorical (or proverbial? I cannot tell the difference) seasons as time passes. The notion of “summer brother” may be a little extraordinary or peculiar, but so lyrical it stays in my heart.
SW by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith is the other Smith from the UK whom I equally admire and adore. Her debut White Teeth was explosive, The Autograph Man that came next was a little too distant a world for me to comprehend, but I decided that SW is the one I would enjoy and keep. I value the friendship of Leah and Natalie, whose domestic troubles and secrets may be – again – a little extraordinary or peculiar, but the thoughtful touches make them relatable and endearing.
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
One of the Americanas that I have read and gladly keep. Wolitzer weaves the story of six friends, and among which, two couples in particular. I appreciated her depiction of two (archetypical) husbands – one who enjoys a thriving career but avoids his children, another who loses his career to mental illness and becomes a stellar stay-home parent. It is both comforting and troubling to have novels neatly tug characters into categories and stereotypes, but again, some details make the characters forgivable to take hold.
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
This is the second Americana family saga that wound its spell on me at the beginning of my increasingly lengthy, snowy winter evenings. Two families joined by an affair, six children separated from their original families, ferried between Los Angeles and Virginia to form a patched up family. Chronicling five decades of their growth, it is amazing to follow journeys of the step-siblings, and to see their fierce loyalty.
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, translated by Philip Gabriel
A Japanese novel that pays tribute to the cherished relation with an animal companion – a male cat named Nana (the irony) who is smug in being superior to one certain nameless cat being written in a classic Japanese novel. It is the little knowing things that makes a reader smile, especially if you are one who shared a life with a pet.
Heartfelt thanks to:
Contemporary women writers for their stories that empower and embrace.
My family who has been everything above accommodating whenever I get carried afar and away with this project.
The friend who reminded me to keep that faculty of critique in my brain working, remained an attentive reader, and patiently engaged in discussions and clarifications.
For the last month of the year, I will be devoting my time to reading books on mindfulness and compassion by Thich Nhat Hahn, and a collection of letters by Vladimir Nabokov – neither of which falls into the category of contemporary novels by women writers. I do look forward to coming back to this project next year afresh.