I’ve missed so many reviews. But so many that I would have written feel like they were about books read in a different year all together, not just in the last two months. That’s because they were really read in a different part of my life.
My father died on June 13, 2023. Thursday would have been his 65th birthday. We knew it would happen, sooner than we wanted, but it still felt too soon. Too fast. I don’t have good words to talk about it yet. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Notes on Grief explores this feeling so well – I read it last February, and I don’t know that I even reviewed it at the time, because it felt so raw and true. And now, I think about it often, but I cannot even imagine opening that book NOW, when it feels I’m living inside of that same grief.
But grief does grow and change. And I keep turning to books for relief, even while grieving. I read Kindred in the hospital. I carried around a copy of Yellowface and started it just before he died. I remember toting that book around in the first day, unable to really pick it up and read, unable to put it down. The day after the funeral, I devoured it. I read two Olive Kitteridge novels, almost back to back, and the short, excellent The Three of Us in that first week, because those novels moved so quickly and could be consumed a chapter or so at a time without a great deal of thought – I didn’t have to carry much plot, I suppose. I listened to Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful, which was about a different sort of grief but was beautiful and meditative none the less. Between my own tears, I searched Hyrule for the tears of dragons, a quest that continues to keep me occupied this sad summer. When at last I could keep a coherent story line in my head, I read The Night Circus, because a friend had recommended this book, and I hadn’t realized when I requested it from the library that it would be so magical. It was consuming and beautiful.
And then I read The Rabbit Hutch, by Tess Gunty, and that felt like a good place to try to jump back into reviewing something. The book is about an low income housing complex known as The Rabbit Hutch. There is lots of good foreshadowing – something awful will happen on a hot night in July. Knowing this, there is a tension in every sentence, every description. Blandine, born Tiffany, is a genius 18 year old girl who lives with three teenage boys in an apartment. They share the apartment because they’re all aging out of the foster system, but they all approach life quite differently. Other residents in the building include a woman who edits obituaries for a living; a young family consisting of an anxious mother, her son and her loving husband; and an older couple who must confront how each one has changed. Not everyone gets equal page time, but each story is impactful. They intersect in beautiful, interesting ways, their stories weaving together to form a story I found very compelling. I was not very happy with the ending, and if you’ve read it I am curious about your thoughts (trying not to spoil things here).
That’s all the review I’ve got in me for now. But it feels good to post something again. I’ve missed immersing myself among readers.
If you have good recommendations for books to read when in THIS state – grieving, less able to concentrate, looking for something that toes that line between really great book and quick and easy read, please let me know. I am reading Greek Lessons now and although I’m halfway through, I think I might just stop – it’s a bit too literary for me at the moment (The Rabbit Hutch ALMOST had that problem, but it was a little more accessible). I’m about to start Everyone Brave is Forgiven. Any other suggestions?
