Isn't Every Book About Family?
But here are a few more #54
Hello, hi - it’s Thanksgiving weekend! It’s Hanukkah! It’s Black Friday! It’s happy official holiday season - let’s goooooo! (This is more for Americans … non-Americans, when do you decide to damn the torpedoes and blaze FULL SPEED AHEAD into Twinkling Light Festivity? Because if you start in with holiday decorations in, like, early November, I really need to talk about me emigrating to you forthwith. CEDAR AND CINNAMON 24/7/365 is my most defining personality trait!)
Anyway, with all these holidays - yours, theirs, all of ours - isn’t family top of mind, for all of us? The ones we’re too far from. The ones we just need a break from. The ones we can’t soak up enough. The ones who love us, who raised us, who we raised, who disappointed us, who we disappointed, who defined us, who inspired us, and who abandoned us. The ones we’re born into and the ones we choose. The ones who’ve left us, the ones we left, and the ones we can’t seem to hold close enough in the right ways. Smarter people than I, and generations of Psych 101 students, have analyzed this to death but it feels like the holidays can be so emotionally volatile because family is the microcosm and a mirror for our lives, right?
And to that end, as I was thinking about this week’s collection of books, isn’t family a theme of jusssssst about any book? Because - it’s life! So while I humbly acknowledge that “Books About Families” is basically like saying “books with words” and therefore is a deeply vague theme … nevertheless this week’s books are all about diving deep into the dysfunctional bonds of family - biological, marital, and chosen - in ways that aren’t ever easy but are deeply recognizable. Because to shamelessly mangle Tolstoy, books about unhappy families are all readable in their own ways.
Gorgeously written, equally warm and sad, The Dutch House feels like an old-fashioned family saaaaga of unavailable parents, flinty stepparents, surrogate families and the unbreakable bond of siblings Danny and Maeve. Told from Danny’s often clueless, indulged perspective, this is a bighearted story with more than a little fairy tale sheen and nostalgic sentimentality, tempered with the uncomfortable realities of being confronted with your own past and choices. And the titular Dutch House where Danny and Maeve grew up is like a homing beacon, pun intended, for the siblings, beautifully rendered in prose.
Humblingly, this is my first Ann Patchett read and it won’t be my last (I know, I know, despite Bel Canto slapping you in the face at every bookstore for about a decade, how is it possible? I have no explanation! What else have I missed?)
His Only Wife is a perspective I haven’t read before and a book I’ve thought about for a few months, post-read.
Power summary: Afi is a seamstress in Ghana whose mother convinces her to marry a successful businessman whom she does not know. Here’s the first line: “Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.”
ARE YOU NOT DRAWN IN? I KNOW, RIGHT? While this debut novel isn’t perfect, it’s interesting. The story about the desire for independence and responsibility, for love and for freedom, about both trying to be a perfect wife and daughter and sister-in-law and niece, while also staying true to yourself, is not a new one, of course. But the POV of an arranged marriage in modern-day Ghana, with its incumbent obligations to extended family, is a fresh spin on it (for me, at least.) Even if I wanted to shake Afi sometimes, she has a resilience and a pluck you can’t help but root for.
I read The Nest in one sitting, which says something about how much I wanted to get up and tackle my to-do list (not much!) but also about what an easy, engrossing read this was.
Power summary: Four fortysomething siblings are set to receive an inheritance that each needs until a family crisis upends their plan, and their expectations.
This is one of those books with interweaving stories of siblings and their families who equally love and resent each other, who are each dealing with their own mid-life issues (debt, addiction, loss, regrets, striving) and who believe that this money will change them, will make it better, will make them better. Despite most of the characters being deeply dysfunctional and a little unlikeable (but in a funny way, not in a Succession way), somehow this is still a witty, compassionate novel. Just the right amount of substance for a Saturday morning!
Kerry’s Controversial Take: The Most Fun We Ever Had will try to convince you that it’s a similar kind of family saga book. Do not fall for its manipulations and tricks! Everyone is annoying, even the characters we’re *supposed* to like.
More Year-End Book Lists For Self-Recrimination!
Oh hey, let’s check out The New York Times Notable 100 Books of 2021, no doubt we’ve read a bunch of these, right?
GUESS AGAIN. I’ve read seven. SEVEN. Gah. Go on, make me feel better/worse - how many have you read?
*Also if ONE MORE of these lists tries to make me read Klara and the Sun, I simply cannot be held accountable for my actions. I GET IT BOOK WORLD. YOU LOVE THIS. You LOVE-LOVE it. Sheesh, get ahold of yourselves already.
RIP Stephen Sondheim
Yes, this is a newsletter about books, but this week the world lost a great writer, lyricist, artist and genius in Stephen Sondheim. He gave us art, music, reflection and unyielding intelligence for more than sixty years of Broadway. He challenged us to be better, to work harder, to think more creatively, to strive. In a world where legend is thrown around too easily, he was one.
(and if we must be thematically strict, he also wrote a number of actual books about his work which are must-reads for the Sondheim fan or anyone curious about the artist’s journey.)
Are you still reading? Wow. Thanks!
That’s a lot of reading, I’m grateful! I’ll just remind you then that all of these books link to Bookshop.org, which supports indie bookstores. You can find my past recos here in case books about family are not your thing (you can also always browse the archive for all past newsletters about fiction, non-fiction, true crime, children’s books, you name it).
Oof, I've only read/listened to 3 of these NYT books. One of which was Klara and the Sun, and it really is VERY VERY GOOD
12! But just added a slew to my library wait list!
So you're saying I shouldn't tell you about how I loved and hated and was annoyed by but plowed through Klara and the Sun and that it haunted me for months after I read it? K. Noted.
My iteration of that sentiment: My Year Abroad. It's on every list but I COULD. NOT. GET. THROUGH. IT. I regularly say awake too late because I can't put a book down. This book I couldn't stay awake for more than a few pages at any time of day or night. Points for insomnia curing, I guess.
I feel like The Plot is another one that's on all the lists. I liked it. It took some getting into and the twist was foreseeable from a little too early, but it was one of those that I ended up staying up way too late to finish.