The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson

4/5 stars

What's it about? A marriage dissolves over the course of 29 poems in this story inspired by Keats. The ever-talented Carson serves up a work of art like none you’ve encountered.

How’d I find it? We all know how I feel about Autobiography of Red, so I’m going to give anything she writes a whirl.

Who will enjoy this book? The Maggie Nelson fans should respond to this one.

What stood out? Two people meet, fall in love, weld their lives together, and grow apart over the years as trust and communication erode. Each section opens with a fragment from Keats’s oeuvre (Anne Carson hasn’t met a fragment too small) that connects the story to its wider themes of beauty and archetype. Though the word “wound” appears on the first page (nay, the very first line!), the rest of the book redeems it.

Which line made me feel something? So many strange lines to chew on: “Is innocence just one of the disguises of beauty? / He could fill structures of / threat with a light like the earliest olive oil.”

The Renunciations by Donika Kelly

4/5 stars

What's it about? Donika Kelly finds courage and healing in an examination of the links between childhood abuse and the wreckage of a soured marriage. Powerful and devastating.

How’d I find it? Always a fan of the work put out by Graywolf Press, I read whatever Kelly publishes since discovering her debut collection Bestiary.

Who will enjoy this book? Those who appreciated In the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado’s haunting memoir / essay collection, might admire how Kelly uses mythology to address similar themes.

What stood out? The way in which Kelly summons archetypes brings resilience to the personal tragedy of this collection; she is a storyteller, an interpreter, an oracle. The poems titled “Dear—” that appear in both the past and present sections contain line for line the book’s most stunning verse.

Which line made me feel something? From “Sanctuary”: “I call this the difficulty of the nonbeliever, / of waking, every morning, without a god. / How to understand, then, what deserves rescue / and what deserves to suffer.”

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

4/5 stars

What's it about? I can do no better than Steinbeck himself in the book’s opening line: “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” A snapshot of a neighborhood, its humanity, its dramas.

How’d I find it? This novel was part of the preparation for a family trip to Monterey. Yes, we made sure to walk past the building that inspired Doc’s lab. My particular copy came from Powell’s.

Who will enjoy this book? For another read that focuses on a single community and its lovable yet flawed inhabitants, try Local Souls by Allan Gurganus.

What stood out? I will never get over how deeply Steinbeck writes characters, how he depicts desperation and misery with a smirk. Cannery Row is as brilliant and vivid as any of his other work, but steeped in winsome levity. The frog hunt with Mack and the boys offers sure entertainment.

Which line made me feel something? Just imagine hosting Steinbeck: “These are not parties at all but acts and demonstrations, about as spontaneous as peristalsis and as interesting as its end product.”

Death of the First Idea by Rickey Laurentiis

4/5 stars

What's it about? In her second collection, Laurentiis shares her journey of self-discovery and self-love in a world hostile to Black and trans bodies. A book that pulls from the masters and makes it new.

How’d I find it? I borrowed a physical copy and audiobook from Multnomah County Library. The audiobook, performed by the poet herself, adds an extra dimension that you’ll want to experience.

Who will enjoy this book? If you liked Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse, check out Death of the First Idea.

What stood out? Laurentiis wrote the hell out of this book, an experiment in form and heady mix of myth, history, and culture. She packs every poem with so much meaning that you have to read them over and over to soak in them properly, even my favorite, the brief “Tiresiad: Auspices, I (Origins)”. The notes at the end testify to the amount of inspiration and craft behind the collection.

Which line made me feel something? From “A Tricky Seminar”: “How your fingers move / To build such attitudes, turning a moaning of the wind / Into a man, making what is a tease of grass at the heel / Into terror, now pleasure, then back to grass again.” Rickey, what is the grass?

Erasure by Percival Everett

4/5 stars

What's it about? Semi-successful writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison angrily scrawls a parody of publishing’s taste for bestsellers simmered in racial stereotype—then watches in horror as his literary career starts to bloom. Meanwhile, family emergencies call him home to Washington, DC to tend to his aging mother.

How’d I find it? I rewatched American Fiction and wanted to read the source material.

Who will enjoy this book? If you like Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, give Erasure a try.

What stood out? Erasure is smart and satisfying, and keeps the reader chuckling as Everett tackles heavy subjects. Intercut into the story are snippets of Monk’s creative process: morsels of writing, lists, criticism. Everett walks the line between absurdity and profundity like it’s easy.

Which line made me feel something? Monk on his hobby: “But the wood, the feel of it, the smell of it, the weight of it. It was so much more real than words. The wood was so simple. Dammit, a table was a table was a table.”

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

4/5 stars

What's it about? In a thorough and fascinating investigation, Sheri Fink details the individual and systemic failures that led to the unnecessary deaths of patients stranded by Hurricane Katrina at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. Fink delivers an unsettling account of ethical questions in healthcare and injustices magnified by our poor preparedness for disasters.

How’d I find it? My book club at work is reading this for its summer pick. I enjoyed much of Five Days at Memorial in its audio format, which was like listening to one long episode of Serial. As a nurse, this book has been hard to shake off.

Who will enjoy this book? The true crime elements recall David Cullen’s Columbine. Try The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom for a companion read to provide additional context about New Orleans during Katrina.

What stood out? The depth of Fink’s research is evident in the gripping narrative driving Five Days at Memorial, a page-turner the likes of The Executioner’s Song. We get to know the real people behind the devastating decisions they made for Memorial’s patients, and that perspective provides nuance to their actions. Fink takes on the underlying factors that led to the crimes at Memorial, including a history of discrimination, the politics that allowed for unsafe conditions in a hurricane-prone region, and the deficiencies of our healthcare system.

Which line made me feel something? Though written in 2013, Five Days at Memorial raises issues that would haunt the COVID-19 pandemic years later: “The goal, participants said, was to save as many lives as possible while adhering to an ethical framework. This represented a departure from the usual medical standard of care, which focuses on doing everything possible to save each individual life. Setting out guidelines in advance of a crisis was a way to avoid putting exhausted, stressed frontline health professionals in the position of having to come up with criteria for making tough decisions in the midst of a crisis”.

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky

4/5 stars

What's it about? A patch of land beside a lake in the Brandenburg hills outside Berlin hosts human encounters over the course of a century. A book about time, brutality, and the geologic strata of history.

How’d I find it? The book club at Lost Avenue Books picked Visitation for its most recent discussion. Next up: Loop by Brenda Lozano, translated by Annie McDermott.

Who will enjoy this book? Reading Visitation recalls watching Zone of Interest for the first time. If you enjoyed Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, pick this one up.

What stood out? The title suits this book perfectly, as the Holocaust haunts the property where Visitation takes place. Erpenbeck embeds the relative mundanity of human concerns within the grander scope of geologic time, an effect that neuters the book’s horror. Chapters in legalese, items in a home described with their prices, dizzying repetitions of family trees—devices that unsettle and send a shudder through the reader. It’s uncomfortable yet exhilarating.

Which line made me feel something? From “The Visitor,” the chapter I most enjoyed: “She wonders whether the sentences go out looking for people to utter them or whether it’s just the opposite and the sentences simply wait for someone to come along and make use of them, and at the same time she wonders if she really doesn’t have anything better to do than wonder about such things…”

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm

4/5 stars

What's it about? I don’t quite know how to describe Malina: a love story, a rallying cry against fascism and patriarchy, a collage, an excavation of language’s limitations. Or, a writer loves Malina, her live-in partner, and Ivan, a chance encounter that became an affair, and navigates the discontent created by history and violent men. It’s an exhilarating ride.

How’d I find it? This was the most recent book club pick at the excellently curated Lost Avenue Books. Given my answer to the last question, you can imagine the lively discussion.

Who will enjoy this book? If you dug Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, you’ll want to read this.

What stood out? I admit, I was not won over by the first section of the novel, “Happy with Ivan,” in which the narrator moons over a younger man who lives a few doors down. The section part, “The Third Man,” changed my mind, launching a sequence of delirious dreams about the narrator’s father intercut with conversations with Malina. These pages are brutal, overwhelming, and intense, and Malina morphs into a threat, a malevolent presence. Bachmann evokes deportation, incest, war, rape, and sexism in raw, surreal ways. I couldn’t put it down.

Which line made me feel something? In a section formatted as a local paper’s interview with the writer: “I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression.”

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes

4/5 stars

What's it about? Anna and Tom are young expats in Berlin, proud of the life they’ve created until they suddenly…aren’t. A searing commentary on modern, work-from-home culture.

How’d I find it? The team at Solid State Books thought I would like this one, and, as always, they were right.

Who will enjoy this book? Millennial freelancers and account execs, this will hit close to home.

What stood out? Latronico has crafted a novel that captures the past ten years like no other I’ve read. The fixation on ambition, codependence in partnership, the meaningless markers of contentment—all utterly contemporary as Anna and Tom sink into their feeds and gentrify their neighborhood. Who needs dialogue when you’ve got grade A malaise?

Which line made me feel something? While the chapter in which Anna and Tom delve into activism certainly feels the most cringeworthy, this description of screen addiction horrified me: “It was like walking through the world’s most hectic street market on cocaine. It was like channel-hopping an entire wall of TV sets. It was like telepathically tuning into the thoughts of a stadium packed with people. But really it wasn’t like anything else, because it was new.”

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

4/5 stars

What's it about? Brian Greene (elegantly, dare I say?) explains superstring theory, its potential to solve the conflict between quantum mechanics and general relativity, and the history of scientific discovery behind these theories.

How’d I find it? I’ve had this book on my shelves for at least ten years, as evidenced by where I found it: Books for America, a wonderful but long-gone used bookstore in Washington, DC.

Who will enjoy this book? If you enjoy popular science à la Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carlo Rovelli, you’ll appreciate The Elegant Universe.

What stood out? This is physics made approachable, a feat achieved by visuals, Greene’s enthusiasm, and many a metaphor to buoy readers through the more abstract concepts. Garden hoses will remind me of multiple dimensions forevermore. And like any good popular science book that focuses on astrophysics, The Elegant Universe gives the people what they want: a chapter on black holes.

Which line made me feel something? The descriptions of scale in this book make the mind wobble: “a black hole whose mass is about three times that of the sun has a temperature of about a hundred-millionth of a degree above absolute zero.”