November Reading: Families in flux
Can we ever really come home? And who are we to each other anyway?
Welcome!
Here’s the 11th installment of my monthly themed reading lists. New subscribers, you can expect a curated list like this to hit your inbox in the first three days of each month, followed by weekly essays where I’ll break down what worked for me in these books and how together they develop the month’s theme. Sometimes on Fridays, I’ll post a discussion topic about book news or life + reading. Please chime in on any post by clicking through to the comments to share your thoughts, too.
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Of all the months so far this year, October was my least favorite.
When I chose the Environmental focus for last month’s reading, I had no idea October would be the hottest on record here in Tucson. The heat drove home the importance of the theme, and also contributed to my hard-to-please attitude when it came to the books I read.
Disappointingly, I found Creation Lake, a book I’d been looking forward to all year, a bit flat.
My focus was also off. Has anyone found the setting to turn off the text read-aloud feature during audiobooks? It constantly interrupted my enjoyment of Kevin Fedarko’s A Walk in the Park to announce “someone with a 202 area code sent a long message, and a photo.” Replying STOP only goes so far. Act Blue has many phone numbers— let’s hope they were enough.
After cheating on my theme with Lili Anolik’s Didion & Babitz for a change of pace, I’m still slowly working through The Monkey Wrench Gang (goofy and problematic) and Parable of the Sower (well-written but so very bleak, even at the midpoint). I’ll probably finish them but in the meantime, with the help of The Mighty Red as a palate cleanser, I am moving on.
This month’s list will immerse you in stories about families, about leaving and coming home, and trying to fit together all the pieces of the puzzle that belong to the whole. I love stories that explore how a family got to be the way it is, and who the characters might be to each other, if they could see each other anew. Mostly, to get out of a slump it helps to choose some books I really want to read. In doing so, this theme emerged.
In order of publication, here are five books with complicated yet affirming family dynamics at the center. The list is bookended by a big cult classic I’m kicking off with and a local memoir, with a 2023 best book of the year I missed and a couple of illustrated covers sandwiched between. Read any one of them or choose your own variation on the theme, to join me in making Novembetter one of our favorite reading months of the year.
The Last Samurai
Helen De Witt (2000)
I’ve kept a hardback copy of this book, listed 29th on the NYT 100 list this summer, through moves to at least three different homes without yet reading it. At over 500 pages, it has always felt like I’d get to it someday, when I had a long stretch of free time to sink into it.
Sybilla’s an American single mother living in London. Her young son Ludo may well be a genius. To occupy him and provide male role models while she works, she has him watch Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai on repeat. Ludo teaches himself Greek and mathematics and anything he puts his mind to, but the one thing he wants to know and can’t is his father’s name. In his search for a man worthy of fatherhood, he puts several through the tests of the samurai.
I’ve thought about DeWitt’s pithy The English Understand Wool at least once a week since reading it this summer—I’m ready to make this commitment to Sybilla and Ludo’s world for awhile.
Sorrow and Bliss
Meg Mason (2022)
Martha has just turned 40 and gotten divorced, after her career and mental health took a turn for the worse. With nowhere to go but her childhood home, Martha’s got to face her chaotic parents without the sister who made it bearable. Can going back be a way to start again? A reader (hi, Susan!) recommended this book to me and then
sent me a copy when I expressed interest in New Zealand writers back in July. It’s fun to take someone else’s recommendation once in awhile and I look forward to discussing it.
The Bee Sting
Paul Murray (2023)
I’ve been waiting for this over 600-page sensation to come out in paperback and it’s finally here. I’m looking forward to a family story told through multiple perspectives and to finally being able to call my sister back to talk about the ending as she finished this months ago. Based on what I’ve heard while trying to avoid spoilers, this book has a climate-related undercurrent and will make a nice bridge from my October theme as well. Just because I’m moving on does not mean I’m done thinking and learning about how to be good and avoid the end of the world.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Rufi Thorpe (2024)
Unemployed and caring for a newborn at 19 thanks to a brief affair with a college teacher, Margo lets her aging pro-wrestler father move in to help with childcare. He’s an expert in creating compelling characters and before she knows it Margo has a plan to turn her finances around: OnlyFans. I’m hoping this will be a fun, quick read but also I’m intrigued by all the good things people have said about the way it speaks to controlling the narrative in a world that seems to care so little about granting power and voice to young women.
The Molino
Melani Martinez (2024)
Published by the University of Arizona press, this hybrid memoir and community history introduces the family who ran the El Rapido restaurant in Tucson’s historic Barrio Presidio for nearly seventy years. It reckons with the family’s loss of home, food and faith in the aftermath of gentrification. At the same time, Martinez shares her personal story of rejecting the work in her father’s kitchen, then finding her way through belonging and transformation, to a spiritual home, guided by the imagery in an iconic mural that graced El Rapido’s wall. Tucsonans, be forewarned: the library hold list for this one is long!
Which of these have you already read and loved?
Will you join this informal not-really-q-book-club in reading one of these titles this month?
With two long titles on my list, I cut it down. Honorable mention titles include Betsy Lerner’s Shred Sisters (everyone’s talking about it so maybe I don’t have to?), Jami Attenberg’s A Reason to See You Again (maybe I’ll still get to it?) and Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation (found at a Friends of the Library sale this weekend, a runaway returns after 25 years to her Idaho potato farmer family, with environmental themes). How do you cope, reader, with so many interesting books and so little time?
On the family theme, I just finished The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande. It was hand-sold to me by the owner of Petryoglyphs in the Mercado district. I wasn't aware it was first pubbed in 2012, so on the old side. But really enlightening, espcecially to this older, middle-class white chick. It was a national bookd Critics Circle Award finalist. All about families and how they shape us, both by good and bad examples. I've been wanting to read Margo's Got Money Troubles, so this seems like a good excuse.
I'm beginning again with you, after falling behind on my reading. So glad the rules of this club are loose! Your dedication to the Booktender these months is inspiring. And I don't know if we can ever really come home again, but I do know we are vital to each other in ways seen and unseen.