Book of the Day Roundup: April 1-5, 2024
Mothers of the Mind
The Remarkable Women Who Shaped Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie and Sylvia Path
Rachel Trethewey
The History Press
Hardcover $36.99 (368pp)
978-1-80399-189-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Rachel Trethewey’s Mothers of the Mind is a studied, reflective analysis of the relationships between three literary icons and their mothers.
Virginia Woolf’s mother, Julia, is presented as a woman of remarkable beauty who rejected feminist ideals and presided over her busy household with queenly detachment. Her death in 1895 haunted Virginia, who was thirteen at the time; she later espoused her own feminist theories in troubled defiance of her mother and included characters inspired by Julia in her modernist novels.
In contrast, mystery writer Agatha Christie and her mother, Clara, enjoyed an adoring relationship. In observing her “unassuming” mother, Agatha realized that the most intriguing characters were not “always the ones who immediately attract attention.” For Agatha, Clara’s death in 1926 was a painful loss that coincided with the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. Struggling with depression and psychological disorientation, Agatha even made a “half-hearted” suicide attempt.
But the most entangled dynamic explored here is that between poet Sylvia Plath and her mother, Aurelia. The heroine of Sylvia’s novel The Bell Jar struggles with mental illness and tries to distance herself from her ineffectual, conformist mother; in reality, Sylvia shared a strong bond with Aurelia, even through their periods of geographical separation. Aurelia’s own youthful aspirations are detailed alongside her teaching career, with Trethewey also revealing how, after Sylvia’s suicide, Aurelia was perturbed by people’s warped, cultish perceptions of her daughter’s life.
The three separate portraits evoke their settings with historical finesse, from Victorian and Edwardian England to midcentury America. The complexities and contrasts within each relationship are developed with restraint, in consideration of the positive and negative impacts of each woman’s own maternal environment.
Via three revelatory and compelling case studies, Mothers of the Mind examines the pivotal impact of mother-daughter relationships upon the creative process.
MEG NOLA (February 13, 2024)
I Cheerfully Refuse
Leif Enger
Grove Press
Hardcover $27.00 (336pp)
978-0-8021-6293-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Illuminating a dystopian landscape with hope and love, Leif Enger’s magnificent novel I Cheerfully Refuse follows a grieving bibliophile’s sailing quest across the Great Lakes.
Rainy, a bear of a man born in a climate-changed time, faced a future of drudgery and subsistence. He was lifted from his procession of gray days by Lark, a kind, passionate librarian. He read all that he could to impress her. They built a happy life together on the shores of Lake Superior—she selling books, and he playing bass in a local band. Kindness was their credo.
But the arrival of a new boarder, Kellan—a probable escapee from a six-year worker contract; a brother figure carrying a rare manuscript, I Cheerfully Refuse—shattered their peace. Lark was murdered by those who pursued Kellan, and Rainy was forced to flee. He took to the lake in an inherited, patchwork vessel, headed for familiar waters: “If I were to see Lark anywhere, it would be in that place where the meteor struck and thinned the world, and islands rose to shelter tattered souls.”
The book’s backdrop is a desperate one, marked by anti-intellectual political upheavals, indentured servitude, rashes of suicide marketed as escape, and oligarchical control over vanishing resources. Rainy encounters leaking prison ships led by villains who never sleep, who face no recourse for their misdeeds; he rescues a sharp nine-year-old, Sol, from the clutches of an abusive trader. He encounters grifters and murderous local dictators. But despite such travails, the novel revels in hope: Rainy trades music for assistance; he is sheltered by kind people; he is rewarded for past protections. With the words of Lark’s books pulsing through him, he cannot fail.
Comet-bright and eloquent, I Cheerfully Refuse is a perfect novel that treats dystopian circumstances as transient so long as literacy remains.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (February 13, 2024)
Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves
J. Drew Lanham
Hub City Press
Hardcover $17.00 (112pp)
979-888574030-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
J. Drew Lanham’s Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves is a stunning amalgamation of literary prose and poetry.
Biology connects Lanham’s two worlds of wildlife and Black being. His entries are close studies of the rhythms and respective intricacies of both, written with the awareness that “every poem isn’t an ode to joy, and yes, sometimes there is sadness, or anger within the words.” One entry wonders “why Black lives don’t matter beyond marches or unarmed Negroes dying.” Through curiosity and questioning, the book probes how Lanham handles troubling social ills himself: “Fuck—now I gotta have that talk with my son once again.”
In other sensuous entries, Lanham turns “to the wild things,” acting as a witness to nature’s allure. The conflation of his naturalist and activist identities is clearest in poems like “Nine New Revelations for the Black Bird-Watcher,” wherein he wonders “if some white people tell crows and ravens how impressed they are with their articulate intelligence.” By way of duality, Lanham implies that suffering and joy can exist in concurrence. His voice is softer, even delicate in his nature pieces; his social prose validates rage and exhaustion. This tension is the book’s most poignant triumph.
The expression of joy is radicalized in “Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves” as his pleasure from “the steady run stream” or “the silent spring” becomes an act of resistance against the racism and war that plague societies—and Black bodies specifically. The book ends with a glossary of terms accompanied by lyrical definitions (ex: “Fall: What autumn does when the wind undresses it.”).
Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves is a melodious collection—an ode to choosing joy and to the resilience that such choosing requires.
BROOKE SHANNON (February 13, 2024)
Nen and the Lonely Fisherman
Ian Eagleton
James Mayhew, illustrator
Little Bee Books
Hardcover $18.99 (32pp)
978-1-4998-1593-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Bright splashes of yellow jump out from a soothing seaside palette in this fantastical LGBTQ+ picture book. Though he loves the ocean, there is one thing Nen, a merman, cannot find even in its unfathomable depths: love. Every night, Nen sings his sorrow out over the sea; his song reaches a lonely fisherman, Ernest, who sets out in search of the singer. Together, they discover that nothing—not even a raging storm—can conquer love.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (February 13, 2024)
Cloudlanders
Christopher Mackie
Kelpies
Softcover $9.95 (288pp)
978-1-78250-840-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A charismatic band of wood nymphs, shapeshifters, and a gigantic humanoid mushroom protect their home from an ancient force in Christopher Mackie’s charming fantasy novel Cloudlanders.
The story begins “years from now, in a strange place where strange things tend to happen.” Bastion, a bucolic island floating in the clouds, is home to magical beings, including those whose bark-colored skin is a source of camouflage in its woods. It’s the only remnant of Earth after the Wavewrecker, a fearsome monster, flooded the world. Bastion’s source of flight and survival is a deposit of uncanny minerals; now it, too, is imperiled by the Wavewrecker’s dark forces. Soon, forgotten legends become perilous realities.
Twelve-year-old Aliana is caught up in the quest to keep her home from plunging into the endless sea when a missing child leads her to a witch who warns of the Wavewrecker’s rising power. Aliana’s twin brother, Garrett, uncovers artifacts from humanity’s earthbound past. Meanwhile, a treasure-hunting fairy catches sight of an outsider flying a plane into Bastion, and an invisible boy afflicted with an unknown illness seems to be at the center of it all. With pieces of the verdant island falling into the sea, these unassuming beings find one another and unite to preserve their home.
The novel’s riffs on classic fairy tales result in satisfying frisson between the familiar and the unexpected. For example, an ominous exchange between red-coated Aliana and a wolf develops into an expectations-defying friendship. Such relationships are at the heart of Aliana’s group’s thrilling adventure to uncover the Wavewrecker’s source of power and keep it from destroying Bastion.
In the potent, environmentally attuned fantasy novel Cloudlanders, magical beings work together to save their home.
WILLEM MARX (February 13, 2024)
Barbara Hodge
