Category: Stop! Look! Listen!

Thirty years ago, I read A.S Byatt’s Possession, the Booker Award winner of 1990, and was possessed by the novel. After her death, in November, 2023, I decided to revisit it, and (sorry for verbal overplay), was repossessed.  

A Few Notes on Metamorphoses 3.158 

Ovid describes the cave dwelling of the hunter-goddess Diana as: arte laboratum nulla: simulauerat artem. Made by no art: mimicking art. 

I was reminded of Niina Pollari’s stunning book of poetry Path of Totality when the solar eclipse occurred earlier this year. This ominous phrase–which describes the area of Earth where the eclipse could be seen–haunted the news cycle for days. I had COVID at the time, and was only able to view the phenomenon on YouTube from my couch in a stupor.

Only An Octave Apart, Anthony Roth Costanzo and Justin Vivian Bond 

While researching opera for my next novel, I was introduced to the marvelously uncanny voice of Anthony Roth Costanzo, a countertenor who made a splash starring in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Philip Glass’s Akhenaten. Browsing Costanzo’s recordings, I came across his collaboration with cabaret star Justin Vivian Bond

I tend to read voraciously, though perhaps too quickly, since I often retain only an impression of a book and its atmosphere rather than its plot. A recent read that made a strong impression is Fearnoch, by Jim McEwen (Breakwater Books 2022). The details blur (and can’t readily be checked since my library copy has been returned) but I have a distinct sense of Fearnoch, both the small Ontario town that McEwen evokes with language both lyrical and grounded, and the people he populates it with.

A cardinal sin (if not what some might consider the cardinal sin) of reading is to judge the contents of a book based on the appearance of the cover. The notion that one is not supposed to make a value judgment after a quick glance is so widespread that the phrase has escaped the literary sphere and breached into life advice. 

Whenever I listen to music, I’m searching for emotional devastation. 

Before I hunker down to write, early in the morning, while the world is still dark, I will often go on long drives, blasting music that incites these feelings; those that break down my walls and allow me to reach a place of raw vulnerability. Particularly if I’m writing poetry. 

As an avid reader, and because reading is such a personal thing, it’s difficult for me to recommend one book to people I’ve never met. But in keeping with the theme of my story, Children of the Gentle People, which centres around food and friendship during times of unease, I’d like to suggest one beloved book: Lolo Houbein’s One Magic Square. 

Growing up with a family that’s half Cuban, I’ve always been drawn to literature that explores the Caribbean experience: the legacies of colonialism, the textures of island life, the complicated inheritance of culture and family. When How to Say Babylon appeared on my MFA reading list, I was eager to dive in. The memoir won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography and was named one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023, but beyond the accolades, I wanted to engage with Caribbean voices as part of my own development as a writer.

I realize that, if the purpose of this column is to surface works its readers haven’t immediately heard of, picking the most recent Booker Prize winner misses the mark. That said, Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song is just that good. More critically, it’s an important artifact pointing up the exhaustion of the threadbare neoliberal consensus that dominates much of “developed” democracy.