books

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.

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. 

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. 

When I first came across Camilla Gibb’s memoir, This Is Happy, I had been struggling for nearly a year to finish any book I picked up, and my mental health had deteriorated to the point where I was forced to drop out of school and quit writing entirely. Despite everything going on in my life, I managed to read This Is Happy to the very end. It was the reason I showed up to work on less than two hours of sleep the next day, which ultimately resulted in me spilling very hot coffee all over myself.  

When my friends recommend books, I borrow them from the library—my apartment remains infested with paperbacks despite my efforts to downsize, and books are an expensive vice—but I lasted a whole fifteen minutes into the audiobook of Julia Armfield’s novel Our Wives Under the Sea before I caved and ducked into a bookstore to buy it while out on a walk. It was just that good. 

It is a joy for a non-scientist like me to lose myself in descriptions of the exquisitely designed life cycles of pecan trees, maple trees, wild strawberries, witch hazel, black ash, and cattails.