When I was in elementary school, I had a best friend named Kate. Somewhere around fourth grade we started our own literary magazine — I managed the advertising using word art and photocopied line drawings. Kate was the editor. We called ourselves Bookworm #1 and Bookworm #2 and even made shirts with puff paint to prove it.
I’m still a bookworm. In case that wasn’t clear already. (So is Kate.)
And what, you ask, does being a bookworm have to do with Large Hope?
Reading is my way into the minds and hearts of people who are different than me. It’s the kind of escapism that allows me to experience something I would never experience any other way and then to return to my own world more compassionate and empathetic, more hopeful and circumspect. I’ve encountered thousands of lives between the pages of books and those lives have changed me.
Knowing that I can change (that others can change) is one of the fundamental sources of hope for me.
The Hand That First Held Mine
by Maggie O’Farrell
Maggie O’Farrell is my new author best friend who doesn’t know me.
I started with Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, and the book I’m about to wax on about, The Hand That First Held Mine, is my third in this burgeoning Maggie obsession.
My favorite one-sentence review is from NPR.org:
“O’Farrell manages to take two rather ordinary women in ordinary circumstances and create something extraordinary.”
It is an extraordinary weaving of two ordinary lives. The story is centers around two unmarried mothers. I don’t know how O’Farrell manages to write about motherhood in a way that is so detail-oriented, but also so full of compassion.
Take, for instance, this snippet from one of the characters interior monologue. She’s a new mother and goes through possible responses to the following question in her head: “How are you feeling about the whole baby thing?”
… she could mention that she had been unprepared for this fierce spring in her, this feeling that isn’t covered by the word “love,” which is far too small for it, that sometimes she thinks she might faint with the urgency of her feeling for her son, that sometimes she misses him desperately even when he is right there, that it’s like a form of madness …
— Maggie O’Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine
And it’s got an opening paragraph that gives me shivers every time I read it:
Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen.
— Maggie O’Farrell, The Hand That First Held Mine
I’ll stop quoting from it and just let you read it.
My Rating: Absolutely gorgeous and funny and heartbreaking and healing
Genre: Literary fiction that might accidentally get shelved as something “book-clubby” but is much broader in scope
Format: Read the first U.S. edition from Mariner Books
Read it If: You love rich characters that confront the complexity of life with equal complexity. There are no easy answers. The characters all do good and bad things.
Steer Clear If: You’re looking for something light and fun.
Would I Recommend this to My Parents: Yes.
Ephemera: When you’ve finished the last line, I recommend you immediately turn back to the beginning and reread the first chapter through your tears.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
by Shelby Van Pelt
My Rating: Feel good feels about a good feeling story
Genre: Octopus-as-narrator (this deserves its own shelf at bookstores)
Format: Spotify Audiobook
Read it If: You’re looking for something that doesn’t pretend life is easy but is also kind of light and fun. And you want to hear what this octopus is thinking. (Ok, not the octopus in the picture, but a different octopus.)
Steer Clear If: You want something with weight that doesn’t tie everything up with a pretty bow.
Would I Recommend this to My Parents: Yes.
Ephemera: I haven’t watched the movie. Is it good?
Did Not Finish
I recently gave up listening to Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I made it a solid six hours in, but I was having trouble relating to any of the characters and it was so complicated I had a hard time following the audio. It’s a book I could see myself trying again at some point. Or not. I have a lot of other things I want to read.