April report

I’ve had 11 days to come to terms with the fact that I did not win the lottery and therefore am someone who doesn’t live in England permanently. It’s a process and I’m working on it.

When I went last September, I felt truly hashtag blessed for having had access to books my whole life. Every time I recognized a landmark based on how an author I love had described it in a book I’d read, well, it was a revelation. Traveling is a blast! But books are a real treasure especially for times when travel is not possible.

They’re also a treat when traveling! I am pleased to report that I read much more than one book this month :)

What I read in April:

Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood (2023)—Eleanor Catton is so good at writing books. I’ll always remember that her second novel, The Luminaries (2013), was the first Booker Prize winner I read because it had won the Booker. That experience made the Booker my favorite literary prize. Most of the time, I truly love what those judges pick!

Anyway, I think if any other author had written Birnam Wood, I wouldn’t have been so quick to read it. The plot—a radical environmental activist and an American drone-technology billionaire form an unlikely partnership over land next to a national park that neither of them has a legal claim to—is rife with CoNtEmPoRaRy IsSuEs and the potential for a lot more didacticism than narrative cohesion. Also, as we know, I’ve been in a mood about the recent trend of screenplays disguised as novels.

But with Catton writing, however, I had nothing to worry about. As new Friend of the Report, Sarah, correctly told me, Birnam Wood is simply a wonderful book—riveting, propulsive, intelligent, and unpredictable in a good way.

Ironically, after finishing it, I wanted it to be adapted into a film or series!! (In the right hands, it has the potential to be just as good as the novel—perhaps precisely because Catton didn’t write it like a script!).

[Time Passes]

In a recent subscribers-only thread of my beloved Tabs,1 Rusty Foster explained why he did NOT like Birnam Wood. I have to admit, the critique was valid, if maybe a little harshly delivered. It helped me remember that reading is so deeply idiosyncratic, and that one reader forgives what another cannot. I forgive the fact that Catton’s novel is in service of “Big Social Messages” because I like the way she writes and I have goodwill toward her for The Luminaries. Foster perhaps does not share that perspective and also maybe had misaligned expectations based on the NYT review of Birnam Wood2 (like when I was frustrated with “everyone” loving The Rabbit Hutch and feeling I’d been bamboozled into reading it).

I mention this to acknowledge that just because I like something doesn’t mean it’s good or that you will like it! As always, caveat lector.

Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (2015)—This collection’s titular story was so different, strange, and arresting to me when I first read it in the New Yorker in 2015 that it stayed lodged in my brain for a long time (impressive!). Naturally, it wasn’t until April 2023 that I felt compelled to see what the other stories were like. They are just as weird, unsettling, and powerful as the one I read so many years ago.

Most people probably are more familiar with Mantel as the author of the critically acclaimed and commercially popular historical fiction trilogy, Wolf Hall (2010), Bring Up the Bodies (2013), and The Mirror and the Light (2020).3 I am here to tell you that her contemporary short stories are just as deserving of praise. I can't explain what it is specifically but her writing is intelligent, accessible, and not show off-y, making it very easy for the reader to become completely engrossed in the world of each story.

I read this book in the perfect context for me. Each story seemed magically to take only as long as the train ride to my next destination on any given day. Many of the stories take place in London, and I got a real kick out of exploring on foot several of the neighborhoods where Mantel’s characters navigate their everyday lives.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860-1861)—This post is dedicated to Julia, the Report’s (and perhaps the world’s) biggest Dickens fan, because if she had not been one of my best friends and if she had not spent years screaming about him, I honestly would never have read a single Dickens book in my entire life.4

Two things prompted me to finally take the plunge:

1. The new BBC adaptation, starring Olivia Colman, which I will be watching now that I’ve done my reading

2. A new exhibit at the Charles Dickens Museum about the infamous London fog. I went for the perspective on pollution and left with the insight that it would be a heinous and potentially friendship-threatening act to go to this museum without Julia and then continue to not read any Dickens5

So about this book! “The most unhinged novel for [me] to start with . . . the obvious choice,” according to Julia. I did love it. I do see why Victorians lost their minds for him and why his works endure to this day! Dickensean characters—unforgettable! The plot and its twists—often predictable, no less delightful for their predictability! The cliffhangers—could you imagine having to read this serially? I would have been truly losing it waiting for the next chapter sometimes.

Back to the characters, is it weird of me to love Joe Gargery (“He’s CHRIST!!!!!—Julia)6 and that weirdo Mr. Wemmick (with his Aged Parent and his DIY moat, castle, and garden) the most? And to not really actually care about any of the parts where Pip goes on about Estella? If it is, I don't care. Sign me up for more Dickens.7

P. D. James, The Children of Men (1992)—I’m shocked to discover I’ve made it through 3+ years of this newsletter without referencing the only movie I’ve ever seen.8 Looking back, I can't believe I didn't even reference it in the September 2022 Report—how did I resist mentioning the overwhelming Baby Diego vibes in London after the Queen died?? The point is, Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of James’s novel is a personal touchstone, and after rewatching it this month in England, it became time for me to reread the book, which I last read a decade ago.

As you might suspect, I didn’t retain anything from my first read except that it is very different from the film, and not in a bad way. I certainly didn’t remember that James’s version takes place almost exclusively in Oxford, unlike Cuarón’s in London. Lucky for me, I did a day trip to Oxford this time around, so the memory of that idyllic college town was top of mind as I read, which overall enhanced the experience of the reread.

Going back to the bit about the differences between the book and the movie—the two are so different that they are truly their own things. I can understand why Cuarón made the choices he made, and appreciate how these changes stay mostly true to the spirit of the book while significantly changing enough things to convey an entirely different perspective and meaning without discarding the majority of the compelling philosophical questions that James’s narrative raises. There is a current throughout James’s novel of Christianity that, until the conclusion, could possibly be read as a reflection of traditional dominant English values and culture, but which, in the end, I think becomes clear is actually James’s own personal belief system coming through. Thankfully, that current doesn’t spoil the bulk of the narrative, which is a genuinely interesting thriller with some meaty speculative questions!

What I didn’t finish reading in April:

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)9—I should have looked inward and admitted that starting this when I got back from England was not going to leave me enough time to finish before the book club meeting. I made it through a good 200 pages, pages that I enjoyed reading! So, why am I now looking inward and admitting I likely won't finish the book? Because I looked up the rest of the plot on wikipedia!

A favorite phrase of mine in my teaching days (often as a segue to me discussing the ending of a text) was “we don’t read books/watch movies for plot.” I was only half joking. Something I learned this month, which surely had to be the first month since my undergrad days in which I read at least 2 Victorian novels, is that I reach a saturation point pretty quickly with a loose, baggy monster from that period. I see the endgame too early and start to ask, “when are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?” In SOME WAYS, they feel like streaming shows that cry out for the editors they can’t have because they’ve been forced to stretch a 6-episode arc into 10 episodes. No matter how well it’s done, I still get impatient.

So! Wuthering Heights, another Victorian classic that I’d never read before. It’s fascinating! It’s goth! Everyone in it is deeply messed up! On a structural level, it’s doing cool things with gossip and narrative and gender and genre! Heathcliff’s trajectory—did Dickens read this novel and then say “what if Heathcliff were white and raised by a blacksmithing Jesus Christ? What would that look like?” 👀 Really makes you think.

I also used to like to joke that I didn’t need to do things like watch Blade Runner (1982) because I “know what happens in it from reading so many academic articles.” Also only kind of a joke (extra funny re: Blade Runner because I do love that movie). With Wuthering Heights, I feel like I read enough to get the picture, to understand the formal, generic, and narrative advances Brontë was making, and to understand how and why this novel has filtered into popular culture. And that’s enough for me at this point in my life!

What I’m looking forward to reading in May:

Sharon Dodua Otoo, tr. Jon Cho-Polizzi, Ada’s Realm (2023)

Lara Maiklem, Mudlark: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames (2021)

Magda Szabó, tr. Len Rix, The Fawn (1959/2023)10

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain Gang All-Stars (2023)

Samantha Irby, Quietly Hostile: Essays (2023)