November report

Well, we’re nearing the end of the year and I for one am having trouble believing that!

My old bête noire—quantification—looms, sneeringly reminding me that I have 31 days to read 4 books if I want to have read 52 this year, and that the books shouldn’t be by WWs1 if I want to reach my secondary goal for the year of not simply reading what I know.

I have much to ponder, but that’s enough thinking here about what’s ahead for the last month of 2021. This is the November Book Report.

What I read in November:

Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete (2021)—What a wonderful, short novel about which my only complaint is that it was so good I wanted it to be longer!

Something has been in the literary air for several years now, something scholars call metamodernism—“contemporary fictions distinguished by inventive, self-conscious relationships with modernist literature.”2 And The Days of Afrekete, like Natasha Brown’s Assembly (2021), could certainly be understood as metamodernist, given the way it draws on the some of the conceits, structure, themes, and style of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925). Solomon’s novel isn’t a “remake” or “revision” of Dalloway, though, and I do think that a reader unfamiliar with Woolf’s novel could absolutely “enjoy”/appreciate The Days of Afrekete. But in its narrative of one day in the life of a middle-aged woman, preparing for and then hosting a party, moving between the present day and flashbacks to the protagonist’s early adulthood, including her romantic relationship with a woman she has not seen much since that time, The Days of Afrekete really captures pretty much everything I love about Mrs Dalloway while also—ironically and appropriately—making it new.3 

For those still reading at this point (LOL) and still interested, a content warning that this novel contains a scene where a person considers harming themselves and one where a character uses homophobic language :(

Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers (2022)—Another influencer special!4 My search for inspiration about what to read next led me to Chan’s debut novel, which will be published January 4, 2022.5 The concept—an overwhelmed mother’s mistake lands her in an experimental reform program that could be called dystopian if the majority of its technology-assisted surveillance methods weren’t functionally things we (“we”) already have/use to “help” (punish) non-wealthy, non-white parents in the present day—intrigued me. While engaging, paced like a sick thriller, and skillfully written in a manner that makes it very easy to imagine it adapted as a prestige miniseries, this book isn’t really “escapist.” (To be clear, I don’t get the impression that Chan intended for it to be escapist).

But there is a sort of tension in vibes, between the subject matter and the generic vehicle within which the themes are explored, that made it kind of a weird read—I am not sure if that's how a lot of contemporary fiction for a certain market is these days or whether Chan is pushing against the generic limits of the “thoughtful beach read” with the important and difficult questions she raises! If you read and liked Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age (2020),6 (also set in Philadelphia), then you would like this novel.

(Also, heads up! There are some graphic depictions of depression and self harm, in case you want to avoid reading such things at this point in your life!!)

Ishmael Reed, The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda (2020)—Look at me, going outside my comfort zone and reading a drama!7 For personal reasons,8 it became time for me to read the play (by one of my favorite living authors) that critiques America’s Favorite Musical™.

From what I gather, having never seen it myself, Hamilton has a strong didactic element to it, purporting to teach Real History but in a Fun Way. Reed, correctly skeptical that a play so enthusiastically endorsed by the Rockefeller Foundation and American Express could possibly be a comprehensive history let alone a transgressive one, responds with a didactic corrective, imagining a night where the ghosts of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, the people they enslaved, and Native Americans whose lives were adversely affected by “the so-called Founding Fathers” visit Lin-Manuel Miranda to convince him of the fundamental mistruths underpinning both Miranda’s play and the 800-page biography that inspired the play’s creation.

I loved this play! And not because I am a known Hater of Musicals, but because Reed, with his characteristic wit and intellectual vigor, delivers this necessary critique in the same generic form as the thing he critiques (a play) and thus demonstrates how a play can be both fictional and faithful to history. I have no doubt that The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, lacking those “cool” “hip-hop”-inflected songs that now fuel exercise classes, is less overtly “fun” and dazzling than Hamilton is. And yet! I enjoyed every bit of it.

And for fans of Miranda’s musical who have made it this far in the Report, please understand that critique≠“cancellation” and that I think it is OK to like Hamilton!! But maybe knowing the critique of it can be good also :)

Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays (2021)—This collection’s titular essay is, to me, one of the finest and most moving accounts of: spring 2020, friendship, love, cancer, art, and being alive, generally and in terms of capital-H History. When I first read it in January, I wasn’t prepared! I didn’t realize how long the essay was, or how riveted I would be, how invested I would quickly become in the health and happiness of its primary focus, an extraordinary woman named Sooki, and how much I would cry (or that I would cry at all!!). It is truly such a special essay.

What about the rest of the essays in this book? Delightful, thought-provoking, very nice and well written, wide-ranging, at times revelatory, and always a pleasure to read.

What I’m looking forward to reading in December:

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I’m going to be off work for 3 weeks (sorry, not bragging).

Should I just reread Middlemarch (1871-1872)?????

Please, sound off in the comments (or in an email to me).