No Son of Mine by Jonathan Corcoran

Posted on January 26, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Disclosure: Jon has taught as guest faculty in my MFA program. I admire his work and he is a dear friend.

Also, I am teasing you about a book that will not be published for months (April 1 of this year, no foolin’), but I’ll repost then to remind you.

Now on to the show.

I found this memoir remarkable. It encompasses much in terms of its time span and the bigger events in the world, and Jon accomplishes something special by being raw and vulnerable, and never self-indulgent. I think the struggles he portrays here will offer something to any reader, because we are all struggling to navigate even the closest of relationships. I am impressed by the writing in terms of that larger storytelling and meaning-making, as well as line by line.

Corcoran grew up in a small town in West Virginia that is just a few minutes’ drive from where I live now. (It’s always a little exciting to read a place written well that you personally know, and I did enjoy that part here. Elkins is not perfect, but I think this author has handled it with respect for both positive and negative qualities.) As a gay kid, he suffered in the town, in the evangelical church his family attended, and in his family itself. He did some secretive explorations of sexuality in West Virginia (not too dissimilar, I think, from those in The Rope Swing, which is however fiction), but did not live as an openly gay man until he left for college at Brown University. Coming from poverty, Brown was both a great accomplishment and a shock: a wider world, but rarified, and Jon was a foreigner to many of his peers and professors there. It’s at Brown that he met Sam.

In his second year at Brown, Jon is in Portland, Maine, with his boyfriend, Sam, meeting Sam’s family for the first time. It’s his twentieth birthday when his mother calls, seething with what she’s discovered. Jon confirms that he is gay. “You are no longer my son,” she says, and she hangs up. This leaves him traumatized, trying to finish college with no financial or emotional or any other kind of support, with no family, and no options, surrounded by Ivy League administrators whose understanding of what all this means is so poor that he is advised to take a year off and travel. His mother spends the next six months calling in the early morning and waking him up to tell him he will die of AIDS or go to hell, or both.

Jon and his mother spend years–fifteen years, the rest of her life–being estranged and trying again, having massive, blow-up fights and years of silence, and abuse and toxicity and cautious attempts at peace and acceptance. Her bad behavior is horribly, shockingly bad. But tangled up with the bad is the fact that this is his mother, his caretaker, whom he has loved, and who still (somewhere, twistedly) loves him, and misses him when they are on the outs. It’s a level of trauma that’s hard to fathom if you haven’t lived it. But as a narrator, he does a good job of describing its effects, including a mistrust of memory and various physical ailments. It also poses some challenges for his relationship with Sam, which will continue until they eventually marry, and into the present.

This is a memoir of trying to reconcile a parent that the narrator loves, his memories of her and of his hometown, with the pain inflicted at the hands of that same person (and place). It’s all a puzzle, to question the causes, to wonder how much forgiveness is due to such a figure. It’s a memoir that is also an assay, both a personal narrative and an exploration of ideas. “…some part of my brain is perpetually trying to explain her actions, to find the root cause for them, and what this really comes dangerously close to is the notion that her actions have an excuse, that if I searched hard and long enough the hurt and pain she caused me can be written away. But she hurt more, a voice says, and I don’t doubt that. So here I am, operating the world’s worst justice system from the recesses of my brain.” “I do not know how to balance all the pain she caused with all the pain she felt.”

There’s a lot to appreciate here, and a lot of wisdom that I think will help just about anybody. Not to say answers, but wise observations about one man’s experience. Most of us are wrestling with difficult, tangled-up relationships where abuse and love meet; many of us are struggling with what to take and what to leave about a family or a place. “I hear her laugh, hear the crinkle of her dyed-blonde hair. I rub her cracked feet, feel her hand on my back. I smell her nicotine fingers. There is her cup of Lipton tea in the little ceramic mug that is white with flowers around the brim. I taste the milky black tea. And I say, I don’t want to lose this all. I don’t want to lose what made me.” There is also some lovely writing here. If the story itself is often difficult, there’s a remarkable amount of grace, beauty, and hope. I think it’s a book for anybody and everybody. Thank you, Jon, for sharing so much in a way that feels both raw and wide-open, and careful and thoughtful. I’m awed.

Rating: 9 paper bags.

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The Hunter by Tana French

Posted on January 22, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Tana French is at her best with this character-focused sequel to The Searcher, featuring humor, angst, pathos, and mystery in a tiny Irish village.

In The Hunter, Tana French (The Searcher; The Witch Elm; The Trespasser; and more), building on the success of eight previous novels, delivers the mystery, atmosphere, and feeling her fans have come to expect.

Following the events of The Searcher, French takes her readers back to the tiny Irish townland of Ardnakelty, where former Chicago Police Department detective Cal Hooper has settled to live a quiet, scenic life and repair furniture. He’s already gotten more than he signed up for, including a lovely, levelheaded girlfriend named Lena; a surrogate teenaged daughter, Trey; and a place in the local social circles (and the pub). But when Trey’s long-absent father resurfaces with a get-rich-quick scheme, he threatens the equilibrium of various village relationships, including those Cal holds most dear. The previous novel saw Cal struggle to find his role in a new place; in The Hunter, he knows what he has to lose and, even more importantly, what Trey does.

French is at her best in this novel, showcasing its sharp, scintillating sense of place (Ardnakelty is a character unto itself) and powerful mood of foreboding and that of secrets deeply held. “The overhead bulb isn’t bright enough,” she writes, “and the fringed lampshade gives its light a murky tinge; when the men stay still to listen, it smears deep, tricky shadows into their faces.” Later, she writes: “The mountain is sly. From far off, its low, rounded curves look almost harmless…. It’s a place whose dangers only come into focus when you’re already engaged with them.” This kind of ambience is cut by sudden, surprising bursts of laugh-out-loud humor.

Cal Hooper can be likened to a old western hero, with his staunch personal code; he equally recalls a hard-boiled detective: he’s retired but, despite best efforts, he’s not done investigating. The father-daughter dynamic so delicately established between Cal and Trey–who share no blood and met only two years ago in the previous novel–is heart-wrenching, gorgeously written, and under threat. He trusts her, but she’s “much too young to have something the size of her future in her hands.” Cal and Lena’s relationship is equally engaging, quietly wholesome, and firm. French has never shied away from weighty themes, and here her protagonists wrestle with vulnerability, revenge, and the danger of letting the past determine the future. French masters beautiful descriptions, easy, natural dialogue, a darkly twisting plot, high stakes, and compelling characters. The Hunter is perhaps her finest work–and leaves readers thirsty for more of Cal’s story.

This review originally ran in the December 19, 2023 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 9 jars of jam.

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Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon & Kim Green

Posted on January 19, 2024 by pagesofjulia

This memoir of food, family, feminism, and Cambodian history, which includes enticing cookbook-quality recipes, is breathtaking in its emotional resonance and lovely writing.

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes tells a story that is, by turns, heart-wrenching, inspiring, harrowing, and mouthwatering. Chantha Nguon’s memoir, written with Kim Green, encompasses both world history and an intimate personal account. Nguon, born the youngest child in a comfortable family in Cambodia’s Battambang, had nine years of soft living and good eating before Pol Pot reset time to Year Zero in the 1970s. Moving first to Saigon, where she weathered the end of the Vietnam War, and then escaping as a refugee into Thailand, Nguon gradually lost everyone she loved, ending with her mother’s death when Nguon was 23. She was a food-focused young child with a mother who took cooking very seriously; she became a young refugee in peril of starvation. For Nguon, rationing or missing entirely the most basic of ingredients is not only a literal life-or-death issue but also symbolically life-altering. With the loss of her family and, to some extent, her culture, she views herself as a repository of recipes, culinary knowledge, memories, pain, and strength.

Food metaphors enrich this book, which sparkles with poignant, deeply lovely writing: “The green-fresh fragrance of young rice is as lovely and fleeting as childhood itself.” Nguon’s mother “taught [her] the art of rebelling as quietly as a whisper of silk.” Twenty-two recipes learned from Nguon’s beloved mother, or developed throughout her own accomplished cooking life, are included, with clear instructions and helpful notes on ingredients (and accompanied by a glossary for potentially unfamiliar terms). These are joined by cleverly figurative recipes, such as the recipe for silken rebellion, which begins: “Find the pockets of freedom available to you. Exploit loopholes.”

By the end of the story, Nguon has transformed into an impressive woman, acting as her husband’s equal (a radical concept, encouraged by her quietly rebellious mother) and a fierce advocate for social change. Nguon, who becomes a staunch feminist, eventually undertakes medical and humanitarian work with AIDS patients and sex workers, fights for education and independence for Cambodian women, and with her husband, founds the Stung Treng Women’s Development Center in rural Cambodia.

Nguon’s titular noodles contribute enormous metaphorical meaning. In her childhood household, slow and proper cooking was prioritized (“my mother despised the flavor of shortcuts”). In Thai refugee camps and in the Cambodian jungle, instant noodles became a prized delicacy. And by the memoir’s end, this thoughtful narrator has integrated these experiences, valuing both the careful preparation of fine foods and the stark relief of basic nutrition. Slow Noodles is a rare gem of a story, gorgeously written, humble and stirring, and packed with tempting recipes.

This review originally ran in the December 14, 2023 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 9 silk threads.

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Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

Posted on January 15, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Kiese Laymon’s Heavy is everything they say it is. I’ll start with some adjectives from Roxane Gay’s front-cover blurb: “astonishing. Difficult. Intense. Layered.” Some books – well-regarded, reviewed by smarter, better-qualified folks than me – are hard to write about. I can only add my voice to the chorus.

I think I’d already begun hearing about Laymon when I read an essay of his in Oxford American, which featured (if I remember) Outkast and his Grandmama. I was impressed then and I knew I needed to read this; I’m just sorry it’s taken me this long.

Laymon comes from Missisippi, raised by his mother and grandmother with infrequent contact with his father. He comes from financial insecurity, and a black* American experience that knows it is wildly insecure in the face of white America. His mother and father are both politically minded, and he has plenty of exposure to questions about race and racial (in)justice, but no exposure to the kinds of questions that bother him from a young age: questions about gender and sexuality and safety, consent, bodies, sexual violence, physical health, eating, economic insecurity, housing discrimination, memory, honesty and lies. He has to pursue these questions himself, and while Heavy is the story of his coming-of-age, it’s much more about figuring out how to interact with some of those questions. Truthfulness, bodies, relationships. How to love responsibly, as he puts it.

*I am following his use of the little-b black here even though that’s a change for me.

I did not want to write to you. I wanted to write a lie. I did not want to write honestly about black lies, black thighs, black loves, black laughs, black foods, black addictions, black stretch marks, black dollars, black words, black abuses, black blues, black belly buttons, black wins, black beens, black bends, black consent, black parents, or black children. I did not want to write about us. I wanted to write an American memoir.

That’s his first paragraph. The book is written in the second person to a specific reader: his mother. The narrator and his mother love each other hard, but there is a lot of harm in their love. The reader gets to see young Kiese grow up, from age eleven or so (it jumps around a bit) to an adult professor earning tenure (in traumatizing fashion) at Vassar College. He keeps his reader up to date on body weight, as he tries to cope with his pain by eating his way up to 319 pounds and then by punishing his body with exercise and anorexia down to 150-something pounds. “I knew, and worried, about how much I weighed and exactly how much money I had every day of my life since I was eleven years old.” The title is not only about body weight, although that’s certainly part of it. It’s about the heaviness of life and responsibility. “To white folk and the police, you will always be huge no matter how skinny you are,” his mother tells him.

I love how carefully he cares about words. His mother pushed him to speak a certain way, to keep him safe: no contractions when talking to white people and police. But he defends the unique language that he and his friends use in school, rebelling in their majority-white eighth grade year by using speech patterns that make sense differently. His mother, an academic, has pushed his writing and revision since childhood, but he’s choosing a different language than the one she pushes. “I realized telling the truth was way different from finding the truth, and finding the truth had everything to do with revisiting and rearranging words. Revisiting and rearranging words didn’t only require vocabulary; it required will, and maybe courage.” WHEW. This book begins and ends with short sections titled respectively ‘Been’ and ‘Bend.’ He writes at the beginning, in ‘Been,’ to his mother: “I am writing a different book to you because books, for better and worse, are how we got here, and I am afraid of speaking any of this to your face.” There’s something powerful in writing down what’s that hard to say.

Heavy is artful, lyric, deathly serious, loving, stark. When Laymon becomes a young professor, he catalogs the ways in which he fails his students, and it’s absolutely raw and horrifying, and therefore brave. (I and most of us have failed worse.) It’s radical, in both senses, and I’m going to have to keep thinking about it. I didn’t do this book justice here. Go read it.

Rating: 8 miles.

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The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard

Posted on January 12, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Alongside her coming-of-age, a teenaged girl must wrestle with when it is appropriate to influence the past and the future in this remarkably imaginative debut.

Scott Alexander Howard’s first novel, The Other Valley, is a lyrical, thought-provoking coming-of-age story that probes the question of self-determination.

“That fall I was sixteen and the course of my life was ready to be determined. My class had reached the apprenticeship level,” at which young people choose a professional path. Odile’s mother has always intended that she try for a conseiller’s post, which is ambitious for a kid from the village’s north end, let alone one as socially outcast as Odile, but she dutifully tries.

Odile lives in a village in a valley bookended by villages in valleys identical to hers, with an important difference: to the east lies her village 20 years in the future. To the west, 20 years in the past. The Conseil governs the rare and tightly controlled visits from one valley to another. Coinciding with her bid for a conseiller position, Odile witnesses a visitor from the east. From what she has seen, she understands what is to come, and has the opportunity to influence events–but the Conseil teaches that she must not. Intervention, it is well understood, leads to catastrophe. “A person… interferes, and then new time rolls over him like a wave, leaving nothing behind. It’s as simple and ruthless as that.”

At the same time, Odile suddenly finds herself part of a group of friends for the first time: a fivesome of boys and girls her age, all struggling with choices about their future lives, including budding romance. She develops concurrent loyalties to the Conseil and to her friends, and these quickly clash. The nature of the valleys implies preordination, but her actions are her own. What if she could save a life? What if she had to sacrifice her own?

Howard’s style is quietly lovely, drawing attention to the starkness of a harsh landscape, a culture with little tolerance for difference, Odile’s loneliness, and her emotional range. “What I felt was a kind of thrilling sadness, something I have since experienced when looking out over other open spaces and lonely boundaries: an emotion that lives on the desolate edge of the known.” Indeed, landscape vistas offer rich commentary on the themes at play in The Other Valley: what may be seen and what is obscured, who is allowed to look. “All I saw were future griefs.” The novel’s tone is somber, but there is hope in the way Odile’s story pushes against the concept of predestination in favor of free will.

The premise is strikingly unusual and provocative; the climax, after a long, subtle build, is electrifying. With beautiful prose, a compelling protagonist, and serious fodder for thought, The Other Valley is a remarkable debut.

This review originally ran in the December 8, 2023 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 peach trees.

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Village in the Dark by Iris Yamashita

Posted on January 8, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Characters from all walks of life come together in this madcap second entry in a mystery series set in Alaska starring strong female leads.

Screenwriter and author Iris Yamashita (City Under One Roof) presents the second installment in a series featuring Detective Cara Kennedy. Village in the Dark is an alternately moody and wacky mystery set in Anchorage and rural Alaska.

The previous year, Cara buried the remains of her husband and son, recovered some time after they disappeared on a family camping trip. As Village in the Dark opens, Cara stands by their gravesites, watching the exhumation she’s requested in order further to investigate their deaths. She’s been placed on long-term disability from the Anchorage Police Department after a failed psych evaluation, so her inquiries will be a bit trickier than usual, even without the personal element. But she’s found pictures of her late loved ones on a gangster’s cell phone, along with other people who keep turning up dead.

Chapters from Cara’s point of view alternate with those of Ellie, hotelier and busybody at Point Mettier, “the city under one roof”: all 205 residents stacked in a single high-rise building in the Alaskan backcountry. Ellie “always had the best interests of the townsfolk in mind whether they appreciated it or not.” A bit later, these points of view are joined by that of a young woman named Mia, who grew up in the sealed-off community of Unity, where women and children have banded together in avoidance of the men who have abused them. Mia has just recently, in adulthood, joined “Man’s World” (the “world outside the village”), where she’s encountered even more trouble than her mother and “aunties” warned her about. Cara and Ellie, who’ve met before (in City Under One Roof) and do not particularly get along, are now bonded by loss, and must work together to keep their communities safe. Mia’s involvement is slower to become clear.

Village in the Dark offers a mystery with both steadily increasing tension and body count, plus plenty of tragedy–not only death, but abuse, neglect, and societal ills. These are balanced with comic elements and moments of zaniness, as when Ellie leads “one of the stranger posses in the history of posses. An innkeeper, a storekeeper, a Japanese lounge singer, and a cancer-ridden geezer.” These characters are just the beginning in Point Mettier, a town with an attitude nearly as suspicious and insular as that of Unity. Long-lost family members reappear and disappear; Cara hesitantly explores new romance; murders will be committed and possibly solved, and Yamashita leaves her readers well set up for the next episode in Cara’s Alaskan adventures.

This review originally ran in the December 4, 2023 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 6 cigarettes.

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Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds by Michelle Horton

Posted on January 5, 2024 by pagesofjulia

The heartbreaking story of a woman incarcerated for killing her abuser, told by her sister, highlights systemic wrongs and the resilience of a family in trauma.

Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds is a harrowing story, a call to action, and a love letter between sisters.

In their 20s, Michelle Horton and her sister, Nikki, were very close, working together to raise Nikki’s two children and Horton’s son. Horton thought she knew everything about her sister’s life, and so was entirely caught off guard by the emergency call. Her niece and nephew’s father was dead. Nikki had killed him. He had been abusing her horrifically for years, and many members of the community had known it, had been working actively to get Nikki out. Horton was told to come and pick up her sister’s children, ages two and four, immediately.

In the months and years that followed, Horton’s life was consumed by the work of single-parenting three children while raising money for her sister’s legal defense, becoming an amateur expert on criminal law and the psychology of abuse, and advocating for survivors’ rights. The high-profile 2019 case of Nikki Addimando resulted in her conviction of second-degree murder and a sentence of 19 years to life in prison. Despite extensive evidence, the judge concluded that Nikki was not a victim of abuse.

Horton’s narrative (with supporting evidence) is available elsewhere, but she additionally brings to her memoir a close, personal account of Nikki’s trauma and that of the three children involved, the deep connection between sisters, and the continuing failure of the legal system adequately to handle abuse victims when they appear as criminal defendants. Horton delves into the sisters’ childhood, including earlier instances of abuse, and the culture in which so many–including the author–failed to recognize the signs of Nikki’s suffering. Keeping silent about her abuse did not serve Nikki in the end, but Horton observes that other victims will not be encouraged by Nikki’s experience to speak up.

The stories Horton relates are heartbreaking. She does not shy away from graphic descriptions of the brutal abuse Nikki experienced, which some readers will find difficult to read. These details do not feel gratuitous, but rather central to the painful but necessary account Horton offers. Her concern extends beyond her own family, to other victims of intimate partner violence who enter the justice system as criminals. Dear Sister is not only Horton’s story and Nikki’s story, but also an urgent appeal for reform. Heartfelt, disturbing, but ultimately hopeful, this memoir is an important part of an ongoing conversation, and a tribute to sisterhood.

This review originally ran in the November 20, 2023 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 half-tubes of toothpaste.

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2023: A Year in Review

Posted on January 1, 2024 by pagesofjulia

It’s time for the annual year-in-review, folks. (You can view past years here.) And don’t miss the best-of list I published the other day!

In 2023, I read 99 books–exactly the same as in 2022! Weird.

Of those I read this year:

  • 75% were fiction. (Last year, 80% fiction, so that’s staying pretty steady.)
  • 70% were written by female authors (80% last year).
  • Of the fiction I read, 23% were contemporary novels, 21% were fantasy/speculative/sci fi, 14% were children’s/YA and another 14% mystery, 11% were historical, and in the single digits were a smattering of others including horror, humor, literary fiction, short stories, thrillers psychological and otherwise, and romance. (Last year, the largest categories were that nebulous ‘contemporary’ [38%], fantasy/speculative/sci fi [27%], historical [15%]. The remainder were small numbers of children’s/YA, fairy tale retellings and mythology, horror, mystery, thrillers, and short stories.)
  • I “read” 4 audiobooks, up from just 2 last year. I took one pretty mammoth road trip, but the audiobooks I took on were long.
  • This year 48% of my reading was for pleasure (last year’s 60%), and the rest were for paid reviews (minus one or two reviews I did for free). This reflects a change when I stopped teaching and made book reviewing a bigger part of my paid work.
  • Nearly half, or 49%, of my reading were books sent to me for review. The other half were mostly purchased (38%), with the balance being gifts or loans or library books. (Last year I purchased 56% of the books I read and 40% were sent to me for review; just a few were received as gifts.)
  • New this year, I tracked who recommended or demanded that I read a book. Liz was the big winner, accounting for 14% of my total reading, which is nearly a third of those I chose (not for review)! My parents were both in there, as well as my favorite soon-to-be-12-year-old.
  • I reread 1 book this year (last year, 2).
  • 28% of this year’s reads were e-books (last year, 21%). Again, that rise reflects an increase in paid reviews; I read as few e-books as possible by choice.
  • The books I read were written by white authors at the rate of 72%. Another 15% were by Black authors, with 12% marked as ‘other.’* Last year, 33% were by Black authors, and 58% by white authors. I did not realize I had done such a lesser job this year of seeking out diversity. That’s something to work on.
  • Just like last year, 11% of the books I read were authored by people who publicly identify as queer.*

*Those last two stats offer some obvious challenges when I categorize, but I do my best.

Wishing us all great reads in 2024.

Happy New Year!

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best of 2023: year’s end

Posted on December 29, 2023 by pagesofjulia

My year-in-review post will be up on Monday, with reading stats. But first, as usual, I want to share the list of my favorite things I read this year. (You can see past years’ best-of lists at this tag.)

I gave two books this year ratings of 10:

These books received ratings of 9:

Honorable mentions and other media:

  • The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley, Sean Lusk – fiction
  • I am late to this party, but found Ted Lasso an outstanding television series: funny, heartwarming, and wrenching, with truly great writing. What a pleasure! Thank you, Liz and Darren, for pushing.
  • Naomi Novik’s series, beginning with A Deadly Education – fiction

It’s been a great reading year. As ever. Welcome to 2024, friends.

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Winter Solstice by Nina MacLaughlin

Posted on December 25, 2023 by pagesofjulia

The solstices are for fire. Summer flames say Keep the light alive (it’s never worked, not once). In winter, a more urgent message: Bring light back to life (it’s worked every time so far).

I was overjoyed to find out about this book in time to get it for the winter solstice last week. I really enjoyed Nina MacLaughlin’s Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter some years ago, and I was pleased to have such an event planned for my day: this little book, a batch of hot mulled wine, and my usual solstice/equinox tradition of a backyard fire. At just 80 pages, Winter Solstice is well designed to be read on the single day in question. I am choosing to share many of MacLaughlin’s lovely words here, so my review winds up practically as long as her book (not really…).

It’s an essay in four parts, each longer than the last, plus an afterword, plus an addendum. “Inhale the Darkness” begins: “Two boys strung the lights on houses in Ohio.” It’s a detailed description of that weekend job, the installation of light against darkness. “It’s an old impulse. To honor the dark with festivals of light, to battle it with same.”

Henri Bosco describes this almost-winter moment of the year, “when the world was poised on a pure ridge,” balanced between two seasons, casting “a glance back at the aging autumn, still misty with its wild moods, to contemplate deadly winter from afar.” The misty mood is behind us. We’re looking now at something dark and wilder.

Next, “The Shadows Below the Shadows” surveys traditions across time, Persephone and Demeter, Krampus, Saturnalia, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and Newgrange. It ends: “Pomegranate, holly branch, birch switch, mistletoe. We’ll leaf with life and pass below the secret places of this earth.” I love the way MacLaughlin integrates stories, legends, traditions, and the connections to nature, the plant life they are all in relationship with.

The Eleusinian Mysteries

were meant to elevate people above the human sphere. They were meant to launch them divinewards. As Cicero says: “In very truth we have learned from [the Mysteries] the beginnings of life, and have gained the power not only to live happily, but also to die with better hope.”

“In Winter We Get Inside Each Other” is about the danger and elemental fear of cold and darkness, and how we deal with those feelings. Describing sledding down a hill on the grounds of an institution for the criminally insane:

…it never felt crazy to cry out, there by yourself, going faster and faster, in your own private moment of fear and glee. Is that what made the lunatics yell inside their cells? Some same combination of soaring down a mountainside unstoppable? I’m happy, I’m afraid, I feel too much, I have to let it out. A cracking open in the descent.

Also sex, sensuality, connection. From a Mary Ruefle poem: “When it snows like this I feel the whole world has joined me in isolation and silence.” (You will have noticed that MacLaughlin makes reference to many others’ wise words.)

“Burn Something Today,” part four of this longform essay, brought me great pleasure as my fire was well underway and I was cozy and warm right up against it, just three or four feet from the remnant snow off to my left, and the page lit up by my headlamp.

Depending on where one lived, the ashes of the solstice fire were then spread on fields over the following days to up the yield of next season’s crops, or fed to cattle to fatten them and boost fertility in the herd, or placed under beds to protect against thunder and lightning, or sometimes worn in a vial around the neck. The lights we string on bushes, that glow on the trees in the center of town–something of these ancient fires lives in them, too. The ancient cults cast shadows in our minds, shift and flicker, their fears are still our fears, down in the darkest places of ourselves.

MacLaughlin’s afterword is “The Timing of the Light,” in which she as a child watched for an approaching car before switching on the electric ‘candle’ in a window, so as to offer hope, light, a bright moment for passersby. “I did not know about conference calls in middle school, but sensed adulthood could be possessed of certain drear.”

The addendum is “Plant Matter,” with a few entries for the plants most important to the winter solstice: holly, blessed thistle, mistletoe, cinnamon, yew, oak. (Others named but not featured: cedar, clove, rosemary, nutmeg, birch, pine, chamomile, juniper, frankincense, and wintergreen. A few of these went into my mulled wine. I considered a chamomile tea before bed but had a beer instead, a kettle sour with cranberry, rosemary, orange peel, salt, and coriander.) In the addendum’s final entry, Oak, which closes the book:

…an end here does not mean the end. The original fire lives in all fire. On the stove and in the hearth, in the bonfire on the beach, surrounded by stones in the woods by a river, in the explosion after the crash, between your ribs and behind your eyes, on the struck tip of the match, on the burning surface of the stars, the source of our fire, and us all. The fire goes out and lives on.

I can’t imagine a better way to observe the changing tide of light and dark. Thank you, Nina.

Rating: 9 timely moments.

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