February 24, 2025 · 3:09 am

The Wren, the Wren: It might be brilliant; it might be boring

Honestly? I’m not sure. There were moments reading Anne Enright’s The Wren, the Wren that I was convinced it was genius. Sublime writing that catches you and holds you. Simple thematic question – what do we owe our inheritance, what do we blame the fathers and men. Rich, rich, imagery and poetry and playful form.

And then moments where I just didn’t care very much what happened to the characters, or couldn’t remember who a character was talking to or why, or whether an image was meant to be Significant or whether it was just there to prove the great writing.

I could let it percolate another few days and maybe I’d be clearer. But I think if I do the likelihood I forget the book entirely is high. There’s just not much there to hang on to; instead, a lot of imagery, a lot of certainty it is Very Beautiful Writing.

So sure – it won the Booker, and – as I Keep On Saying – it’s quite beautiful. And there are scenes I think might haunt me. But would I recommend it? Goddddd. I just don’t know.

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February 24, 2025 · 3:02 am

Long Island: Bets on the ending

Put Colm Tóibín’s Long Island in your library cart and you won’t be disappointed when it (eventually) makes it to you (I say eventually because inevitably it will have a wait list as everyone wants to read this one).

*many spoilers ahead*

It’s probably because I’d just finished the Elizabeth Strout, but the style of this one read as similar. Direct, descriptive of character’s thoughts, weighted moments that are not Literary – just excellent, and the interweaving of characters from previous works. Pressed I’d say I liked Strout better, but it would be hard pressed.

Long Island opens with a knock at the door. Eilis opens it to learn that her husband, Tony, has been having an affair. The woman he’s been sleeping with is pregnant, and her husband is at the door to explain that when the baby is born he will be dropping it off with Tony. And for some reason Tony thinks Eilis should go along with this plan. All of Tony’s family seems to think the same. Eilis is not so keen.

So off she goes (home?) to Ireland, bringing her grown children with her. With the unanswered question of whether she’ll return, and if she does return, if she’ll stay with Tony. She makes it seem like it’s his choice – like if he takes in the baby she won’t, and if he doesn’t, she will – but the reader knows (even if Eilis doesn’t) that this will always be her choice. Tony is not a choice maker.

Complications abound when she returns to Ireland. Her mother’s ailing health. Her former flame, Jim Farrel – now engaged to her best friend (but secretly!). Her adult children and what they want and expect from her.

How she can make a choice when so many people Expect So Much of her. What choices are hers, in the end. Well, that is the ending, and it’s a cliff hanger, so buckle up your book club and let everyone have their say.

For me? I want Eilis and Jim together on Long Island. And I want it to be a world where what Eilis wants she can choose. Want, we know, isn’t always get.

Delightful, great writing, absorbing (make it past the first 30 pages) and heart-full. Romance? I don’t know I’d call it that – stop slinging around genre words like you need them. Just read it, ok?

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February 16, 2025 · 2:38 pm

Pineapple Street: Not good, and hard to put down

What is the name for the genre of book that is not good, but you don’t want to stop reading, and you feel the whole time as if you are already watching the movie adaptation of the thing? Or the kind where the writing is verging on good and interesting, but is mostly just descriptive in the most obvious sorts of ways? Or where the characters change, but that change is at once extremely obvious from the outset and also simultaneously not convincing when it happens (like the crucial event(s) that force the change are just so predictably ridiculous)? Or where the way to hook the reader is through descriptions of how the ultra wealthy live – of their tablescapes (a word I didn’t know existed), their vacations, their clothes and their houses? Where you read the thing quickly and when it’s over feel faintly irritated with yourself for having given over the time to a book that is so clearly not good but is – nevertheless – hard to put down?

Jenny Jackson‘s Pineapple Street embodies this whatever-genre it is. It is – as was the case for me yesterday – an ideal book for a snowstorm where time vanishes in shovelling, sledding and fort building – and further funnels away in reading a book that when it ends you find yourself flummoxed that you didn’t just return it to the library. Perfect for an airplane, a beach, a doctor’s office where you expect to wait forever.

Oh sorry, did you want to know what it’s about? I’ve already given more time to this book then I’d like, so quickly: ultra rich family lives in Brooklyn Heights (which I’ve since gathered is a fancy neighbourhood in New York) and the millennial children lightly struggle with the Torturous Burden of being born extremely wealthy and the Guilt of not deserving such privilege. The end.

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February 16, 2025 · 2:23 pm

All the Worst People: In which you accidentally think something

Phil Elwood worked in PR for a lot of terrible people: dictators and tyrants and etc. Then he wrote a book about that experience All the Worst People. And in the book makes the argument that whoever controls the narrative controls what people think. So one cannot help but think that the book itself might just be one such effort to make us readers think particular things about Elwood.

While the explanatory frameworks of mental illness, or desperation, or youth make his individual actions comprehensible, the book casts the larger structures of extreme wealth and connection are the real problem.

And while I’m inclined to agree with the argument, in a book about how feelings and thoughts get constructed and manipulated, this reader could not help but be suspicious that the same was happening. All the while enjoying the narrative intensity of Elwood’s anecdotes of adventure and misadventure amid piles of cash or injections of ketamine (which, let me say, the book does a great job of convincing the reader is a Good Idea).

As I continue my tentative exploration into more non-fiction by way of very fiction-like non-fiction, I’ll say this one does much to build and maintain narrative and character.

That’s it – no strong endorsement one way or another. If you’re looking for that, the NYTimes put this in the top 100. Maybe 10? Who cares.

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