What I read in August
August's online and offline reading recs. Including: Charlotte Wood, Sophie Cunningham, and Monika Kim.
Hello!
Books
Stone Yard Devotional, by Charlotte Wood
I’d just started this at the end of last month, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a very quiet novel, I think, about a woman who has - almost accidentally - found herself living at a convent. She’s not religious, and early in the novel she’s gone there just after the end of her marriage, to find some peace. She calls it “an escape”. A short time later, she’s there again and just… never leaves. Years later, the convent is awaiting the arrival of the recently-discovered remains of one of the sisters, and they’re to be accompanied by someone from the past; an activist, news-fronting sister, “celebrity nun” Heather Parry. In the midst of this, the convent is plagued by mice, the result of climate change creating hotter, drier weather lending a chaos to an already eventful summer. It’s beautifully written, and much of the “action” is left unseen and unspoken - why the woman is there at all; what happened to her marriage, her high-powered career, her parents. The futility the woman feels - her constant efforts to find some meaning - makes the novel a meditation on grief and despair. Time is slippery in the novel, months and years merge together making it unclear how long the woman has been at the convent, how long went in between her visits, how long the mice really have been wreaking havoc. Gorgeous.
This Devastating Fever, by Sophie Cunningham
Another “climate fiction” novel, but a very different one, This Devastating Fever is about a woman, Alice, who has been writing a book for over a decade - much to her agent’s annoyance - about Leonard Woolf and the Bloomsbury Set. It’s very meta - footnotes (another annoyance to Alice’s agent) blur Alice’s life and research; timelines skip back and forth between Woolf’s colonialist past in Sri Lanka, Alice’s pre-pandemic past, her early ideas for the book in the mid 2000s, and her present, Zoom-heavy life amid lockdowns. It blends historical fiction with non-fiction, magical realism, and autobiography. Very fun, and gave me weird nightmares about Sri Lankan monkeys.
The Eyes Are The Best Part, by Monika Kim
And now for something totally different, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a palate cleanser. This was the last of my book shopping when I went to West End for brunch at the beginning of the month, so I think I did quite well! I’ve not quite finished yet, so I’ll save this for next time :)
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Online reads
Camilla Grudova could write about anything and I would read it, but I’m especially going to read it when it’s about Angela Carter and her sardine tin collection.
A new (to me) Substack - Laurel’s recent recommendations are a perfect brain reset (Perfect Days is gorgeous, and if you haven’t seen it you should.)
Jia Tolentino on tweens at Sephora. (The New Yorker)
I’ve loaded up my kindle for taking to Bali in September, and then I’ll obviously be getting my hands on the new Sally Rooney as soon as is physically possible.
What did you read this month?
Terri-Jane x
ICYMI…
