What I read in September
September's online and offline reading recs. Including: Sarah Manguso, Angela O'Keeffe, and Gerardo Sámano Córdova.
Hello!
Books
Liars, by Sarah Manguso (Picador - ARC)
I read this and then I got on a 14-hour flight where a woman sat in front of me with two toddlers. She had a baby carrier strapped to her for the smaller one, two rucksacks, snacks and things for the kids to do, and she kept them entertained for the whole flight. Two hours before landing, when they woke everyone up for breakfast, the man sitting next to me took off his giant headphones and eye mask, and leaned forward over her chair and asked her something in French. It was the first time he’d spoken to her on the flight. When when we landed, she spoke to the flight attendant about their connecting flight, strapped on the baby, got all the bags down out of the overhead locker, took the other toddlers hand, nodded at him to stand up, and they all walked off the plane together. He was carrying his own jacket.
Sarah Manguso's Liars is very good.
Monstrilio, by Gerardo Sámano Córdova (Dead Ink)
I’ve had this on my radar for a little while, so when I made a very speedy visit to Foyles, it was on my list of books to grab (I also picked up Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot and Dorothy Tse’s Owlish in an extraordinary display of self-restraint). I read the first half of Monstrilio in Bali, and finished it on the plane, where I then spent the last hour staring at the back of the chair in front despondently (thank you, Jetstar, for having no screens).
After a young boy dies, his grieving mother cuts out a piece of his lung, and the lung inexplicably starts to grow. It was much weirder and better than I hoped; folktale-y with multiple perspectives, all of the characters were built out, with relationships and careers spanning ~a decade. I’m not sure I’d expected the story to go as far as it did, and I loved the later chapters, after Monstrilio has become more than it seemed he would.
The Sitter, by Angela O’Keeffe (UQP)
I waited ages for this to come into the library, and then I gobbled it up in a couple of before-bed reads. It’s about a woman who is writing a book about Cezanne’s wife, Hortense. Trapped in Paris when Covid lockdowns are announced, the writer drifts in and out of her research, invoking Hortense’s spirit in the room with her, wanting her story told. It’s very cleverly done, and doesn’t feel anywhere as trite as I’ve just made it sound, instead, it’s as much about separating art and artist, or not separating them, and about how lives impact one another, leaving trails of breadcrumbs across time. I really enjoyed it.
Online reads
This, from
, wrt a book I also read recently, is spot on.
I really enjoyed
’s guide to annotating - I love seeing how other people keep notes/diaries/bookmarks. (There’s also a Joan Didion deep dive coming up, which I absolutely cannot commit to, but I wish I had more hours in the day)
As a person who did not get a Sally Rooney ARC, this was interesting…
I managed to get a proper hardback copy of Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo (real hardbacks are special editions in Australia because all of the books, including new releases, are floppy paperbacks - who knew?!) so I’m reading that, and I’m also going to read the other books I bought in London now that I’m home and Mum’s gone home, and I’m back to my normal life. I also snapped up Samantha Harvey’s Orbital in the kindle sale, and I want to get to Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium, both of which I’ve heard good things about.
What are your reading plans for the next month? Did you already finish Intermezzo?
Terri-Jane x
Thanks so much for the shout-out! ♥️
oooh The Sitter sounds really interesting! x