Quick Lit January 2024 Archives

The Nix

by Nathan Hill

I finally read Hill's debut after reading and enjoying his sophomore novel Wellness. The Nix is similarly long (at 640 pages) and sweeping in scope, spanning decades and unfurling the life stories of several generations of one midwest family. The story begins in 2011, when Samuel Andresen-Anderson suddenly finds himself embroiled in professional scandal, and almost simultaneously discovers his long-absent mother, who left the family when he was a child, is headline news for throwing rocks at a presidential candidate. We go on to examine the long road that led to her decision to leave the family, her childhood, even the family's roots back in Norway, where the myth of the Nix—a spirit that follows you for life—originated. I'm glad I finally read this but this blend of family saga and satire didn't work as well for me here as it did in Wellness. Heads up for multiple content warnings that are not evident from the publisher's description.

Oranges

by John McPhee

Our Book Club community manager and nonfiction lover Ginger found this title among James Mustich’s 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die. In this slim volume, McPhee shares everything you didn’t know you wanted to know about oranges. The seemingly ubiquitous fruit is rich with history and its importance in the realms of climate, geography, economics, and nutrition will surprise you. McPhee’s engaging voice will make you feel like you took an exciting class field trip to the Florida orchards, and you’ll never look at an orange the same way again.

Dayswork: A Novel

by Chris Bachelder, Jennifer Habel

In the endless days of the pandemic, a woman spends her time sorting fact from fiction in the life and work of Herman Melville. As she delves into Melville’s impulsive purchase of a Massachusetts farmhouse, his fevered revision of Moby-Dick there, his intense friendship with neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his troubled and troubling marriage to Elizabeth Shaw, she becomes increasingly obsessed by what his devotion to his art reveals about cost, worth, and debt. Her preoccupation both deepens and expands, and her days’ work extends outward to an orbiting cast of Melvillean questers and fanatics, as well as to biographers and writers—among them Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell—whose lives resonate with Melville’s. As she pulls these distant figures close, her quarantine quest ultimately becomes a midlife reckoning with her own marriage and ambition.

One Woman Show: A Novel

by Christine Coulson

WSIRN guest and literary agent Elisabeth Weed recommended this book, which she called a good example of a title that "has a thimble full of weird." Coulson worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 25 years, where one of her last jobs was writing the 75-word wall labels for the museum's new British galleries. She imagined a novel in that form, and this life story of Kitty Whitaker is the result: a sly and stylish novel told solely through museum wall labels about a 20th-century woman who transforms herself over the course of her lifetime. This short novel could easily be read in one sitting, and is an excellent pick for structure nerds or art and design fans.

Loved and Missed

by Susie Boyt

This slim British novel packs a big punch and is sure to be on my best-of-the-year list. In this first-person family drama, we meet a grandmother who raises her granddaughter from infancy because her daughter, who's been struggling with addiction for nearly a decade, is unable to do so. The story is brutal and tender, gorgeously written, and surprisingly funny for a book that required multiple tissues. I appreciated that the prose, while never plodding or needlessly complex, did invite a close reading: I am inclined to be a fast reader, but I consciously slowed down so I didn't miss anything. While the story is set roughly in the present day—just before the dawn of the iPhone—it has an old-fashioned feel to it; if I didn't know better I might have guessed it was a Persephone title. Heads up for multiple content warnings: some are evident from the plot description but some took me by surprise.

The House of Doors

by Tan Twan Eng

From the publisher: "The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When 'Willie' Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one. Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings-and the freedom to travel with Gerald. His career deflating, his health failing, Maugham arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair, and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper. But as their friendship grows and Lesley confides in him about life in the Straits, Maugham discovers a far more surprising tale than he imagined, one that involves not only war and scandal but the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder. It is, to Maugham, a story worthy of fiction."

Two Women Walk into a Bar

by Cheryl Strayed

This new Cheryl Strayed mini-memoir is a 31-page snapshot of her complex relationship with her mother-in-law, a woman she very much wanted to be close to—but their relationship was never quite what she had hoped for or dreamed of. At a key moment in their history together, Strayed reflects back on the ill-fated moment they first met in a bar, before they were officially connected by marriage. Twenty years later, in the present day, her mother-in-law is entering hospice care and working out her "unfinished business." I've never read Wild, would you believe it? But I loved Tiny Beautiful Things and, given the opportunity, was happy to re-enter Strayed's world on the page for this short story-length reflection.

Quick Lit January 2024

The Nix

Oranges

Dayswork: A Novel

One Woman Show: A Novel

Loved and Missed

The House of Doors

Two Women Walk into a Bar

a gateway

to reliable joy this summer

Buckle Up!

summer reading starts May 16th