what I’ve been reading lately:
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Five Children and It by E. NesbitBooks of Wonder, 1999 (originally T. Fisher Unwin, 1902)
Part of what is so pleasing about E. Nesbit’s books is the way that her children navigate through the world, and the world they navigate through: in this book, a summer-holiday-world of adults and sand-fairies and magical events and not very many other children. And, of course, I’m smitten with the British-ness of this story,…
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The Wings of the Dove by Henry JamesMiramax Books, 1997 (originally The Bodley Head, 1902)
James’s sentences are often exquisite: sentences as long as paragraphs, sentences full of commas, phrases nested like Russian dolls. His style forces me to slow down, to re-read passages, and I appreciate his pacing, his rhythm. Even the long slow middle of the book, a period of waiting for Kate and Merton and Milly, and…
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What Happened to Lani Garver by Carol Plum-UcciHarcourt, 2002
This story of small-town narrow-mindedness is unsettling, upsetting, but also well worth reading. Growth & progress & learning to be real.
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The Voyage Out by Virginia WoolfBarnes & Noble Classics, 2004 (originally the Duckworth Press, 1915)
Woolf’s first novel is full of luminous detail, perfect descriptin: a boat moving along a river, a thunderstorm, the way night falls or morning breaks. Familiar themes of aloneness, the inadequacy of language, the difficulty of communication: but here that’s all combined with the disconnect between the sexes, which makes this book feel frustratingly dated…
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Lucy Rose, Here’s the Thing About Me by Katy KellyDelacorte (Random House), 2004
When eight-year-old Lucy Rose’s parents separate, she and her mom move to Washington D.C., where her grandparents live. What follows is a pretty standard story, told in the form of diary entries, of getting used to a new place, making friends, and having child-sized adventures. Lucy Rose is smart, and her voice is really endearing,…
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Affinity by Sarah WatersRiverhead Books. 2002 (originally Virago, 1999)
Perfectly faux-Victorian, the twists & turns of the mind & of prison corridors, allusive and delicious and dark. A story told in the form of diary entries, secrets and private thoughts.
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How I Live Now by Meg RosoffRandom House, 2004
Intense & amazing; one of those books I liked too much to say anything intelligent about.
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The Night Watch by Sarah WatersRiverhead (Penguin), 2006
A story told backwards; a story of how people came to be where (who) they are. The start of the first sentence: “So this, said Kay to herself, is the kind of person you’ve become: a person whose clocks and wristwatches have stopped […]” Elsewhere, Kay remarks that people’s pasts are “so much more interesting…
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The Great Good Thing by Roderick Townley Atheneum, 2001
A book about fairy-tales, stories, memories and dreams, family-history—and how all these things live on, or don’t. I was charmed from the opening lines: “Sylvie had an amazing life, but she didn’t get to live it very often.” Clever and sweet and pleasingly book-ish.
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Bellini in Istanbul by Lillias BeverTupelo Press, 2005
Archaeology as metaphor, excavation: bringing things to the light, brushing off the sand and dust. I am, generally speaking, a sucker for poems about art, poems about seeing, and so it’s not surprising that I enjoyed this collection. (The last poem, “Blue Guide to Istanbul,” was perhaps my favorite: descriptions of blue objects, small &…