It was meant to be. There Cyndi Reeves and I were, in the lobby of the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, catching up with each other ahead of a Bryn Mawr College sponsored dinner with Phillip Lopate. That was all wonderful enough, but then there came Anmiryam Budner, of Main Point Books, with a box of
Better Living Through Criticism, written by A.O. Scott, who was slated to speak at the theater later that night.
A. O. Scott, I said? Really? For I had, not long before, r
eviewed Better Living for the
Chicago Tribune, and, before, that, simply loved reading Scott's movie reviews for the
New York Times. A.O. Scott. A literary celebrity.
Two friends, a literary celebrity, dinner plans with the nation's great essayist, and then a conversation with Anmiryam in which she pronounced that the book Cyndi and I must read next (we always ask and she always tells) was Adam Haslett's
Imagine Me Gone. Anmiryam is an impassioned book reader, which is what makes her such a stunning book seller. From her lips to our hearts, these books.
Cyndi and I were in. Soon our friend Kelly Simmons was in as well. We'd all buy Haslett's newest, and then we would discuss.
Books and friendship. Like coffee and cream.
Maybe you'll be in, too. Maybe we could all discuss? Because Haslett bears discussion. For now I would like to share with you the most exquisite passage in a book built of exquisite passages—a story about the long-lingering affects of a father's mental unwellness. Here is Michael, the oldest son, who has some of his father's imbalance. He's talking about fear. It's devastating because it's so true.
What do you fear when you fear everything? Time passing and not passing. Death and life. I could say my lungs never filled with enough air, no matter how many puffs of my inhaler I took. Or that my thoughts moved too quickly to complete, severed by a perpetual vigilance. But even to say this would abet the lie that terror can be described, when anyone who's ever known it knows that it has no components but is instead everywhere inside you all the time, until you can recognize yourself only by the tensions that string one minute to the next And yet I keep lying, by describing, because how else can I avoid this second, and the one after it? This being the condition itself: the relentless need to escape a moment that never ends.
Anmiryam Budner of Main Point Books (Bryn Mawr, PA) has a way about her. A stealth
please, try that wins me over every time.
I think you will like this book, you will appreciate this writer, this reminds me of something you might have done or might some day do, she'll say. And there's no walking away from that.
Most recently I left Main Point Books with
The World Before Us, a novel of great complexity and intrigue by Aislinn Hunter. It is a story told in part by remembrancers—ghosts, if you like—who have gathered around a British archivist named Jane. Jane works in a small museum of vast collections—and that museum is about to close. Jane also endlessly works through a childhood trauma—the day the little girl left in her charge (Jane was fifteen at the time and slightly (secretly) in love with the child's father) disappeared on the estate of a Victorian asylum. Obsessed with the disappearance of little Lily, Jane is also obsessed with other mysteries of the asylum's late 19th century heyday. She ponders, researches, loses herself in the vortex of time.
Those remembrancers listen in. They remember their own pasts. They move the story forward.
Hunter is an author of many gifts. Her ability to conjure colliding periods, a musty museum, multiple distant lives, garden ruins is, I think, uncanny—she does it all so very well. Then there's the shape of her sentences, the sly inventiveness bent into even the most quiet of scenes:
... she reached a large glass case on thick oak feet. It contained a series of criss-crossed branches upon which Nathanial Hartford, Esquire, had supervised the wire mounting of two hundred and four hummingbirds in an attempt to display all the colours and designs of the species. The birds were caught in various stages of rest or flight, their wings closed or spread out like the slats of a fan. Most people paused here briefly, if they stopped at all, but Jane studied each bird in turn, the dark beads of their eyes, their long bills, flamboyant gorgets. Those of us who had followed her into the museum studied the birds too, and watched her, the care she gave each individual thing.
"When is a bird no longer a bird?" one of us asked.
This is a story that takes its time, that introduces large casts of alive and dead characters, that hinges around the questions that an archivist has about a character that appears to have gone missing from the history books, a character named N. The suspense is a researcher's suspense. The plot is not nearly as important as the themes—time, memory, regret, the cloister of the dead around the turbulence of the living. I was reminded, as I read, of Nova Ren Suma's
The Walls Around Us (about which I wrote
here)—another book told, at times, with the Choral We, another book in which the language is careful, inventive, and haunted.
It took me a while to finish
World. I've been lost inside a thicket of Too Many things. And even if, at times, I wished for a few less direct intrusions by those remembrancers, even if I wondered if the story might have succeeded with fewer characters, I always wanted to get back to this story. I wanted to see how this incredibly talented Hunter would pull her complex machinery off. I wanted to appreciate the particularity of this novelist, in passages like this:
And in the dark, in drifts of memory, we recall some of the people and things we have happened pon, moments that aroused us from the stupor of our lives—the plumes of a peacock unfolding under an elm, the bright platter of a sky coroneted by trees, a list retrieved from between an armoire and the wall of a house by the sea:
Flat of palm on abdomen
Shift of sheets
Hard shelf of his hips against the soft of mine
Curve of water glass against my lips—his hand trembling
Coarse planking of the wood floor
The hitch of a sliver
A number of weeks ago, I was asked to take a photograph of my TBR pile. And so I did, joining many other authors in this wonderful photo diary
posted today on Mom.me. I can proudly report that I've read a number of the books pictured in my stack since snapping the picture. I must also report that I recently took nearly 60 new hardcovers to my local library for donation and my house is more book stuffed than ever.
I'll never get ahead.
You probably never will either, because there are so many great books to be read. And if you're looking for even more temptations, then I recommend two book-savvy bloggers to you.
First, meet Anmiryam Budner, who kind of sort of blew me away last Saturday at Main Point Books with her deep knowledge of authors and stories. There we stood, in that lovely space, pointing to this book, that book, this one. She'd read them all. I'd read enough of them to talk at length. She gave me room to complain about the unfair review of
Stacey D'Erasmo's Wonderland in the
New York Times Book Review, and anyone who lets me do that is golden. That woman knows this business, and she talks about it and the books she loves here, on
My Overstuffed Shelves.Second, here is Elizabeth Law, a children's publishing giant now in the business of book editing and ushering. For
her first blog post ever she wrote about ten books she loves and why. Fascinating insights, with more—on word count, editorial letters, and publishing magic—to come. She's a fresh new voice on the book blogging scene, and so we welcome her in.
