I re-read 3 of my favorite novels of all time.
It turns out, I loved them all over again.
I’m in a USA twirl this month, doing things that need and want to be done. And in the process, as ever, I’m reading. I’m on book #24 or so of my year’s 100 reads, and I’ve decided to do a thing where I re-read some of my absolute favorites.
It’s a thrill.
I’ve gotten through three, and when I say that reading good books is better than reading bad books, even when you are not reading them for the first time, I am saying it LOUDLY.
Here be them. Have you read these three? If not, what are three of YOUR all-time faves?
Sea of Tranquility
The first Emily St John Mandel book I read was not Sea of Tranquility. It was Station Eleven, which I liked, but not in some miraculous, life-altering way. (I still haven’t seen the TV show, although like with lots of television, I intend to.)
But then, almost two years ago, I rented a tiny wagon house in the middle of a field four hours from my house in the Argentine countryside to work on a writing project. I had rented the place for four nights, but left after three, because it turned out being inside a tiny wagon house in the middle of a field four hours from my home in Argentine countryside was incredibly creepy at nighttime. But what I do remember is this: I lay there, in that little wagon bed, cramped up against the walls, listening to the May wind howl against the shutters and the barking of the dogs and I finished Sea of Tranquility.
And it was SO amazing.
TLDR
The author
I think I told you, above. Also, she is my best friend’s cousin. Please read all her books now!
The plot
Things happen to interesting people at several different points in time over the course of the 20th through the 25th (!) centuries. There is a great time travel element, and a global pandemic, and music, a bestselling author on a book tour away from her young daughter who is asked a lot of absurd questions at her readings (the author, not the daughter). It is clear these are true things that readers have asked dear author Emily. They are funny!
The structure
Intersecting narratives, with some of them extending beyond this book. (Yes, you should read The Glass Hotel!)
The ending
Swoon.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
My famous Barbara Kingsolver story is this:
Four months into my freshman year at college, after I had met the best friends I would retain for 25 years (and counting), I had already regaled them with the (short, apparently) list of my favorite books and authors. As such, when the dorm’s annual ski trip meant we were on a long car drive to the mountains, no cell phones to scroll yet in existence, we played the game, Twenty Questions. By the time it rolled around to my turn, I had done a lot of thinking. They would never guess mine!
My turn went like this.
Them: “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
Me: “Animal.” (That means humans, also, in this game.)
Them? “Barbara Kingsolver!”
The end.
Re-reading The Poisonwood Bible, which came out a few years before that car ride, felt new, since I last read it in the mid-to-late 2000s while I was living in Kenya. There were things I remembered clearly from the book: the atmosphere of the then-named Belgian Congo, the vague outlines of a gaggle of sisters, a missionary father whose God had gone to his head.
And there were things I didn’t.
Some I found while reading. The entire plot about the hotel in Brazzaville at the end! The other entire plot at the end with the other sister who stays in Africa!
And some I learned after I finished and started to investigate. Barbara Kingsolver wrote the book five separate times in the voice of each narrator! Barbara Kingsolver lived in Republic of Congo (as it was then called) briefly as a child! The book was a finalist for a Pulitzer! Barbara Kingsolver got a reported million dollar advance in the late nineties for the manuscript!
I loved this one. I cried so hard. I read the last three hours in my dark bedroom on a Tuesday when I was supposed to be working.
The end.
TLDR
The author
I think I told you everything above. But also, I have read all her books but NOT Demon Copperhead even though I know I must. I hate reading about drugs and honestly that’s the reason I haven’t. I must.
The plot
It is 1960 and the Price family, against the advice of the missionary organization they hope to represent but will not, leave Georgia to become missionaries in the soon-to-be independent Belgian Congo. They don’t know what they hell they are doing, they cause all kinds of hurt and pain, and many bad things happen to them.
The structure
Told in alternating voices of the four sisters as the events take place, with the mother’s voice interspersed as a decades-later retrospective.
The ending?
The whole last third of the book makes the book, and it’s a long one. Wait for it.
Trust by Hernan Diaz
Trust has been one of my favorite reads in the last few years, and this was my third time through it in as many years. I first heard about it from my friend Rory, who texted me the recommendation after a dinner in NYC when I told her I was obsessed with rereading Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald adjacent, with a particular passion for attendant rivieras and sanitariums. Trust, she told me, FIT THE BILL.
It did. And, as predicted, I loved it. I read it again within the year. This third time, it had been about a year and half since the last reading, and in that period of time I’d gone ahead and read the author’s first book, which had been printed by a small press with low expectations and then had gone on to be a finalist for a Pulitzer. (Trust won it, in the first year the award was shared, alongside Barbara Kingsolver’s latest, Demon Copperhead. Yes, I am aware there are so many intersecting themes in this post of my favorite books!)
After I finished, I listened to a fantastic interview with the author, who is the first Argentine to win a Nobel for fiction according to my research. In the interview, he touches on his background - Swedish and Argentine and something else I forgot - with a degree from the University of Buenos Aires and a later career in the United States. For a long time now, as a professor at a Yale. Most interestingly, the interview discussed how Diaz approached the writing of the book as if he was truly writing several different, stand-alone novels. Fascinating!
TLDR
The author
See above.
The plot
In the early 20th century, a famous financier and his wife live a grand life in New York City. He makes lots of money, and then more of it, and then people start to write about his life. His wife, who has a crazy backstory, does lots of other interesting things, and then there is a sanitarium in Switzerland, not for the first time. People write stories about it all.
The structure
See above, also.
The ending.
The ending! Swoon!
Since I’m loving the re-reading the greats thing, I’m now thinking of more to read.
Next up?
The Glass Palace by Amitov Ghosh (not to be confused with The Glass Hotel, mentioned above)
What else should I add? Only faves, remember.
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The Guest List-Lucy Foley- This is what happens when a wedding is held on a remote island in Ireland and everyone has secrets. My niece and I read it this month for our book club of 2.
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