to the word garden

1. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Four diverse Edwardian women rent an Italian castle and spend a magical month on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. This novel is a delightful read that has beautiful and humorous moments in equal measure. Think along the lines of E. M. Forster’s figure of the ‘Englishwoman Abroad’ but written by a female writer. Going South for the English means shedding the trappings of northern society and allowing the passions and vivacity of the South to work upon them and open them to life. The enchanting effect of the South on people of a Northern constitution is a well-known trope but it is interesting to note the warmth which this cliché is dealt with in the hands of a female writer. I highly recommend this to those who’ve enjoyed Forster’s A Room with a View.

2. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

Every once in a (long) while, one comes across a novel like Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment. Its prose delivers such an intensity of raw feeling, that the words seem to burn on the page. This novel is about a 38-year-old woman, Olga, who is abandoned by her husband and left to take care of their children, Gianni and Ilaria, and their dog Otto. Told in the first person, this novel takes you into the darkest depths of Olga’s despair. Ferrante’s female characters are unarguably my favourite in literature — they know they live in a world that is kinder to men than it is for women and they’re haunted by past women and their pain, be they mothers or female figures in their childhood. This book is subtly about a woman living with the shadow of another woman from her childhood, who was also abandoned and had a tragic fate. Ferrante’s writing style is flawless, as always, and some sentences beg to be marked in the margin. One of the best books I’ve read this year so far! If you’ve read and enjoyed the Neapolitan Novels, you’ll also love this one.

3. Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud

I read Hideous Kinky by Esther Freud in a day -- it’s a quick, consumable read. This is a memoir, thinly disguised as a novel, about a mother in search of an adventure, who takes her two daughters to Morocco. The novel is narrated from the point of view of the youngest daughter and it is about living hand to mouth with a single mother in a foreign place. I quite liked its depiction of childhood and the diverse Moroccan people they encounter, with their eccentricities and their kindnesses. The mother is probably the character I liked the least — she can be quite problematic. It’s not a must read, in my opinion, but it’s still a sweet memoir-like novel that recreates the beauty and challenges of childhood.

4. The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

The Neapolitan Quartet is brilliant but Elena Ferrante’s shorter fiction is something else. Imagine the raw emotion, the psychological characterisation, the violence, and the magnetic voice of the narrator of the Neapolitan Novels distilled in under 200 pages, rather than spread across four books. That’s Ferrante’s short fiction. ‘The Lost Daughter’ is a perfect book for those who’d like a ‘beach read’ that is intellectually engaging, a book set in summer on the shores of the Mediterranean that can be read in a day or even a sitting. The narrator, Leda, is a scholar of English in her late forties, who is drawn to a 23-year-old mother and her young daughter playing with a doll at the beach. She is driven to do an explicable thing that takes her to depths of her past and her relationship with her daughters and her mother. Out of all of Ferrante’s characters that I’ve encountered so far, Leda is by far the most enigmatic and the novella at times almost reads like a character-study because Ferrante creates such a psychologically complex woman. I found the ending a bit rushed but I think this is the first Ferrante that really made me want to reread it as soon as I finished it. There is just so much to unpack, so many complex thoughts about being a mother and being a daughter and the bond between the two that deserve to be revisited.

5. The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey needs no introduction. This was my first Ancient Greek epic and it was just what I expected. Some parts towards the beginning and the end dragged a bit, but Odysseus’s narration of his travels in the Mediterranean were very quick to get through because they’re such iconic tales and entertaining, too (although the misogyny was irritating). Robert Fagles’s verse  translation, published by Penguin Classics, is a great translation in my opinion, but at some point I’d like to check out Emily Wilson’s new translation too. Overall, I’m glad I finally got around to reading this and it inspired to pick up more epics, which I could read alongside other novels. I’m now particularly interested in reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Virgil’s The Aeneid.

6. The Mischief by Assia Djebar

Assia Djebar is an Algerian writer that I don’t hear about often. Her debut novella The Mischief (originally La Soif) was published in 1957, just three years after Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse and the influence of Sagan on Djebar’s debut novella is palpable. Coming-of-age, body consciousness, sexuality, passion, and death converge on the Southern Mediterranean seascape in The Mischief just as they do in Bonjour Tristesse, with the added themes of the Paris-Algiers binary and race. Nadia, the narrator, is practically the North African equivalent of Sagan’s Cécile -- a carefree and indolent young woman discovering herself and her sexuality, and creating tragic mischief. Although Djebar drew heavily from Sagan, her debut is still wonderfully executed and distinct enough, plot-wise, to be worth reading in its own right. I was specifically astounded by how unlikeable Nadia is, and yet, how masterful of Djebar to still give her an alluring voice that compels the reader to read more. In fact, I read this in a sitting. I’ll definitely read more of Djebar in the future, although her later  work seems very different.

7. Tangerine by Christine Mangan

Remember that familiar phrase in book reviews that goes along the lines of ‘the setting is almost a character in itself’? Well, Christine Mangan’s Tangerine truly earns it. This novel is set in 1950s Morocco, Tangerine evokes the mysterious  and alluring atmosphere of Tangier. A psychological thriller unfolds in this city’s heat spell: Alice, who was swept away to Tangier by her husband John, one day finds Lucy on her doorstep, a friend of hers she had completely cut ties with. Their past is slowly unfolded through flashbacks and meanwhile, things start taking an ominous turn in Tangier. What I love about this book is that the setting is present in every page; it’s what, I feel, makes this novel so immersive. The chapters alternate between Lucy’s and Alice’s point of view, and the foreignness of Tangier serves to bring out their respective characters. Towards the end (I won’t spoil anything), I was particularly intrigued by how Tangier becomes almost a presence within the characters rather than an exterior space. Since Tangerine, received mixed reviews, I did not have high expectations for this novel, but the setting almost made me completely disregard the predictability of the plot -- although, there were a few good surprises -- and the wordiness of some descriptions of actions -- although the writing style generally flows and is a pleasure to read. Since Mangan provides both the main characters’ perspectives, the reader is always one step ahead of the characters and know what they’re about to face. I guess this puts emphasis on the psychology of the character rather than the unfolding of the plot, which I think works but I can see why some readers demanded more from the plot of a ‘psychological thriller’. The nuance is in characterisation and setting, rather than in plot. I think this was a great debut novel with a gripping opening and a satisfying ending, particularly for someone who is interested in relations between setting and character, rather than plot, although I consumed the plot too!

FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE MONTH: The Days of Abandonment and The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante