In an effort to keep myself accountable, I thought I’d share quick thoughts on the books I read over the next year.
The first book I read was Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck. I picked this up from my favourite bookstore for several reasons, including its endorsement as a staff pick, but especially because the protagonist is a Classics professor. Unfortunately, I found the translation (from German to English) poor and distracting. I made it through the first chapter before deciding to put it down.
The next book I read and actually completed was The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor. Wow, do I love FOC’s writing. I haven’t read any of her work since my undergraduate days, but I was convinced to pick this novel up after reading Hilton Als’ essay This Lonesome Place, featured in his Pulitzer Prize winning collection White Girls, which contextualized this particular FOC novel in the unreconstructed South, and shared new (to me) insights on her engagement with race.
Photograph by Joe McTyre / Atlanta Journal-Constitution / AP
Every single sentence is in its perfect place. The story is curious: a mad preacher dies of old age, and his great-nephew, who he kidnapped as a child, is left alone in the outskirts of the city. The nephew is infected by a need to baptize a relative of his – a parting gift from his late great-uncle. The rest is about Christianity, mental illness, familial violence and relationships, disability, and race relations in the American South. There are no women, and when they are mentioned by male characters it is done with contempt. Still, the characters and their inner monologues are haunting.
Illustration of Flannery O’Connor by Charlotte Strick & June Glasson.