I've been working long and hard this month, but I've managed to make time for my reading adventures. I've had to face it: It's essential for my mental health, the care of my brain, and my mood in these terrible times.
Earlier this month, Garth Greenwell won the PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel Small Rain. I was lucky--I checked in with my fabulous library in Glens Falls--Crandall Library, and they had a copy. It has been a good read for me emotionally.
Like the narrator, I am completely leery of doctors and their interventions. But when the narrator develops a life-threatening condition that leaves him hospitalized in the ICU for 2 weeks, he mentally scrambles to find a way to accomodate what's happening. He's only in his 40s, completely unprepared for such a venture, and feels an incapacity to handle what usually occurs only in people of poor health in their 60s and 70s. Yet he hustles, as we all do, to find ways to let his mind escape what's happening. Unwittingly he focuses on recent, past traumas, but also on the many wonderful relationships in his life. For me, as a hospital-phobe, due largely to a life-threatening condition that happened to me in 2012 and was not handled well, to say the least, I totally resonated with the narrator's experience and his all-too-real, understandable anxieties. A great novel! I know, it sounds too grim, but I highly recommend it for its veracity to human experience.
I am also nearing the end of The Distant Hours by the Australian author Kate Morton. It's 563 pages, and frankly, would have been improved by some tightening, to say the least. However, I have enjoyed it. Gosh--I only paid $1.99 for the ebook, so that's something. It's set in England, mostly during the early years of World War II, but also bounces forward in time so that the daughter of a very young evacuee can visit the "Castle" and the people who offered her mother shelter during the Blitz. A complex family saga, much more complex a story than I've described here. Although overly long, it is compelling. I recommend it!
Fellow hospital-phobe here too, due to having my brother in and out of them when he and I were both young. Then Peter in and out for twenty years too. I now don't want anything to do with them, so I can sympathise.
ReplyDeleteDistant Hours sounds interesting, I think I have read something by Kate Morton but not sure what. I'm currently reading The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson, which is wonderful and a book of essays by British cook, Nigel Slater. I like it when I'm reading two excellent books that I want to keep picking up.
Hi Cath,
DeleteI'm not at all surprised that you may have read a Kate Morton novel. I suggest her books to you, based on what I know of your reading tastes. Do look her up. From what I know about what you love in books, I believe you would thoroughly be wrapped up in her stories.
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell sounds like a good read. I have never had bad experiences in hospitals but can understand wanting to avoid them in any case.
ReplyDeleteI just finished The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz. It was a totally wacko sort-of mystery novel published in 2007, and I thoroughly enjoyed. Not for everyone though, I am sure. I am not sure what I will read next.
Hi Tracy, I'll look forward to your review of The Spellman Files. Sounds really different, which is something that always appeals to me!
DeleteGreat blog
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