Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA
Welcome to the March round of Friday Reads! As we wait for the weather to warm up (and for our twenty-fifth issue to come out), The Common’s Literary Publishing Interns bring you book recommendations that explore love, identity, hope, and flaws.
Documentary filmmaker Alice Diop brings an unsettling sense of reality to her first fiction feature, which follows a novelist attending the trial of a woman accused of drowning her 15-month-old child. Based on a real-life incident of infanticide, the courtroom proceedings depicted in Saint Omer borrow from the 2016 trial of Fabienne Kabou, which Diop herself attended. In synopsis, this may sound like a lurid mix of fiction and documentary, but this precise and emotionally complex film, which sprung from Diop’s fascination with Kabou’s trial, does not have the anxiety-stoking energy of a true-crime story. It is so rooted in the point of view of Rama, the writer attending the trial, that I hesitate to describe it as a courtroom drama. The film’s dual focus—on both Rama, the writer, and Laurence, the young woman accused of infanticide—turns the trial into something other than pure spectacle and results in a story that looks closely at the frighteningly powerful bond between mother and child.
Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA
Welcome back to Friday Reads! Here in Western Mass, a frigid February is upon us—a perfect excuse to stay inside with a good book. Need help finding that perfect read? Look no further than these recommendations from The Common’s contributors.
Anne Enright’s Actress, recommended by Mathilde Merouani (contributor)
I think Anne Enright should be a superstar. Not that Anne Enright works in obscurity—her 2007 novel The Gathering won the Booker Prize. But if there was any justice to literary success, there would be think-pieces about whether Anne Enright is overrated. People would be so used to hearing that Anne Enright is one of the greats that, in their suspicion, they’d assume she must be too mainstream to be good. But then they’d read her and discover that she is, actually, one of the greats; they would see in her impeccable prose the perfect balance of comedy and tragedy that makes the tragic a little funny and the comic a little sad. If I had it my way, Anne Enright would have to tell fans that she would just like to have dinner in peace. I’m not sure Anne Enright would enjoy this level of fame, but she would certainly have something interesting to say about it.
Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA
Happy new year! If you’re hoping to read more in 2023, we’ve got just the thing for you: exciting book recommendations from our contributors. From reportage that reads like a page turner to romance against the backdrop of political turmoil, these exhilarating books are perfect for cozying up somewhere warm.
By ARINZE IFEAKANDU
Reviewed by JULIA LICHTBLAU
Though I’d heard Arinze Ifeakandu read from his debut collection, God’s Children Are Little Broken Things, at its launch at Greenlight Books in Brooklyn in June 2022, I was unprepared for the force and distinctiveness of his writing when I opened the book. Soft-voiced and diffident, Ifeakandu seemed overshadowed that night by his effusive interviewer, Brandon Taylor, who hailed his arrival as a new gay Nigerian writer and fellow graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop on the literary scene. The stories in Ifeakandu’s collection merit reading for their subtle explorations of the nuances and hazards of living as a gay person in Nigeria, where open homosexuality is subject to federal criminal penalties and punishable by stoning in some states.
Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA
Last month, we launched Issue 24, which features wispy, ethereal poems, striking watercolors of the Stebbins Cold Canyon flora and fauna, stories about resilience in the face of war and natural disaster, and essays that celebrate humor and heritage. Wondering what our contributors are reading to keep themselves inspired? Look no further than this month’s Friday Reads.
By GUNNHILD ØYEHAUG (Translated from the Norwegian by KARI DICKSON)
Reviewed by OLGA ZILBERBOURG
Laura is expecting a baby. A twenty-four-year-old literature instructor, she lives with her partner Karl Peter in the heart of Bergen, a city in the westernmost part of Norway. She’s suffering from a strange sort of anxiety, which she suspects has something to do with the pregnancy: everything around her seems double, not quite like what it is.
Laura has more common anxieties as well, including a problem with her apartment. The buildings in her part of town are constructed of brick on the outside and wood inside, which makes them so flammable that they’re called “chimney houses.” If their chimney house were to catch on fire, there would be little chance of escape. Then, there are the noisy students living above and below, a drug dealer across the street, hypodermic needles littering the neighborhood. She decides that she and Karl Peter have to move before the baby comes, but this decision, too, seems to bring her nothing but anxiety.
Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA
We launched Issue 24 last week, which features an exciting medley of writing: pieces about journalists and translators, forest fires and traveling icebergs, ghosts, cousins, and parents. Wondering what our contributors are reading? Check out their book recommendations below:
Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA
As the weather gets cooler and rainier, you may find yourself looking to spend time indoors with a good book and a steaming cup of tea. In this installment of Fridays Reads, we bring you exciting book recommendations from two of our volunteer readers, which dwell on dark, absurd, and solitary experiences.
Caren Beilin’s Revenge of the Scapegoat, recommended by Grace Ezra (reader)
“The sun develops as it ends. The color gets so stabby.”
Hard and luminous, Revenge of the Scapegoat scowls as the reader delights. Beilin has set out to examine the expression, cultivation, and inheritance of the scapegoat’s situation, not shying away from the unyielding responsibility of the role. Not only is this novel undoubtedly accomplished, Revenge of the Scapegoat had me laughing myself feral.
Beilin’s narrator, Iris, is working as an adjunct at an arts college while toiling with her husband, Joe (an alcoholic who insists that the road to sobriety has been paved by microdosing heroin) and a recent diagnosis of autoimmune rheumatoid arthritis at only thirty-six years old. Her two feet seem to be most affected by the pain, affectionately named Bouvard and Pécuchet after the title characters of Flaubert’s posthumous novel (“the only one lit majors and bookstore owners read”). Iris’s chummy feet quickly become major characters in the story; they exercise dignity and concern as well as good humor. The two fall into asides about history and literature, compelling the reader to group the pair with the other eccentric artists that make Revenge of the Scapegoat such a gratifying indulgence in the absurd.
I haven’t even gotten to the part of the book that thrills and sets the story to motion. Iris receives a collection of letters written to her by her father in which he ascribes heaps of cyclical family trauma to her. The first time that she received these letters was when she was a teenager, though Beilin makes it clear that the inauguration of the family scapegoat happens in childhood. Iris (as alter ego “Vivitrix”) clears off to the Pennsylvania countryside, where she’s employed by a stirring gallerist and apathetic widow, Caroline, and her “Heathcliffish” son, Matthew. There are also heart-stepping cows, but I’ll save all of that magic for the actual read.
Revenge of the Scapegoat was a transference for me: not an escape, but that rare book that takes you somewhere completely new, strange, and fantastic. It would normally be a big ask for a book to take me “in that fetid twilight marinade refusing suicide barking at peaches in a pact with the unrevealed,” but for Beilin, she can serve it up with potency and pleasure.
Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading, recommended by Tyler Hayes (reader)
“I have no desires, save the desire to express myself—in defiance of all the world’s muteness.”
Invitation by Vladimir Nabokov follows the surreal—but not unfamiliar—events following the trial and indictment of one Cincinnatus C., an intelligent but quiet man. While imprisoned with him, we meet laconic guards, pernicious spies, and even butterflies. We learn that he has been charged with nothing more than “gnostical turpitude,” and that the punishment is death by decapitation.
In the end, Nabokov’s achievement here is in dispelling the notion that we can transcend absurd performance—let alone find joy—in the presence of those who don’t understand us. His deployment of incisive, subtle duplicity, which manifests as both humor and pathos, is virtually unmatched at this word count. Read it as both cause and cure for solitude.
Rarely is a book as delightful as June Gervais’s debut novel, Jobs for Girls with Artistic Flair, a story of people who do their best to be better and then fail and try again with courage and integrity. These characters cannot be dismissed or ignored, because they don’t give up. The novel is about belief: in one’s self, in others, and in the future. These days, such belief can be a difficult emotion to muster, so Gervais’s success in this regard is even more laudable.
The novel takes place in the mid-1980s in the fictional Long Island town of Blue Claw, somewhere near the location of Riverhead, New York. The novel’s time period is one that, until recently, I might have considered to be post-feminist. Women could have it all, we were told, and most of us believed it. Our innocence, or naiveté, had yet to be dashed. But Gina Mulley, the main character of Gervais’s novel, is another case entirely—she exists in a world without labels like feminism.
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