Repeats and First Times: These Are Mine; What Are Yours?

Last week in Traverse City --

Morning sunshine brought out orchard gold in Leelanau, as those cherry trees not yet bare of leaf burst into song. I burst into smiles myself when the sun came out, feeling as if an old friend not seen in ages had suddenly called my name from across the road. While the gold of the tamarack seems tarnished now, dulled from its brightness of only days ago, there is still a lot of yellow and orange and warm burnt umber in the landscape. I’ll add a few more end-of-October images as I go along so you can see what I mean.

Morning sun on Leelanau cherry orchard --

Tuesday of last week Sunny and I got to our new agility class for the first time, passing through a torrential downpour to get there. This week we had sunshine for the drive but a little scare with the tire pressure warning light in my car, necessitating an unscheduled stop at the tire shop. Sunny behaved beautifully! Not a single bark! I was so proud of her. When we got to class, though, my confidence for the sport was low, Sunny’s energy much too high, and she was so wild on our first turn through the course that she had to be put on-leash. By our third turn, however, she acquitted herself well, so I felt better driving home through snow squalls. Typical Michigan Halloween weather!

Sunny at Juniors -- being a good dog!

Halloween snow!

 

Seasons are repeats, though never identical from one year to the next. When I re-read a book, as I often do, each reading differs slightly from previous experiences, so that re-reading favorite books is always for me a rich experience. My focus for today, however, is on novels I read this year for the first time and thus, those at the top of my recommended fiction list from 2023.

 

What order should I use to present them? Alphabetical by author? By title? Chronological in the order read? In the order published? Considering and rejecting all these possibilities but also thinking that the order of presentation really doesn’t matter at all, I decided to be whimsical and list in reverse alphabetical order of author’s last name.

Asparagus in autumn is beautiful.

Yourcenar, Marguerite. Memoirs of Hadrian. I wrote a bit about this historical novel back in August, somewhat amazed at myself for reading it at all. In the past, I was not much of a reader of historical novels: I thought of them as genre fiction, somehow less than literary, but such certainly cannot be said of Yourcenar’s fiction (nor of many of the other historical novels I have recently found so engrossing). Nor was I ever drawn to the Roman Empire. But Memoirs of Hadrian captivated me. I read it in French and intend to read it again in English translation – and then probably again in both languages in my future re-reading.

 

Straight, Susan. I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots. This is an amazing novel. ‘Amazing’ is one of those words I seldom use, as it seems used far too often for books, movies, ideas, events, etc. that are far from amazing, but Sorrow’s Kitchen, like Memoirs of Hadrian, is a tour de force. The main character, Marietta, is like no other fictional woman I’ve ever met before. Born into an isolated Gullah community in South Carolina, Marietta is physically and imposingly large, “blue-black” like her father, silently observant, and self-reliant. The course of her life, as is true of every human life, is in part self-chosen and in part shaped by circumstance, but Marietta’s response to circumstance is all her own. Many reviews describe as “lyrical” books that do not seem that to me at all. Straight’s novel is lyrical. It also rings true. Marietta is not an easy character to know, but as her essence slowly unfolds every reader will want a happy ending for her. Read this book!

 

Gloss, Molly. The Hearts of Horses. Back at the beginning of August, I wrote that The Hearts of Horses was the horsiest novel I had ever read. In that earlier post I also wrote of the Gloss novel (repeating myself here for those who don’t follow links), that The Hearts of Horses takes place in the period of World War I: “Although far from the fighting, some of the farmers and ranchers in Gloss’s novel are swept up in a jingoism that puts their German immigrant neighbors in peril. There is also discussion between the characters of the fates of the thousands of horses shipped over to Europe to become cannon fodder or shell-shocked survivors right along with the soldiers. The main story, however, takes place out West. It is no longer open, fenceless rangeland, but big-boned teenager Martha Lessen is determined to lead as free a cowboy life as she can and rides away from home to offer her services 'breaking' horses. Martha does not have much in the way of social graces, but, perhaps because she was so sensitive to the feelings of horses, she wasn’t bad at picking up cues about people’s feelings without having to have everything spelled out for her.” Like Marietta in Sorrow’s Kitchen, Gloss’s Martha is atypical of her gender, but she makes her own way, as does Marietta, and I loved this story, too.

 

Dorris, Michael. Yellow Raft in Blue Water. Why had I never read this novel before? When I look online now, I find that it is taught in university classes all across the country. Dorris was the first chair of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College but perhaps remembered most these days for having been the husband of Louise Erdrich. I won’t comment on any of that. I only want to say that this novel is beautiful and surprising. It could almost be described as three novellas, the first with a young woman as the main character, the second focused on the mother of the first, and the third going back to the Horse mother’s mother. Three generations, the youngest of mixed race, her father Black, mother Native American. Now there’s a problem, and I don’t have the book here to refresh my memory and can’t find the answer online: Is “Native American” as close as we get to First  Nation affiliation? Online search turns up the idea, sometimes in question, that Dorris was “part Modoc” on his father’s side. All we know of the three fictional characters in Yellow Raft is that their reservation is in Montana. But the novel can be looked at on its own, apart from all that (and the author’s suicide and so much that preceded it in his personal life), and my opinion of this book is that it holds up well as powerful fiction, each earlier generation shedding light on where the more recent finds itself. 

 

Brooks, Geraldine. Horse. Yes, another book of historical fiction, yet another horsey novel, but it wouldn’t get on my top fiction picks for 2023 for those reasons alone. Set partly in 19^th-century America (the novels jumps back and forth between time periods), Horse tells the story of real-life Lexington, adding for the purposes of fiction an enslaved Black character and his free Black father, as well as a young mixed-race man in the sections of the book set closer to our own time. Brooks and Gloss write knowledgeably and convincingly about horses and no less so when it comes to their human characters. If you want a second opinion, one of my good friends here in Northport (an accomplished author herself) said that Horse was “the best book” she read this year! If you missed and want to read what I had to say about this novel in August, here is the link. 

And finally – 

 

Atwood, Margaret. Hag-Seed. First a confession: I have yet to read The Handmaid’s Tale, though every year I swear that this winter I’ll finally get to it. It is not a matter of avoidance. Just hasn’t happened. But a friend brought me Hag-Seed, and because I have respect for her recommendations I sat down to read the book. Reading on the back of the book that the main character was reduced to a hut in the – was it woods? country? Whatever it was, that pulled me in, and I was immediately hooked. If you are a Shakespeare reader, if you have any experience with or love for live theatre, if you relish literary themes of betrayal and revenge, magic and illusion, you will be delighted with this story. About the title: "Hag-seed" is one of the epithets spat at Caliban in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," the play which forms the background and structure of Atwood's novel, life mirroring drama and containing drama of its own, of course. Absolutely brilliant. And entertaining!

 

There you have it, my top read-for-the-first-time novels of 2023, so far! There are two months left in the year, and more books await my first reading (including an ARC from an author who never disappoints), so I may be adding a couple works to this list before New Year’s is upon us. And really -- it is only coincidence that two of my top novels read this year could be called "horse books," given that very, very few novels for adults feature horses, let alone novels this good. It's also only coincidence that all but one book on this short list are by women authors. Another year it would have been different. 

Just because --

Next I suppose it would only be fair to name my top nonfiction picks. For now, though, what are your favorite novels from this year’s first-time reading? Note that they need not be newly published this year. Maybe you finally read a modern classic for the first time and would put that on your top picks list. Whatever your top recommendations are in fiction from your reading this year – that’s all I’m asking for today. 

Tamarack on All Saints' Day