Read 5 of 2023. Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel

Learning to Talk is a book that marvels, that makes you infer, come up with connections of your own to Mantel’s memoir. “Giving Up the Ghost”, and finally makes you marvel at how she connected these stories to moments from her childhood, to give us an experience like no other.

The stories in this collection are raw, precise, part memoir, part imagination, and all wonderful with sentences that flow and words that fit seamlessly. This book is about teenagers and children who are odd with their families, neighbours, the school, and the world at large. Each story laced with curiosity, cleverness, and different ways of seeing the world.

Mantel through these stories allows the reader to glimpse into her world and life growing up and yet ensures that there is some distance that is always maintained between how much she wants the reader to know and how much she does not.

Each story is about when a child’s life shifts – what moments define it – when a pet dies, when the child is lost and finds itself eventually, a teenager’s realization about what love is and how adults work in the world, and about how daughters come to view their mothers over a period. Mantel doesn’t let go of any emotion – of each sentence being in the place it must.  

And in all this there are times when she draws on history to tell these stories and that’s when each one comes alive with even more exuberance and nuance. There is attention to detail, there is attention to every heartache, melancholy, and the political and personal mingle in all the specifics of time and place.

Learning to Talk is a delightful read that will stay with me for years to come. I may not recall every story but that will then be the perfect time to reread this collection.

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

Title: Motherhood
Author: Sheila Heti
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN: 978-1627790772
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 Stars

It took me a while to get into “Motherhood” by Sheila Heti. I was under the impression that this one would also be an easy read, just like, “How Should A Person Be?”, however, I was mistaken. “Motherhood” also because of the content and obviously the writing style (which is mostly meta in my opinion), makes it a little of a tough read. If you are prepared to battle through the first couple of pages, you are in for a treat.

“Motherhood” as the title suggests is obviously about motherhood but beyond that,​ it questions what a woman loses or gains when she becomes a mother. At first, it comes across as a strange book even, given there is no plot really and when you read the narrator’s life and her point of view, then everything falls into place.

Her experiences, her friends’ experiences, people who have children and people who don’t; they all play a major role in building her as a person and yet at the core of it is the question of motherhood – related​ to body, philosophy, society, ​and womanhood.

More than anything, the book is about a woman’s body and her choices, which are hers alone. The writing​, as usual,​l is solid, drifting and changing forms (which I enjoyed a lot by the way) that propels the book to another level.

“Motherhood” celebrates every aspect of being a woman and I am so glad it does. At the heart of it, Heti is also writing about femininity and vocation, mortality and empowerment and the history of it all. She breaks the mould of what is being a mother and what isn’t and gives room for ideas and opinions that are different to breathe and prosper. Sheila Heti is truly one of a kind writer according to me.

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li

Title: Number One Chinese Restaurant
Author: Lillian Li
Publisher:Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN: 978-1250141293
Genre: Literary Fiction,
Pages:304
Source ​:Publisher
Rating:4 Stars

A dysfunctional family to the core and their story set against the backdrop of a Chinese restaurant, which of course belongs to them. Nothing in this genre could get better. I couldn’t wait to read this book and now I know why. It is the book that has the right amount of funny and tragedy with so much going on with various people. At times, it was difficult to keep track even, but once you get to know the characters (as it would happen in every book, except those written by Tolstoy), the reading becomes easier to tackle.

“Number One Chinese Restaurant” refers to The Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland. The one place to go to for hunger pangs and celebrations of any kind. It is world in its own, surrounded by its own people with their problems – be it from waiters, to kitchen staff who love and hate in equal measure to the owner and his family (quite an extended one at that) – a world that has been stable for some time till disaster strikes and people’s lives go awry.

I have always been skeptical of multiple-narration in books. Different voices kind of throw me off the story but surprisingly this did not happen with this book. It felt easy to read it. The beauty of such books (at least to me) is that one can empathize with almost everyone. To me the angst and pain of Jimmy to Annie (Jimmy’s niece) who wants to go back to the past when her dad was around and a young love story that had me hooting and not at the same time.

“Number One Chinese Restaurant” is a heady read of parents and children, youth and aging and above all of what it means to be family and how far are we willing to go to give it all up.

The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Mallory Ortberg

Title: The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror
Author: Mallory Ortberg
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 978-1250113429
Genre: Short Stories
Pages: 208
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 Stars

Fairy Tales were never meant for children, I suppose. Over the years, and along the way, they became for children. No wonder there are so many retellings and translations of the true fairy tales from different regions of the world, in order to maintain them for what they were: sinister. “The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror” by Mallory Ortberg is one such book of dark and playful stories based on classic folk and fairy tales, each one told with a twist of feminism, gender fluidity (at least from what I could make out for some of them) and more.

This is not a parody on fairy tales. This is what I thought when I picked it up but it turned out to be way ahead and progressive than that. Mallory not only understands these fairy tales in great detail and with an amazing insight, but she also is aware that cultures, time, and tellers shape the story and hence her stories do not at any time seem jaded. Moreover, her stories seem more real, given the times we live in and rightly so. Again, might I add: not meant for children.

I cannot even discuss these stories without giving away anything, so I will not. What I will say though is that “A Thankless Child” is one story that has stuck in my mind (a retelling of Cinderella if you please) and a very strange one at that. What I loved is that Ortberg is not here to shock you.

The stories are to break stereotypes, to get away from the prejudice and bias we create and above all to be able to think and feel the way you want to. There is also a sense of humour which is evident in the retelling of The Beauty and the Beast. I could go on and on about this one, but all I must say is that you just have to read this collection of stories.

The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat

Title: The Parking Lot Attendant
Author: Nafkote Tamirat
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
ISBN: 978-1250128508
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 240
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 Stars

The Parking Lot Attendant is such a weird book at times and maybe because of all its oddities it works brilliantly for the reader in so many places. The plot is this: An unnamed young woman (a lot of unnamed narrators or protagonists in books these days), who has just recently become a resident on the island of B with her father tells the story of how things came to be. Of why she and her father had to come to this Utopian styled community, leaving their home in Boston. That essentially is the crux of the story. No wait. There is more.

 

There is Ayale, the shady parking lot owner in his mid-thirties who the woman was attracted to while she was living in Boston. Their life as Ethiopians in Boston (this has to be mentioned. You will know why when you read the book). The book is about the woman and her relationship with Ayale, her father and how she has to flee the country with her father. I can’t give away any spoilers, but I guess you get the drift.

 

Tamirat’s writing is refreshing. It doesn’t mostly follow the linearity of time – things happen and jump from one time track to another, so it does take a lot to get into the book, but once you get the hang of the events, it is an easy ride. The story seems awkward but it is anything but that.

 

There is a lot going on – coming of age, the woman’s relationship with her father, the commune and its principles (will almost make you relate to the world we live in) and Ayale’s relationship with the woman (which is so twisted that you have to read it to believe it). “The Parking Lot Attendant” is engaging, stumbles at times, confusing as well, but redeems itself beautifully with the writing and characters. I loved it nonetheless.