Podolo (1948, but 2024 in this edition), by E.P. Hartley, is a short story presented in small book format, designed and illustrated by Seth in his GhoPodolo (1948, but 2024 in this edition), by E.P. Hartley, is a short story presented in small book format, designed and illustrated by Seth in his Ghost Stories for Christmas series. Podolo is a small, need-I-say desolate island off Italy to which a small party ventured for lunch via gondola. The party finds a feral cat, apparently starving, and the woman in the party 1) decides to try to feed the cat and then (inexplicitly) decides 2) to consider killing the cat if she can’t catch it and take care of it, presumably using a “put it out of its misery” defense.
The gondolier makes it clear that killing cats is not considered good luck in Italy, which explains the presence of so many feral cats, but regardless, no one else is in favor of killing the cat. Let it live, even if it is not well! But the woman, frustrated in her attempt, tells one of the party that she is “no longer trying to feed the cat.” The guy goes back to the boat, and he and the gondolier (inexplicably) fall asleep, but when they wake up, and proceed to find the woman, the gondolier says he saw some kind of humanoid creature lurking (what else would he do but lurk?) in the dark (maybe a Negro, he says, because it was hard to see him(?!), but then he finds (spoiler alert!!) a dead cat, and then the dead woman.
I thought the basis for wanting to kill the cat was insufficiently clear and just weird and even cruel, but maybe her cruelty is the point? I wish we had more interaction with the actual ghost, but there is something chilling in this one about what the ghost is and why it kills. We also are left wondering: Does the ghost kill the woman because she killed the cat? We don’t know anything about the sequence at all. So that seems kinda weak as a plot point.
But then: Look at that cover. I like that cover! A red-eyed demon cat ghost? Maybe it indicates Seth's interpretation of the cat as killer? Try to kill me, lady, and I will get my revenge? Or maybe the ghost cat lures unsuspecting island visitors to their doom? More questions than answers, but the end is still a bit chilling, actually.
“I don't go out anymore, a restlessness has come over me, and I don't go out”--Boathouse
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”--Jack, the mad wr“I don't go out anymore, a restlessness has come over me, and I don't go out”--Boathouse
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”--Jack, the mad writer of Stephen King's The Shining, repeating this phrase page after page
Boathouse (1989; English translation 2007, audiobook 2017) by Jon Fosse is a novella that features his signature mesmerizing (or boring, to some, no doubt) repetition, that becomes almost trance-like. Sometimes in his work this repetition pertains to simple rural folk who get caught in their daily routines and ways of thinking. Sometimes it is obsessive. Here, in an early novel for Fosse, we take this basic formula and apply it to a noir crime setting, increasingly dark and somewhat eerie or sinister. A man, about 30 narrates the story--he doesn’t go out any more, he writes all day to keep his anxiety, his restlessness, at bay--and it is this book that he has written that we are reading.
The man’s name is Baard, He lives in an isolated area in an isolated town with his mother, who increasingly worries about him. He used to be in a band when he was in school with buddy Knut, they used to practice in the boathouse, but something happened between Knut and Baard over a girl, without confrontation, and this is when the restlessness--maybe the Norwegian word translates to disquiet, as Fosse names Pessoa and his Book of Quiet as an influence?
Ten years later Baard sees Knut again, who now teaches music, is married with two little girls. He has “made something of himself,” while Baard, our narrator, has basically done nothing with himself in ten years, paralyzed by anxiety that doesn’t improve when Knut’s wife flirts with him, even tries to seduce him.”I'm over thirty years old, no job, no education.” Our narrator has had no romantic relationships of any kind, ever, I think, so he doesn’t know what to say, what to think, he doesn’t know how to talk to the woman and tension builds and builds as Knut becomes aware of the tensions between the three of them.
“I stopped. I didn’t know what to do. I remained standing on the road, and I saw Knut walking outward along the road. I stopped. I didn’t know know what to do. I remained standing in the road, and I saw Knut walking outward along the road, and Knut thought that now he walked, just walked away, doesn’t know, must go, shall, go now.”
More and more as I read Fosse I see the influence of Beckett and maybe Pessoa, stripped down, fragments, the repetition, sort of stream of consciousness, which is why I first listened to it, because it is essentially a monologue, though the events are also recast from the perspective of Knut at one point, but I think as Baard sees Knut’s likely point of view? Not sure.
If you hate this style it would be easy to parody, but for me I felt the building intensity to an ending where it's revealed"something happens" in the penultimate sentence. I think the short work is great, as I am in the Fosse rhythm. ...more
On the Frontlines: The Lives of Japanese War Brides, Volume 1 by Marina Lisa Komiya (to be released 8/11/26, so thanks for the early look from the autOn the Frontlines: The Lives of Japanese War Brides, Volume 1 by Marina Lisa Komiya (to be released 8/11/26, so thanks for the early look from the author, Fantagraphics, and Net Galley) is a hard-hitting story she says she is writing because she is inspired to tell the stories from people that get erased, where people are forgotten or silenced. This volume focuses on four such individuals, two just-post-WWII Japanese women, Yariko and Haru, in peril, and two American soldiers, whose lives become intertwined in various ways during and after Japan's defeat.
One of the groups of history’s forgotten people Komiya has in mind is definitely women who during and after the war had very few options for survival, many forced into prostitution, including some by their own Japanese government to cater to the conquering American army, who they feared otherwise might be even more brutal. These women were asked to do their “patriotic” duty in this service! These kinds of stories get silenced in history books and are hard to read, but they are important to remember, too. Komiya chooses not to create a hero story but to honor those everyday women who struggle to barely survive, sometimes depending on the kindness of unlikely strangers.
Another group ignored by history as Komiya sees it are the “queer ghosts of the past,” so two of the four main characters--one Japanese, one American--are gay. Yet another important consideration is the position at that time of mixed race Japanese-American kids, despised by many postwar in both countries, but maybe more so in Japan. These children were seen as representations of treachery, symbolic traitors.
This is a powerful story, well worth investing your time in, empathetic and as Komiya points out, not simple. Nationality and sexuality are “multivariate,” she writes in a preface. She is not trying to create characters who are demons or heroes. She is writing about down-and-out women and decent American men, in this story. ...more
Morning and Evening is a short and somber novella in a spiritual vein by Jon Fosse, whose work I am reading as it comes to me. There are two parts; MoMorning and Evening is a short and somber novella in a spiritual vein by Jon Fosse, whose work I am reading as it comes to me. There are two parts; Morning, or birth, and evening or death. That simple. A life story, condensed, in a way. But maybe lmore complex than it initially seems.
In the first part, a baby, Johannes, named after his grandfather, is born, and his father meditates on his life with his wife in labor. In the second part a man named Johannes (whom i thought at first could have been the grandfather, because of the name, but I am quite sure now is the baby in old age) has a day like any other, except he feels strange, and begins to lose touch with things. He would seem to be approaching death, but this could be magical realism and it could be the man is actually dead.
Thus, it could be a kind of dream that reinforces the spiritual importance of life. On the surface, again, very simple, a simple fisherman's story, going out, meeting a friend, but then the nature of reality and life's meaning come into question. It has a resonance that Fosse brings to his work generally. He reminds me a bit of JM Coetzee a bit, too, in The Life of Jesus trilogy. Strange, but reflective, nudging you to reflect with them, these guys....more
Postern of Fate (1973)--Oh, you wanted to know what a postern is?! So did I: “A postern is a secondary door or gate in a fortification such as a city Postern of Fate (1973)--Oh, you wanted to know what a postern is?! So did I: “A postern is a secondary door or gate in a fortification such as a city wall or castle curtain wall”--# 5 (of 5) in the Tommy & Tuppence series by Agatha Christie is the very last novel we have from the Auld Dame. Her last Poirot as you may know was published as she intended after her death. But this book is basically vilified by the Goodreads crowd: 3.18 rating over all! Loathed it! So I, sometimes the contrarian, expecting to also hate it, came to like it quite a bit!
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, now in their seventies and still goofily in love, have moved into an old house in an English village. In the house there are books, and in one there is a mysterious message: "Mary Jordan did not die naturally." Over time we find she did die 60 years ago, but this does not stop T & T from investigating the crime, talking to as many old people as they can. And for some reason, those still connected to the crime don’t want the case solved, so Tuppence is in danger; she’s actually shot, though not seriously, and being the feisty gal she is, this does not dissuade her.
Along the way, many people in the area recall T & T and they reference earlier cases from the previous books, so it’s kind of an encore process. Also along the way, their dog helps solve the crime.
Ta ta, Agatha Christie! So this completes my having now read all of the Poirots, Marples, Olivers, Races, Battles, and Tommy and Tuppences. I also read several--most?--of the non-series books she wrote and largely herself preferred over her series books. I only have now not read some of the collections of stories, which I may or may not do. By my rough count that is about 70 Christie books, which I do believe hundreds of thousands if not millions have done at this point. I'm glad to be part of the Christie (roughly) completist club. This year I also climbed another related mystery mountain, having finished all 75 of the Inspector Maigret books but Georges Simenon, and a few non-Maigret roman durs from him that he and most critics preferred....more
“There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book, Things in Nature Merely Grow (2025). This is what a police officer “There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book, Things in Nature Merely Grow (2025). This is what a police officer said to her at her door when he announced that her second son, James, had died from suicide in in his first year at Princeton. Six years prior, her first son, Vincent, had also committed suicide, when he was a high school student, and Li herself was hospitalized for suicidal depression.
On each occasion Li wrote a book to sort of “make sense” of the senseless in her life, and in the case of the last two books, to honor her sons. And to make clear:
“If an abyss is where I shall be for the rest of my life, the abyss is my habitat. One should not waste energy fighting one’s habitat.”
Li doesn’t like the term grief, as it suggests there might be an endpoint of her sorrow, that she might “turn a corner” or something, which she knows will never happen. So what does she commit to doing? “Radical acceptance” of her sons’ choices, as terrible as they have been for her and her husband, who like James, most often chooses silence. Radical acceptance of sorrow. We expereince hard stuff; how do we live with it?.
The book for Vincent was more emotional because he was a “feelings” person, and she wanted to honor him, but Jwmes is isolated, chooses silence, thinking, stoicism, and so the book is cooler, more stoic (maybe) though one could argue King Lear’s rage is underneath the surface of this book. Or the Euripides Grief cycle of plays (as conceived by Anne Carson).
Li is committed to “doing the things that work,” including not just writing but reading Camus, Wittgenstein, Euclid, Shakespeare, Euripides, Montaigne, C.S. Lewis, Henry James, Wallace Stevens. As many of us do, she reads to figure out what she wants to say and feel and think. She also learns to play the piano, and gardens, living thinkingly alongside death. She's not religious, so there's no solace there for her.
James and his mother had read The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus, where the author says that the only serious philosophical question (Camus wrote this after the Holocaust and Hiroshima) is suicide. And Li thinks her son James is a combination of the often suicidal Hamlet and Bartelby’s “I prefer not to.”
“The verb that does not die is to be. Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later, only, now and now and now and now.”
It’s a cool (as opposed to warm) book, but I nevertheless cried when I read it a couple times, for personal reasons. Suicide is one of the worst things that can happen to the living, left behind as the one who dies moves on. Such anguish. Such an abyss. And while I have not (yet!) been suicidal, I know depression, I know tragedy, I have known many suicidal people, some who who have finally committed suicide. I think I understand Hedda Gabler. I don’t quite understand seppuku, but I respect it. I understand assisted suicide and support it. I am curious, too, how books can help me think how to put into words the worst things that inevitably happen to us.
This is a hard book, one of the 2025 NY Times 100 Top books of the year, and it deserves to be read. I might have a quibble about her discussions of how cruel people were to her online and in person after these deaths, blaming her, so ugly. It took me out of the story for a bit, it's about something else, maybe too much about her, not James, but it was still a very good book, I learned how not all grief stories have to be “redemption” or “healing” stories. ...more
"Sisters, sisters, There were never such devoted sisters"--White Christmas
Yet another huge and impressive brick of a book in the graphic novel univers"Sisters, sisters, There were never such devoted sisters"--White Christmas
Yet another huge and impressive brick of a book in the graphic novel universe, that has made many “best of 2025” lists that I thank Rod Brown for sharing, which he predictably (and entertainingly) loathed, and I (not surprisingly) liked a lot. Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me (2025) by Mimi Pond is the third brick I have loved by Ponds, Over Easy and The Customer is Always Wrong, two books about her waitressing at some restaurant in the SF bay area. Why read two books about a restaurant?! Easy: Ponds is hilarious and a terrifically talented cartoonist.
Do Admit (which is a phrase the Mitford girls say) is also entertaining, in a kind of continuous train wreck kinda way--many of the people in this rich Brit Mit family are despicable, but it is to her credit that she makes of them a generally “affectionate” satire, as Ponds’ favorite (and the most famous, maybe?) Mitford sister, Nancy, also did in writing semi-autobiographical novels about her family.
The Mitford family was well known for various reasons in the twentieth century, and Ponds writes her own interest into the tale, why a working class girl might be fascinated (as many of us still are about Hollywood and rock music rich ‘n’ famous figures) with a rich Brit fam..Nancy Mitford was the best known, the author of several well known comic sendups of her fellow rich Brits; Jessica was a Communist or what might today be called in the US a democratic socialist, having worked against Franco and spoken up against the House Un-American Committee and written the send-up of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death, which I must have read into if not finished at one time.
Unity and Diana were straight-up fascists, friends with Hitler himself and during the war, never apologetic about it even after the war! Despicable.. . . but you know, page turner to read about the vile sometimes.
The two less interesting: Deborah, the youngest, actually came into wealth after Daddy Deaarest lost most of their fortune. Daddy was a racist, colonialist asshole. Dad and Mom divorced over ideological differences. Pamela, who lived the longest, but what else?
This book is really impressive, well-researched, longer than it had to be at 500 pages, though I read it all pretty quickly, I’m in her age range of people who might like to get into what might now be an obscure topic. She is as witty as many of the Mitfords about it all, but also doesn’t ignore the fascism and other jaw-dropping things. I think it deserves to be on the best of the year lists, Rod--the art is terrific, more illustrated book than comics, actually, with all the information in it; took her six years to do it, but as with any book, she manages to make the sisters interesting with all their letters and nicknames and politics and sex scandals (and oh, there was a brother, too!). Very deliciously dishy at some points.
Reminds me of Capote’s Women, the rich white women he befriended and then turned on to write a dishy book, who then turned on him. Eh. But then, it has its appeal, the roasting of the rich. And a bit like the Royal Tenenbaums. But also, relevant to our Present Moment, with Musk and the rest of the billionaire class of oligarchs and fascists that millions seem to adore or at least be fascinated with. ...more
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