In which I wrap up April…
Things I’ve Read
The Committed, by Viet Thanh Nguyen. This was a lot of fun to read. I really enjoy the dialectic and internal conversational style of Nguyen’s narrator both here and in The Sympathiser (I sort-of assume that everyone has these kind of conversations in their heads, please don’t disabuse me of this notion), and I really enjoy writing that tangles with identity in relation to empire and colonialism, so this was a winner for me. It takes the story of The Sympathiser forward pretty effectively, though it also feels a bit like it’s going to come apart at the seams at times (this may well be the point), and deepens the complexity of its identity questions by taking the protagonist to France. In a lot of ways, I enjoyed this more than The Sympathiser, because I’m more interested in these questions in relation to Europe’s colonial histories than I am in them in the US context. A++ would recommend.
How Much of These Hills is Gold, by C. Pam Zhang. I spotted this in paperback when the bookshops reopened (yaayayayayyay, etc), and remembered that I’d put it on my list to read when it was long-listed for the Booker last year. It follows two Chinese-American immigrant children in California in the dying days of the gold rush after the death of their father, and it’s another one that tangles with identity in really rich ways. I was impressed by the way it managed to handle the balance of ‘this is what the world was like’ and showing a character’s resilience in that world, while being clear that It Was Not Good and avoiding some kind of weird abusive romanticism. The thing that I enjoyed about it most was the way it created an atmosphere of place and told the story of its characters’ relationships with that place in all its complexity. I have loved northern California when I’ve had the chance to visit, and this just made me feel like I could smell it.
Civilisations, by Laurent Binet. Binet’s first novel HHhH is, frankly, a masterpiece that he’s probably never going to surpass and we should all stop demanding that he should. His second (The Seventh Function of Language) brought me a lot of joy, but me is a person who spent three years reading Roman political discourse through Foucault, so I may be a little warped. Other people’s mileage definitely varied. This one is an alternate history in which rather than the Portuguese and Spanish conquering the Americas, the Inca Atahualpa invades Europe. I had a lot of fun with it and the way it plays with C16th European history and religion (if you don’t get a kick out of the idea that rather than trying to get a divorce out of the Pope, Henry VIII takes to the Inca religion, worships the Sun and takes multiple sides, have you even had Tudor history forced down your throat for years?) but I’m not convinced Binet really knew where he was going with it in the end — the final section is, I think, trying to interrogate the history he’s written, but it doesn’t really land. I’d also really quite like a parallel story of a fairly normal life inside the world that Atahualpa is shaping in Europe, because Civilisations left me wondering what that would be like.
Transgressive Devotion, by Natalie Wigg-Stevenson. And finally, in the theological reading category, this wonderful book which mixes systematic theology with performance art and a deep concern for the realities of devotional life when you’re a human juggling all the different bits of you (but especially, for me, who is also a person juggling academic interests and training for ordained ministry as well as trying to maintain a faith that feels alive). I found it really helped me a lot with some of the doctrinal and the ecclesial things that I’ve been getting into in the last few years, but more than that it helped me think about ways of thinking about and performing parts of my faith in ways that breath new life into it, and it’s going to be with me a while.
Things I’ve Watched
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: I enjoy weekly realise, short-season television, and Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes are two of my favourite MCU characters (Captain America: Winter Soldier is the best Marvel film, ok) - so why did I get into this more? It had it’s moments, and some smart (if occasionally confused) political commentary, but it just seemed like it was trying to do too much, and not trust two of the stronger characters (and actors who genuinely invest their characters with life) to just be and develop. But equally, it did provide me with Sam and Bucky fixing a boat, and that was joyful.
In the pile for next month
The TBR pile is now threatening to fall over and crush me in my sleep… It includes Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom, Edmund de Waal’s Letters to Camondo, Torrey Peter’s Detransition, Baby, Robert Jones Jr’s The Prophets, and Michaela’ Wrong’s Do Not Disturb (for when I want a little light reading about the state of Rwanda…) Away from reading, I’m determined to try and watch Nomadland - but mostly May features a lot of revision, so all bets are off, really.
A photo from last month
We went to the beach for a day trip in the Easter vac, and it was wonderful.
