November 2024 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the November 2024 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I’ve read and rank them from worst to best.
This month’s round-up is a bit delayed because I was busy studying for and taking finals. Thanks to audiobooks, however, I was still able to get through a number of excellent books this month, including a bunch of much-talked about 2024 releases. And, as the end of the year approaches and best-of lists abound, stay tuned for my own, which will be coming soon in two installments: silver-medalist runners-up and a gold-medalist list of my favorite reads this year. Until then, happy reading!
10. Temples of Delight - Barbara Trapido
Fiction, 358 pages
Alice met Jem when she appeared, unannounced, in the middle of class at an all-girls religious school in the British suburbs. Alice is immediately infatuated with the new arrival, who spins fabulous tales about her family, has a complex vocabulary and literary life, and seems the image of sophistication. When she turns 16 and fails to win a scholarship that would allow her to stay at the school, Jem is forced to leave. Although she promises to write, she never does, and Alice is never able to fully move on. Alice enrolls at Oxford, meets a man who she never quite loves, and then gets in a car accident that reshapes her future. It’s been years since she’s seen Jem when she meets Giovanni, the American publisher of a book written by Jem, that ultimately leads her back to her friend and into situations unknown.
I read Barbara Trapido’s book, Brother of the More Famous Jack, back in January and was enamored by her quick-witted, detailed style of writing. Relatively unknown in the U.S., I felt like I had discovered a hidden gem. Temples of Delight, however, was a bit of a letdown. The story felt too expansive and, as a result, massively unbelievable. The best quality of Brother of the More Famous Jack was Trapido’s ability to write wonderfully fulsome characters out of the smallest details. While the trappings of the same existed here, I just wasn’t convinced by the plot decisions that Trapido made. I’m not ready to give up on Trapido, but I wouldn’t recommend you enter her oeuvre here.
Rating: 7/10
9. Long Island - Colm Tóibín
Historical Fiction, 304 pages
Long Island is the long-awaited sequel to Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn, which follows a young Irish immigrant to the United States in the 1950s who falls in love with an Italian-American man. Long Island begins in the spring of 1976. Eilis Lacey is now in her forties, has two children, and is still married to Tony. They live in a cul-de-sac on, you guessed it, Long Island, next to everyone in Tony’s large, Italian family. One day, Eilis answers the door to a man who informs her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child, and that when the baby is born, he is going to bring the baby to her to be raised. Eilis wants nothing to do with the baby and feels betrayed not just by her husband, but also by his family who begin to prepare for the child with open arms. Determined to take a stand and feeling untethered from her roots, Eilis decides to go back to Ireland to visit her mother for the first time since she left. She returns to her hometown as she left it; except now, her former-best friend Nancy is engaged to her one-time love, Jim. Over the course of the summer Eilis must decide if she should return to her family and her husband’s baby on Long Island or remain in the town that she once tried to leave behind. I thought this book was a perfectly lovely sequel to a book that I enjoyed when I read it a decade ago. It doesn’t do anything innovative and likely won’t stick with me, but it was a satisfying read during the time that I spent with it.
Rating: 8/10
8. The Safekeep - Yael van der Wouden
Historical Fiction, 272 pages
Isabel lives alone in the Dutch countryside in a home acquired by her uncle in the early 1940s. It’s 1961, and as a single woman in her early thirties, Isabel lives a spinster life set in routine. When her brother Louis brings his newest girlfriend, Eva, to stay at the home while he goes on a prolonged business trip, Isabel is far from pleased. Eva is instantly disruptive to Isabel’s way of life, insistent that she stay in Isabel’s late-mother’s bedroom, touching things Isabel doesn’t want her to, and asking questions that Isabel can’t answer. She can’t prove it, but when small items start to go missing, Isabel is sure Eva is to blame. Then, suddenly, the tension between them becomes sexual, and the two begin a passionate affair marred by shame and foreboding. Their intimacy, however, causes Eva to let her guard down and the true motives for her presence are revealed. The Safekeep was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and has some ardent fans. I thought it was good, not great, and that the second half, when the reason for Eva’s presence is explained, was much better than the first. Once the mystery was revealed, I struggled to square the behavior in the first half with the second, which ultimately made for a bit of a let down of a reading experience.
Rating: 8/10
7. Splinters - Leslie Jamison
Non-Fiction/Memoir, 272 pages
In this memoir, Leslie Jamison writes about the birth of her daughter and the simultaneous breakdown of her marriage. She examines her career as a writer and professor while also struggling to raise an infant, co-parent with a person who refuses to speak to her, and, later, attempting to date again. It is clear that Jamison, a professor of nonfiction at Columbia and contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, chose every word for a reason. Indeed, Splinters is worth reading for the sentence-level writing alone. I took in this memoir in what I think is the ideal format: listening to the author read the story herself.
Rating: 8/10
6. Headshot - Rita Bullwinkel
Fiction, 224 pages
Eight teenage girl boxers arrive at Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada to compete in a championship tournament. There is no prize for winning and no accompanying prestige outside of the gym. None of the girls will go on to be professionals. Other than the teenagers, no one really wants to be there. The coaches are looking forward to visiting the casinos when the competition is over, and the parents, if they came, don’t fully understand why their daughters have chosen this sport. For the girls, however, this competition is everything. The tournament is bracket style, with head-to-head matchups that will ultimately lead to a final round and a victor. Each round is a vignette told through the perspective of the competitors, and through this lens, readers are introduced to the competitor’s hopes and fears, pasts and futures, and in-the-moment competitive assessments. The form of the book is creative and the rhythm of the writing is meant to mirror the rhythm of the sport. While I appreciate what Bullwinkel was doing, I found the repetition to be a bit overworked. Otherwise, this is an impressive debut and a great example of how a unique structure can be used to tell a story.
Rating: 8/10
5. The God of the Woods - Liz Moore
Mystery, 476 pages
It’s August 1975. A child goes missing from her bunk at Camp Emerson, a sleep-away camp in the Adirondacks for children of the elite. A missing camper would be cause for concern in any situation, but particularly here, given that the missing child is Barbara Van Laar, the daughter of the wealthy family that owns the camp. The Van Laars have been through this before. Nearly fifteen years earlier their son also went missing, never to be found again. When the police arrive they’re confused by what they find: the family isn’t particularly concerned and the staff isn’t speaking. Told from the perspectives of a rotating cast of characters, from the camp counselors, to the family members, to the detectives, The God of the Woods is a thriller, a creepy mystery, and a story about the influence of wealth and power in one small town.
This book has been all the rage since it was published over the summer, and I can definitely see why. Moore’s chapters are short enough that I needed to keep going and see what was coming next at the end of each one. I was also drawn in by the speed with which she cycles through character perspectives, all of whom she writes believably and with just enough backstory to keep interesting. I was ultimately a little disappointed with the end reveal because I thought she used a few too many red herrings than necessary, but I don’t regret reading it. I pretty rarely find myself reading for more than an hour at a time, unable to put a book down, but as soon as I saw that there was only 100 pages left I parked myself on the couch and raced through to get to the end. If that’s not the sign of a satisfying reading experience, I don’t know what is.
Rating: 8.5/10
4. The Wedding People - Alison Espach
Fiction, 363 pages
Phoebe Stone checks into the Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island ready to die. She has booked her hotel room for only one night with the intention of having a nice dinner and then committing suicide. When she arrives, however, she realizes the hotel has made a mistake. Every other guest checking in is there for a weeklong wedding celebration. The bride, who has meticulously planned every detail of her week, is perturbed by the presence of Phoebe, and even more perturbed when she learns of her plan. Motivated more by a desire for her wedding to go well than by any concern for Phoebe, the bride manages to talk Phoebe off the ledge. What follows is an unexpected week filled with family drama, humor, and healing in this delightfully heart-warming book.
Rating: 8.5/10
3. The Husbands - Holly Gramazio
Fiction, 352 pages
When Lauren gets home to her apartment in London, she’s greeted at the door by Michael, a man who claims to be her husband. She’s freaked out; Lauren’s not married and has never seen Michael before in her life. When she looks at her phone, however, she sees photos of the two of them going back years, including wedding photos. Her friends know Michael and love him. Lauren has no idea what is going on. The next day, Michael heads up into the attic to change a lightbulb, but the man who comes down the ladder isn’t Michael. It’s someone new and he also claims to be married to Lauren. The decor in her apartment is slightly different, her job has changed, but her friends and family recognize him and the evidence on her phone proves, yet again, that she is indeed married to this man. Testing a theory, Lauren asks the man to go into the attic to grab a box. When he starts to descend the ladder, it’s someone new again. Lauren suddenly realizes that she has infinite lives in front of her. If she doesn’t like the man, or the situation, or the cards she’s been dealt in this life, she can simply send the husband back into the attic and a new future will emerge. All the choosing, however, forces Lauren to reckon with what it is she wants from life. When should she settle and when should she keep trying for more?
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this book when I started to listen, but was ultimately very impressed by its wit and creativity. The concept could have been goofy in the hands of a lesser writer, but Gramazio commits fully to the concept and the larger questions posed by the premise, leaving a nuanced and entertaining book in her wake.
Rating: 8.5/10
2. Colored Television - Danzy Senna
Fiction, 276 pages
Jane is a mixed-race writer who has been writing a novel for the past decade about the mixed-race experience in America; a novel that she believes is a prize-winning magnum opus. When her agent and editor read the manuscript and recommend that she try something different, the monumental rejection is just the cherry on top of a series of life disappointments. Jane’s currently living in her friend’s fancy Los Angeles home for the year with her husband Lenny, a painter, and two children. They’ve never owned a home of their own and bounce from one short-term rental to the next while Jane awaits her big break. Fed up with the situation, Jane cons her way into a meeting with a producer who has just signed a massive deal with a streaming service to develop “diverse content.” She’s desperate to make this new gig work but never able to find her footing. The result is a comedy of errors, a biting satire, and a sharp social commentary. Also, fun fact, Danzy Senna is married to Percival Everett who just won the National Book Award for his excellent novel, James.
Rating: 9/10
1. All Fours - Miranda July
Fiction, 336 pages
All Fours feels like it might be the most quietly talked about novel of the season. Shortlisted for the National Book Award, the book rocketed onto the scene for its frank discussion of perimenopause, sexuality, and middle-aged womanhood. In it, a semi-famous artist (resembling Miranda July) decides to drive across the country in pursuit of self-growth and personal development. She carefully plans her route and nervously sets out. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child, she decides to stop for gas and get lunch. She will not be driving cross-country after all. During that brief break she meets a man named Davey, checks into a motel, employs Davey’s wife to completely redesign the motel room into a luxury escape, and then, once the remodel is finished, begins an extremely explicit affair with Davey. Note: the whole book is explicit, so if that’s not your cup of tea this isn’t the book for you. When the time allotted for the road trip is up she returns home trapped within the lie she’s telling her family about the past few weeks and the internal awakening she believes she’s had.
I listened to this book, which is narrated by July, and think it’s the only way I was able to enjoy this book in the way I did. July puts on a performance and adds meaningful intonation to sentences and dialogue, some of which I probably would have disregarded as unconvincing if I was just reading the words on the page. The performance aspect is also all-encompassing, which allowed me, as the reader, to buy into a story about a woman who, as Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times aptly wrote, shows “indifference to any current affairs but her own.” I was bothered not just by her seeming disconnect to the wider world and her position of extreme privilege within it, but also with the way she used the people around her. This included her best friend Jordy, whose only purpose seemed to be to support the narrator through her many problems. Despite all of this, or maybe just putting these critiques aside, I was totally enraptured by this book and its absurdity, quirkiness, honesty, and unique voice.
Rating: 9.5/10
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Want to see past months’ round ups? You can find those here. You can also check out my most recent posts below.
