With every major move comes a weeding of books: a pile for the Little Free Library; another for a local charity; recent titles for your favourite library; and the “keeper” pile – the books you cannot bring yourself to part with. For booklovers, a book in the keeper pile is a treasure, even if your recollection of the story is vague and you may never read it a second time. What is hard to give up is the feeling that the book left you with when you closed the covers.
I recently went through this exercise for the fourth time in about twenty (20) years. With as little sentimentality as I could manage, I reasoned, I reconsidered and I rationed. In the end, most of the books that made it into the keeper pile during the three previous culls were given the honour again. Having earned that distinction, they warrant sharing with fellow book lovers.
For the purposes of this blog, I have pared down the older titles and added a few more-recent favourites. I have also included two books that are not in the SDG Library collection as incentive for patrons to use our Interlibrary Loan system, which provides access to libraries across Ontario. If you haven't yet explored it, I encourage you to do so. Meantime, here is my curated list in alphabetical order:
Atonement: a 2001 novel by Ian McEwan, widely regarded as one of his best works. It opens in 1935 England, carries through the Second World War and takes us to 21st-century England. It’s a story about a girl’s childish mistake, which ruins lives, her adult life in the face of that mistake and her attempt at atonement through her writing. I love Ian McEwan’s novels, and this one is my favourite.
A Fine Balance: a 1995 novel by Rohinton Mistry. This internationally acclaimed bestseller is set in India in the 1970s. It tells the story of four strangers whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil and whose fates become inextricably linked. The book offers readers chilling glimpses at wretched poverty, the caste system, political corruption and the struggles of marginalized people. And it does so without ever losing sight of the characters’ resilience and humanity.
All We Leave Behind: a 2017 memoir by Canadian journalist Carol Off. This is a brave portrayal of a journalist who crosses the line that separates a reporter from the story. Readers first meet her as a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan for CBC-TV following 9/11. She finds a brave source who is willing to reveal on-camera a story that will endanger himself and his family. She transitions to the role of a friend when her source and his family make perilous attempts to immigrate to Canada. Quill and Quire has described the book as a “fascinating tale about how one reporter’s request turns an extraordinary family’s life upside down, combined with a cogent examination of her own attempt to hold on to her humanity.” Off's story is honest, caring, reflective and deeply moving.
Disgrace: a 1999 novel by South African writer J.M. Coetzee, which was awarded Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize. Coetzee is known for writing with moral and philosophical depth and exploring themes of colonialism, identity, power and human suffering. Without question, he was true to his style in Disgrace. His main character, a flawed white South African professor, faces questions of privilege, desire, misogyny and racism in post-Apartheid South Africa, and he fails miserably at addressing them with sufficient feeling and recognition. There were moments when he evoked fury, loathing and bewilderment in me. Reading Disgrace in the present day might have a heightened effect, and the response might be different still, depending on the reader’s age, status and gender. For me, it provided the rare experience of loving a book for its stunning writing and brave exploration of complex moral questions while viscerally disliking the central character. The mastery of creating this juxtaposition is perhaps what makes Coetzee one of the most influential authors of contemporary literature.
Disgrace is well worth waiting for through the Interlibrary Loan system. While waiting, you might want to watch the 2010 film version, which is available in the SDG Library collection.
Five Little Indians: a 2020 novel by Michelle Good, a Cree Canadian whose previous career was practicing law and advocating for survivors of the residential school system. The novel focuses on five fictional survivors, most of them thrust out of residential school when they turned 16. They were unforgivably dumped in Downtown Vancouver with their wits, their traumas and a few dollars in their pockets. Although fictional, the characters are based on real-life survivors. Good tells their stories with such truth and tenderness that we feel immense compassion for them, no matter how “broken” they may become, and we will them to find a way forward.
Lullabies for Little Criminals: a 2006 novel by Canadian author Heather O’Neill. This debut novel was celebrated with numerous prestigious writing awards, it won the 2007 Canada Reads competition and became an international bestseller – all deservedly so. O’Neill tells the story of a motherless 13-year-old, Baby, whose father was just 15 when she was born. In some ways, the two are best friends and look out for each other. Mind you, Jules can’t escape his heroin addiction, and Baby is the more responsible of the two. By age 13, she is out on the grittiest streets of Montreal. Taken in by a local pimp, she falls into a life that we cannot bear for this spirited child. O’Neill tells this story without “a trace of self-pity or bathos,” as one reviewer has put it. The book is as funny as it is heartbreaking. I enjoyed O’Neill’s next two books, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night (2014) and Daydreams of Angels (2015), just as much, but Lullabies’ position as a debut novel makes it extraordinary.
Olive Kitteridge: a 2008 collection of related short stories by acclaimed American writer Elizabeth Strout. The main character is a characterful retired schoolteacher – crusty on the surface but a sentimental softie at heart. She is just SO human that she reminds us of our own imperfections. We want to scold her when she gets it wrong and hug her when she hurts. If you read Olive Kitteridge, chances are you won't be able to resist the 2019 sequel Olive, Again.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: a debut novel by Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, published in 2019. The book has been described as both a memoir and a book-length poem. Written in the form of a letter to his mother, it's a futile attempt to help his mother understand him – futile because she cannot read. The publisher describes the book as a "brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity ... as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard." The novel is sexually graphic at times, describing the main character’s coming of age with another young man, but it is written with great sensitivity. Some passages are so beautiful, so poignant, they take your breath away.
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit: the 1985 semi-autobiographical debut novel by Jeanette Winterson, who is considered one of the most original voices in British fiction to emerge in the 1980s. She was born in Manchester, England in 1959 and adopted as a baby by evangelicals. Her mother was a maniacal Pentecostal Christian, and her father, who is very much in the background of the story, goes along with it, perhaps to keep the peace. In the novel, as in Jeanette’s life, the mother attempts to instill her own extreme religious views in her daughter and keeps her as far away as possible from all outside influences, including school. When Jeanette becomes attracted to another girl, the mother and her religious friends subject both girls to a form of exorcism. What transpires is dark, but not without lighter moments. And the female characters have depth. The book is described as warm, kind and often funny and as much about growing up in northern England in the 60s and 70s as it is about sexuality and religion. (Available at the SDG Library as an e-book.)
Out Stealing Horses: a 2003 novel by Norwegian author Per Petterson, translated into English in 2005. It begins at its end, when the main character, an aged Trond, looks back to a fateful summer in 1948, when he was 15, and certain unexpected events forever altered his life. What I remember most about the book is the portrayal of a boy’s love for his father. The book cover describes the novel as a “poignant and moving tale of a changing perspective on the world, from youthful innocence to the difficult acceptance of betrayal, and of nostalgia for a simpler way of life.” A review in the Irish Times described it as a “very special miracle of a book.” In reflecting on my experience with the novel, that’s how I remember it as well, and it’s now on my bedside table for a re-read. As with Disgrace, this novel is well worth ordering through interlibrary loan.
The Overstory: a 2018 novel by Richard Powers, who won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this sweeping depiction of environmental activism and the intriguing workings of the natural world. It is also a gift of extraordinary storytelling. The publisher writes: “There is a world alongside ours – vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.” For me, the book changed my experience of a walk in the forest. It instilled in me a heightened sense of reverence and marvel for the natural world and a deeper understanding of those who dedicate their lives to saving the planet from ourselves.
The Shipping News: a 1993 novel by Annie Proulx, who won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this original, darkly comical and heartwarming story. It’s set in a rugged coastal town in Newfoundland, the main character’s ancestral home. Quoyle returns home with his two daughters after a sad and pathetic end to his marriage and his wife’s life. The novel’s rich cast of quirky characters has a part in his struggle to reclaim his life. The book cover describes the story this way: “As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons – and the unpredictable forces of nature and society – and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.” Throughout this transformation, readers will cheer him on.
The Year of Magical Thinking: a 2005 memoir by the late Joan Didion about the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne in 2003 and the near-death of their daughter Quintana. A renowned journalist, essayist and novelist, Didion was a pioneer of New Journalism, also known as literary journalism. My first introduction to her was in journalism school, more than 25 years ago. In awe of her writing style, I carefully studied her rhythm, her structure and her use of repetition. Her brilliance is no less evident in this memoir, even as she writes about grief. She described The Year of Magical Thinking as her attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness … about marriage and children and memory … about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.” She was able to convey her thoughts and feelings without the sentimentality that one might expect in a book about heartbreak. She gives us the facts and, oh my goodness, they are unforgettable.
West With the Night: a 1942 memoir by Beryl Markham, which got the attention it deserved when it was reissued in 1983. Markham was a British expat who moved to East Africa as a child in the early 1900s. She followed her father’s path as a horse trainer and breeder before becoming a bush pilot. She was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic eastbound against the prevailing winds, and her journey is described in the memoir. The best review I have read about it is on the back cover. In a letter to a fellow writer, Ernest Hemingway writes: “She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen.”
As an aside, West With the Night is my original keeper, apart from a small collection of childhood books (which I have kept as much for their illustrations and the little signature so carefully written in cursive letters at the top right of each title page). I have two copies of West With the Night on my bookshelf, lest I lend one to someone who also considers it a keeper. As another side note, Markham was portrayed as a character, Felicity, in the film Out of Africa. In real life, Markham was friends with Karen Blixen, who wrote the memoir upon which that film is loosely based (the book version is also worthy of keeper status).
And this ends my current list of the best-of-the-best on my bookshelves. Please share your keepers below in the comments section and introduce other patrons to books and authors they might otherwise never know.
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