Here are my final reads of the year—I whizzed through these last five books to boost my count up to 48, or roughly one per week, almost at my pre-new-job counts of previous years.
Always and Forever, Rose Tremain
Tremain’s slim volume follow the life of a teenage girl who finds it difficult to move past her first love; indeed, even well into her marriage she is plagued by thoughts of him and what-ifs. After seeing him again at her mother’s funeral, she decides to go to his childhood home to speak to him, but instead has an altering conversation with his mother, which will hopefully help her to move on, as she is also facing the end of her marriage and is thus at a crossroads. Tremain, who won the Women’s Prize in 2008 for her novel The Road Home, is known for writing each of her novels as their own journey, and though Always and Forever is short and stylistically simple, it still falls neatly into that category.
Milk and Honey, Rupi Kaur
Yes, I have finally read Milk and Honey, the compilation of Kaur’s famed short poems, some only one or two lines and others the length of a couple of pages. The book is divided into three sections, “The Hurting,” “The Loving,” and “The Healing” and speak of falling in love, heartbreak, childhood trauma, and female solidarity with her characteristic brevity, which is, at the same time, often filled with depth. This is a volume I wish I had read in my 20s, as it seems perfect for those years which are filled with the ups and downs of dating when you think it’s love when it’s actually not, and the hurt that accumulates from it. For example, “she was a rose / in the hands of those / who had no intention / of keeping her” or “my tongue is sour / from the hunger of / missing you”. Or this, which anyone faced with the looming judgment of the patriarchy could use: “the next time he / points out the / hair on your legs is / growing back remind / that boy your body / is not his home / he is a guest / warn him to / never outstep / his welcome / again”.
The Wideacre trilogy, Wideacre, The Favored Child, and Meridon, Philippa Gregory
As I came back from getting married and three weeks in Indonesia, faced with the end of the year, I needed some easy reading, and I thought this trilogy by Philippa Gregory would do the trick. Although most of her books are characteristically long (500+ pages) her narrative style sweeps the reader in and carries them along swiftly, and the Wideacre books were no exception. Wideacre follows Beatrice, who loves the land her father owns more than anything. When she realizes that no matter what she does, she can never own it, she goes to fatal lengths to ensure that her children, boy or girl, will be the ones to inherit it. In the next book, raised as cousins, her daughter Julia struggles to live with her son Richard, who is manipulative and tries to control her. And finally, Meridon follows Julia’s daughter as she realizes who she is and tries to get back what is hers. What I love about Gregory’s historical novels is not only the depth of her characters (the women!) but also their realization of how men, and the patriarchy, rule their lives, and what they do to get around it. Some, like Beatrice try to plow right through, without regard for the consequences, and others, like Julia, try to play by following the rules and outwit them from within. And not to mention that the portrayal of female pleasure is a constant undertone, which is also highly appreciated.