The Groves of Academe, Mary McCarthy
This is the first novel I have read of McCarthy’s who was prolific in the 1950s, and after reading the first chapter, I had to do a Google search to see if Netflix’s series The Chair (starring Sandra Oh) was not in fact based on this book. Alas, it was not, but the similarities run uncannily deep: Henry is a professor who has recently been given a letter of dismissal, and he is convinced that everyone in the university—the other literature department professors, the president, even the students—wants to see his downfall, and sets out to persuade them all that he deserves to stay, telling all manner of lies to get them on board. There is a lot of context I certainly missed out on while reading this novel, considering that it is set in the era of McCarthyism and the Communist scare, as well as the fact that McCarthy chose to make one of the main characters a visiting lecturer from Russia, among other small details and turns of phrase that I could have spent ages Googling. On my short list for this year’s final books is another of her novels, so we will see how they compare.
The Book of Colour, Julia Blackburn
The Book of Colour is a journey through the author’s ancestry, starting in the Seychelles with her great-grandfather and grandfather, and ending in Mauritius. She tells the story of how she came to be with fantastical details and magical realism tied in with South Asian and African folklore to create a colorful portrait that is, at the same time, painful and melancholy and yet full of vibrant life, vivid in its intensity. That the female figures in her life play such a minor role in her story is its only downfall. With only slight mentions of her great-grandmother and mother, the reader is left with knowledge of only her grandmother, who was struck with a curse meant for her grandfather and spent the rest of her life in the hospital because of it. And again, little is actually made of this. However, through her descriptions of her great-grandfather’s and grandfather’s lives, one can see not only the trauma they suffered, but also the trauma they thus inflicted on their own children, and the author leaves readers with the hope that by acknowledging it, the healing process can begin. Blackburn’s memoir was short listed for the Women’s Prize in its inaugural year.