What I read this year: part two
Geetanjali Shree 💜
🌃 The Night Alphabet (Joelle Taylor, 2024) felt like another British cousin to Carmen Maria Machado’s writing - twelve short stories, all about sexual/gender-based violence, linked by a central narrative speaker in getting themselves tattooed in a future Hackney. Beautifully written in Joelle Taylor’s signature, lyrically-saturated style, but I wasn’t convinced the ending (December Cia can’t remember this).
📖 Jane, A Murder (Maggie Nelson, 2005). Very sad - more essayistic than I’d expected. I’d love to read something putting this in conversation with Susannah Dickey’s ISDAL.
🌙 I cannot be good until you say it (Sanah Ahsan, 2024). For some reason I ended up writing my review about a month after reading this, so a bit fuzzy… Sanah’s brilliant at entering and leaving a poem, which is underrated imo. I wonder how this might have worked if it were split into 2-3 smaller pamphlets…
🥣 China Room (Sanjeev Sahota, 2021) was a quick reread to get out of a reading slump. Loved this the first time I read it, loved it again! In between I’d read this interview SS did with Kamila Shamsie, which meant I paid more attention to the structure here… apparently this is one of his weaker novels, though, so unsure if I should read them.
⏳ Tomb of Sand (Geetanjali Shree, trans. Daisy Rockwell, 2018). Possibly my favourite read of the year? I love a big juicy novel - getting to spend so long in its world, and in Rockwell’s translation, was such a treat. I loved how much fun this has with language and with undoing what a novel is, especially in a postcolonial/post-Partition context.
💄 Funny Boy (Shyam Selvadurai, 1994) was mainly because I wanted to read Gayatri Gopinath’s essay about it in Impossible Desires. I liked this but I don’t have loads to say - kind of wish I’d gotten to study and write about this critically, especially the fifth story, at uni.
🧵 Threads (Sandeep Parmar, Nisha Ramayya, Bhanu Kapil, 2018) was a last minute pre-library-return read. Kicking myself for not reading this sooner! Would have been so helpful for my diss. I’m q compelled to this conversational style of writing, so will defo return to this.
🎛️ Siblings (Mary Jean Chan, Jay Bernard, Will Harris, Nisha Ramayya, 2024). Very pleased I managed to only buy one book while working during Free Verse, and extra pleased it was this! I promised myself I would reread and then write a review, but that doesn’t seem to have happened (lol).
💤 My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh, 2018) was an indulgent audiobook reread. For some reason in my review I described in excruciating detail how I would direct the opening shots of the film adaptation (I have not written anything like this before or since???).
🐟 Piecemeal (Ahana Banerji, 2024) was a slim lunchtime pamphlet read - some lovely poems in here. Love a fish.
☔️ Private Rites (Julia Armfield, 2024) was a proof copy from a pal. Reading this confirmed my belief (from reading Our Waves Under the Sea) that JA is good at building a world, but less good at convincingly leaving it at the end—which is why her short stories are better, if you ask me. Q liked the first 2/3 of this though.
🍓 Bright Red Fruit (Safia Elhillo, 2024). Again, an overdue review! Not very on-brand for me (YA novel-in-verse), but also very on-brand (Safia Elhillo). Was surprised by how dark this is, given its YA branding… interesting to see how SE translates the themes she explores in her poetry (shame, patriarchy, girlhood, sexual violence) into a fictional character.
🌑 Food for the Dead and Ways of Healing (Charlotte Shevchenko Knight, 2024 and 2022) was an interesting pair to read back-to-back - made me think about how poems work as units in and of themselves in a pamphlet, versus as part of a greater whole in a collection. Also fun to see how CSK’s interests/voice develop between the two.
🍸 Gin & Tonic (Phoebe Stuckes, 2017) was so sad and gobliny, but really funny and great on a technical level. Love!
💭 Encyclopaedia (Chloe Elliott, 2023). Can you tell I was having a Poetry Business moment… Intrigued by CE’s decision to have quite a long sequence in such a tight space. I think it works well.