Laurie Lico Albanese, author of two novels and a memoir, including Stolen Beauty, shared with us the books she is reading now to help her understand the current situation.
“Outside my window the sun is shining and families are walking together. It’s lunchtime and my inbox is filled with friends’ and students’ chatter about the books we’re reading, writing and thinking about today – day 10, 11 or 12 of our stay-in-place quarantines.
“Since anxiety interrupts our attention, short pieces have filled me with relief and distraction. I’m finding myself revisiting Elizabeth Strout’s collections, particularly Anything is Possible and Olive, Again. Strout’s deceptively simple prose always startles me with its clarity, and Olive Kitteridge’s blunt and clear-eyed assessment of life’s pitfalls – and her own failings – feels right for today. When we’re faced with the truth of our depths and limitations we might find ourselves right beside Olive – who often seems to be experiencing disappointment, hope, and the balm of forgiving love in a single moment.
“Alain de Botton’s NYT essay “Camus on the Coronavirus” prompted me to pull out my well-worn Camus and revisit his very short essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” The last line – “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” – has always comforted me. I guess you’ll have to read it to find out why.
“Novels are my preferred reading experience, now and always, for the transportive and sustained immersion in another life and consciousness. For that, I’m feeling the beauty of two fairly recent novels:
- The Dutch House – Ann Patchett’s new novel is a stunning tale of how family shapes us for better and for worse. The love that our narrator Danny feels for his sister Maeve, and the abandonment they live through alone and together, helped me recognize that today’s corona isolation is simply putting into stark relief the fact that each of us is always, ultimately, facing life alone and yet inexorably linked to one another.
- The Water Dancer – Ta-Nehisi Coates’ first novel folds all the pain and wisdom of his memoir Between the World and Me into a first-person fictional narrative that has the power and resonance of myth. I’ve been returning to this story and urging my students to study how Coates infuses this work of historical fiction with the depths of his contemporary awareness and knowledge yet never falls into anachronism or breaks the fourth wall.”
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