11. ‘…Nothing like grief, just grief.’
I hate to start this letter like this, and I really would love to be less predictable, but can someone please tell me how we are already in the month of May?
It’s as though I blinked and April and Ramadan were over and I cannot tell you what happened to them. Still, I hope April was good to you, I hope your Ramadan was exactly what you needed it to be and, if you celebrated, I hope you had a wonderful Eid, too.
After I shared my last letter I received an unexpected and incredibly touching message. I won’t share it in its entirety here but this part struck me:
“I just spent a train ride home on my phone reading your latest newsletter and kind of zoned out from everything around me. I have just lost my dear grandfather two weeks ago and it feels like a year and just a day ago at the same time. Reading your paragraphs about your mother and brother-in-law just hit hard and also softened my heart a little bit…”
I don’t speak about grief and, more specifically, what it means (to me) to grieve, anywhere near as much as I could. Part of the reason is that, rightly or wrongly, I simply don’t want to but I suspect it’s also because I’m never quite sure how it’ll be received. Grieving is hard work and feigning normality sometimes feels easier but, as with so many things, the easiest way isn’t always the best way.
I started this month revisiting a book I loved but found myself unable to speak about when I first read it last year. I share many of the books I read publicly, but not all of them. Sometimes I just don’t think a book is good enough, other books I might have enjoyed but have little to say about, sometimes I’m just too lazy to figure out what I want to say and then there are the books that grab something within me so very hard that I cannot share them for fear of revealing more than I care to about myself and my own feelings, and this was most certainly the case with Obit by Victoria Chang.
“Similes– died on August 3, 2015. There was nothing like death, just death. Nothing like grief, just grief. How the shadow of a chain-link fence can look like fish scales but never be…”
In the way of the obituary, many of the poems in the collection begin with an announcement of a death: the death of a person, a feeling, an object. Her mother died, her father died, language died, memory died, hope died… Victoria herself died. These deaths- some relating to the loss of a life, others signifying that someone or something that once was no longer is- are life-altering.
When Victoria Chang wrote that ‘to acknowledge death is to acknowledge that we must take on another shape’, I see this as one way of saying what I’ve long been feeling: to lose those you love is to lose whoever you were before that moment. You cannot be completely shattered and expect no cracks to show when you finally gather the strength required to piece yourself back together, no gaping holes in place of the pieces the one/s you loved took with them.
In almost all ways, I am simply not the same and I tell myself this often because I still need to hear it; I write it here just in case you find yourself in the process of painfully shaping yourself anew and you need to hear it, too.
I appreciated the message because it was a reminder that in sharing what we can, perhaps the door we’ve just walked through remains open to those coming up behind us, to the newly bereaved, to those yet to experience (their version of) what we have, to those totally unsure of what they might find in the darkness ahead. Perhaps, in sharing our experiences we might light the way even a little.
Obit, too, does this in its own way. It isn’t a collection for those who are grieving; like any other collection, I think it can be appreciated by anyone, however, I do think it contains something extra for those of us who know all too well what Chang meant when she said:
There was nothing like death, just death. Nothing like grief, just grief.
Onto the Books
I just posted my April reading wrap up over on Instagram and no one was more stunned than I was about just how much I read in April but, beyond quantity, the quality of the books I read last month was quite spectacular. Just genuinely good literature (for the most part).
I’m going to share just a few of the titles because there’s just no need to share all thirteen but some are most certainly worth your attention.
New Favourites
I use the word ‘favourite’ sparingly, consciously, and hesitatingly. I also reserve the right to change my mind at any given moment but, for now, these are the ones I’m adding to the caveat-free recommendations roster.
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel (tr by Rosalind Harvey). This book I loved and I welcomed the announcement that it has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Two friends, Laura and Alina determined that they don’t want children. Laura commits to this decision by choosing to undergo surgical sterilisation, whereas Alina changes her mind and sets out to do whatever she can to get pregnant. What follows is a story of motherhood in all its guises and the associated complexities. It is also a book full of the kinds of love which hold firm, ready to deliver when they‘re needed most.
A Horse at Night: On Writing by Amina Cain. This was a truly delightful reading experience, more-so having read Cain’s novel, Indelicacy earlier in the year. Reading A Horse at Night felt a little getting a peek behind the scenes, an intimate understanding of Cain’s process but also her relationship with literature and the specific works that have grabbed her attention and impacted her in some way. I’m very concerned with how books make me feel and I love when people talk about the ways in which the offerings of the world’s creatives- whether words, paintings, music or other- open our eyes and our hearts to possibilities beyond those we’ve so far imagined for ourselves. If this is you, too, you’ll want to read this book.
Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan. When it comes to short form, I think Claire Keegan is quite the master. Like so many, I fell for Small Things Like These back in 2021; in December 2022 I read Foster and to this day that final scene has the power to move me. Walk the Blue Fields is just a quietly striking collection of stories and I now I’m quite concerned about the fact that I now only have one more of Keegan’s published works left to read. Antarctica is being reissued later this month, along with an updated edition of Walk the Blue Fields so if you’re all about the complimentary editions, you might want to wait for those but I’d highly recommend just getting your hands on them however you can.
Silence Is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar. I’m not sure why but Layla AlAmmar’s novels always seem to fly under the radar and I think it’s inexcusable. This, her second offering, is a story about war and displacement and the perilous search for safety faced by far too many. The protagonist is a young woman who fled Syria for the UK, where the journey, and all that she suffered before and during, has left her so traumatised that she cannot speak, even as what she witnesses demands that she does. This book is also a perfect example of how to depict violence and the associated trauma in a way that isn’t gratuitous or overly descriptive and without lessening the desired impact.
At the start of the year I shared my most anticipated 2023 releases and I wanted to update you as and when I read them, even if the reading experience isn’t what I hoped it would be. The Mountains Sing is a book I loved when I read it a couple of years ago and I welcomed the news of Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s sophomore offering, Dust Child, however, no one is more surprised than I that, in the end, it fell a little flat. It has generally been very well-received with five-star reviews all over the shop but I think the combination of multiple perspectives, not all of whom were as fleshed out as I’d have loved to see, as well as the absence of perspectives I would’ve appreciated hearing more from, and an ending that was too neat for my tastes means that I didn’t love it like I hoped I would. It is not a bad read, not at all, and if you read it and love it no one could hold that against you, it just wasn’t a particularly satisfying or memorable one for me.
Books on My Radar
I recently picked up River Spirit by Leila Aboulela, which was also on my list of most anticipated 2023 reads. It was published back in March but I wanted to buy it only when I was in the mood to read it straight away. I read about twenty pages before I’d even left the bookshop and I’m now almost half-way through so hopefully by my next letter I’ll be able to share some concrete thoughts on it.
The other book I picked up recently was Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe, which has all the potential to be an absolute winner. If careful explorations of the lives of Black people interest you, this might be one to look out for.
Lastly, during one of my recent bookshop wanderings I spotted Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s new novel, The Sleep Watcher. Having read her two earlier books, Harmless Like You and Starling Days, and really enjoyed them, this news excites me greatly. I love a quiet novel- one that feels pondered and insular and this one sounds like it’s offering just that. Now, these hardbacks are getting a little pricey so I’ll be getting this one only when I know I’m ready to read it and I haven’t already blown the book budget (look at me pretending I’m responsible enough to have a book budget) but I do plan to read it and I’m very much look forward to doing so.
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Keep well,
Tasnim
Tasnim, thank you for sharing these books and for your immense vulnerability. I will absolutely need to check out Victoria Chang; she's new to me. ❤️
Beautifully written Tasnim, as always ❤️