B. Morrison's Blog, page 2

Three Days in June, by Anne Tyler

I’ve been a fan of Anne Tyler’s novels from the get-go. She writes about my kind of people and the place I lived in for most of my life. I slip into her stories as though they’d been tailored just for me—and never more so than with this latest book.

Assistant head in one of those posh private schools Baltimore is known for, Gail is shocked one Friday morning when her boss discloses that she’s decided to retire, and the new head is bringing her own assistant with her. Gail’s response is to sim...

THICK and Other Essays, by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Reading this collection of essays has been like sitting down with a friend and asking, So tell me—what do you really think? Cottom draws on her academic training and her lived experience to create pieces that blur the line between sociology and personal essay. One editor said she was “too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose.”

 

If in her academic life she is chided for h...

Loitering with Intent, by Muriel Spark

We meet Fleur Talbot sitting in a graveyard in Kensington writing a poem, when a young policeman approaches her. It’s 1949. Young Fleur, eager to collect experiences that she can use in her writing, rejoices in “how wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century.” She makes friends everywhere “almost by predestination.” When the friendship pales, she says, “You didn’t think of discarding them just because you didn’t altogether like them.”

Her friend Dottie—one of many...

Earthly Joys, by Phillipa Gregory

We meet John Tradescant, gardener to Sir Robert Cecil, as he discusses the state of the gardens with his master in preparation for the visit of the new king: James I. Since Queen Elizabeth died without heirs, James—son of Mary, Queen of Scots and already King of Scotland—has ascended to the throne of England. The story is told by John himself, who is based on the real John Tradescant the Elder, the most celebrated horticulturalist and naturalist of his age.

As a gardener, John has no power in...

A Piece of the World, by Christina Baker Kline

Most people are familiar with Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. However, little has been known about Christina Olson herself aside from the fact that she had a degenerative muscular disorder that eventually made her unable to walk. Another tidbit of knowledge has been that Wyeth often painted not only Christina and her brother, but also the house on the Olson farm in the small town of Cushing, Maine.

My interest in Andrew Wyeth’s work intensified wh...

The Collected Regrets of Clover, by Mikki Brammer

Clover, a quirky, awkward, and introverted 36-year-old, is fine living alone. She observes friendships and romances in films and the uncurtained window of the apartment across the street, but she has little need of them herself. It’s too hard to explain to people that what she knows best is death—death and the dying.

At five, Clover witnessed her kindergarten teacher’s death. Then, only a year later, her parents died in an accident while on vacation while traveling, leaving her to be brought ...

How to Love Your Daughter, by Mila Blum

Translated from Hebrew by Daniella Zamir

As this short introspective novel opens, Yoella has come from Israel to Groningen in the Netherlands to stand outside her daughter Leah’s home. She does not approach the door. Instead she looks in at a window to see Leah with her husband and two children. It has been ten years since she has seen her beloved daughter, during which men would occasionally call her to say her daughter was safe but hiking in Nepal or some such place without phone connec...

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp, by Leonie Swann

There’s a body in the woodshed at Sunset Hall, Agnes’s home that she’s turned into co-housing for other elderly folks. They include Bernadette who’s blind, wheelchair-bound Winston, flighty Edwina who practices yoga and bakes impossible biscuits, and Marshall who sometimes goes off into la-la land. And of course Hettie the tortoise.

Agnes already has a lot on her plate: finding her false teeth, the occasional ringing in her ears that renders her temporarily deaf, and having to take the stairs...

Hush Hush, by Laura Lippman

I was thrilled when this twelfth book in Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series came out in 2015. I decided to save it for a moment when I really needed it, a moment that came this week. Hush Hush is everything I hoped it would be and more. Lippman is in top form, digging into the darkness of family life—and its joys too.

After the death of her baby, Melisandre Harris Dawes was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity (postpartum psychosis). She spent some time in rehab and then moved to Sout...

Faraway Tables, by Eric D. Goodman

In his first collection of poems, Goodman moves around in time and space, recalling past travels, anticipating the future, both near and far. Most of all, he pays attention to the world, noting small details as he finds meaning in seemingly ordinary moments, whether it’s making a cup of coffee or winding the clock. 

In “Relics” he and a childhood friend, newly reunited, explore Baltimore’s Museum of Industry.

Decades may have passed between us,

but our bond remains durable,

like these vestiges ...