Month in Review: May 2025

What I read this month

Every Good Boy Does Fine by Jeremy Denk Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – Reread for Reading Austen 2025 The Showings by Julian of Norwich, translated by Mirabai Starr Any Human Heart by William Boyd Show Boat by Edna Ferber Booth by Karen Joy Fowler Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer“But He Doesn’t Know the Territory” and And There I Stood with my Piccolo by Meredith WillsonReading the Theatre continues

After getting started with Judi Dench last month, I could not seem to stop reading books set in or about stage productions, and came across a couple of good ones.

A 2016 London revival of Show Boat

Show Boat by Edna Ferber, basis for the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, offered a colorful look at the vanished world of floating entertainment on the Mississippi shortly after the Civil War. A dated novel in many ways, but still effective storytelling, I found.

I also enjoyed Karen Joy Fowler’s Booth, about a strange and haunted group of siblings, one of whom was a great actor while another shot Abraham Lincoln. Fowler’s contemporary fantasia on historical themes goes more deeply than Ferber’s novel into the racial injustice woven into American culture, considering the differing attitudes that split the family.

Meredith Willson leading the band celebrating The Music Man’s premiere

In a moment of Book Serendipity, I next read two books by Meredith Willson, in one of which he mentions that he briefly worked on a radio show called “Hollywood Show Boat”; he also mentions the Booth Theater in New York. In case you don’t know, Willson also wrote the book, lyrics, and music for The Music Man, an iconic American musical, and if you have not seen it, you should.

Reading about its origins in But He Doesn’t Know the Territory fascinated me—the persistence of Willson and everyone involved was astonishing, and it was interesting to learn how his use of speech-rhythm-as-music developed. I also enjoyed Willson’s reminiscences about his Iowa upbringing and early career in And There I Stood with my Piccolo. I’m surprised I’d never heard of these delightful books, so thanks to the University of Minnesota press for reprinting them.

A disappointment

Any Human Heart by William Boyd sounded terrific — a “whole-life” novel of a man who spent stints as a spy and an art dealer, in the form of his intimate diary. I expected something Robertson Davies-esque, but instead it was like an Adrian Mole diary that went on for far too long and included too many disgusting sex scenes and absurd meetings with real-life famous people (Picasso, Hemingway, etc.).

Fake artwork by “Nat Tate”; read more about it here

The latter were mixed in with made-up famous people, including one artist, Nat Tate, around which Boyd had formerly created an elaborate hoax. All, real and fake, were allotted pretentious footnotes. For me, this had the curious effect of draining life from the real people, rather than giving verisimilitude to the invented characters. The exception was a vicious but effective characterization of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who featured in one of the longer episodes and made a return appearance later. I think the book would have been stronger if it had focused on that, but instead it flitted off into more unlikely episodes and then petered out with the main character never having really grown up, as far as I could tell.

Anybody read this or anything else by William Boyd? Is there something better I should try?

Currently readingOne of Joan Hassall’s engravings from Mansfield Park (Folio Society)

I’m on my third read of the Austen 2025 readalong, Mansfield Park — I got confused about the order and thought Emma was up next, but she’s fourth, of course.

This is another one suitable for Reading the Theatre, with its home production of the drama “Lover’s Vows” coming up. But already, just a few chapters in, I notice that the theme of playing a part in life, putting on a show that will deceive and mislead others, has been introduced by a world-weary Mary Crawford:

“With all due respect to such of the present company as chance to be married, my dear Mrs. Grant, there is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry. Look where I will, I see that it is so; and I feel that it must be so, when I consider that it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.”

It’s a much more ambitious and complex novel than the previous two, and though I already know what happens, I’m interested to see how Austen unfolds this drama.

On the blogTen Books of SummerA new way to find your next favorite readApril Reading in Review

What’s on your shelf this month?

Linked at The Sunday Post at Caffeinated Book Reviewer, the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz, and the Monthly Wrap-up Round-up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction