My March in reading

I only read eight books in March. Only eight! A trifling amount! Not really—it just means I had slightly more of a life last month. Probably a good thing, right?

The Sandman Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman

The first two books in Gaiman’s Sandman series follow a larger, mostly linear narrative. Volume 3, on the other hand, contains four short stories featuring the Dream King—not always as a main character. One is entirely about cats. It’s a fun read—a nice flight of fancy away from the seriousness of the initial volumes.

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson

Johnson’s novel is a queer retelling of the Oedipus myth that takes place mostly on England’s rivers; our protagonist Gretel is a lexicographer who was raised by her mother on a houseboat, only to be abandoned by her when she reached her teenage years. As an adult she finally finds her mother again, who has developed dementia. Gretel has to stitch pieces of memory together to better understand what happened to her mother, to their runaway companion Marcus, and to the bonak—the frightening creature following them in the river. Johnson’s prose is beautiful and lush, and it swirls in little eddies like water itself. The quality of the style makes up for the few places where the plot lags—though overall, I greatly enjoyed this one. Perfect for spring.

Justice Hall by Laurie R. King

In this installment of King’s Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series, the investigative duo aims to help their friends Ali and Mahmoud Hazr, who they met earlier in the book O Jerusalem. But as it turns out: Ali and Mahmoud are actually white English nobles who’d been living and working undercover in British-occupied Palestine just because they didn’t feel like being nobles?? And all the characters are totally fine with this, and will do anything they can to help them thrust their noble responsibilities on someone else so they can get back to Jerusalem?? It is gross. On the bright side, the plot itself is fairly engaging—there’s an actual mystery to solve here that has to do with one of the nobles’ relatives lost in WWI. But the blatant brownface is hard to move past for the modern reader. I know the book was published in 2002, but that doesn’t seem like a particularly good excuse. We’ve decided to skip ahead and read a more recent book in this series in April, to see if King changes the way she writes about race and gender over time.

The Trail of the Serpent by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

I listened to this 1861 novel on the Phoebe Reads a Mystery podcast; its known as a very early example of the detective story. But it meanders far more than later detective stories do—ultimately it’s more like an adventure story. From the beginning we know that the wicked Jabez North has committed murder, only for an innocent man, Richard Marwood, to be jailed for the crime. But then we follow Jabez to France as he changes his name and swindles a wealthy heiress, etc.—it’s all over the place. I was surprised at how darkly funny Braddon could be at times—I didn’t expect such punchiness from a Victorian author. Yet this wasn’t my favorite. Also, a big content warning for deaf folks: there is a deaf detective in the novel, Joseph Peters, who speaks in his own form of sign language—which the author frequently refers to as “the dirty alphabet.” Literally cringed the first time I heard Phoebe say it aloud.

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

I struggled with this novel at first—until I decided to read it as though it were a book of poetry instead. Through vivid imagery—sublime and disgusting alike—Chang tells the story of Daughter, and the stories Daughter receives from her mother, and her grandmother. Daughter awakes with a tail one day like Hu Go Po, the tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. Daughter falls in love with Ben, a neighborhood girl who understands and matches Daughter’s supernatural animality. It’s a beautiful story of growing up, of how our lineage shapes us, of young queer love, told through a plot structure that’s anything but traditional.

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

I genuinely think this is one of the best books I’ve ever read in my entire life. Lockwood’s memoir is about how, through a strange loophole in the Roman Catholic Church, she was raised by a priest; she and her mother and her siblings moved with him from rectory to rectory as he ministered to different parishes. Years later, she and her husband experience a financial crisis and have to move back in with her parents. I think this book appealed to me as an ex-Catholic—but even so, I don’t think you have to be that familiar with the Catholic church to enjoy it. It was astoundingly funny—I frightened my dog by laughing aloud more than once. But it also handles much more serious subjects—abortion, child sex abuse in the church—with compassion. I adored it. I borrowed a copy from the library, but I think I’m going to buy my own copy, just to have on hand.

Murmur by Laura Mullen

Here’s the thing about grad school: you simply cannot read all the material that you’re assigned. There isn’t time. Instead, you have to develop strong skimming skills so that you can participate in class discussion without having absorbed the text. Murmur is a book of poetry that I was assigned in grad school, but didn’t find the time to read. And now I sort of regret it, because I liked it a lot. The book creates the atmosphere of a murder mystery without actually containing a murder mystery. It asks the question: what if a murder mystery were a book of poetry instead? There aren’t named characters, but there is a murdered woman in a green dress, a husband-suspect, a detective. There’s a crime scene at a lonely beach. Murmur manages to strip the murder mystery genre down to its parts, to poke and prod at them until the genre itself confesses.

The Removed by Brandon Hobson

I picked this one up for Roxane Gay’s book club, but I got around to it too late to participate. The Removed was not at all what I expected it to be. I knew it was about a Native American family who had lost one of their sons in a police shooting, and later decide to foster a child who uncannily resembles their son. What I didn’t realize is that the chapters switch perspectives: Maria, the mother, still suffering from her loss and caring for her husband with Alzheimer’s; Edgar, the younger brother who has sunk into a drug addiction; Sonja, the older sister who obsesses over a man named Vin and his son Luka. And each of these perspectives is like a totally different book! Maria’s is a family drama in Oklahoma; Edgar’s is almost a sci-fi story of deranged video games in the dystopian Darkening Land; Sonja’s is more of a domestic thriller. All their stories are mixed with Cherokee folklore as well. You should definitely put this one on your list—I’m not sure I’ve read anything quite like it before.