2021 in reading (and writing)
Over Christmas I read a bunch of novels, having little else to do in locked-down London and still a bit unwell with long Covid. Among them: Asylum Road by Olivia Subjic and Regeneration by Pat Barker. January is not really a good month. I finish up work ahead of what is supposed to be four months working on Look Here. For the book I read Feminist City by Leslie Kern. For pleasure, I read Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginsburg, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (maybe pleasure not the right word?), Young Skins by Colin Barrett, Having and Being Had by Eula Biss, Luster by Raven Leilani and Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson - a favourite of the year’s new books. A 2021 resolution is to finish writing a short story for the first time, and in this month I start to make tentative movements on this account.
In February I make illicit trips around the locked-down city to research my book. These are mostly on foot, and slowly. I reread Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story, which is revelatory now that I am actually writing first-person nonfiction. Citizen by Claudia Rankine is also illuminating, in terms of what form can do when you bend it, break it open. While working from a friend’s empty flat, I find and read Roisin Kiberd’s The Disconnect - I really like its artful ending. Over another boring lockdown weekend of doing nothing, I read a PR copy of Insatiable by Daisy Buchanan which is not what I usually enjoy reading, but is diverting in how scandalous it is (for me, a woman who does not read much commercial or romance fiction).
I have two experiences of being moved to tears while reading in March: one is I am, I am, I am by Maggie O’Farrell and the other is The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. Actually, make that three, since I listen to Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason while leafleting for Sian Berry’s mayoral campaign and it makes me laugh and cry both. Maybe I am too easily moved! I really enjoy The Weak Spot by Lucie Elven. No One is Talking About This makes me feel like I’m missing something, not sure what. Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett, on the other hand, astounds me. I’m doing solid work on the book at this point, though getting slightly worried about earning money or rather not earning money, plus the fact that the city I’m supposed to be observing is still very much asleep. I’m also working on the short story I promised myself.
April. Things begin to feel a little better. We move house and I finally get physiotherapy which helps my long Covid misery. I’m not reading so much now, beginning to get a little disenchanted with new fiction which happens to me from time to time. In the new flat I read White City by Kevin Power and Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri - the latter gives me a jolt of surprise when I read its back cover and its chapter list, since it sounds so much like a literary fiction version of the raw material of Look Here. Obviously, in practice it is miles apart from what will become my book. I go back to work this month and read A Lonely Man by Chris Power on my lunchtime walks, and The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill too. I finish the short story and send it to Seren, who gives me some gentle edits.
In May I get married. The government says we are not allowed to have readings at the ceremony, which is fine by me, but at the reception I get drunk and read ‘Scaffolding’ by Seamus Heaney off my phone screen, explaining to the English guests that it’s an essential part of the modern Irish wedding experience. At home I read Second Place by Rachel Cusk, which feels like a dream in retrospect. Seren suggests I read Peter Stamm, and I start with Seven Years - extremely my kind of thing. I admire him hugely. Real Estate by Deborah Levy is a treat, but it lacks something that I love of the first two of that series - maybe the tight focus, the condensed and short experience within. This month, Tolka publishes an essay of mine called Wayfinding. This is my first time submitting something to a literary journal - more on this at the end of this page.
Before we go on honeymoon to Scotland, I read Show Them a Good Time by Nicole Flattery in the bath, which is brilliant. Also it’s great to live in a flat with a bath again. Emmie gives me an early copy of Beautiful World, Where Are You and I read it over the course of a day or so. I really enjoy it. I am surprised by how short Assembly by Natasha Brown is, which I listen to while tidying my room. Maybe I should have read it in book form to get a better sense of all the white spaces. On Colonsay I read more Peter Stamm - To the Back of Beyond, and My Lover’s Lover by Maggie O’Farrell. Karl goes around the island asking islanders about John McPhee, since we are both here partly because of The Crofter and the Laird. He meets a man whose father-in-law’s chickens were run over by McPhee. On the train home I read Say Nothing, which we borrowed from Paul and Lynn before we left. It’s very cinematic. When I get back Wild Pets by Amber Medlund is waiting for me, and I read it quickly and recognise much of life in it.
What happened in July? My log says I didn’t finish anything until late July. I was working on Look Here, I suppose, afraid that it would fall apart at the seams if I didn’t concentrate on it. Also, from start to finish this year is lousy with books I didn’t manage to finish - sometimes down to me as a reader and sometimes maybe the book’s fault. Seren lent me All Days are Night, another Peter Stamm, and I also read Three Rooms by Jo Hamya. In the Highgate bookshop I buy Soft City by Jonathan Raban and A Vision of the World by John Cheever, because I am more and more interested in the short story now, having managed to finish writing one (1) story. I read both in the shade of the big tree in the back garden. Also, I use my ice cream maker a lot during the summer and so I buy a copy of ‘the ice cream bible’, Ice Creams, Sorbet and Gelati by Caroline and Robin Weir.
August. I am supposed to finish Look Here this month. I whittle my working hours down to free up my time for writing (some reading, some walking around London, too). Some work books: The Sphinx in the City by Elizabeth Wilson. I read Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido - heartwarming. I am blown away by Niamh Campbell’s forthcoming We Were Young, who just feels to me like a capital I important writer of our times. I find The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller absorbing, except for the repeated graphic sexual assault scenes that all novels apparently need to include now.
In September I file the manuscript of Look Here and immediately go to the charity bookshop, buy a copy of Underworld by Don DeLillo and start to read it in the pub. Brilliant! On the train to the Chilterns I read How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm. Late in the month I get bronchitis while at home in Ireland and read Free Love by Tessa Hadley in bed. I’d read her shopping lists to be perfectly honest. In Hodges Figgis I buy a copy of Bewilderment by Richard Powers but can’t get into it. I listen to the Bennington College podcast and on the ferry back to London I reread Less Than Zero, which I think is much more worthy than Ellis’s current reputation would suggest.
I’m trying to read through the Booker list in October, but Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle is so long. I enjoy it, though - it feels like a bit of a master work. It takes most of the month. I also dip into the wonderful new collection of Siri Hustvedt essays. I read A Room with a View, having wanted to since reading Checkout 19. I also read The Weekend by Charlotte Wood, because Sophie Roberts recommends it on her podcast and I trust her taste in books!
On holidays in Tenerife in November I read The Infatuations by Javier Marias and the Elizabeth Hardwick biography. In one evening I read Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, which is the best thing I’ve read all year, or maybe ever? It’s essentially perfect: solid, as one friend describes it - like you can pick it up and look all around. I am delighted to get my hands on A Great Hope by Jessica Stanley, which is fantastic, gripping and very funny. I buy a copy of Story of My Life by Jay McInerney in Skoob and read it on the Tube. I can’t believe I read this (many times) when I was 13, it’s so filthy!
December. Cold, dark. A couple of Christmases ago Karl gave me two Kate Atkinson first editions (I think purchased at The Second Shelf in Soho) and I decide now to reread Life After Life, which feels like taking the big winter duvet out of storage. I also read The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis, which the Bennington podcast tells me was his half-arsed senior thesis repurposed into book form. Feels like it alright. On audiobook I listen to Matrix by Lauren Groff which is - what’s the word? - transporting! This month my short story ‘Pose’ is published online by Granta. I have some novels lined up for Christmas reading - Elizabeths McCracken and Strout, an old John Updike about suburban marriages - but I also have a 1000-piece puzzle, an ice cream maker and a new draft that is starting to require my attention. We’ll see what happens next.
Also, a final note on the year in my own writing. I think it’s good to be transparent about some of these things. At the beginning of 2021, I decided to, like Vivian Lee, make it my goal to rack up a load of rejections. I had never submitted anything to a literary journal or really applied for anything at all, other than writing a novel and sending it to agents etc. So this goal translated into me writing one short story and one essay, both during my ‘book leave’ in Q1 2021. Both of these were eventually published without much difficulty (though one was passed on by another magazine along the way). I submitted one myself and my agent placed the other one.
I also applied for three grants/bursaries - I didn’t get any of these. Only one was a blow to my ego. The others just felt unfortunate, as they would have bought me some much-needed time for more stories and essays. I was really only able to write ‘Wayfinding’ and ‘Pose’ because I took four months off my day job to work on Look Here in early 2021.
The main takeaway of this approach, for me, is that I am no longer afraid to apply for anything, to write and submit anything - it really is just a question of finding the time. I can’t submit a short story to a journal if I don’t have time to write it in the first place. At the moment I work freelance, effectively full-time each week, though I do have some flexibility. I have been writing around my work since 2016 and I don’t have any desire to stop working and write full-time, because I enjoy copywriting and the structure it gives my weeks. Also, precarity is draining. For me personally, it’s not creatively useful. But it does seem that the more you write (and publish), the more of your life it tends to consume. So I do need to find a way (financially and otherwise) to ring-fence more time for my writing in future, because this is the only way the work gets made. But I don’t really know what the answer is. Reduce my cost of living? Get up earlier in the morning? Lotto win? Answers welcome please.