I read Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy, because the older I get, the shorter life seems and the less patience I have for the ordinary when I could have something sublime.

Let my start by saying I laughed at the necrophilia scenes. Perhaps I should finish by saying that too. That one sentence will tell you whether this book is right for you or not.

McCarthy is famous for the violence of his writing. Quite a few critics point to Blood Meridian as the most violent book. Not just the most violent McCarthy book, but the most violent book.

I disagree. Now it has been many years since I read Blood Meridian, but I do not recall that one featuring a serial killer rapist who attempts to make sweet love to a corpse but keeps getting thwarted in Loony-Tunes-esque ways—forbidden desecratory love, but make it slapstick.

Child of God does not resonate for me as much as No Country for Old Men (the finest crime novel I have ever read) or The Road (with the scariest horror scene I have ever read), but even a lesser McCarthy is a magnificent thing. He is a prose stylist nonpareil. At times his sentences are straightforward and terse, the noun did the verb to the object, marching the plot forward in staccato steps. Without warning his sentences turn wavy, different lengths, new cadences. He describes the mundane throwaway details like a monk illuminating the serifs in his scroll.  

I did not read a print version, but when I checked the Wikipedia page, I found the passage that made me stop in my tracks and rewind the audio as I walked the dog the other day:

“He came up flailing and sputtering and began to thrash his way toward the line of willows that marked the submerged creek bank. He could not swim, but how would you drown him? His wrath seemed to buoy him up. Some halt in the way of things seems to work here. See him. You could say that he's sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it. But they want this man's life. He has heard them in the night seeking him with lanterns and cries of execration. How then is he borne up? Or rather, why will not these waters take him?”

One final but crucial note: If you enjoy audiobooks, do not miss the Tom Stechschulte narration. He is one of my top five favorite narrators. Child of God is set in eastern Tennessee and he gets the accents right.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is like any other English boarding school novel, only the students are preparing to spend their adult lives in two specific careers, first as carers, then as donors.

That much is revealed in the opening parts of the story, so I’m not spoiling anything. We know from the start that something unusual is going on at Hailsham, but our narrator, Kathy H., doles out the details slowly in this slow-burn science fiction novel.

Here Nobel Prize-winner Ishiguro visits some of his favorite themes: what makes us human; how we construct memory and how memory shapes us; how we justify our crimes against others. “I wasn't sobbing or out of control,” Kathy H. thinks on the last page, but I was.

This is my fourth Ishiguro novel. I rank him among my top ten living writers. Scratch that: I just jotted a list of my top fifteen living writers, and Ishiguro belongs in the top five. I feel myself becoming a better person in real time as I read his books, feel my humanity growing.

The audiobook is capably narrated by Rosalyn Landor, if that is your preferred medium.

Squeaking in under the deadline for Women’s History Month is my re-read of the first book in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, The Wreath (1920), translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally.

Set in 14th century Norway, the book follows Kristin through her childhood and adolescence. Kristin is the eldest surviving child of well-to-do farmers, both pious Christians. She’s an obedient young woman, careful to mind her parents, her friend the priest, and eventually the nuns she meets when she spends a year living in a convent. If she is not overjoyed when her father arranges her betrothal to a young man named Simon, neither is she upset…not until she meets Erlend Nikulausson, a man whose reputation is already in tatters for having fathered two children with his married mistress. From the moment Kristin meets Erlend, all thoughts of Simon fly out of her head.

I loved this book in college when I read it for a class on women and religion. I still love it for the way Undset puts women’s lives front and center. Her treatment of sexuality, desire, the medieval Catholic church, and family makes for outstanding historical fiction, and eventually led to her winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

But I have no patience for Erlend, who reminds me of Anatole Kuragin, who vies with Napoleon for being the biggest asshole in War and Peace. When I was younger, I admired Kristin for her impetuous affair. I wanted her to follow her heart. I’m still a fan of true love, but in my middle age, I am out of patience for men who behave badly. I’m not mad at Kristin but I am officially over Erlend, who was old enough and experienced enough to know better. Men who think with their dicks, nor caring who they hurt? This is not romantic.

The books are outstanding works of literature, and I recommend them highly, but I’m not going to reread books two and three. I done with you, Erlend. It’s over.

Book talk for February 25. What's everyone reading?

For Black History Month, I read Toni Morrison's Beloved, which may be the closest thing we have to a Great American Novel.

Set in Ohio a few years after the end of American slavery, we meet a Black woman named Sethe. Her mother-in-law died a few years ago, and her two sons have run away from home, so now Sethe lives in her house only with her daughter, Denver, and a trickster ghost. That uncomfortable stasis is upset with the arrival of Paul D, who knew Sethe back when they were both enslaved. Paul D exorcises the ghost and settles in.

Only the ghost comes back, taking the form of a young Black woman and calling herself Beloved.

Going into it, I did not realize this was a literal ghost story. I don't mean the psychological is-it-or-isn't-it ghost you get in some gothic stories. I mean this ghost crawled out of the grave and found herself a house to haunt.

This was not my first time reading Morrison, but I'd missed her best-known work. It is about the horrors of slavery reverberating through generations, so it is not a fun read, but it is a profound read. Beloved is essential reading for understanding America.

Every January, I read a George Saunders book to start the year off right. This year I chose Liberation Day, a collection of short fiction.

Saunders may be the best of the contemporary American writers. Not the main point, but because he’s so good, he gets standout voice actors for his audiobooks. If you enjoy listening to books or are merely audiobook-curious, let yourself enjoy this book aloud. The biggest name is probably Tina Fey, but everyone is superb.

Saunders is hailed as a master of literary fiction, which is true, though I wish more people would recognize him as a master of science fiction, because that’s what half these stories are. Not the kind with pew-pew-pew space lasers, more the kind with mind-wiping technology that never gets explained in detail, for which fact I am grateful.

In trying to pick my favorite element of his stories in this book, I landed on this: Saunders is so good at writing normal people failing. Bitchy colleagues, idealists who choose complicity over courage, mediocre writers and their underwhelming husbands who make a halfass attempt at vengeful masculinity: None of these characters are straight-up villains. They are ordinary people who make disappointing choices.

No, I take that back, the parents in “Mother’s Day” are villains, and so are the parents in “Liberation Day.” They just lack the introspection to see it.

If this is your first George Saunders rodeo, this is a fine place to start, though my favorite collection is Tenth of December. His novel Lincoln in the Bardo is one of those astonishing books that can change your life. And A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is the best way I know to introduce yourself to Russian literature.

Seventeen years ago, I read The Historian, a literary horror novel by Elizabeth Kostova. It made a good impression on me back then, so I pulled it out again.

Notably, I did my re-read in print. I listened an hour before abandoning the audiobook, because I do not like ensemble casts. The only exception to this rule is the audio of Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, probably the best audiobook I’ve ever listened to. And one of the best books I’ve ever read.

And I’ve been trying to bring print reading back to my life. I’m happier when I dedicate part of my day to sitting in my recliner with a book.

The Historian is about scholars pursuing Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula. It is a page-turner, which is important when your book is 600+ pages long, though I am mystified at how this is possible, considering that most of the action is set in libraries and archives. And by action I mean “academics reading letters and historical documents.” Infrequently, a vampire will pop out of the library stacks to fang someone, but mostly the characters admire architecture and read solemnly by lamplight. It shouldn’t work but it does.

More than most writers, Kostova excels at atmosphere. She brings to life various settings in Europe in the 1950s and 1970s, including the communist chill of Romania, famous for a region called Transylvania. There’s not much graphic violence in the story, but Kostova lays on the atmospheric dread almost from page one.

For my annual Russian novel, I chose a Tolstoy novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Of all the world’s literature, nineteenth century Russian is my favorite. Depressed people with patronyms and convoluted sentences. This is my happy place.

The title gives it away, but Ivan Ilyich dies in this book. He does so at the beginning of the story, leaving his family with not enough money to get by on. This sort of thing happens a lot in Russian literature.

Right after Tolstoy kills him off, we go back in time to see the course of his life as a living man. If this were twenty-five years ago and I were still an English undergraduate, I might care about this unconventional structure, but I’m middle aged and can’t be bothered.

Sometimes Tolstoy writes likeable characters, like dear sweet Pierre in War and Peace. This is your occasional reminder that I read War and Peace last year. I don’t want anyone forgetting. Other times Tolstoy writes assholes. You will not be terribly sad when Ivan Ilyich dies.

Ivan Ilyich cares more about wealth and power than he cares about, for instance, his wife. There’s one home decorating scene, where he’s deciding which furnishing and decorations will best show off his status, that calls to mind the vapid people on HGTV.

It’s while he’s hanging his wealth curtains that Ivan Ilyich stumbles and injures himself. It seems mild, but the injury turns into a chronic condition. Probably. Or perhaps something else causes the illness that slowly weakens Ivan Ilyich. The doctors aren’t sure, though they’re happy to take his money.

George Guidall is one of my favorite audiobook narrators, and he does a magnificent job here, as usual. If you’re curious about Russian literature, this is a fine starting point, especially since the book is fairly short, unlike War and Peace, which I read last year.

My other recommendation would be the George Saunders book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which combines Russian shorts stories with literary criticism. I know that sounds like homework but it isn’t. It’s delightful, especially as an audiobook.

Since moving to Minnesota in May, my pleasure reading has dropped way off. Things have been bananas, especially with the ongoing mold problem in my basement. I don’t know when I’ll get back to weekly book talks. Occasional book talks, that’s more realistic.

Departing from her signature mind-bending science fiction novels, e.g., The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North turns to Greek mythology in Ithaca.

This is the story of a city populated by women and old people and very few children, because the men have been absent for years, waging war against Troy and/or sleeping with island witches.

When skirmishers attack Ithaca, it falls to the women to save the city. This is difficult for Penelope, who must be quiet and empty-headed, lest she give the impression that she means to wrest power from her husband Odysseus, never mind that he’s been gone for years without so much as a postcard.

Complicating matters, Penelope’s cousin Clytemnestra just murdered her awful husband Agamemnon, and now she has arrived in secret in Ithaca, seeking refuge.

North has a gift for words. She writes characters who stay with me for years, and while battle and action and drama are plentiful, she is a contemplative writer, giving care to details and inner thoughts even as the raiders attack.

If you’ve enjoyed the outstanding Greek retellings by Natalie Haynes and Madeline Miller, Ithaca will be up your alley. And if you enjoy audiobooks, Catrin Walker-Booth is a captivating narrator.

George Saunders is the best contemporary American writer, an opinion I feel more comfortable holding following the deaths of first Toni Morrison and then Cormac McCarthy.

Unusually among successful writers, his primary medium is short fiction. He’s only got the one novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, which is so good that he should probably stop there. Pastoralia is his second collection of short stories, published in 2000.

Prose craft is different from storytelling. Being good at either one of these things is uncommon. Each Saunders sentence writes is a gem, but handled in such a lowkey way that you don’t realize you’re reading a master. You’re too focused on turning the pages because you need to know what happens next.

Though if you enjoy audiobooks, I would implore you not to turn the pages but to listen to Saunders narrate his own work. The thing about Saunders that too many reviews miss is that he’s funny. Uproarious. The man is funny in print, but I listened to the book and I was howling.

Also: when you listen, you can’t look ahead to know when a story is about to end. Three different times in this book, a story ended and I gasped out loud in shock. There are only six stories so that is a fifty percent gasp rate.

My favorite story was “Pastoralia,” about some historical reenactors, but the one I’m going to quote from is “Sea Oak,” in which an elderly aunt bullies her nephew (a sex worker) into earning more money: “Show your cock. It’s the shortest line between points.”

While the rest of you are enjoying Charles Dickens the way God intended, with Muppets, I am here finishing up the first Dickens novel, The Pickwick Papers, serially published in 1836-1837. It follows the adventures of an English gentleman named Pickwick and several of his fellow gentlemen. I cannot overstate how boring these adventures are.

Forgive me. I do not typically speak ill of works by living writers, and even though Dickens is safe from my literary criticism, there are plenty of you out there who like this book, and here I am being unkind to it. I am sorry. I would like to hear what it is you like about it.

The book is a series of linked vingettes. Many of them feel frivolous. It is true there are moments of depth, but the first time I said "Ah, now we're getting somewhere" was p. 564, which is fairly late in the game for a plot to thicken

Pickwick gets himself thrown in debtors' prison, and for a few blessed pages, Dickens writes with the social consciousness that elevates him above so many other writers. That passage would be enough to radicalize anyone into becoming a prison abolitionist. Regrettably, I cannot speak with such fervor about the remaining 700ish pages.

There are also footnotes and appendixes but I have only one wild and precious life.

A couple of years back I listened to an audiobook version of The Christmas Carol. It's in the public domain, so there are quite a few voice actors to pick from, but I quite enjoyed the narration by Tim Curry, and that's what I might recommend before the Pickwick Papers.