books for the hospital waiting room

It's been a difficult week, but reading helped get me through it.   As I sat in a hospital waiting room while a family member went through a complicated surgery, there were hours to fill.  Many kinds of waiting experiences - waiting for a loved one in hospital; waiting for a loved one to be sentenced in a courthouse (ok - read my book I Know Where I Am When I'm Falling),  or even waiting in an airport departure lounge to board a long flight - have in common the odd mixture of boredom and anxiety.

When it comes to books at such times, I want one I can trust, one I can swiftly get into - and if necessary out of quickly.  But I also want something of substance.

So first I finished Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

It's written as a letter to a difficult mother who will probably never read it. It is painful and passionate, a story about identity about survival and loss. It's also about sex and coming out. “Sex can get you close to a boy. But language,” Vuong writes, “gets you deeper.”   Lines like that are plentiful in this exquisite novel. I found myself copying them down,  trying to hold onto them. This is a poet's debut novel and it cuts straight to the bone.

Who are the briefly gorgeous? All of us.  The temporal nature of love, of passion and of beauty makes this book so poignant.  Not only are the main character, Little Dog and his lover Trevor briefly gorgeous - but also Little Dog's mother and grandmother.  Their stories of leaving Vietnam, their emotional damage and vulnerability will break your heart. When his grandmother Lan is dying, she says, "I used to be a girl, Little Dog.  You know?... I used to put a flower in my hair and walk in the sun.  After big rain, I walk in the sun.  The flower I put on my ear.  So wet, so cool."

Later, Little Dog recalls stealing flowers for his grandmother from a field. Vuong writes, "It was beauty, I learned, that we risked ourselves for."

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous is a knock out novel, elegiac in places, and I predict it will be big big big.  Release date is June, so put it on your list.



The day before my relative went into surgery,  I had the pleasure of hosting Amy Kempel for her new collection of short stories,  Sing To It.  

 In this week's New Yorker, James Wood said he couldn't get the title story out of his mind.  It's a story of less than 100 words, yet it gives us a whole relationship, in metaphors, in a gesture and in a proverb.  Amy Kempel is a master at economy. Like Vuong, she writes like a poet.  Her stories often read like prose poems.  She spoke on Sunday among other things - about paring down, about looking at each story and asking herself what she can leave out, what is necessary.  She also said that when she begins a story (and she often revises in her head), she always has both the first line and final line.

How is that possible, you wonder?

Most interestingly, she said she learned a technique of ending stories from the play 'Night Mother by Marsha Norman.  It's the penultimate line of that play that's the killer -  but the final line, which  looks like a throwaway, actually puts a finer point on the penultimate one.  I taught this play to my literature students many times, so won't spoil it here.  Just go and look it up!  You can rent an incredible film adaptation of the play starring Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft.

Oh, and let's not forget Amy Hempel's relationship to dogs.  There was a friend of hers at the store on Sunday, with his dog, and it was just so charming to watch their interaction, and to watch and be in the presence of Amy Hempel herself.  Such a joy to listen to her speak about craft.  We recorded the event at Politics and Prose, so it should be available on our website in a couple of weeks.


And finally  I want to mention another extraordinary novel of the same high quality,  one that also got me through the last few days. It's The Friend by Sigrid Nunez.

 Reading this book is like chatting with your most intelligent friend - touching on every subject of interest, from books, to writing, to teaching, and to love affairs.  And also, once again to dogs! In this book the protagonist adopts a great dane in her tiny Manhattan apartment, after the suicide of a dear friend.

 You can pick this novel up practically on any page and get from it substantive, intelligent, beautifully crafted writing.  Then if need be, you can put it down.  It was perfect for yesterday evening as I waited waited and waited some more, to finally see my beloved post surgery relative.

Books like these are breaths of fresh air and true inspirations. Hopefully they will also be that for you.

#sigridnunez #oceanvuong #amyhempel #singtoit