I really buried the lede in my description of March. Forgot to mention the most important thing. I got a job! I’ll be teaching 8th and 11th grade English at an independent school just ten minutes from home. (This seems to be St Louis-speak for what I always knew as “a private school.”) I’m excited for the opportunity—though also quite anxious, never having taught anyone younger than a college freshman.
I spent April beavering away at various jobs: consulting, editing, working my shifts at the bookstore, and, this month, working with two theater productions. I served as the dramaturgue for the New Jewish Theater’s excellent production of Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic and participated in a panel on Upstream Theater’s delightful production, in Phillip Boehm’s translation and adaption, of Jura Soyfer’s End of the World Cabaret. Maybe you know as little about Soyfer as I did. Check out the link to his Wikipedia entry. A fascinating but all-too-short life. It was genuinely thrilling to watch a production from its very first table reading to final performance. Theater people are truly amazing! And St Louis seems to be a great theater town.
I was busy and didn’t read as much as usual, but here’s what I did make time for.
Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place (1982)
The subject of Episode 44 of One Bright Book.
Rebecca chose this novel-in-linked-stories about seven women living in a tenement building in an unnamed American city, and I’m glad she did. It has all the things. Struggle, resilience, community as sustenance and as suffocation. Joy, despair, sex, death. The use of real estate and domestic spaces to tell the story of 20th Century American racial uplift. Tellingly, doesn’t feel dated. Would pair well with Ann Petry’s The Street, though Brewster is slightly less committed to realism. Reminded me too of Bryan Washington’s story “Alif,” which is also about a neighbourhood where everyone is all up in each other’s business. This book was around a fair bit in my 1990s bookselling days, but I’d never read it or indeed anything by Naylor. I’m glad I did, and I plan to read more.
Francis Spufford, Nonesuch (2026)
Iris Hawkins wants to be rich. Not for the comfort that money can buy, though that’s nice too. But because she wants “to be part of the way the world works… to be in the room where decisions are taken… to make things happen… to see the angles.” She wants men to have to see her and not be able to ignore her.
At first this is difficult because she’s a secretary at a financial firm in the City in 1939. But with the advent of the war she’s able to take on more responsibility. Men are deployed. Her boss has checked out from worry about his son, a POW of the Germans. He distractedly acquiesces to her plan to short the market, a plan that pays dividends. She even impresses John Maynard Keynes when she unknowingly meets him at a country house party.
It’s impressive that Iris can do all this, because the rest of her life is more than a little busy. A one-night stand with an engineer in the still-fledgling industry of television turns serious, not least when the man’s father, a charming, helpless old coot in thrall to the study of the occult, turns out to know what he’s talking about. Iris is soon being pursued by magical creatures and in a race with another young woman, the aristocratic golden child of the British fascist movement, to unlock angels that have been entombed in London sculptures. Oh yeah, she also needs to foil a plot to assassinate Churchill and replace him the pro-German Lord Halifax.
This is all as busy as it sounds, and frankly I can’t work out how Spufford wants to connect the secret systems of finance and the occult. Maybe this will become clearer before long. Turns out that Nonesuch is the first of the duology. On Bluesky, Spufford said the second book is due next summer. Better be because Nonesuch ends on a real cliffhanger!
Christoffer Carlsson, The Living and the Dead (2023) Trans. Rachel Wilson-Broyles (2025)
Crime novel set in the same region of western Sweden and featuring some of the same characters as Blaze Me a Sun, which I enjoyed a couple of years ago. Less interesting than its predecessor, unfortunately. Similar structure (a crime in the past, hitherto unsolved, leads to a new crime in the present), similar themes (young people become middle-aged people who find their lives haven’t had as much in store for them as they expected). All done just a little less compellingly. Diverting enough—the audio got me through a long drive—but nothing special.
Tana French, The Keeper (2026)
Wrote about this here. An ongoing conversation with Elle has me wondering if it’s more pro-vigilante than I had credited. I loved the book, though: what does this say about me?
Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices (1980)
The second selection for Leviathan’s Women of a Certain Age book club. Another rousing discussion of another terrific book. Hadn’t read it in more than ten years: happily, a joy to revisit. We considered the novel’s structure, its cast of characters, the difficulty of discerning a protagonist, the relation of these obliquities to the historical period in which it is set, namely, the period in 1940 from Dunkirk to the beginnings of the Blitz when the war, as far as Britain was concerned, was both all-consuming and distant. We thought about the novel as a portrait of an institution—someone mentioned Shirley Hazzard’s book about the UN as a comparison—in this case, the BBC, and the flattening of any distinction between the employees’ personal and professional lives. The higher-ups, in particular, basically live in Broadcast House, but eventually the building’s theater, previously used for orchestral recordings, is turned into a dormitory for all employees. Convenient and safe, but also frustrating in that the room’s excellent acoustics make every snore, sigh, or groan crisply audible. This is an example of Fitzgerald’s inimical tone, which veers suddenly from humor to heartbreak. The ever-present possibility of death turns monomania from a joke to a noble enterprise: I’m thinking of the example Dr. Vogel, a German émigré and expert in recorded sound, whose perfectionist tendencies see him record several hours’ worth of church doors squeaking, only a few seconds of which will feature in a planned “Sounds of Britain” program. We might find Vogel’s obsession annoying or even irresponsible in the face of larger dangers. But we are bound to feel differently when he is killed by a piece of flying drainpipe in the aftermath of a raid, as he is patiently explaining to an air raid warden on behalf of a stranger that English law allowed the man to enter his bombed-out building twice, once to get his mattress and once to take any other personal effects. Suddenly pedantry seems less persnickety and more the foundation of the rule of law.
Dozens of moments like this fill the pages of this terrific short book.
I didn’t plan to read two Blitz novels in such short order, and I don’t have anything smart to say about the differences. I can only note that when memory becomes history—as it has in the 45 years between the publication of these two novels—then literary modes other than realism seem reasonable in a way they might not have before.
Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs (2014)
First novel in Bennett’s first fantasy trilogy, which I bought because it’s been reissued in a spiffy new edition. I’d have never looked twice at the old one. I’m shallow that way. Which would have been bad, since the premise is good. Bulikov (vaguely Russian or Eastern European) was once the continent of gods. Magic ruled the day. The place was wealthy and powerful. It colonized the rest of the world, all the places the gods did not favour. That was especially true of the island of Saypur, whose people suffered greatly at Bulikov’s hands. But then everything changed. New technology allowed little Saypur (vaguely Islamic or Mughal Indian) to kill and/or sequester the gods and now once-mighty Bulikov is an impoverished vassal state of the highly militarized Saypur. When a famous Saypuri academic, a specialist in the old gods, is found murdered in Bulikov’s former capital, a city whose geography has been rearranged by the technology that killed the gods (an event known as The Blink), a Saypuri diplomat is sent to investigate. It’s not long before she, along with her very cool sidekick, finds that those murdered gods might not be so dead.
City of Stairs is often great (premise, world-building, characterization) and sometimes not great (too long, slow start). But I got so into it that even before I finished I’d bought the other two. I moved on to the second book right away, but before long I got stuck. It has a bad case of “middle novel” syndrome. I’ll get back to it, though.
There is a thing about Bennett, whose Ana and Din books I so much enjoyed earlier this year, that I should mention because some of you might find it disqualifying. The guy has a mania for the solecism “hence why”: it’s appeared at least once in each of the three books I’ve read, and it’s like fingernails of the chalkboard. What are the editors even doing???
Not much of a reading month, really. All that theater stuff kept me pretty busy. Fear not, May brought a better assortment.
Eiger, Mönch & Jungfrau 
Congrats on your new job!
Thank you!
Great news about the job – congrats!!!
Dorian, massive congratulations on the teaching gig! You and I are VIBING – I too have never taught kids younger than undergrads and will be doing so from September. I have two Year 9 classes (= 8th grade), and one Year 12 section (= 11th grade), plus one each of Years 7, 8 and 10. We should conspire together.
Spufford is so damn good, I’m glad you enjoyed Nonesuch. It occurs to me that I never really thought he was trying to connect finance and the occult, but now that I think about it, maybe he is – with the sense that, to many people, the abstract and abstruse nature of modern finance might as well be wizardry, relying as it does on the manipulation of things unseen whose existence is basically conditional on everyone agreeing to pretend they exist (and yet they’re real enough to ruin lives). The Keeper: now that I think about it, I don’t think French is pro-vigilante in it, exactly. I think she’s written herself into a corner, where she has to keep Cal at a certain level of sympathy because of the paternal role he fulfills for Trey, and so she can’t go as dark as the implications of the premise seem to demand. That makes it look like she’s either unaware of the issue or blithely skating past it, whereas in fact I think she’s aware of the issue, and not blithe about it, but is hamstrung by the character choices that have been made.
I should read more Penelope Fitzgerald; found The Blue Flower deathly dull, but The Beginning of Spring is just magic, and Human Voices has always appealed for its premise. Also: Gloria Naylor sounds great. I used to see The Women of Brewster Place on the prize-winners rack at my high school bookshop job, but have somehow never picked it up. Plus another podcast episode to listen to!
That notional podcast list is really piling up…
I think you’d like Human Voices, and I am almost positive you’d really like Brewster.
I appreciate how you put French’s dilemma. Was it you who wrote that it would be great if she wrote a nursing novel? Hell yeah!
And YES we should conspire re: teaching. Let me know what texts you have in mind. I’ll say that your list of calsses is awfully long. Six is a big number, especially with 5 preps. That seems criminal, really. Am I understanding this correctly???
Haaaa. Yes – you are understanding the class spread correctly. Thank you for saying that it seems like A Lot; it seems like A Lot to me too, but no one else has yet said this. On the other hand, I am getting a lot of support and resources from my future colleagues, which is great news.
Re. texts, it’s a mix of set texts and my own selections. Within the latter, I’m mostly sticking to texts that have been taught before, for the sake of ease and because they’re already resourced to some point, but have gone for one or two that will be completely new to the department. (I’ve checked these with colleagues who have said, yes, those will teach well.) Year 7 does a novel (Haroun and the Sea of Stories, already taught although I’ve never read it) and a Shakespeare play (Henry V, already taught and apparently goes down well), plus a Creative Writing and Art unit later in the year that’s already resourced. Year 8 also gets a novel (The Hound of the Baskervilles, not previously taught but I’m looking forward to planning that) and a few pre-built anthologies of nonfiction pieces and poetry. Year 9 does a novel and a play (I’m doing Ursula K LeGuin’s The Word for World is Forest, already taught by one other colleague and hell yeah UKLG; for the play I’m going to try George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, not already taught, which has lots about generational conflict, the roles of women, is highly structured, etc.) Years 10 and 12 are the first full year of study for, respectively, GCSE and A Level exams, so the course texts are a bit more rigid. Year 10 gets both a modern play (An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley) and a “heritage text” (our school does a Shakespeare play; the exam board lets you pick from three and I’m going for The Merchant of Venice), plus more pre-built anthologies. Year 12 is split between two teachers; once they’re at this level, you pick an area of specialisation from a list set by the exam board (American Literature, Gothic Literature, The Immigrant Experience, etc.) Our school does American Lit. They then have to do two novels, of which one is a set text (The Great Gatsby – which I’ll be teaching) and the other can be from the set list or selected by the other teacher (my co-teacher has picked the other one from the set list, which is The Grapes of Wrath.) I also get to teach the Y12s their prose coursework text, which I get to select. (They have to write two coursework tasks – a close reading of a passage and a comparative essay – using three texts – prose, poetry, and drama – of which one must be 21st-century and one must be 20th-century.) Teachers get a free hand here. I’m going for William Golding’s novel The Inheritors, which is chock-full of symbolism and allegory and is about the spiritual effects of figurative language itself. Lots to identify and lots to argue with.
But. Yes. I have a huge amount of prep to do and am only just starting to get a handle on everything that’s needful. I’m sure it will shake out eventually…
Honestly, I think that many different preps is inhumane! Especially for a first time! I mean, I’m glad your colleagues are being helpful, but this really seems like a lot to ask. How many students in each class?
I’ve been curious about The Inheritors, but was mildly put off when someone told me Golding was a real “she breasted boobily up the stairs” kind of writer. But that must not be right if you’re going to teach it to students!
I think 20-25 tops? I honestly don’t know what’s normal and what isn’t – I guess I’m glad they think I can handle it, but it’s reassuring to know that this looks like a lot to someone else too, and it’s not just me being unreasonably self-doubting (although – that too.)
I’ve only read two Goldings, The Inheritors and Lord of the Flies, the latter so long ago I retain no memory of its prose specifics (and it has the advantage [?] of containing absolutely zero women to breast boobily anywhere). I don’t remember encountering that in The Inheritors, though, plus it’s about Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, so a certain amount of regressive gender politics is plausible for the environment – but actually my recollection is that, of all the Neanderthals, it’s the young woman who’s intellectually best equipped to deal with the sudden changes in their world.
I trust you on this. And god better The Inheritors than more Lord of the Flies…
20-25 is a lot! I know many public school teachers in the US have to deal with many more than that, but anything over 20 is really tough, in my experience. I am lucky mine will be capped at 17.
BTW I don’t think I ever listed the 11th grade texts: Gatsby, Passing (thank god, have taught many times), The Crucible, The Glass Castle (unknown to me), MAUS (thank god, can teach it in my sleep), as well as various shirt stories and nonfiction. As my own choice, I’ve decided to add Tommy Orange’s There There, which I’ll pair with some Jack Skeets poems.
I think 20-21 is the top limit. The classes get smaller as the kids get older; my Year 12 class will probably be closer to 6 or 7 students. (But then, they also generally get better at sitting in chairs and focusing as they get older.)
Gatsby: sigh (I have feelings about it, to be briefly revealed in a later post). Passing: I’ve been convinced this will teach well ever since reading it! The Crucible: definitely teaches well, plus you can show them the movie, which I think is entirely reasonable to do with a play (reading plays instead of watching them only ever gives you half the story, really). The Glass Castle: interesting – I read it when it came out and have retained little other than that it’s a sort of elevated misery memoir, like a proto-Educated. Maus: no problems there! And the Tommy Orange is a nice choice. I don’t know Jack Skeets at all – is he a Native American poet?
My bad–his name is Jake Skeets. Yes, he’s Navajo. I’m only just getting into his stuff, but it seems so interesting.
I doubt I’ll ever convince them to drop Gatsby, but maybe I can make some slow changes over time…
6 or 7 students–now we’re talking!
Oh, sent before adding: what are YOUR texts?! What are middle and high school English classes in the US setting these days?
Not sure my school is especially representative. It’s private, for one thing, kind of your classic college prep. I would say it is a high-achieving school, but its students, as far as I can tell so far, are interested in learning but not would-be intellectuals, if that makes sense.
Anyway: the set texts in 8th grade are Fahrenheit 451, Of Mice and Men, A Raisin in the Sun, Small Things Like These, The Joy Luck Club (super weird choice IMO but apparently kids get really into it), Julius Caesar, and a short story unit where we’ll do some in common and add choices of our own. To this I’m adding Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, which I hope will work. It’s basically a YA text and the issues are pertinent and it’s sort of a beginner version of his usual narrative sleight of hand (that naive Ishiguro voice). I wish it were a little shorter though.
That roughly describes my school too: private (“independent” in UK parlance) at least. They’re really pushing academic achievement at the moment but used to be much better known for sports (although several well-known authors have gone there). Quite a few of your set texts are on the options lists somewhere – Klara and the Sun is sometimes taught to standardised exam classes here, for example. That looks like a pretty fun list for 8th grade and lots on it – do they read everything all the way through?
That was my impression, too, that St Louis is a quite interesting theater city.
Human Voices may be my favorite Fitzgerald, although for some reason I have not read your favorite. Beginning of Spring is on a shelf right beside me rigth now. Maybe this summer will be the moment.
Congratulations on the teaching job. I have no doubt it will be interesting in the best way.
To add to the theater interest, we just saw Fat Ham at the Black Rep. Terrific play, terrific production.
It’s always a good time to read the Beginning of Spring, though the end of a long Maine winter (do those exist anymore?) would be a great time.
Thanks, Tom. I’d prefer not to work full time but needs must and I’m curious what it will be like to work with students of that age.