A few of my favorite reads…
CONTEMPORARY & CANONICAL ǁ NEW & OLD.
Fiction ※ Poetry ※ Nonfiction ※ Drama
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All tagged maternity
Barbara Kingsolver’s How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) (2020) is her first collection of poetry. Kingsolver is, of course, beloved for her fiction, respected for her nonfiction, and now we might add, applauded for her verse. It is a collection I encourage any lover of poetry, particularly poetry by women, to reach for; it is a collection that will sit beside Mary Oliver’s Devotions on my shelf, its pages gradually more and more worn.
Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (2020) includes some of the most moving fictional explorations of courtship and childbirth, maternity and pandemic, grief and loss, that I have read of late. Ultimately, this novel grapples with the ways that parents can move on after the unthinkable happens and they lose a child to illness; a part of that story, O’Farrell’s novel argues, as literary critics before her have, is William Shakespeare’s penning of his famous tragedy Hamlet, an act that may provide healing for both himself and his relationship with Agnes.
