Gilead

Gilead

Chris Mathers Jackson
The Classics

Certain novels are slow and contemplative; they paint a portrait of a life or a time using carefully selected shades and hues to capture a mood. There may not be much action beyond that of memory, but it is enough. More than enough even. Marilynne Robinson’s winner of the Pulitzer and National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead (2004) is one such novel. Contemplative, slow-burn writing like hers gets at the big questions of life with a hefty serving of earnest feeling sprinkled throughout. Written in first-person, Gilead is one man’s reflection upon his life, his family, and the meaning of human goodness.

A Gentleman In Moscow

A Gentleman In Moscow

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

These majestic surroundings and my freedom to enjoy them are not lost on me as I pull myself out of the story Amor Towles weaves in A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). Towles is a household name and over the course of the past eleven years (since the publication on Rules of Civility in 2011) he has acquired a well-deserved following. This, however, is my first Towles’ novel. I scan the mountains around me as moment by moment they glow deeper purple red a the sun sinks further toward the far western horizon before I return to the Count and the world of Moscow’s grand Metropol hotel; the contrast between his life and my own in this moment could not be more pronounced.

Throne of Glass Series

Throne of Glass Series

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

As anyone familiar with her other works would expect, Sarah J Maas’s Throne of Glass series includes a hefty dose of struggles (both internal and external) among a growing cast of characters who all come together in the hope of making a better world through love and friendship.

The Sorrow Stone

The Sorrow Stone

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Kári Gískason’s The Sorrow Stone (2022) is a beautifully crafted historical fiction set in the 10th century. This novel adds to the growing body of historical fiction that builds on the stories of Nordic culture and the settlement of Iceland. Reading The Sorrow Stone transports the reader back through the centuries to a time of cold and hardship when revenge and duty weighed upon everyone, and when one woman is forced to face her past to save her son’s future.

Bewilderment

Bewilderment

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

In Bewilderment, however, Richard Powers doesn’t limit the reader to life on planet earth; rather, through the first-person voice of his protagonist, astrobiologist Theo Byrne, Powers’ writing wanders the universe in search of life, but always returns home. Layering astronomy, biology, and neuroscience, this novel challenges its reader to think more broadly, to consider alternative truths, and to recognize how little we know about ourselves, our planet, and our universe.

Learwife

Learwife

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

J. R. Thorp’s debut novel, Learwife (2021) is a lyrical, internal monologue of King Lear’s widow during some undefined point in British medieval history. The novel opens as news of Lear’s death, and that of his three daughters, reaches a convent in northern England. Here, amidst the stone walls and industrious lives of the nuns, resides the estranged wife of King Lear who slowly unravels her story while she grieves the family she had already lost. Thus, Thorp’s Learwife begins where Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear concludes and provides the missing queen’s perspective through her memories and her grief.

At the Edge of the Orchard

At the Edge of the Orchard

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Tracy Chevalier has written many an impressive historical fiction (Girl with The Pearl Earring being probably her most famous). I picked up At the Edge of the Orchard (2016) this spring and allowed myself to fall into the historical spaces the book brings to life. This novel is divided into two halves. The first half, set in Ohio’s Black Swamp, in the 1830s alternates perspective between a husband and a wife. The second half follows their youngest son on his meandering journey west (through the 1840s and 50s). In this novel, Chevalier’s sparse writing creates characters who come alive amidst the harsh conditions of nineteenth-century pioneer life.

West With the Night

West With the Night

Chris Mathers Jackson
The Classics

Beryl Markham’s West with the Night (1942) is an eloquently written memoir that paints a series of powerful portraits of 20th-century Africa. Markham was a woman who boldly worked in male fields—race horse training and aviation—during the early- to mid-1900s. Unlike some memoir, Markham’s prose is eloquent, her imagery rich. West with the Night describes in vivid, suspenseful detail her experiences in eastern Africa, even after she left it. Among other things, this memoir reflects Markham’s love affair with Africa and the many ways that the continent formed her as a child and young adult.

Emily of New Moon Trilogy

Emily of New Moon Trilogy

Chris Mathers Jackson
The Classics, Books for Writers

This winter I enjoyed all three of L. M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon books: Emily of New Moon (originally published 1923), Emily Climbs (1925), and Emily’s Quest (1927). Titular character and heroine, Emily Byrd Starr, feels the call to the creative life at a young age. There is a magic tug that draws her to put pen to page. As such, her story, told over the course of this trilogy, is very much a portrait of the artist as a young woman of sorts.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Chris Mathers Jackson
The Classics

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the story of one girl’s coming of age in the 19teens. Set, as the title suggests, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the first two decades of the twentieth century, this rich novel focuses on the story of Francie Nolan. It is also, however, the story of her parents and their love, her aunts and grandmother, her neighborhood at large. Ultimately this moving coming-of-age novel explores the American promise that poor American kids, the grandkids of immigrants perhaps, might realize and the magic of that promise.

A Ghost in the Throat

A Ghost in the Throat

Chris Mathers Jackson
Nonfiction

Irish poet Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s part memoir, part translation A Ghost In the Throat (2020) is, as she states from the beginning, “a female text” (3). In fact, lest her reader fail to absorb this, she titles her first chapter “a female text,” her first line of the first chapter (after the epigraph of a few stanzas of Eiblín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s “Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire” or “Keen for Art ó Laoghaire”) is all in caps (“THIS IS A FEMALE TEXT.”), and then her memoir concludes: “This is a female text” (282). It is clear, she means us all to associate her text, and Eiblín’s as well, with the female. As such, it is both organic and circular, dynamic and complex.

The Island of the Missing Trees

The Island of the Missing Trees

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

When a Ficus carica, commonly known as the edible fig, takes up a narrative voice in a novel, readers should know they are in for something unique. In the case of The Island of the Missing Trees (2021) by Elif Shafak, the tree narrator, the multiple storylines and settings (contemporary London and twentieth-century Cypress), and the beautiful prose all work to utterly transport the reader.

Still Life

Still Life

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

I recently picked up Sarah Winman’s recent historical fiction novel: Still Life (2021). In addition to its beautiful cover of flowers and parrot, the reference to the world of painting in its title immediately piqued my interest, as did its setting of Florence, Italy.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Chris Mathers Jackson
Books for Writers, Nonfiction

In an effort to read books that might help shake off the writer’s block I had suffered since May, I picked up a copy of Gilbert’s book, and I must say, as fall merged into winter this year. I am pleased I did. While Gilbert’s literary voice grates at me from time to time, I thoroughly enjoyed nearly all of her points and assertions in Big Magic and will encourage other creatives to give it a readthrough if they have not already. Big Magic provides readers with no-nonsense suggestions and best practices for shedding the fear of failure and endeavoring to create if called to do so.

A Court of Thorns and Roses Series

A Court of Thorns and Roses Series

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

For readers who appreciate a suspenseful fantasy interwoven with a good dose of romance, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015) and the four books that come after it will delight.

The first in this series, A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015) establishes the divided world in which we find our heroine, Feyre Archeron.

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