Children at your feet
Not all books about kids are sad!
The year my child was born, I was doing a theme of “books upon which Best Adapted Screenplay winners were based,” which led to some really awesome reads, but it also led me to stupidly choose Rosemary’s Baby and—get ready for this—Sophie’s Choice. SOPHIE’S everloving CHOICE! For my middle-of-the-night anxiety reading! What on earth! As my tears dripped onto his little cheeks, I looked down at the new infant entrusted to my lifelong care and whispered fiercely into his ear, “Sometimes, your mom is a real dumbass.”
I will save you from similar poor timing decisions by alerting you, in a non-spoilery way, to how these books about children may upset you.
🧤 Hamnet
Maggie O’Farrell, 2020
🚨An 11-year-old boy dies. This is not a spoiler, it is literally the first thing you learn, via a note about William Shakespeare’s IRL son.
That’s who this super richly written historical fiction is about—the family of William Shakespeare (though he’s never explicitly named in the book). His wife and three kids did not accompany him to London to grow pointy goatees and amuse the queen. Instead, they stayed home in Stratford-upon-Avon to, according to O’Farrell’s richly written historical fictionalized account, cultivate medicinal gardens and generally stress.
Despite having an 11-year-old boy of my own, Hamnet did not reduce me to a sodden mess! If I’m being honest, it just made me want to hang around Sherwood Forest and harvest honey. However, you have been warned. Probably do not read while you hold an infant child in your arms.
Recommended to: Those who love history and feelings. And those who love mothers! Any knowledge of or interest in Shakespeare is unnecessary.
🌳 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith, 1943
🚨Alcoholic parent, threat of some scary and violent abuse, poverty, struggling
The above warning doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, but it’s not, say, as grim as Angela’s Ashes. Now that I’m thinking about it though, there are lots of similarities! But this one is older, tighter, and set in Williamsburg (Brooklyn, not Virginia, though obviously I’d be more than all over a Colonial Williamsburg coming-of-age story).
Francie (the semi-autobiographical stand-in of Betty Smith herself) struggles and succeeds and fails and struggles some more, all while trying to balance the problems of a father she adores and the survivalism skills of a mother who will make it all work through sheer willpower. It’s one of those reads that’s both easy and difficult, and, again, gives you a great and grimy snapshot of life in another time.
Recommended to: Those who liked Shuggie Bain and Demon Copperhead or just want to hear about what Williamsburg was like before the mixologist era.
😬 Atonement
Ian McEwan, 2001
🚨Actually, no real warnings here, unless you are triggered by the Blitz (legit) or are a piece of shrubbery that does not like being whacked with a stick. I get it, shrubbery!
Thirteen-year-old Briony is bored and annoyed, tired of being left out of her older sister’s more glamorous lifestyle (as she sees it). Plus, it’s the English countryside in the 1930s! What is there for a young, rich girl to do besides whack a shrub with a stick! Oh wait, she’s 13, she can just… create a bunch of drama that gets way out of hand.
It’s wild that a grown-up man writes an adolescent girl so well, though, dang, Ian MacEwan writes everything well. I’ve since read a handful of his other books (all great), but this one’s still my favorite.
Also recommended: The 2007 film version by Joe Wright. A very young Saoirse Ronan plays Briony, and there is literally no more beautiful gown than the green number Keira wears. Once that actual gown came to Richmond as part of an exhibit on costumes, and I cried looking at it. Sometimes, your mom is a real dumbass!
😇 Also, if you’ve read a book EELS begged you to read and you felt strongly about it one way or the other, let me know in the comments or by hitting reply! Talking about these things is my greatest joy.
😇 😇 Double also, if you like EELS and want to share it with your bookish friends, I’d be so grateful! Here’s the link to the whole shebang.
And now, a bonus recommendation
🎭 Fates and Furies — Lauren Groff, 2015
Recommended for: “Those who love marriage plots recast on the scale of epics, plot twists that turn faster than Charybdis, and lines that crackles like the bubbles that "flea-jump from a champagne glass." Or maybe you just want to read what's behind the book cover that launched a thousand lookalikes.”
Recommended by: Gabriela, who among many other things, makes zines. Gabby is recently into reading novels in Italian and last loved Detransition, Baby, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, and Another Brooklyn. Also, she just turned me onto the Literature Clock, which is a very good… time.
That was the ninth EELS! Last week, one reader told the owner of the Dusty Stack™ to throw Lolita right in the trash, and another told her to definitely escalate Lolita. Do with that what you will! Send any and all questions, feedback, shouted book recommendations, and pics of your Dusty Stacks (the very tiny EELS readership can help!) by hitting reply!
– Susan