Read Indies 2025: Letters, Translations, Limbs and a Goat

To begin with, a fan favourite: Business as Usual by Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford (1933). It might have been Simon whose enthusiasm originally brought this title into my stack, but if I’d ever leafed through a copy anywhere, I’d’ve been instantly enamoured. As I was with Jean Webster’s Daddy Long-Legs, for instance, also with letters and doodles and an intriguing setting (boarding school). Here the setting is a department store, based on Selfridges (which I know only from the public television series “Mr Selfridge”). Indeed, it was sold there, Christmas 1933, signed copies on the Book Floor. And the real-life stories of the two women who penned the novel are interesting too (their lives as young working women inform the realistic elements of the novel). I read it in short bursts (as with the Provincial Lady diaries) but anyone who’s partial to the epistolary form could be tempted to read it in a single sitting, one letter leading to “just one more” until…

Wishlist: Still distributing but no longer publishing new material. Discounted stock available here. https://www.psbooks.co.uk/handheld

This led me to a very different collection of letters, certainly a single-sitting read: Arsenic Mon Amour: Letters of Love and Rage (2024), exchanged between Jean-Lou David and Gabrielle Izaguirré-Falardeau. The former is a writer, the latter a “student, artist, and militant”, and their letters are translated by Mary O’Connor. The letters are impassioned and poetic, but also ordinary and human. The first begins “I hope I won’t end up regretting what I’m about to write” as the two write about being born in—and growing up in—Rouyn-Noranda, the copper capital of Canada, in the region of Abitibi-Témiskamingue Québec. One’s family has a historic role in the community and the other does not: both wrestle with the devastation wracked upon the land by the mining industry and the knowledge that the community remains inextricably bound to it. Easy for me to say, writing today from the nickel capital of Canada, but this is a universal story: “Where we’re from, you can’t escape it.”

Wishlist: Love Stories Now and Then by Marie-Pier Luneau and Jean-Philippe Warrens, “the first comprehensive survey of Quebec and French-Canadian romance novels. […] This book challenges many of our assumptions about romance novels and offers a compelling glimpse into the dreams and fantasies of love over the past two centuries.”

Now, moving from one work in translation to a collection of essays about translation: river in an ocean, edited by Nuzhat Abbas (2023). As with reading bpNichol’s poems, I found myself feeling disconnected from some of these pieces, lacking experience with the literatures of their original languages. Pieces by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek (on Rwandan stories), Gopika Jadeja (on Dalit stories), and Norah Alkharashi (writing about Arabic) overcame my inexperience. Musings on translation and decolonisation, and the intersection of different communities seeking to preserve their stories, remained interesting, inspiring even, without much experience. For instance, from “Elegiac Moods—Letters to Agha Shahid Ali” by Rahat Kurd”: “Loss may be our experience, but loss is not our destiny. To translate it to remember how to resist.” And in “Remembering Lala Rukh” by Maryam Rahman: “She lived simply and gave amply.” Further, the scripts in Arabic and Tamil are beautiful: even when I couldn’t appreciate the translation commentary, I enjoyed the experience of those words on the page. (Thanks to Joe, for recommending this.)

Wishlist: Arabic, Between Love and War, edited by Norah Alkharashi & Yasmine Haj: “In Arabic, the word for love حب  is one letter shorter than the word for war حرب.”

From short essays to short stories, Danila Botha’s collection Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness (2024) is a little more than two hundred pages long, but it contains enough stories to read one each day for a month. They are just the right length to enjoy with a cup of tea before it begins to chill, and this is what I recommend (I read them over a few months). They are similar to Cyril Dabydeen’s stories, in that they are not mere sketches despite their length, but they usually unfold in mere moments. Although the subject matter sometimes overlaps with that in Jann Everard’s collection (women’s everyday lives, mostly Jewish) one has the sense of being invited to witness rather than inhabit. But to attend closely, albeit briefly. This is more like channel-surfing rather than sitting down to watch a film, so perhaps most appealing to readers who read enough short stories to have different short-story-reading moods. In the beginning, I wondered what would stick, after making the acquaintance of so many characters in such a short volume: what remains is the sense of an astute observer in a busy and complex world. Good enough for me.

Wishlist: A Good Name by Yejide Kilanko: “Trapped by family expectations, Zina marries Eziafa, moves to Houston, and trains as a nurse. Buffeted by a series of disillusions, the couple stagger through a turbulent marriage until Zina decides to change the rules of engagement.”

From one Toronto writer to another, Kristen den Hartog’s The Roosting Box: Rebuilding the Body after the First World War (2024) is non-fiction but, like Andrew Hunter and Rowan McCandless, her prose is creative—designed to engage. She lives near the historic site of the Christie Street Hospital and regularly passes the plaque marking its location. Her decision to structure the book in chapters named for body parts damaged—or destroyed—in WWI seems gory, but that’s overcome by the tenderness with which the stories are told (often in soldiers’ own words), and struggles contextualised. The photographs are striking and the use of primary sources impressive, particularly the decision to include poetry of the time in fragments to enhance exposition—but it’s really all about the stories, of the men and those who loved them and those who aimed to serve their needs (often other veterans in need).  And not Toronto stories after all, but wartime stories: as we witness historic alliances shift in response to power wielded by dictators today, it is surprisingly relevant to revisit historic conflicts in the context of everyday people’s lives. Den Hartog’s curiosity and commitment remind us that, even when all we see is a plaque, it marks a million stories.

Wishlist: Zaatari by Karen E. Fisher: “The recipes in Zaatari are glorious. Passed down the generations from mother to daughter, cooking keeps the people of Zaatari camp connected to the towns and villages of the Syria they fled.” — Claudia Roden

The obvious link here is they’re both Goose Lane titles, but that was accidental: it was a stylistic link for me. Each section in jules delorme’s memoir i heard a crow before i was born (2024) seems to connect, to coallesce; just as den Hartog’s segments come together to rebuild a body, delorme’s come together to rebuild a life. His style is spare and his syntax succinct. There are some memorable images in the short chapters, including the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) child’s view of a bear drinking from a stream, water dripping from its magnificent and powerful jaws: awe and wonder. There are small flourishes that evoke a sensory response, like the sound of so many voices at a powwow. There are deeply rooted reconciliations with a child’s memories of a mother who was a victim and a father who was a monster, with gratitude for a grandmother who taught him the ways of his ancestors. There are humourous moments, including a family member’s jokes about delorme’s “Ass Burger’s” diagnosis. But it’s the love stories that struck me, including that of kaia’tákerahs, a goat whose love was was ’better so often than those who walk on two legs. purer. truer. sweeter.” A simple and heartful reflection on a rich and as-yet-unfolding life.

Wishlist: Mohawk Warriors, Hunters & Chiefs | Kanien’kehá:ka Ronterí:ios, Rontó:rats & Rotiiá:ner (English/Mohawk) by David Liss and  Tom Wilson Tehoháhake

“In Mohawk Warriors, Hunters & Chiefs, Wilson further explores his identity through a stunning collection of paintings that explore what it means to be removed and reconnected with your cultural heritage.”