It occurred to me to keep The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu as a novella for November. But when I was rushing to leave the house one afternoon, and returned because I’d forgotten my wallet, I slipped TEoKN into my bag on a whim. So, naturally that’s what I read that day (not the carefully packed selections).

Augusto Higa Oshiro’s description of the sea, early in the novel, alerted me to the author’s attentive phrasing: “The sea was everything: the scent in the air, hidden desires, the morning’s secret, its impermissible force, the fury of what was incomprehensible.” The rhythm, the accumulation of sounds (in translation from the Spanish by Jennifer Shyue, whose afterword illuminates her passion for Latin American writers), echoes the water’s motion but also the inner workings of the professor’s mind, his difficulty adjusting to his forced retirement,

In one sense, the story is stuffed full, as with this description: “He greeted a neighbor with his usual pallid surliness, amid the customary crush of vehicles, vendors on their tricycle carts, vagrant recyclers with their sacks, and crowd of stands and orange sellers of Giribaldi.”

But, amidst the cacophony, Katzuo’s loss echoes amid his feeling of being unmoored. “He had to sit down on a bench, Katzuo seemed to shrink, he felt ashamed, those strolls, his very life, the books he had loved, everything settled into emptiness, like it had never existed, like there was no justification, for him, for his body, for his dreams, for anything at all.”

The sense of precision with language and structure is consistently present, but absence and a sense of a suspended self are overwhelming, rooted in Katzuo’s sense that he doesn’t truly belong anywhere (pulled between his Japanese and Peruvian identities and concealing his sexual orientation). It’s an immersive and impressive character-study that lingers. [It was originally published in 2005 and the translated edition from Archipelago was published in 2023, with an excerpt at Lithub here.]

Marie Hess’s Going Back Home (2019) is a novella which considers the gap between stories told to Indigenous children about their ancestors, their strength and resilience, and the sense of powerlessness instilled at residential school via the institutions of government and church.

“How many stories have the boys relieved through the memories of their fathers and grandfathers. Stories told of fearless hunters or the stories told of great warriors, their faces are unknown. Yet they feel their strength as their grandfathers portray their courage through battle after battle, a strength that saved our mohawk people. But these stories of battle were fruitless against the cowards that hid in the darkness and preyed on the young.”

She draws on her memories of time served in the Mohawk Residential School and the interplay between memory and invention, between reality and dream, invites readers into an ever-shifting exploration of inherited trauma and healing. This CBC short film presents the restoration work done on this historic site to allow survivors to share their stories and to allow visitors to explore the history in concrete terms.

Historical settings feature in Edith Wharton’s Old New York (one of the Virago green-spined editions on my shelves, originally published in 1925) with four long stories from settlers’ perspectives. In the 1840s, “False Dawn”, the 1850s “The Old Maid”, the 1860s “The Spark”, and the 1870s with “New Year’s Day”. They’re preoccupied with the upper classes, with those who “had not come to the colonies to die for a creed but to live for a bank account.” There is, for instance, a son whose decisions can never satisfy his father but which are, ultimately, proven worthwhile.

They’re the “conservative element that holds new societies together as seaplants bind the seashore.” In one instance, friendship allows a woman, who’s conceived out-of-wedlock, to devise a plan for her to raise the child until complications require a new plan. “Old New York always thought away whatever interfered with the perfect propriety of its arrangements.” And there’s another scandal caused by an elderly father-in-law who’s cared for by a man who may or may not have fought in the Civil War. They complement one another well and got me eyeing the other Whartons on my shelf. Do you have a favourite of hers?

In contrast, Kerry Trautman’s Irregulars (2023) is told from the perspective of a waitress, interacting with the customers seated in her section for one shift. We hear about their orders, the eccentric details required to satisfy their requests, and her involvement with (or disengagement from) the substance of their conversations. Trautman’s from Ohio and the back of the book contains a list of her favourite restaurants, including the Westway Diner in NYC and several Ohioan businesses, including Kewpee Hamburgers in Lima.

She credits Jason Baldinger for the photographs that contribute to the novella’s sense of place; you can practically hear the clatter of cutlery and the clunking of the fryer baskets. The cover is a barely legible Guest Check, and the slatted swinging door to the kitchen has something sticky on it: this is an insider’s perspective, with the perfect amount of messy detail to satisfy those of us who enjoy briefly inhabiting different characters’ workplaces. (Do you?) We can imagine what it’s like (for 70 pages) to smooth out the kinks with her colleagues and work her tables. “How to lie, be an actress, whatever gets you what you need.” I’d tip Trautman, if I could.

And you know what was NOT in my bookbag? Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a nearly-six-hundred-page-long novel that several of you have recommended since it was published in 2020. I’ve borrowed it from the library three times before; I was determined this time, so I read just a few (very short) chapters most days, to keep the variety of voices distinct.

Unsurprisingly, with a book this massive, there’s something for every reading mood. So, yes, sometimes it’s grim: “Drop Plan A when the whole thing goes smash, enact Plan B, which was this: survive! You just do what you have to, in an ongoing improvisation, and survive if you can.” But, also, sometimes it’s not: “What will you know? Hard to say, but something like this: whether life means anything or not, joy is real. Life lives, life is living.” This is the first of KSR’s books I’ve read, but I’d like to read more. And they’re all pretty hefty, so I’ll leave them at home too.

Which of these have you read, or which do you have on your TBR? Which would you pack into your bookbag if you had to choose right now? And would you end up reading something else entirely, instead?