Editors’ Picks: Moments of Contemplation in Books
What literature insists upon is not only its capacity for storytelling but for inspiring sites of reflection. As we encounter the disparate narratives that literature provides, we confront loss, tenderness, ambiguity, longing, and, finally, the fundamental humanity that resides at a novel’s core. This month, members of the Review’s Editorial Board have compiled various books that speak to these qualities, all of which evoke moments of contemplation within us.
The Lightness by Emily Temple (HarperCollins, 2020)
“Death was for goldfish and grandmothers, disappearance was for fathers and fortunes. Girls like us would only go on forever,” decides Olivia, the protagonist of Emily Temple’s debut novel The Lightness. Breathy and precarious, this story staggers itself up in the mountains, at a pan-spiritual meditation center for troubled teens. Here, the air is thin and the strawberries are impossibly red and reality is unreliable, coming undone. At its heart, however, this book studies the condition of teenage girlhood. The girls of The Lightness shimmer with illusion and desire the way myths do. They are beautiful and unknowable, as prone to cruelty as they are tenderness. They pluck each other’s eyebrows and seamlessly quote obscure wisdoms from Tibetan monks. French braid and fast on nettle tea. Lipstick and levitation rituals. In her witchy and Sapphic prose, Temple marries the mundane existence of girlhood with an otherworldly restlessness, a hunger for deeper knowing. I could live in its strange adolescence forever.
— Anoushka Subbaiah, Fiction & Poetry Editor
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)
To the Lighthouse is not an easy read; the very act of processing it necessitates intellectual labor. That is a well-established fact—it is, after all, a staple modern classic, a literary masterpiece, a “fancy” book. What I didn’t hear when I was gearing up to read it is how intensely emotional of an experience it would be. The way the book meanders in and out of peoples’ consciousnesses, weaving a rich and complicated psychological reality, is fascinating, confusing, satisfying, and deeply saddening, all at once. Little nuggets of obscure emotional truths are embedded within long and circuitous passages of thought. Through this narrative practice, the mundane is exalted to the extraordinary while somehow masterfully retaining a sense of its insignificance—a marvellous piece of evidence for the novel’s ever-present self-awareness. This book defies simplistic reactions like “relatable,” “enjoyable,” or even “good.” It is what it is—the story of a guesthouse, the Ramsays, and human relationships—a story that, in this contributing editor’s opinion, deserves to be told over and over. Any literary enthusiast who enjoys characters drawn out with exacting, realistic, human detail should pick up this book. I know I will return to it in the future and glean more insight in every reread… the future foretells a romance between To the Lighthouse and myself, and I cannot wait!
— Mariam Muhammad, Contributing Editor
Only as the Day is Long by Dorianne Laux (W.W. Norton, 2020)
Mention poetry in casual conversation and you’re often met with the vague confusion reserved for quantum physics or classical Greek. Laux’s new and selected poems, taken from all eras of her 25 year career as a poet, are singularities in the realm of verse for their utter and unselfish accessibility. In content, the poems are almost exclusively autobiographical. But, after wandering from one elaborately outlined scene to another, one gets the distinct impression that there is some kind of direct confession, some break in the fourth wall between writer and reader. The depths of emotion Laux plumbs are rooted within the unique experiences of her own life—ranging from love, sex, abuse, longing, death—and yet she asks not that her reader understand her, but to understand themselves. Consider, for instance, lines from the poem “Dust”:
“Someone spoke to me last night, /
told me the truth. Just a few words, /
but I recognized it.”
In others’ truths are the truths of ourselves; Laux’s lush and haunting prose is as honest, for herself, for you, and for me, as the day is long.
— Alex Carpenter, Contributing Editor
Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in 10 Blocks by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum Books, 2019)
In Spring 2020, just a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic materialized in the United States, I nestled myself in a sunlit corner of McCabe’s lower level to read Look Both Ways for my Educational Studies course on children’s and young adult’s literature. Penned by Jason Reynolds in 2019, Look Both Ways follows the individual yet interconnected experiences of a group of children on their walk home from school after “a school bus fell from the sky.” I anticipated a cute, quick, and simple read. Stretched thin by summer internship and study abroad applications, upcoming research papers, and the overall daily grind of Swarthmore, I was thankful for an opportunity to settle down and offer myself a break, though still couched in productivity. Confidently, I allotted myself two hours on Look Both Ways before I returned my attention to the barrage of deadlines looming over me.
Though I finished reading Look Both Ways as swiftly as I hoped, I was unable to dislodge Reynolds’ poignant narrative from the forefront of my mind for the remainder of the day. Catapulted into memories of my childhood, I appreciated, for the first time, the significance of my own experiences as I returned home from school each day. Time I often spent either introspecting or bonding with classmates, my daily sojourn home offered me much needed space to articulate my sense of self as I stepped into my adolescence. Though comedic and light-hearted, Reynolds intersperses Look Both Ways with the hardships of life—present even in the most mundane realities, like walking home from school—and the ways in which children engage these truths. Expertly, Reynolds asserts children’s personhood, agency, and insight; indeed, children author their world.
As I reckoned through Look Both Ways, children’s literature’s value is not circumscribed to its primary audience. In witnessing these narratives’ complexities and potentialities, adults, too, can discover much about themselves and the wider world.
— Helen Tumolo, Copy Editor