Love List : April

sparkle of possibility | infra-ordinary | midnight hours

‘April showers bring May flowers’ chirps the sign outside the florist — but I don’t want any more April showers — I want April magic. Last year, unexpectedly I found some. Searching for a last-minute place to stay as a family, serendipity took a hand and I discovered an Edwardian boathouse for rent, on the Suffolk coast not far from where I grew up. I hadn’t been back there for years — long enough to have forgotten how it felt to breathe beneath mesmerising, expansive East Anglian skies.

The Boathouse was all our seaside dreams come true. It stood at the end of a familiar coastal path —I had unknowingly passed close by many times, first as a teenager and much later as a new mother. Nestled in the corner of a boatyard at the top of the Deben estuary, its many windows looked out onto water, mud flats and so much sky. Early each morning, my youngest set off adventuring with my Dad: watching the fishermen set out, collecting shells, searching for hagstones to ward off witches. Meanwhile, I swam, as the high tide edged up the beach. The low sun dripped a trail of gold across the water’s surface and gently touched my cold shoulders.

My Dad befriended the harbourmaster, who told us on the last morning that the boathouse was owned by the family of Helen Oxenbury, whose children’s books we have always loved. This was a place that inspired We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, a picture book I read to my children so many times, I can still recite it by heart.

Time seemed different on those boathouse days: softer, and forgiving. Clouds drifted slowly, boats clinked gently, water lapped against the shingle. I felt peaceful —more so than I had for years —grateful to be with those I loved, in a place which had been waiting at the edges of my memory. A part of me floats there still.

Here’s what I’ve been reading & loving this month:

fiction

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

This book completely passed me by when it was published in 2019 and I came across it recently via Huma Qureshi on Instagram. Since I finished reading, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. In the beginning, it tells the story of soon-to-be-divorced Toby Fleishman, finding his way through online dating, work, parenting and mingling with a wealthy New York community. One day, his ex-wife Rachel leaves him unexpectedly with their children, and disappears.

The initially nameless narrator of this story turns out to be Toby’s college friend Libby, who is now a stay at home mother in New Jersey, but was once a journalist for a men’s magazine, during which time she learned that ‘the only way to get someone to listen to a woman [is] to tell her story through a man’. When the narrative suddenly twists, it becomes apparent that nothing is as straightforward as it seems, and Toby may not be the hero of this story (if there is a hero at all).

The plot of the novel is clever and enjoyable, but it was Libby’s voice that really compelled me. She describes with heartbreaking clarity how it feels to be in your forties, coming to terms with the understanding that life no longer has the sparkle of endless possibility that it offered in your youth. The choices you made — however happily you made them — have taken away from you a host of other choices, perhaps without you even noticing. This is the gut punch realisation of the book, and the question at its heart is how we can find a way to live with it.

‘You were not ever going to be young again. You were only at risk for not remembering that this was as good as it would get, in every single moment — that you are right now as young as you’ll ever be again’.

Whilst I am (perhaps unsurprisingly!) someone who prefers to read a book before watching the adaptation, on this occasion I read and watched concurrently: the TV adaptation (on Disney +) captured the novel so well, and Lizzy Caplan is just wonderful as Libby, particularly in the final episode.

non-fiction

Notes on a Parisian Commute by Lauren Elkin

When I packed my bag for Paris, I couldn’t resist slipping in this lovely little book by Lauren Elkin, to be re-read in situ. A love letter to Paris written in the form of iPhone notes, during the no 91 and 92 bus rides of her daily commute, this is a unique portrait of a city, and a fascinating insight into a writer’s observations, thought processes, and experiments in form. When I took an Arvon writing masterclass with Lauren Elkin, she spoke of her interest in the infra-ordinary — a term coined by Georges Perec to describe an everyday that is neither ordinary nor extraordinary. Connecting with the infra-ordinary requires us to pay careful attention to the habitual and to the daily details of our lives, a task that Lauren Elkin has undertaken with both care and flair. This book vibrates with delight in detail, and Perec appears within its pages on several occasions.

Threaded through the diary-style entries — in their often impressionistic form — is both a deeply personal narrative, and a wider historical one (the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks). The author’s fellow commuters are illuminated by the beam of her observation, and she captures the balance between togetherness and solitariness that is central to city life. I read the book — appropriately — on a Paris bus (the number 85) and as wheels and pages turned, I felt the city flow around me — an unchoreographed dance of quotidian life, rich in meanings and memories, spooling endlessly out beyond the bus window.

online

Watch by

Alice Vincent

This piece by author (and new mother) Alice Vincent on the quiet, dark hours of sleeplessness recalled to me my own days mothering a newborn. Lately, I’ve been pulled back to that time of overwhelming intensity — I’m reading an advance copy of this incredible book by Lucy Jones (of which, more soon) and it has left me thinking deeply of the bleary-eyed, tender new mother I once was.

Watch reveals the compelling stillness and surprising thrilling intimacy of secret midnight hours spent with a waking baby. My first son — who for many months woke two-hourly — is taller than I am now, but I still feel that, if I rub my eyes, I could perhaps step back into my old bay-fronted bedroom, where I stood silent beside the curtain and watched the city lights shimmer as I held him in my arms and rocked him back to sleep.

watch

Oh, and Alice Vincent’s new book Why Women Grow is on my to-read list — it looks to be an absolute beauty.

My April loves.

Thank you for reading, and for your continued support.

Laura x

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