an important distinction

August was a tame but fruitful month of second-hand book buying. The first three novels I bought at my local village fete, which unexpectedly had a second-hand book stall with paperbacks for £1 each. It was raining (finally) so I had to walk around with them under my jumper. The fourth novel I bought on eBay and I’m reading right now. So here’s what I bought in August, for a total of £8.45…

The Visitor by Maeve Brennan

One of three books I bought at my local village fete, The Visitor feels like it’s going to be one of those fated coming togethers of reader and book. I’d never heard of Maeve Brennan before picking this up, but the cover, the slim size and the indie publisher drew me in.

Maeve Brennan was an Irish writer and journalist, best known for her short story collections The Springs of Affection and The Rose Garden. As it turns out, The Visitor was posthumously published in 2000 after being discovered in a university archive, having been written in the 1940s.

The Visitor is the haunting tale of Anastasia King, who, at the age of twenty-two, returns to her grandmother’s house — the very house where she grew up — after six long years away. She had been in Pans, comforting her disgraced and dying mother, the runaway from a disastrous marriage to Anastasia’s late father, the grandmother’s only son. “It’s a pity she sent for you, Anastasia”, the grandmother says, “and a pity you went after her. It broke your father’s heart”. Anastasia pays dearly for the choice she made, a choice that now costs her own strong sense of family and makes her an exile — a visitor — in the place she once called home.

This is one I’m very excited about, and I think I’ll probably pick it up to read very soon.

69 by Ryū Murakami (tr. by Ralph F. McCarthy)

Another of my village fete finds, 69 by Ryū Murakami is a book I’ve looked at in book shops a couple of times but never bought. I’ve never read anything by this Murakami before, but I’ve always been intrigued by the somewhat graphic nature of his titles and book covers.

Not to be confused with Haruki Murakami, Ryū Murakami is a Japanese novelist, essayist and filmmaker, best known for his postmodern novels exploring themes of human nature and disillusionment. 69 was first published in 1987.

It’s summer of nineteen sixty-nine, and Kensuke Yazaki is seventeen and interested in everything: the Rolling Stones, Rimbaud, the Velvet Underground, French New Wave, Jimi Hendrix, political protest and Janis Joplin, all of which is happening in a long way away. But Kensuke and his friends are going to bring nineteen sixty-nine to their provincial Japanese city, start a dissident movement, barricade their school, make a film, stage a festival. Not for the sake of art or politics, for a much better reason, for the only real reason. To impress girls.

In The Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami (tr. by Ralph F. McCarthy)

Someone local was clearly having a Murakami clear-out because I also picked up In The Miso Soup. Based on the blurb, this one appeals to me more than 69. I feel like this is one that I’m going to remember long after reading it.

It’s just before New Year, and Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo’s nightlife. But Frank’s behaviour is so odd that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: his client may in fact have murderous desires. Although Kenji is far from innocent himself, he unwillingly descends with Frank into an inferno of evil, from which only his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, can possibly save him.

Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie

A far more intentional acquisition than the other books this month, I bought Alison Lurie’s Foreign Affairs on eBay after watching csop’s video ‘books for a lonely fall‘. I’m reading it right now and so far I understand why it’s a favourite of his. I know I’m a bit early for autumn, but the days are getting shorter…

Alison Lurie was an American novelist and academic. Similar to one of the protagonists in Foreign Affairs, she also wrote several non-fiction pieces about children’s literature.

Virginia Miner, a fifty-something, unmarried tenured professor, is in London to work on her new book about children’s folk rhymes. Despite carrying a U.S. passport, Vinnie feels essentially English and rather looks down on her fellow Americans. But in spite of that, she is drawn into a mortifying and oddly satisfying affair with an Oklahoman tourist who dresses more Bronco Billy than Beau Brummel.

Also in London is Vinnie’s colleague Fred Turner, a handsome, flat broke, newly separated, and thoroughly miserable young man trying to focus on his own research. Instead, he is distracted by a beautiful and unpredictable English actress and the world she belongs to. 

Both American, both abroad, and both achingly lonely, Vinnie and Fred play out their confused alienation and dizzying romantic liaisons.

If you’ve read any of the above books, I’d love to know your thoughts!