Atmospheric AF: October in Review

Spooky season might be over, but spooky reads are eternal.

Hi friends,

In past Octobers, I’ve been really into spooky classics like Dracula and Frankenstein, but this year I opted instead for a wider range of eerie, speculative, and fantastic reads, most of them quite new. I finished out the month with a total of seven books, so the bonus Honorable Mention pyramid tier that’s up on my website includes some shows and movies I’ve been watching this month as well! Go check ‘em out, they’re good ones. 

Now, since we are quite literally losing daylight hours here, I’ll go ahead and dive right into the books. But first! If you haven’t already subscribed, please do so below so you don’t miss out on future Lit Chats!

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The Foundation:

The Searcher — Tana French

This was my first book of October, aptly picked as the first gloomy week of rain and mist matched the moodiness of the Irish countryside where retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper moves for some peace and quiet. Except, because this is a Tana French book, Cal is quickly roped into an unofficial missing person case that he can’t refuse. To be honest, this wasn’t my favorite of the Tana French books I’ve read (I prefer the Dublin Murder Squad books), but it was still sufficiently cozy and scratched the atmospheric murder mystery itch, which is why we come to French in the first place.

A Darker Shade of Magic — V.E. Schwab

I was really craving an escapist fantasy à la Schwab’s most recent novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, so I picked up the first in her Shades of Magic series. In theory, it should’ve hooked me: four alternate universe Londons with varying levels of magic inside them all stacked on top of each other, and two of the only three people who can move between worlds are a grumpy sorcerer and a fearless lady pirate/thief. I think if I’d been more focused on the book instead of reading a page at a time while my Duolingo ads played then I would’ve gotten into it faster, but even when I was focusing it didn’t truly enthrall me like Addie LaRue did. That said, it was still a solid portal fantasy and I’ll likely read the rest of the series eventually.

Marigold and Rose — Louise Glück

This tiny, fifty-two page novella from Nobel Prize-winning poet Louise Glück asks the question: what if a baby wrote a book? No, really. Glück’s first work of fiction explores the rich inner lives of a pair of infant twins as they mature through their first year of life as chronicled by baby Marigold, an aspiring author who dreams of writing a book as soon as she knows words. Don’t be deceived by its diminutive size or strange premise, this was a surprisingly profound meditation on time, language, and family that’s more than worth the hour it’ll take you to read.

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Solid Supports:

Mexican Gothic — Silvia Moreno-Garcia 

As a Library Bitch™, I tend not to get around to super-hyped books until a couple years after they’re pubbed, when the holds waitlist dies down a bit. This month, I finally got my hands on a Kindle copy to get me through a long flight and let me tell you: this book was the perfect plane read. Mexico City socialite Noemí’s quest to save her cousin Catalina from a mysterious illness at the remote family estate of Catalina’s new English husband is fast-paced, delightfully chilly, and teeming with Gothic dread. A surprising twist places the novel more firmly in magical realism territory than I’d expected, and there’s also some powerful anti-colonialism rhetoric behind the pulpy Gothic romance façade. I get the hype now and am excited to read Moreno-Garcia’s newest book, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (in another three years, probably).

Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro

It’s a good thing I had no idea what this book was about before I started, because I think I would’ve been skeptical about just how heartbreakingly human a narrative told through the eyes of a self-aware robot could be. Klara is an AF (Artificial Friend), chosen to be the companion and protector of a young girl named Josie who is often unwell, and it becomes Klara’s mission to make Josie well again no matter the cost. While often frustratingly vague in terms of the socio-political context of this dystopianish near-future, I was captivated by Ishiguro’s focus on the clinical uniqueness of the human soul, and by the unexpectedly primitive performance of worship and prayer from its most technologically advanced character. Klara’s consciousness will go on living in my brain for quite some time. 

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THE TIPPY TOP:

The Rabbit Hutch — Tess Gunty

Do you ever experience a piece of art that’s so well executed, it makes you despair a little bit because you feel like you’ll never be able to make anything as good? That’s what this book did to me. I first came across The Rabbit Hutch in Chicago’s Exile in Bookville, where I read the prologue standing right there on the shop floor because the shelf talker told me to. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: indie booksellers know their shit. 

The Rabbit Hutch follows the intertwined stories of the residents of La Lapinière, a run-down apartment building set in the fictional dying rust belt town of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Populated with characters such as an obituary website moderator, a young mother afraid of her son’s eyes, the slightly deranged son of a late famous actress, and an apartment of former foster kids, including a high school drop-out obsessed with twelfth-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen, it runs the gamut of humanity in a searingly sharp, achingly astute way. I found myself stopping to reread sentences that were not only gorgeous, but also so poignantly and accurately captured a specific emotion or experience that it quite literally made me stop in my tracks. While there is a rotating cast of characters, the main story revolves around eighteen-year-old Blandine, an enigmatic, almost otherworldly character whose quest to emulate her favorite female saints by leaving her body is fulfilled on the very first page (note: while there is violence here, it’s not sexual violence, if that helps anyone else’s anxious brains to know ahead of time). 

Many of these storylines are not particularly original, but what I admire most about Gunty’s writing is how deftly she toes the line between cliché pitfalls and true, genuine depictions of vulnerability. Illicit student/teacher relationships are not groundbreaking, nor are the anxieties of new mothers, lonely widowers and spinsters, or the children of narcissistic parents. Yet Gunty manages to reflect each of these stories off of each other in a way that makes them feel true and new and human, finding holiness in the mundane and tenderness in the anonymity of strangers who all live under the same roof. I’ll echo that shelf-talker in Chicago and say: just read the first page. Then come talk to me when you’ve blazed through the rest. 

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Thanks again for sticking with me til the end! I hope you found some good reads here. If you pick any of these up, please tell me! I’d love to chat about them with you. 

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Until next time, happy reading!

<3 Catherine