Maureen McGranaghan

I just finished Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, which I loved. (Pretty much read it all over again right after I finished.) But there is a serious and vividly described rodent infestation, which might be a deal breaker for some.

Judas by Amos Oz
The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley
Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

It's a dark final note--his "malevolent delight" and "cruel, merry eyes." Faye is going to wait him out. She has only patience to pit against this "resplendent and grinning" terrible "deity." What is she doing swimming alone on this particular beach? #rachelcusktogether

I find that last scene on the beach unnerving. The first time I read the books, I was mystified by it. Now the man who (I think) menaces her at the very end seems in keeping with the stories we hear of ex-husbands determined to wield power. #rachelcusktogether

Love this book too. Not sure when I first read it. Sometime after that I bought it for my dad, then reread it and thought it might have been a strange gift, given some of the...content. 🤣 I mainly recalled the philosophy and the bulrush basket metaphor. I've read it again since. No exhausting it.

"...the fire...left everywhere a patina of its own in which one believes one can glimpse ghostly images." I love Paola's description of the church. I guess actually taking us into it would have been anticlimactic after that. Hmm. Instead, Faye nearly faints in the heat. #rachelcusktogether

I finished it too--but I've read it before. I am curious to hear people's thoughts on last scene, when everyone gets there. I remembered there were multiple terrible men in this last part (Sophia, Paola, and Felícia's husbands) but wow. Surprised anew. Stefano takes the prize.

Hmmm...This is called having relationships. We do give up freedom, but where would we be without them? Freedom is a recurrent word/theme in the trilogy. Various people we've met-the Greek, most memorably-note that "freedom" outside relationships doesn't feel like freedom at all. #rachelcusktogether

"He understood that he had given some of his freedom away, through a desire to avoid or alleviate his own suffering, and while it didn't seem exactly an unfair exchange, I believed he wouldn't do it again so easily." #rachelcusktogether

I haven't lived in enough places to test this hypothesis one way or another, but she has a point. And yet, I think setting does matter. The relationship between that and our natures is complicated, a subject begging deeper exploration. #rachelcusktogether

"I said I wasn't sure it mattered where people lived or how, since their individual nature would create its own circumstances: it was a risky kind of presumption...to rewrite your own fate by changing its setting..." But she is arguing you can't rewrite it. Character is destiny. #rachelcusktogether

"I wonder...if you have ever thought of what it would be like to live in the sun... You wouldn't have to suffer anymore." Just now, in winter's intense grip with no end in sight, I can almost believe this. #rachelcusktogether

Learning about her and Bourgeois was the hallmark of yesterday's reading.

Yes, the grandmothers... They are willing ears, and as such he'll give them his attention. But they surely have stories to tell.

I love this book. And Howards End. Two of my all time favorites.

"Clubbable" -- great term!

I'm struggling a bit with Sibylla's story, but her son is thriving in the freedom she's given him. "Five billion [people], and...I am the only one...who thinks children should not be in absolute economic subjugation to the adults into whose keeping fate has consigned them." #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

Happy to return to Yamamoto at the end. Ludo has given up seeking a father and is now seeking...a partnership? With someone on a similar intellectual/spiritual quest via art and knowledge. #Discuss_DeWitt_2025

Yes

"Stories need cruelty in order for them to work" Sophia suggests. I think about this often. It's hard for me to write cruelty. Painful to read too, but affecting--and there is plenty of cruelty in the world. Hmm #rachelcusktogether

Aftermath, The Last Supper, and A Life’s Work.

I read that too but I prefer the trilogy to it. It struck me differently from these ones.

Or he’s easier to idolize/idealize in absentia.

I do love the story of the Welsh novelist determined to reach the sea, only to clamber into a military zone, where he is held at gunpoint and then offered tarts and tea. 🤣 #rachelcusktogether

The whole experience of this dinner sounds unpleasant. They encounter construction trying to get there; they can't order what they want; they're stuck gazing at the other "ebullient" guests, and then...the food.

Isabel would make the best of it, I'm sure! Maybe she can talk him out of future staycations in which he deputizes a dubious subordinate, then disguises himself and undoes the damage via strange substitutions of various kinds.

I know. I think it's part of the concept for these novels, which I have mixed feelings about. May try her memoirs. Someone told me recently that they combine her considerable intellect with more emotion/turmoil (on the part of the narrator--Cusk herself in that case).

It gets mired in machinations. Mostly to teach Angelo a lesson? To borrow a new word I just learned from Beowulf they are all learning to thole (suffer), with grace, more or less. But the Duke exasperates me.

"Dear Isabel,
I have a motion much imports your good;
Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline,
What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine."

He takes her acceptance for granted. But she seemed pretty eager to enter the convent earlier. Oh well, the Duke has other plans. 🙄

#TheBard_ProblemPlays

I find it rather mystifying that Mariana wants to be married to this guy. Moulded out of faults indeed.