What This Week #18
Summer slowdown, an inappropriate quotation, the brutality of nature
What this week?
A decision.
I’m joining the legion of Substackers whose missives have passed through my inbox in the past week or so and have decided to pause subscriptions for the summer. I certainly don’t imagine that I won’t be writing here at all for the next few months—I have plenty of exciting deep-dives brewing—but I want to take the pressure off. Not feel like I have to turn up with any regularity when life seems relentlessly intent on pulling my focus firmly elsewhere.
I wrote a few weeks ago about the post-it marked ‘Freedom!’ (I’m looking at it right now), and while the first step in finding that freedom was moving away from the rigidity that What This Week needed to look a certain way every week, the next step appears to be acknowledging that it can’t feasibly be every week right now.
I’m sure that a lot of my lovely paid subscriber community will tell me that they would be happy to continue with payments, that I’m allowed to take a break, but this way feels like it has more freedom attached to it. And freedom is the watchword.
Monthly payments will be paused and those who’ve paid annually will have time extended onto the end of the subscription period when things are up and running with more regularity again.
Okay, admin sorted—let’s get on with the show!
What this week?
A quote that almost works, but doesn’t quite.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ll know I like a seasonally appropriate quote. Well, thanks to over a week of gorgeous weather in the UK, this beautiful quote from poet and author, Gwendolyn Brooks, is actually fairly inappropriate. I’ll share it nonetheless—an act of mild-mannered rebellion—and you’ll have it ready if June takes a turn for the November-like before I’m in your inbox again.
The sky was gray, but the sun was making little silver promises somewhere up there, hinting. A wind blew. What sort of June day was this? It was more like the last days of November. It was more than rather bleak; still, there were these little promises, just under cover; whether they would fulfill themselves was anybody’s guess.
It’s taken from Maud Martha. A Novel. A beautiful book—the story of an ordinary life, told by a poet, in vignettes. A whole heap of Claire favourites in one sentence. This was recommended to me years ago, by a friend who stumbled on it in a university library and thought I’d enjoy it. It was fairly unknown and hard to get hold of, and the copy I eventually found is not particularly aesthetically pleasing, though the words won me over, just as my friend knew they would.
It’s cheered me no end to see that the book has been reprinted by Faber (gorgeous edition, which I’ll be adding to my Christmas list) and is championed by Bernadine Evaristo “Such a wonderful book. Utterly unique, exquisitely crafted and quietly powerful. I loved it and want everyone to read this lost literary treasure”, Tayari Jones “Maud Martha reveals the poetry, power and splendor of an ordinary life” and Max Porter “Incredible ... She is a quietly radical seer, she is literature itself, a person in the world. It's a rare kind of perfect!”.
Finally, I love how the quote is a callback to the quote I shared from Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout back in February. The idea that sunlight offers a promise—whatever the time of year.
What this week?
The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer.
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that my reading has been very much Brontë-themed over the past week or so. I won’t share more on that yet, because—as some of you cleverly deduced—there’s an exciting deep-dive in the offing. Prior to that, I spent a very pleasurable few weeks in the company of the book that inspired the recent Netflix series I recommended, Transatlantic (see WTW#13).
I’m usually fairly steadfast about reading a book before I watch a screen adaptation, but (as I described with The Scapegoat in WTW#12), occasionally, watching first brings its own sense of freedom. You can enjoy without comparison. Revel in the differences, rather than be disappointed by them. I liked what they did with Transatlantic, taking a fictionalised true story and making it incredibly engaging and visually interesting. Its source material, The Flight Portfolio is equally excellent, but a much denser proposition. Over 500+ pages (of small type), Orringer tells the story of a young American called Varian Fry on a mission to save the great and good of the art world, the world’s great thinkers and creatives, by getting them safely out of Europe. It is 1940, France is already occupied. America have yet to join the war.
It was interesting to notice that knowing what unfolds in the TV show, I initially felt impatient as a reader. The book’s storytelling is slow, intense and incredibly detailed. I’d had a few books that I’d absolutely raced through before this one, and suddenly found myself slowed to a near halt. But I was invested enough not to consider putting it to one side, and went with the change of pace. I’m so glad I did.
Unlike the TV adaptation where Mary Jayne Gold and other characters share the spotlight, the book is very much Varian’s story. He’s a great centre point—full of heart, thwarted by increasingly desperate circumstances, a flawed human wrestling his own personal demons as he tries to save others.
Varian’s struggle to accept his sexuality is explored in much more detail in the book. As is the question of what makes a life worth saving. Fry’s mandate from the Emergency Rescue Committee is to get specified individuals to safety, but every day hundreds of ‘ordinary’ Jewish refugees appear at his office door asking for help to escape—who has the right to decide who has more value?
If you have the time and headspace for a big, immersive piece of historical fiction this summer, I’d thoroughly recommend The Flight Portfolio. (And also Transatlantic, before or after reading, if you haven’t seen that yet.)
YouTube tangent of the week: the references to Marc Chagall and his paintings in The Flight Portfolio made me think of Notting Hill (I think there’s a cake-based callback in the final scenes too).
What this week?
Springwatch (BBC iPlayer).
What can I say, three weeks on and I’m still missing Succession. I’ve started The Americans in a vain attempt to fill the gap, but it’s not the same. So with the day-to-day feeling quite intense, I decided to go for a change of tone altogether for my weeknight viewing and relax with Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan and the Springwatch gang.
It turned out not to be as relaxing as anticipated—in fact, a veritable substitute for the fascinating and compelling drama I’d been seeking.
Think Succession is the ultimate in destructive sibling rivalry? Wait until you see a buzzard chick attacking its brother until his battered little body rolls out of a tree-top nest. Logan Roy, the worst parent ever? Or is that the nightjar who randomly eats one of its live chicks, or the kestrel who rips up its dead chick into snack-sized chunks and feeds it to his siblings?
The Roys are made up. Nature is real—and absolutely brutal.
And on that delightful note (apologies), I’ll say ‘see you when I see you’.
I hope you get to slow down and create your own summer cadence.
I hope you choose to find a little freedom.
(Includes affiliate links to Bookshop.org, an excellent bookselling website supporting indie bookshops)
Lovely! I've had Maud Martha at home on my shelf for ages (I buy those Faber re-issues as soon as they come out, without even looking what they're about) so you've reminded me to get it off the shelf and add it to the more selective TBR stack. I wrote about their latest one, Termush, a while ago. The archive mole unearthing this list is a genius.
Thanks for reminding me about the Flight portfolio, I do want to read the book behind the series. excited about the Bronte deep dive. And thanks for pausing the subscription, I really appreciate that.
We've just come off Netflix, so I'm going to be very interested in Apple recommendations. If anyone hasn't watched it, Ted Lasso is fabulous, funny and emotionally intelligent. I'm always interested in iPlayer recs!