Despite the time that the pandemic supposedly freed up, I didn’t read more books than usual in 2020. If anything, I might have read a bit less. There were no long subway rides on which to consume a random novel, and no book clubs to go to. If a book didn’t grab my attention, or if it irked me—as many books admittedly do—it was easy enough to set it aside.
On the other hand, I found myself spending more time with the books that were meaningful, that helped me make sense of this strange and difficult year, and above all, inspired me to continue reading and writing.
Here are a few of the books that made 2020 a little more bearable and less lonely. I included a few links to my Instagram mini-blog where I reflected on them in the past year.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The first novel in Ferrante’s popular saga, about a friendship between two women in Naples, remains my favorite. I did finish it in 2019, but watched the TV series and read the next book in the series, The Story of a New Name, in 2020. The book is immersive and features a devastatingly honest first-person narrator. I found a great deal that was relatable, but am still conflicted about Ferrante’s gender and class politics. I liked the second book less than the first, and wasn’t inspired yet to read the third.
Between Friends by Amos Oz
A book of poetic, moving short stories written late in Oz’s career. Oz was one of Israel’s most prominent writers and is best known for his novels. The interconnected stories are set in a fictional kibbutz in 1950’s Israel. I was struck by the stories’ sparse, understated style, Oz’s ability to convey both great tragedy and compassion in just a few simple sentences.
I’d read the book before in Hebrew, and reread it in translation in order to teach it in my Israeli Literature and Film class at Baruch college in Spring 2020. The class turned out to be very diverse, since many students signed up to fulfill a requirement and knew little about Israel. Most students liked the stories and found them relatable even without knowing much about the culture or historical context.
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
I was reminded of this book by the TV series that had begun airing on HBO, and started reading it shortly after the first lockdown in March. The novel is an alternative history in which Charles Lindbergh comes to power in the 1930s and allies the U.S. with Nazi Germany. Though it’s often read as a cautionary tale about anti-Semitism, its most powerful message is about the insidious ways in which totalitarian leaders come to power.
Here’s what I wrote about the book back in March:
In the current crisis, many people talk about mutual aid and solidarity. But what would that mean politically? With the closing of borders and the perception of the virus as arriving from ‘somewhere else,’ we are already living in a more fearful, conservative society. I think that we need to be vigilant and aware of where this crisis is leading us.
As a novel, the book exhibits many of Roth’s strengths and weaknesses: it’s a brilliant portrait of a Jewish family living in 1930’s and 40’s New Jersey, but the plot does drag on toward the end without delivering many revelations.
Abigail by Magda Szabó
In a new edition from NYRB (published in Hungarian in 1970), this mysterious novel by the Hungarian Magda Szabó centers on Gina, a teenage girl from a well-off family who is inexplicably shipped off to a strict, nearly totalitarian boarding school. It’s also set in the 1940s, and though Gina is sheltered from the unfolding war, we slowly learn about its effects on her and her classmates.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this novel, but I suspect that that’s part of Szabó’s intention. When Gina is admitted to her school, she is stripped of her clothes along with any marking of identity. She’s then ostracized by her classmates for making a silly faux pas and cut off from her father’s protection by a rule that prohibits pupils from writing letters that include complaints.
Still, as Gina adjusts to her environment and wins over the queen bees, the novel becomes oddly comforting. Is the lesson about our ability to survive and even thrive in repressive situations, or an admonishment against accepting oppression as the status quo?
A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf
In the summer, I turned to Virginia Woolf’s diaries for inspiration and insight into her writing process. Woolf is an author I read and admired from a relatively early age, and one who seems to define a sort of rigor and authenticity that I aspire to. But as I read the journals this year, I find myself wondering whether that kind of writing is still possible in an era when paid work expands into all areas of life and when there are so few people or institutions who protect meaningful thinking and writing.
This is still an open question, but it makes reading writers like Woolf seem more vital than ever.
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
Lessico Famigliare also translated into English as Family Sayings is probably my favorite among the books I read in 2020 for the first time. It is a lightly fictionalized memoir of Ginzburg’s early life in Italy, focusing especially on her imposing father and exuberant mother. I admire Ginzburg’s ability to use seemingly inconsequential phrases to paint poignant portraits of her family, and to write about difficult events without sentimentality. At times I did wish for a little more insight about the way the author and her family dealt with the losses they experienced during the war—including the death of Ginzburg’s first husband, Leon Ginzburg, in a Nazi prison.
But the book taught me many things, and kept me company during the long fall months.
Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics by David Grossman
Like Oz, Grossman is a very prominent Israeli writer whose work garnered recognition around the world. In this short collection of essays and talks, Grossman reflects on reading and writing in the context of modern-day Israel, a country that has been in nearly-constant crisis since before its founding in 1948. The book’s title essay begins with a quote from Franz Kafka’s story “A Little Fable,” in which a mouse is caught between a trap and a prowling cat. “Alas, the world is growing smaller every day,” the mouse says. Later, Grossman returns to the fable to affirm the value of writing, and especially the writing of fiction:
The authors who are here today know: when we write, we feel the world in flux, elastic, full of possibilities—unfrozen. Anywhere the human element exists, there is no freezing and no paralysis, and there is no status quo[…]
I write, and the world does not close in on me. It does not grow smaller. It moves in the direction of what is open, future, possible. […]
I hope that you too have found books to inspire you in this difficult year, and will discover others to uplift and sustain you in 2021.
