In J. L. Carr’s deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painter’s depiction of the apocalypse, Birkin finds that he himself has been restored to a new, and hopeful, attachment to life. But summer ends, and with the work done, Birkin must leave. Now, long after, as he reflects on the passage of time and the power of art, he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost.
Thanks for this post, John. What you call "literary comfort food" I call "positively good reads" and "feel-good fiction with substance" on a website, positivelygoodreads.com, that I began nearly two decades ago when I was looking for such novels. It wasn't always easy to find them, so I thought it would help others with glass-half-full tendencies like me to have a list and a couple of paragraphs about each book. I add to the list whenever I read an appropriate book, and it now has scores if not hundreds of books. (I haven't counted.) It is always good to find other readers whose opinions I respect (i.e., you) who enjoy reading comforting books. I've received feedback that I'm just looking for escape, and that's a misunderstanding -- as you recognize.
My suggestion is not a novel. It is " The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows" by John Koenig. It is a collection of words created by Koenig to define feelings and ideas that have never been captured and are ineffable. One of the joys of reading is to have a writer articulate something that the reader could never adequately express. My favorite word is "sonder" which means "the realization that each passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own --- populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherent craziness.". Even before I read the book, I gave a copy of it to my niece, Meredith and told her that I gave it to her because "it is a book meant for a person with a little melancholy in her soul".
Laurie Colwin’s cookbooks are wonderful entries into her real life. Hint: she’s just like her characters, kind, loving, normal. Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. They include information on her life and what led her to make the item in the first place. Her apartments, her daughter, her parties (in her tiny unit); they are all part of her story. Recipes are few and spare. Her chapter on black beans is priceless.
Plainsong and Happy All The Time (and all of Laurie Colwin books quite honestly) are some of my favorites for all of the reason you mentioned. I would add to your list the novels of J Ryan Stradal - Kitchens of the Great Midwest and The Lager Queen of Minnesota and also Joan Silber's linked shorts story collections, especially Fools.
Keep those publisher profiles coming! At the used bookstore where I work a donation just came in of a stack of gorgeous books from Archipelago Press. Most are translations, many from countries which don’t often appear on American shelves. I would love to know more about the publisher -- how they choose their books, find translators, etc. (hint hint).
My comfort read is Sentient, by Jackie Higgins. It is a nonfiction book and actually a biology book focused on our senses. While it may not sound like much of a comfort read, I can assure you that reading about our innate capabilities and those of amazing animals with extreme capabilities is awe inspiring. The wonders of nature can bring anyone comfort and anyone that reads this book will learn some amazing things and have a greater appreciation for what our bodies and minds can do. I found it inspiring.
It's a testament to the awesome power of a good writer. I heartily second Plainsong, which I just recently read and absolutely loved. I would also humbly submit most of the novels of Barbara Pym (like a nice cup of tea) and Elizabeth Strout (not so much, but often very comforting).
I appreciate this post so much as well as the recommendation to read Search. I started reading it almost immediately. "I loved it" isn't a strong enough reaction. It is a wonderful comfort read but it also might be the closest protagonist to me and plot to my life that I've ever read and the author did it all very well. Like Dana, I'm a 54-year-old, married, child free woman who cares very much for her church (in this case, a large United Church of Christ congregation) and works hard for it. I have served on a search committee for an Associate Minister and five years ago, I joined the staff. I run a program for pastoral residents - new divinity school grads who serve in a supported "first-call" at our congregation for 27 months. I actually recruit from divinity schools and lead a search for a new resident every year.
Search gives me a character I can related to and Huneven also gets so many of the details and interactions of volunteer church life just right. I also cannot stand handbell choirs, so those passages made me laugh out loud. But nothing made me laugh harder than an interchange early in the book, though, when the committee is told one of their first tasks would be to interview the church's staff members and one of the committee members says, "staff?" Anyone working for a church who is not the Senior Minister has felt this invisibility! I haven't felt this delighted and surprised by a book in a long while.
I love your exploration of the temptation to give up caring but caring anyway. My education as a sociologist would make it very easy to see all of church life through that lens - the maneuvering and power plays to gain influence and social capital, but I try not to do that, or at least when I do I ask myself first if I'm not projecting my own motivations onto others. And that is one other thing I loved about Search. Toward the end, when Dana is going to lose, she is accused of being the incalcitrant one right after she has lodged that judgement at another committee member. To her credit, she doesn't dismiss it outright. She takes it in and leaves it there as a possibility.
A few of my own comfort reads that come to mind: The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart (memoir) and the Starbridge series of novels (more church settings and religious themes) by Susan Howatch. My last unexpected delight would be The House in the Cerulean Sea. A strange little book that's hard to find but unique is Spark by Patricia Leavy. It's a fictional story that is also a textbook for the social sciences.
Here's my comfort read
A Month in the Country J.L. Carr
Brief description from New York Review of Books:
In J. L. Carr’s deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently discovered medieval mural in the local church. Living in the bell tower, surrounded by the resplendent countryside of high summer, and laboring each day to uncover an anonymous painter’s depiction of the apocalypse, Birkin finds that he himself has been restored to a new, and hopeful, attachment to life. But summer ends, and with the work done, Birkin must leave. Now, long after, as he reflects on the passage of time and the power of art, he finds in his memories some consolation for all that has been lost.
Thanks for this post, John. What you call "literary comfort food" I call "positively good reads" and "feel-good fiction with substance" on a website, positivelygoodreads.com, that I began nearly two decades ago when I was looking for such novels. It wasn't always easy to find them, so I thought it would help others with glass-half-full tendencies like me to have a list and a couple of paragraphs about each book. I add to the list whenever I read an appropriate book, and it now has scores if not hundreds of books. (I haven't counted.) It is always good to find other readers whose opinions I respect (i.e., you) who enjoy reading comforting books. I've received feedback that I'm just looking for escape, and that's a misunderstanding -- as you recognize.
My suggestion is not a novel. It is " The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows" by John Koenig. It is a collection of words created by Koenig to define feelings and ideas that have never been captured and are ineffable. One of the joys of reading is to have a writer articulate something that the reader could never adequately express. My favorite word is "sonder" which means "the realization that each passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own --- populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherent craziness.". Even before I read the book, I gave a copy of it to my niece, Meredith and told her that I gave it to her because "it is a book meant for a person with a little melancholy in her soul".
Laurie Colwin’s cookbooks are wonderful entries into her real life. Hint: she’s just like her characters, kind, loving, normal. Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. They include information on her life and what led her to make the item in the first place. Her apartments, her daughter, her parties (in her tiny unit); they are all part of her story. Recipes are few and spare. Her chapter on black beans is priceless.
Plainsong and Happy All The Time (and all of Laurie Colwin books quite honestly) are some of my favorites for all of the reason you mentioned. I would add to your list the novels of J Ryan Stradal - Kitchens of the Great Midwest and The Lager Queen of Minnesota and also Joan Silber's linked shorts story collections, especially Fools.
Keep those publisher profiles coming! At the used bookstore where I work a donation just came in of a stack of gorgeous books from Archipelago Press. Most are translations, many from countries which don’t often appear on American shelves. I would love to know more about the publisher -- how they choose their books, find translators, etc. (hint hint).
I wish I had your recall. My list was collected over 20 years, and I doubt I could remember the plots of most of the novels.
John,
My comfort read is Sentient, by Jackie Higgins. It is a nonfiction book and actually a biology book focused on our senses. While it may not sound like much of a comfort read, I can assure you that reading about our innate capabilities and those of amazing animals with extreme capabilities is awe inspiring. The wonders of nature can bring anyone comfort and anyone that reads this book will learn some amazing things and have a greater appreciation for what our bodies and minds can do. I found it inspiring.
It's a testament to the awesome power of a good writer. I heartily second Plainsong, which I just recently read and absolutely loved. I would also humbly submit most of the novels of Barbara Pym (like a nice cup of tea) and Elizabeth Strout (not so much, but often very comforting).
I appreciate this post so much as well as the recommendation to read Search. I started reading it almost immediately. "I loved it" isn't a strong enough reaction. It is a wonderful comfort read but it also might be the closest protagonist to me and plot to my life that I've ever read and the author did it all very well. Like Dana, I'm a 54-year-old, married, child free woman who cares very much for her church (in this case, a large United Church of Christ congregation) and works hard for it. I have served on a search committee for an Associate Minister and five years ago, I joined the staff. I run a program for pastoral residents - new divinity school grads who serve in a supported "first-call" at our congregation for 27 months. I actually recruit from divinity schools and lead a search for a new resident every year.
Search gives me a character I can related to and Huneven also gets so many of the details and interactions of volunteer church life just right. I also cannot stand handbell choirs, so those passages made me laugh out loud. But nothing made me laugh harder than an interchange early in the book, though, when the committee is told one of their first tasks would be to interview the church's staff members and one of the committee members says, "staff?" Anyone working for a church who is not the Senior Minister has felt this invisibility! I haven't felt this delighted and surprised by a book in a long while.
I love your exploration of the temptation to give up caring but caring anyway. My education as a sociologist would make it very easy to see all of church life through that lens - the maneuvering and power plays to gain influence and social capital, but I try not to do that, or at least when I do I ask myself first if I'm not projecting my own motivations onto others. And that is one other thing I loved about Search. Toward the end, when Dana is going to lose, she is accused of being the incalcitrant one right after she has lodged that judgement at another committee member. To her credit, she doesn't dismiss it outright. She takes it in and leaves it there as a possibility.
A few of my own comfort reads that come to mind: The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart (memoir) and the Starbridge series of novels (more church settings and religious themes) by Susan Howatch. My last unexpected delight would be The House in the Cerulean Sea. A strange little book that's hard to find but unique is Spark by Patricia Leavy. It's a fictional story that is also a textbook for the social sciences.