Favorite Books: Shaping a Life with Agency

At the end of each year, I weigh which books stood out for me. I am often surprised by themes that connect them. 

A theme that occurred in much of what I’ve read is about women having agency over their own life, and the ability to live it without threat of sexual or physical violence. Several books explored this theme through a lens on the past when women had far less agency. Even then, some succeeded in exerting control over their own life either because they had a supportive spouse, or they functioned in a critical and respected role in the world of women. A community of women can be a powerful counterbalance to the lack of control that women often experienced in the wider world.

 

I am drawn to literature, which follows a woman throughout her life, revealing the evolution of the person. This has become a topic of interest to me as I am at that point in my life where I am able to look back and see my own evolution. I am interested in the shaping of a life through time.

 

Yet another theme which appears in many of the books that I read is the act of documenting one’s own life with words. As someone who has often done that, I am especially intrigued with that written record of one’s own history. It is not lost on me that I have sixteen years of blogs publicly documenting my own life path. On a more personal level, I found myself reviewing my own past letters and journals when I recently moved, valuing them for their view into my thoughts at a much earlier time, a bit of personal time travel.

I have written of how liminality, that place in between where transformation happens, and bringing what is hidden to the forefront, are subjects often reflected in my artwork. It occurs to me that these are also themes in the construction of a story.  Liminality is a core theme in many books as it captures the journey of a character through life challenges, often shaped by personal secrets. That is similarly true of many of the books that I recommend.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

 

The Frozen River, while fictionalized, is based on a true story of a midwife, Martha Ballard, who lived in the late 1700s in Maine along the Kennebec River. The river is a character within this story, presenting a theme of the river’s buried secrets revealed only upon its thawing.  The story presents a view of the community of that time and the rich interrelationships between its residents.

 

It was a time when women had little control of their life and lived in a world of physical and sexual threat. In this tale, our protagonist has a respected career as a midwife which afforded her a level of agency, even as she moved within a world where many women lacked that and were easy prey for unscrupulous men. 

 

She also was a keeper of secrets, aware of the often-hidden stories of the women in the community. We know her tale because she recorded it in a daily diary which became key evidence in a rape trial, a critical part of the story. That diary and its analysis can be found in yet another book, a non-fiction one, that served as source material for Lawhon. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Excerpts of the diary are woven into The Frozen River.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans 

 

The Correspondent has elements of each of the mentioned themes. I picked it up because the author Ann Patchett recommended it. It is a book written in letters directed to a variety of people. I wasn’t sure at first how that was going to work. Was it going to engage me? How does one fully develop a character through letters? I was surprised to realize that I had a through line to the essence of the letter writer; a view of her through the eyes of her many correspondents and her self reflections shared with those to whom she was close. Within the letters, I saw her personal evolution and honesty in coming to terms with the challenges she had struggled with in the course of her life.

 

Sybil Van Antwerp, our correspondent, was a woman who by all standards had agency over her life. She had a successful career as an attorney, married and divorced, had children and grandchildren. Most importantly she had a curiosity about the world and people. She preferred the handwritten word to the electronic and wrote each week to family and friends and especially authors of books she enjoyed, including of course Ann Patchett.  She also reached across generations, writing to a young boy, who ultimately came to live with her in his time of crisis. And she was feisty. She had an ongoing correspondence with a woman at the university who would no longer let her audit classes. She didn’t give up without a fight, ultimately winning what she sought and winning a friend in the bargain with her understanding of the person. But a life is more than an outline. Within it lies the painful disruptions of what we imagined our life to be, and our response to that reshaped future. It is within this story arc, that we begin to learn the fullness of a life as one responds and reshapes one’s understanding through time.

I've been told that an audio book for this story adds an additional dimension in capturing each character effectively through their voice.

 

Circes by Madelyn Miller

When I was a child I loved mythology. I think the idea of a god defined by a theme intrigued me and moments where they stepped into the world of humans were fraught with drama. The novel Circes is based on the story of a lesser goddess, some would say a witch, for she turned men into pigs when necessary. The story humanizes her, bringing us into her world where she doesn't quite fit in goddess circles. Exiled to an island where at first she is reliant on visitors to relieve her solitude, she soon discovers visitors can also pose a threat - hence the pigs. Witchcraft is her protection in a world where even goddesses are subject to threat. Along the way she offers her guidance to Odysseus and bears him a son, learns to weave with a loom gifted from Daedalus and chooses to be human rather than immortal. She hits my theme of agency and has a life path of many centuries through which to decide her course.

Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

Night Watch, a Pulitzer Prize winning book, is a story of the aftermath of war, of both soldiers and the women and children they left behind, each trying to reshape their life after loss and disruption. It is a story of a mother and her child as a stranger  violently inserts himself into their lives as the head of their household. It is the mother's silence that ultimately frees her of his control as he tires of them, leaving them at a lunatic asylum which surprisingly proves to be a place of respite. Far ahead of its time, the asylum gives them an opportunity to regain control of their lives.

The Dictionary of Lost Words. By Pip Williams 

The Dictionary of Lost Words takes us to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary as a team of scholars determines which words warrant inclusion. Through the eyes of a child playing under the table to the thoughtful woman she grows into, it explores the underlying idea that the language of women can be different from the language of men and easily dismissed if not recorded in writing. Hence Esme, the protagonist of this book, creates the Dictionary of Lost Words to preserve a world otherwise hidden from view.

Other recommendations: 

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger - Another river theme! It too holds secrets. Prejudices and the threat to women underlie the story.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich - a coming of age story, but also a story where the river plays a significant role related to secrets.

Show, Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld, a collection of short stories that have an authenticity that resonated with me.