Happy Wednesday everyone! Woah. How has your year been so far? I hope that it has been great. I also hope and pray that the rest of the year will be brimming with good news, positive energy, and blessings. I also hope that everyone will be happy and healthy, in body, mind, and spirit.

Wednesdays also mean WWW Wednesday updates. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted originally by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday are quite simple, you just have to answer three questions:

  1. What are you currently reading?
  2. What have you finished reading?
  3. What will you read next?
www-wednesdays
What are you currently reading?

My foray into the works of women writers has crossed over to April. Toward the end of March, I realized that I still had several books I wanted to read, hence, this extension. My reading journey has brought me to a familiar name. If my memory serves me right, it has been a decade since I last read a novel by Jodi Picoult. Although it was without design, I decided to pick up Sing You Home, making it the fourth novel by the prolific American writer that I read. At the heart of the story were Zoe, a music therapist, and Max Baxter, a landscape artist. For nearly a decade, the couple has been trying to have children, to no avail, due to fertility issues; Zoe also had several miscarriages. They then tried in vitro fertilization which gave Zoe a slim hope. But just when their prayers were about to be heard, life and its (un)pleasant surprises caught them off-guard. This unraveled their life and long-buried resentments surfaced. I am just a hundred pages into the book but a lot has already happened. Anyhow, I expect that more drama will unfold; after all, this is a Picoult novel. I will feature more of my impressions of the book – if I am not done by Friday – in this week’s First Impression Friday update.

What have you finished reading?

The past week has been as packed as the week before it, i.e., I was able to complete three books. The first of these three books was Jessica George’s Maame. It was at the start of 2023 when I first encountered George. Her debut novel, Maame, was a familiar presence in several of the most anticipated 2023 book release lists. It was a no-brainer for me to include it in my own 2023 Books I Look Forward To List. Unfortunately, I was not able to get to it before the year ended; I always failed this reading challenge. Nevertheless, I was able to obtain a copy of the book this year, hence, its inclusion in my foray into the works of female writers.

The book’s title Maame is a Twi word – George is of Ghanaian heritage – which means woman or a mother. This was what Madeleine “Maddie” Wright’s mother had nicknamed her daughter. However, this weighed heavily on Maddie, considering the circumstances she found herself in. At the age of twenty-five, she has been the primary caretaker of her 57-year-old father who was suffering from advanced-stage Parkinson’s disease; her mother spends her time in Ghana running her family’s business and travels to London every other year. Maddie’s life was unraveling. Her work was unfulfilling. She has a non-existent social life because she spends most of her time at home taking care of her father. Meanwhile, her peers were living life to the fullest. Maame, at its heart, is the story of a young woman at life’s crossroads. We can say she was experiencing her first-quarter life crisis. After all, our twenties are our most tumultuous years. Maddie had to confront her culture, her equally tumultuous relationship with her family, and even her job. Her story is one that many young adults can relate to. Maame was an accessible read that was enriched by cultural touchstones.

From an unfamiliar writer to a familiar one. My next read took me to the Caribbean, to Guadeloupe in particular. Within the ambit of literature, Guadeloupe has become synonymous with Maryse Condé, long-considered a dame of Caribbean literature. Condé is also a familiar presence in discourses vis-a-vis possible Nobel Prize in Literature awardees; it was through these discourses that I first came across her way back in 2018. she is yet to be recognized by the Swedish Academy but these discourses were more than enough for me to dip my toes into her oeuvre.

The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana is my fourth novel by Condé. The titular Ivan and Ivana are a pair of twins born to Simone in Dos d’Âne, a “godforsaken hole” in Guadeloupe. They were named after Ivan the Terrible, a movie that captivated Simone. They grew up not knowing who their father was. They grew up in squalor in a countryside village detached from the comforts of the modern world; the story was set in the 21st century but why do I keep feeling that it was from the early 20th century.  Ivan seems to be upholding the reputation of his namesake; the inspiration for his name was a foreshadowing of some sort. He was a semi-hoodlum who dropped out of school and resented the inequities that he experienced; he felt that he deserved more out of life, hence, his cynical view. It was actually his radicalization that was charted by the story; Ivana remained mostly in the background. The heritage of colonialism reverberated all throughout the story; it is a recurring theme in Condé’s oeuvre. Overall, it was a predictable story but it also showed a different dimension of Condé’s storytelling.

For the first time since I started reading exclusively works written by female writers, I finally found myself reading a work written by a European writer. It was through an online bookseller toward the end of 2023 that I first came across Spanish writer Carmen Martín Gaite and her novel, Variable Cloud. Curious about what Gaite has to offer, I obtained the book. Without design, I included it in my ongoing literary journey. Apparently, Gaite is one of contemporary Spain’s leading female writers.

Originally published in 1992 in Spanish as Nubosidad variable, the novel chronicles the story of Sofia and Mariana. They were once close friends at school but eventually grew apart. A chance encounter during a party they both attended in their middle ages helped rekindle their friendship. Sofia was now a wife and the mother of three children. However, her marriage was falling at the seams. Eduardo, her husband, was mercenary and emotionless. Mariana, on the other hand, was a successful psychiatrist but she can’t seem to form stable relationships with men. Things changed when she encountered Raimundo, a depressive man who eventually became Mariana’s lover and subject of obsession. Through their correspondences – the story was primarily epistolary in form – they confided in each other their views on a plethora of subjects such as sex, marriage, politics, and even literature. Variable Cloud was a unique experience brimming with commentaries on the intricacies of family life, marriage, and even feminity. It was a riveting read that probes into the female mind although the story was bereft of a robust plot.

What will you read next?