What I’m reading: Historical memory edition

My mind is restless this week. Even though I’ve never been a morning person, I wake up as early as 5 a.m. with thoughts spinning around like wreckage in my head. Recent events in the news and politics float between reminders to buy Christmas presents, book doctor appointments and confirm playdates – the usual chaos of life as a parent and journalist, kicked up a notch.

Thank goodness for novels. By handing over control to a narrator and focusing on someone else’s fictional thoughts, I can take a break from my own real thoughts.

Right now it’s ‘The Maid’ by Nita Prose, in which a maid at a five-star hotel in New York discovers a body and then becomes the main suspect in the subsequent murder investigation. Molly, the protagonist, has an obsession with order and tidiness, which is reflected in the neat structure of her observations about the world around her. But while she notices things that others miss, she also struggles to understand other people’s motivations and read their behavior, making her an interesting character to guide the reader through an unraveling mystery.

The following is “Scorched grace”, by Margot Douaihy, which I could not resist after The Times crime columnist recommended it because of the wonderful protagonist, Sister Holiday, “a strange, tattooed nun in New Orleans, trying to restore balance after blowing up her life in Brooklyn.” I’m sold.

My other reading lately is less likely to settle my feverish thoughts. “In the shadow of the Holocaust”, an essay by Masha Gessen in The New Yorker, examines the politics of memory in Europe and its implications for current events in Gaza, tracing history back through the lens of their own Jewish family, shaped for generations by anti-Semitic violence.

Gessen was meant to receive the Arendt Prize for Political Thought this week, but the ceremony was postponed following outrage over the essay’s comparison between Gaza and Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Heinrich Boll Foundation, which co-sponsors the price, said the award would be presented “in a different setting.” The irony of this was striking, as the essay also includes a lengthy discussion of Hannah Arendt’s criticism decades ago of an Israeli political party, Tnuat Haherut, which she said was disturbingly similar to the Nazi party in philosophy, methods and organization .

Gessen’s discussion of historical memory fits well with “Let us not hasten to our destruction”, by Seth Anziska in the New York Review of Books. Anziska, a historian of Israel, reflects on the lessons that the country’s 1982 war holds for today, but wonders if anyone is interested in heeding it: “Historians always try to look back to understand the present, but when should we do that? sound the alarm? What can understanding the past yield when there seems to be an insatiable urge to repeat it?”

When I think about such things, I like to go back to “The urge of memory”, by Kate Cronin-Furman in the Los Angeles Review of Books, which combines her work on Sri Lanka’s atrocity memorials with other research on the politics of monuments and mass graves around the world.

Reader Comments: Books you recommend

Teresa LaBella, a reader in Nova Scotia, recommends “Good Night, Irene” by Luis Alberto Urrea:

Of the novels I’ve read set against the gruesome backdrop of World War II, this story stands out as the best. I read the description and almost put it back on the shelf. How many more retellings of humanity’s worst atrocities do we readers need?

We need this. We need to know who the Red Cross “Donut Dollies” were, what crucial role they played in the morale of the soldiers, the PTSD likely inflicted on volunteers who were near, on their way to or on the front lines.

What are you reading?

I want to thank everyone who wrote to tell me what you’re reading. Keep the entries coming!

I’d like to hear about the things you’ve read (or watched or listened to) that you recommend to other Tolk readers. What were your favorites this year? Or of all times?

If you want to participate, You can fill in this form. I may publish your response in a future newsletter.