Curated by SARAH WHELAN
Here it is, the final Friday Reads of the decade! This month, we’re sharing the audiobooks that have entertained and challenged us this year. If you’d like even more listening material, check out The Common Online’s Poetry Recordings here.
Recommendations: The Dutch House by Ann Patchett; The Vexations by Caitlin Horrocks; Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt; All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Movie directed by CÉLINE SCIAMMA
Review by HANNAH GERSEN
In 1770, Brittany, France, a young female painter, Marianne, is hired to paint a wedding portrait of a noblewoman. But the assignment is unusual: she must make the painting in secret because the bride, Héloïse, is reluctant to marry. Héloïse and her mother live in an isolated seaside estate, and her mother explains to the young painter that the portrait is necessary to entice the bridegroom, who lives in Milan. Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) is arrestingly beautiful, and I can imagine many movies that might begin with the groom’s approving gaze upon receiving Héloïse’s portrait, kicking off a storyline that would take viewers into Milanese high society. But Portrait of a Lady on Fire instead focuses on the two weeks that Héloïse and Marianne spend together in a nearly empty house by the sea (the bridegroom in question never appears on screen). Written and directed by French filmmaker Céline Sciamma, and with a nearly all-female cast, Portrait is both a romantic story of two people falling in love, and a sensitive depiction of a female painter’s life and artistic practice in the eighteenth century.
Curated by: SARAH WHELAN
Already done reading our latest Issue? Prolong the fun with these weekend reading recommendations from our Issue 18 contributors.
Recommendations: The Weil Conjectures by Karen Olsson; Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk; 7th Cousins: An Automythography by Erin Brubacher and Christine Brubaker; How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
Book by MAHIR GUVEN
Translated from the French by TINA KOVER
Reviewed by FEROZ RATHER
The protagonist of Mahir Guven’s debut novel, Older Brother, is the son of a Syrian emigre taxi driver and a French mother who has died by the time the story begins. He is in his late twenties. An Uber driver addicted to hash, he is living in a suburban ghetto outside of Paris he calls “the dump of France.” He fears his ennui, induced by the indifference of the countless customers he ferries around, might kill him. But despite the jadedness, his caustic humor enlivens him, endowing his fulminations with a faint existential quality.
Curated by: SARAH WHELAN
Issue 18 is almost here! Pre-order your copy today to enjoy brand-new fiction, poetry, essays, and artwork arriving on October 28th. If waiting by the mailbox isn’t your thing, countdown to the magazine’s arrival with book recommendations from some of our Issue 18 contributors.
Recommendations: Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard by Cynthia L. Haven; Loves You: Poems by Sarah Gambito; A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa; The Farm by Joanne Ramos; and Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors.
Review by MEG KEARNEY
Book by WYATT TOWNLEY (SFASU Press 2019)
What does it mean to “rewrite the body?” To dive deeply and lose ourselves in Wyatt Townley’s fourth book of poems, we must think of “body” as physical human frame; body as door, as house; body as a lifetime’s work, needing to be revised, re-visioned, reclaimed. Rewriting is a daily task, a practice, and the body—the poem/house—source of both refuge and danger, of “both / basement and / torna- / do/,” is also a source of connection with the world.
Curated by SARAH WHELAN
The Common is a proud recipient of a Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, and our staff are ready to celebrate! In conjunction with the Brooklyn Book Festival, you’re invited to join Whiting Prize winners The Common, Black Warrior Review, American Short Fiction, The Margins (Asian American Writers Workshop), and The Offing for an evening of literary merriment at LIC Bar in Long Island City. Event details can be found here.
If you’re already as excited as we are, please enjoy this month’s Friday Reads as a special treat – featuring reviews from editors at all the winning publications.
Recommendations: When You Learn The Alphabet by Kendra Allen; Two Lives: A Memoir by Vikram Seth; The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi; Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq by Jess Goodell; A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez.
Book by MARIA TERRONE
Review by SUSAN TACENT
Maria Terrone’s grandparents were among the estimated nine million people who emigrated from Italy between 1881 and 1927. While her parents were born in the United States, her connection to Italy is deep, informing her identity and experiences as much as being a lifelong New Yorker has.
Book by AKRAM AYLISLI
Translated from Russian by KATHERINE E. YOUNG
Review by OLGA ZILBERBOURG
Contemporary books emerging from post-Soviet countries often deal with the dehumanizing effect of the region’s systems of government on its victims, seeking to trace and partially redeem the psychological and physical harm many have suffered. For understandable reasons, few authors care to look at the perpetrators, at the people who committed murders and mass murders, informed on and denounced their neighbors. Yet, in the post-Soviet reality, often it’s these people and their descendants who have risen to the top, taken charge of the new nation states, and written their laws.
Curated by: SARAH WHELAN
Break a sweat with July Friday Reads as our summer staff tackles heated questions of faith, sexuality, and partisanship.
Recommendations: Home by Marilynne Robinson, Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, The Bostonians by Henry James