{"id":270693,"date":"2021-06-10T00:41:41","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T21:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/20-books-you-should-read-this-summer\/"},"modified":"2021-06-10T00:41:41","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T21:41:41","slug":"20-books-you-should-read-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/20-books-you-should-read-this-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"#20 books you should read this summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#20 books you should read this summer<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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A gifted and admired writer across genres\u2014his novel Summer Gone<\/i> was nominated for the Giller prize, while The Danger Tree<\/i>, a memoir of his mother\u2019s Newfoundland family, brought him a chorus of praise\u2014Macfarlane\u2019s works have always focused on memory and family. That long-standing theme<\/a> is understandably far more sorrowful in Likeness<\/i>. Born out of the fatal illness of Macfarlane\u2019s 29-year-old son, Blake, in 2018, it conveys grief in heartbreaking, often quietly stunning, prose. <\/span>\u201cWhen the worst that can happen, happens, the only useful lesson is the knowledge that it can,\u201d he writes mid-book. \u201cThat\u2019s the take-away: a world can actually end, time can actually run out.\u201d<\/p>\n

A gigantic John Hartman portrait of Macfarlane, with a background depicting an aerial view of his hometown of Hamilton, hangs in Macfarlane\u2019s living room. Contemplating it, especially during Blake\u2019s illness, brought Macfarlane, 68, a sense of his personal chain of being, of the essential likeness of grandfather, son and grandson. Thoughts of Macfarlane\u2019s father, a taciturn doctor also named Blake, run from intense golf matches to drives through Hamilton when the older man would recount ancient gossip about the local elite. Newly vivid memories of his own youth and worries over Blake meant facing the painful contrast between the days of their youths, a time when the father felt limitless possibilities and the son lay in a sickbed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The painting never leaves the story. The light it portrays and the light it reflects, the overall\u2014aerial, in fact\u2014view it provides of what was naturally no more and what may be cruelly cut short, evoke so much. Between asides that amuse and sadden equally\u2014\u201cAnd if I may, if your son or daughter asks if you want to grab a bite, say yes\u201d\u2014Macfarlane writes of the pleasure of walking with Blake when he\u2019s in remission and of the days when \u201che was in such pain I thought my heart would break with helplessness. I would hold him, my 29-year-old son, sometimes for as long as half an hour.\u201d There is an ache in Likeness<\/i> that cuts as deeply as it does because of the beauty of its expression. Brian Bethune<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n