MJ Werthman White's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I have a long history of loving Ann Patchett’s writing, her New Yorker articles, the gorgeous collections of essays, and, beginning with Bel Canto, her novels.

Tom Lake is no exception. In Covid lockdown on a Michigan cherry farm, a mother, a father, and three grown daughters isolate. But this novel is neither dark nor fraught. Rather, I found a literary fairy tale, told by the inimitable Patchett, our Scheherazade, that led me into an enchanted forest (or, more accurately, cherry orchard) of allusions to Chekov, to Our Town, to Pasternak and Sam Shepard and more, much more, in order to solve a puzzle and in the process tell a story with a happy ending.

To throw in a literary reference of my own, it turns out all happy families are not alike.

Lessons in Chemistry is also a fairy tale, a feminist one infused with humor and a strong dose of karma.

Set in the benighted 1960s (as opposed to our own benighted times), it’s the story of two soulmates, the brilliant chemists, Elizabeth Zott and her doomed husband Calvin, their daughter Madeline, and the psychic dog, Six-Thirty (there is no piece of literature not improved by the presence of a dog, especially such a good boy as is Six-Thirty).

In quick succession, Elizabeth loses her husband, research job, discovers she is pregnant, and lands an insulting cooking show assignment. But never fear, enemies are confounded, grievances redressed, mysteries solved. “And she lived happily ever after” will never be a bad thing, no matter how much of a cynic you think you are.  

Edisto (along with its sequel, Edisto Revisited) is a novel I reread every couple years for the sheer pleasure of revisiting seriously underrated southern writer Padgett Powell’s account of a pivotal summer for the twelve-year-old Simon Manigault.

It’s the closest one can get to hitching a ride in a time machine back to an Edisto Island before gentrification, a chance to get yourself back to the garden. Take it. You won’t be sorry.