Toward the end of Agatha Christie’s 1937 novel Death on the Nile, detective Hercule Poirot likens his investigation to an archaeological excavation, declaring, “You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone. … That is what I have been seeking to do—clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth.”
Poirot’s comparison is an apt one that reflects his creator’s oft-overlooked interest in archaeology. As the wife of Max Mallowan, a British archaeologist who led digs in Syria and Iraq, Christie often accompanied her husband on his trips to the Middle East, all while she was at the peak of her powers as a best-selling author. She spent her mornings writing and her afternoons in the field, photographing excavations and conserving and cataloging finds. The methodical nature of the work greatly appealed to the mystery novelist, who “was of course fascinated by puzzles, by the little archaeological fragments,” as Charlotte Trümpler, who co-curated an early 2000s exhibition on Christie and archaeology, told CNN in 2011. “[S]he had a gift for piecing them together very patiently.”
She’s weary of journalists asking her what is the one most important thing for people to do to rescue the planet. “There isn’t one single thing that’s most important,” she says. “There’s one single thing that’s important to you. We’re so lucky to have all the different people with their concerns about saving animals and the environment, and so on. People take on different aspects because then they can work with passion about what they care about, knowing that other people are working on the other aspects.”
That approach is necessary because the threat to nature is “a pattern where you pull out the threads, like biodiversity, and animal and plant species become extinct,” Goodall says. That tapestry unravels and ecosystems then collapse.
In the diner, no one is eating. Three customers lean on their tall stools, none of them speaking. And behind the counter, a soda jerk bends to retrieve something we can’t see. Like a bartender, his job is to serve lonely people late at night, to pour them drinks, because that’s all they want in front of them: sturdy cups of coffee, cooling and forgotten.
A mother and daughter meet in Japan for vacation. They take walks, ride trains, visit art galleries, eat in restaurants, and shop for gifts. This is just about all the surface action in “Cold Enough for Snow,” the slim and sly second novel by the Australian author Jessica Au. The daughter narrates in calm prose that evokes the sound of a rake carefully tracing a pattern in sand. Along the way, she shares a few memories: of a creepy patron at the Chinese restaurant where she worked as a waitress; of the otherworldly allure of a beloved college professor’s house; of her first visit to the home where her husband grew up. We never find out where either character is travelling from, or much about the lives that await them upon return.
Lan Samantha Chang’s third novel begins by bringing history to the table: “For thirty-five years, everyone supported Leo Chao’s restaurant.” The Wisconsin eatery is a family affair. Everyone assumes it will eventually be peacefully handed down to one of Leo’s three sons – but they overlook just how fraught and bloody inheritance can be. “In dark times,” Chang writes, with a characteristically cunning sense of slow-boiled foreboding, “there is really nothing like a good, steaming soup, and dumplings made from scratch.”
That gift — of feeling at home as a foreigner, foreign when you’re at home — is a duality perhaps especially helpful to writers, to whom it lends the kind of stereoscopic perspective that makes Mead’s writing so clear and profound. Even for those who stay put, which is to say most of us for the last two years, “Home/Land” is a remarkable exploration of how being mindful of the past can enrich and imbue with urgency our everyday lives. Our past, Mead reveals, is the home we take with us.
As with a casual tryst, the best part of this book is the anonymity; the promise of no strings attached. No names or expectations, just give and take what you want. While no single experience or story guarantees the pleasure you seek, the thrill is in taking a chance on the unknown.
Common things—filing my toe nails, the misshapen little piggie.
Nasty tasks–cleaning out the compost bucket, slime of rind and reason,
corkscrews which resemble crucifixes, talc, drink. Paperclips
that teenagers link into six-foot chains because they had nothing to do.