Books I Read in March

contemporary literature fiction, retellings, and reimaginings

Apr 18, 2025

Welcome to Books I Read: March Edition! March is typically the longest month but it passed quickly and I had to keep reminding myself that winter had nearly come and gone.

One of my goals for March had been to read books in translation, and I only slightly got to it, time flying by and time spent reading decreased, so I’m carrying it into April, that goal. I also had quite a bit happen in March so I was looking to books as a way to escape, so if I wasn’t immediately pulled in, I moved on to the next.

All in all, I read 5 total books. I rented 3 from the library. 1 book is mine, and 1 I borrowed from a friend.

Mina’s Matchbox by Yōk Ogawa

“If you wanted to describe Mina in a few words, you might say she was an asthmatic girl who loved books and rode a pygmy hippopotomus. But if you wanted to distinguish her from everyone else in the world, you’d say that she was a girl who could strike a match more beautifully than anyone.”

It follows a twelve-year-old Tomoko who has left Tokyo, where she lived with her mom who needed the help to complete a college course, to stay with her family in a coastal town in Japan. There she finds her aunt, her cousin, her German grandmother, the housekeeper Yoneda, a pygmy hippopotamus, and the hippo’s caretaker. It’s there that she befriends her slightly younger cousin, Mina, who is mysteriously ailing. In a mansion that once was bestowed with a zoo in its backyard, only survived by the family’s pygmy hippopotamus, everyone lives their life without much desire to leave. There’s also the uncle and the older cousin, both of whom don’t really live there and only come occasionally, which means it’s cause to celebrate, their return. There’s a sadness to it, soft and sweet and poignantly introspective, woven through Tomoko’s outsider perspective, describing her experiences, a brush with the past as we begin to understand as she brings the reader back into the present day.

“What I’d said about the book of photographs did not come from Mina or from someone else. Those were my own thoughts. I’d spoken to Mr. Turtleneck for the first time using my own words.”

It’s clear Mina is wise beyond her years. She’s attuned to the way her elders live, reading and musing. It’s this intellectualism that’s a part of the household’s way of life that is unfamiliar to Tomoko. She’s stuck echoing the sentiments around her. And Tomoko worships Mina in that childhood way, despite being older. There’s a pivotal moment, at the library picking up books for Mina, when she starts telling the librarian, who she’s befriended on her many trips there, her thoughts on a book. Typically, Tomoko borrows Mina’s words but it’s the realization that she’s expressing her own thoughts and beliefs that marks this turning point from adorer to individual.

“In the house at Ashiya, books were considered more precious than any scultpure or piece of pottery. There were bookshelves in every room, so that a volume would be close at hand as soon as one thought of it, and the children were free to read the adults’ books.”

Since the story is written in the past tense, Tomoko an adult, the dichotomy of remembering a childhood experience while presenting it to the reader as a momentary occurrence creates a nostalgia that I happen to love quite a bit. The description and voice is mature but the subject matter is youthful, one that assumes the still-developing identity of the characters it’s storytelling for.

You’d like this if you’re looking for:

A book about memory, childhood, and the attempt to capture something lost.

You might also like:

Never Let Me Go by Kazoo Ishiguro, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

“One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in life is this: Do not preemptively take no for an answer. Do not decide your request has been rejected before it officially has. As with so many other lessons that involve assertion, this one applies far more to women than men.”

What if Hillary Clinton never married Bill? Well, her last name would still be Rodham, and our political sphere but look a little different. Roaringly funny and wry, it’s easy to forget this is fiction, it’s so infused with historical events and truths. The novel begins at Yale Law School, where Hillary and Bill meet as students, Bill one year behind. Their story unfolds, but the book departs to ask: what if it never continued? It’s fascinating to think about these alternative lives we might have led had we made other decisions, how very different but at the end we’re still the same people. Hillary wears pant suits and she wants to make a difference.

“Surely, if he was elected, some form of exposure therapy would occur in which I began to perceive him as the national leader rather than my ex-boyfriend.”

Throughout the novel, I thought it was interesting how Sittenfeld chose to show how much Bill’s presence in Hillary’s life, even for so brief a period when she was young, could impact the rest of her life: in relationships, in life, and in politics. The book is set up so there’s this continual merging of their lives, and Hillary never truly gets to escape his sphere.

“Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught. The less you screw up, the more clearly the public keeps track of each error.”

The book is very much about the double standard of women in politics, who are scrutinized for anything and everything. It’s apparent throughout that no matter how trivial of a mistake or upset Hillary makes, it’s put on a pedestal of righteousness that she lacks even in comparison to the factual allegations that others in the novel face without any public scrutiny.

You’d like this if you’re looking for:

A funny but serious reflection on women in professional and political America.

You might also like:

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo, The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

“She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people.”

In my publication of the novel, A Conversation with Elizabeth Strout and Olive Kitteridge is inserted in the back. I found it interesting: an author having a Q&A with a character she’s created. Upon reading, I learned something, or perhaps my observations were solidified. The novel’s namesake is a character with a big presence. Even in Tell Me Everything in which she’s 90, taking place thirty years after this novel, she has gumption and a ferocity, even when her physical body isn’t in a scene.

“People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.”

In the conversation, Strout explains why this novel followed an episodic format: Olive is a force. Her role in the community as a townsperson and teacher means she appears in chapters she’s not even narrating. She is who she is, and I kept wanting more at the same time I never felt I wasn’t getting enough. But the reader needs a break from her compassion and her cruelty, even if it’s in the form of another character running into her, or through gossip or friendship. Everyone has their own experience with her, and everyone has their own perception. I got to know her, and her loneliness despite being surrounded by people. She has these big emotions that seem to overwhelm her, and in order to minimize them she turns them into criticisms for the people around her.

“And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she'd felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist's gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.”

I enjoyed going back in time to get to know Olive more. (Strout has created a world of characters that find themselves in various of her books without requiring the reader to read in any sort of order. The more novels you read, the fuller picture you get, but they all stand on their own.) She’s married, her son is grown up but still nearby, and she’s still fairly active. While in Tell Me Everything she’s telling stories, in Olive Kitteridge she is the story.

You’d like this if you’re looking for:

A contemporary American novel about a small town of people that live big interior lives.

You might also like:

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Luster by Raven Leilani

“And when I am alone with myself, this is what I am waiting for someone to do to me, with merciless, deliberate hands, to put me down onto the canvas so that when I’m gone, there will be a record, proof that I was here.”

Slick, sticky, and promiscuous, Edie, a young Black woman finds herself caught in the open marriage of an older white couple and their adopted Black daughter as she struggles with trauma endured through gender, family, race, and class. The voice and intensity of the plot, created a tempo that seemed never to falter or still, which always makes for a quick but enjoyable read for me.

“All I want is for him to have what he wants. I want to be uncomplicated and undemanding. I want no friction between his fantasy and the person I actually am. I want all that and I want none of it.”

From the moment Edie enters into a relationship with Eric, the age, race, and economic differences create a power dynamic that Edie feels but Eric is blind to. But Edie was looking to be in a position of impotence, still figuring out life and dealing with a history of bad interactions with men.

He’s a married white man in his forties, and upon a series of circumstances, Edie ends up moving into his family’s home, where she meets his daughter Akila and forms a relationship with his wife Rebecca.

A painter, she was unable to create living in her rundown apartment lacking in basic resources or even the feeling of security. But taken care of, fed, seen in this family’s house, with a benefactor of sorts providing her with materials she begins to paint again and I thought it was such a lovely note about needing the basics in order to create, and that’s okay. It was also poignant that the wife was able to identity that this girl needed pushed slightly (which she did by providing materials) into the person she could see the girl for.

“It’s hard not to be aware of an age discrepancy when you are surrounded by the most rococo trappings of childhood.”

Her relationship with the wife and the daughter create an imbalance or a shift in how I understand Edie. In her relationship with the wife, there’s a clear separation of age, and it’s this relationship and the one with the daughter that gains more importance than with the man who’s interests, career, presence remain in the background, until she becomes physical with him, and even then his identity is still unimportant. And I think it’s these female relationships that allow Akila to feel supported and seen and purposeful.

“Because she is thirteen, and I remember how it felt from the inside. I remember what I thought I knew about people, and the pride I took in being alone. But from the outside, the loneliness is palpable, and I think, she is too young.”

Her relationship with the daughter, who she was closest in age to but where there is still a level of distinct separation of age, she becomes an aspirational or insightful figure to; someone who simply by having a few extra years lived must know something more about the world.

You’d like this if you’re looking for:

A contemporary novel on growing up, understanding relationships, and the importance of support and resources to flourish.

You might also like:

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, The Idiot by Elif Batuman, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Medea by Eilish Quin

This contemporary take on Medea, a sorceress known for her relation to Jason and the Golden Fleece, was empowering then gruesome. It follows her story from birth to some sort of reconciliation.

Born to King Aeetes, son of Helios, and Eidyia, an oceanic, Medea has divine lineage. She spends her childhood attempting to learn the art of pharmaka, using plants and herbs to create magical concoctions. Her mother, mostly away, at sea. It’s not until her youngest brother Absyrtus is born that her mother sees the prophecy and she returns to the sea almost permanently, leaving Medea to raise him. The action begins when Jason comes to collect the golden fleece Aeetes had a dragon protect after a golden ram and his owner accidentally fell from the sky in their town. From this point on, an urgency to leave the reign of their father begins, along with it tragedy.

It felt right that I read this book. About halfway through, I realized I was gaining a bit of the story about the Argo, the ship whose parts changed and changed but identity stayed the same, a concept that inspired the name of Maggie Nelson’s book The Argonauts (read my review).

read my review

The concept of prophecy and knowing our prophecy and what might the future look like had we’d never known means it might have been different. That we toil our lives away to avoid the very thing we end up doing anyways sure that we can change how it was told to occur. That our love for someone can be strong enough to make us capable of overcoming whatever path has been paved but it doesn’t make it strong enough to make us aware of our limitations or the intensity that we’ve given into.

You’d like this if you’re looking for:

A contemporary take on classic Greek mythology.

You might also like:

Circe by Madeline Miller, Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller; (The Odyssey is being made into a movie with quite the cast)

Book(s) I Didn’t Finish

The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk: I do want to complete this book one day, the narrator some lyrical figure that lurks in the air and all the objects. It was slow, though, and I had wanted a book that would allow me to escape.