A Ghost in the Throat was such a beautiful book. It's about a young Irish mother who becomes obsessed with an 18th century Irish poet. She spends her day making to-do lists to take care of her home and giving of herself constantly. But she steals away from everything while she's nursing and pumping and enters into the world of Eibhlín Dubh, "sipping [her] own dark sustenance from ink." She translates Dubh's poem and meticulously researches her family lineage. She visits the known places that Dubh visited and lived. "What's all this for?", asks a visiting nurse after the birth of her third child, as she boldly flips through the folders she's collected on Dubh. It's because, surprisingly, Eibhlín Dubh's poem is famous and studied in Irish schools yet there is almost no academic work done on her life. That's because Dubh is a woman and so much of women's lives is erased, day after day.

I saw so much of my own daily life in these pages. This is a female text, the book states from the beginning. Maybe you'll see some of your own life captured here?

It's been a long time since I read a book nonstop in one day, but I read Sea of Tranquility in one breathless gulp. ESJM fans: I think this is the book we've been waiting for! It spans centuries: from settlers in British Columbia in 1912 until the time traveling moon colonies of the 2400s. We revisit Vincent from Mandel's earlier novel, The Glass Hotel, as we travel through time to understand a space/time glitch that the Time Institute discovered.

This book is about so much. What stood out the most to me was Mandel's focus on Olive Llewellyn, a pandemic author from the 2200s. Even in the 2200s, Olive still gets questions like, who's watching your kid while you're here? Why would you choose to be away from your family to do this work?, etc. It made me wonder if the sections on Olive were semi-autobiographical, given that she was doing promotional tours as her 2014 pandemic novel, Station Eleven, was made into an HBO max series.

After I finished this book, I realized I only need to read one more book to become a Mandel completist. I'm anxiously awaiting that book through Libby right now!

This is - so far - my favorite Erdrich novel. It tells the story of Father Damien, the priest who arrived at Little No Horse in 1912 and died in 1996. It is written with gorgeous details and I spent the entire time swooning over Erdrich's prose. I've always enjoyed her stories but found her writing to be top-notch here. So many secrets within the Nanapush, Puyat, and Lazarre clans are uncovered here, as well as Father Damien's own secret life. I am so excited to learn more about these families as I continue to read their stories.