Best Reading, 2025: Fiction
The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie. Nothing stops Salman Rushdie, not even being nearly killed by a savage knife attack at Chautauqua in 2022.
This novel features a not very likeable protagonist. In fact, one could almost call him an obnoxious snob. But oh well, watching his his amour propre get dented and pretty much destroyed on the honeymoon from Hell – he manages to misplace his wife! – is rather entertaining, plus as a setting, La Serenissima is hard to beat.
A poignant story about loss and mourning, beautifully written. Definitely the first novel I’ve ever read that is translated from the Bulgarian language! And really, he had me with those first sentences: “My father was a gardener. Now he is a garden.”
Audition by Katie Kitamura. The first sentence of my review of this work is “Audition is a strange book.”
So I wasn’t sure whether to include this book in this post. In the first half of the story, we meet the unctuous and appropriately named Mr. Fox, a middle school teacher no less, with some unforgivable proclivities. The second half relates the police investigation into Fox’s fate, which no one could possibly lament. This part of the book had me truly mesmerized. But I think the novel should come with a warning: you may find some of the content simply too disturbing to deal with. I’m not sure what is says about me that I was so powerfully drawn into this depiction of evil that pulls no punches.
Whew! Well, so now I can move on to novels with far more engaging themes and characters. I speak, of course, of the wonderful works of Anthony Trollope.
Just a few weeks a go, several of us who are members of the Trollope Society USA concluded our online discussion of The American Senator. This is the second such discussion I’ve participated in; the first was Mr. Scarborough’s Family. In both instances, the novels and the discussions were hugely enjoyable. We connect via Zoom, so that members from various places can easily participate.
Our next selection for discussion is Framley Parsonage. This is the fourth title in Trollope’s six-book saga Barchester Chronicles. I’ve already read it twice. Third time, here I come! Meanwhile, I wanted to slip in another Trollope, one which I hadn’t previously read. My choice, which I just finished, was Bullhampton Vicarage. This novel centered on a situation frequently encountered in Trollope’s novels; namely, lovers who yearn to marry but cannot due to financial or other obstacles. The crisis moment, when it finally occurs late in the novel, is truly harrowing.
Our group’s leader has stated the opinion that Trollope is the true inheritor, from Jane Austen, of the marriage plot. (I agree with her.)
And now, for my four favorite contemporary fiction titles of the year:
Kiran Desai covered all the bases in this magisterial work. The action ricochets from India to America, with stops in Italy and a few other places along the way. While Sonia and Sunny are trying to work out their respective fates, the crowded canvas presents us with sundry other characters – friends, family, and others who just wander in and out of the narrative. The writing is lovely:
‘Mama sat out with Babayaga until late, looking upon the enchantment of the forest. A scops owl came out to hunt a squirrel. The owl was disrupted by the branches and found it difficult to land; the squirrel ran from branch to branch; the bird followed but still couldn’t catch the squirrel. The squirrel was silent, the owl was silent. Briefly, before they vanished, the squirrel running, the bird gliding, the owl swiveled and looked at Mama. The woods filled with cool moonlight.’
The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia made it onto several Best of 2025 lists, including the New York Times selection of Ten Best Books of the Year.
In Fonseca, Jessica Francis Kane imagines in enchanting detail a trip that novelist Penelope Fitzgerald made to Mexico. Fitzgerald has gone there in hopes of securing a legacy from two childless, rather eccentric sisters-in-law. She and her husband Desmond need the money. (Fitzgerald actually did make this trip in 1952.)
Desmond has not accompanied Penelope on this fact-finding mission, but she does bring along her six-year-old son. His name is Valpy. He is one of the most irresistible children I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending fictional time with! I kept wishing I could make him materialize in front of me and give him a robust embrace, and then send him on his way.
Fonseca seems to have flown under the radar of those literary worthies in charge of compiling best-of-the-year lists. I urge them, and you, to read this absolute gem of a novel. Having done that, or before doing it, treat yourself to one of Penelope Fitzgerald’s terrific historical novels. My two favorites are The Beginning of Spring and The Blue Flower.
I’ve already reviewed the last two books in this group. The first is by one of my favorite authors, Ian McEwan. In What We Can Know, he is writing at the height of his considerable powers. I cannot praise highly enough McEwan’s eloquent, meticulous prose and his provocative storytelling. In my view, he stands at the summit of novel writing:
‘As was noted long ago, we are all innocent children in the tall forest of our clever inventions. What brings our students round to the beginning of a mature understanding of history and an appreciation of what the past has imagined is – simply – detail. The everyday life of, say, a mid-twenty-first-century junior doctor as told by her digital traffic, recording her week: dropping her young children at nursery, dealing with intractable illnesses, difficult patients, useless or gifted colleagues, low pay, constant pressure, keeping watch on troubling political developments, meeting friends, loving or ceasing to love her husband, paying bills, streaming new music, planning a holiday, worrying about a pain, ordering the shopping – and so on, a picture made up of countless points of different colours, like a landscape by Seurat, whose work we display and explain, can arouse even the dullest of our students into an acceptance of shared humanity across an immensity of time.’
Finally, there is Evensong by Stewart O’Nan. It is hard to put into words what to my mind makes this novel so exceptional. It features a cast of quite ordinary characters, living in a quite ordinary suburb. The individuals in question are growing old, and they seek to help one another with daily tasks, especially regarding transportation. They each feel a mixture of empathy and exasperation. And, to some degree, fear. This book struck me so forcibly; it strove to depict the divine element that resides in every human being.
From a chapter entitled Requiem:
‘They all had their losses, and if time made them easier to bear, the dead were also more remote and harder to recall, a silent slideshow of old memories unchanging as the past. Emily and Arlene had been alone for so long. It was the fate that awaited Kitzi, and while she vowed that she would sell the house after Martin died rather than inhabit an empty shell, she wasn’t certain she could leave everything she knew behind for a box of an apartment in Maxon Towers or the Morrowfield, no matter how cozy. Susie, who had done exactly that, was still surprised to wake up in a new place with a cat and now some mornings a strange man, as if her other life had never happened. She missed not Richard but her garden and the woods beyond, the deer and turkeys silently passing through the birches as she watched from the window over the sink. Gone, all of it, the children grown, the house sold. There was no going back.’
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Next up: the best crime and espionage fiction. Oh and I wish to leave you with this Bach piece, Sing Unto the Lord a New Song, to welcome in the New Year:
Give the gift of Reading, 2025:
In 1863, in regard to the substance of his novels, Anthony Trollope made the following observation to George Eliot:
‘I have attempted to confine myself to the commonest details of commonplace life among the most ordinary people, allowing myself no incident that would be even remarkable in everyday life.’
In hewing to this principle, Trollope succeeds time and again in revealing the innermost depths of his memorable characters. Stewart O’Nan performs the same effortless magic in his latest novel, Evensong. The setting is the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where a group of older woman have formed an organization dedicated to serving the needs of elderly residents of their community who need transportation and assistance with other needs in order to remain in their own homes. The organization has named itself The Humpty Dumpty Club.
The combination of compassion, anxiety and determination are part and parcel of the doings of the Club’s members. And it is in the depiction of these individuals as they go about their self-imposed tasks that the author succeeds brilliantly.
It is probably already evident from what I’ve written here: I LOVED THIS BOOK! Read it, then give it to someone you know who loves great writing and great storytelling. They will thank you.
The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Somehow I managed to get to this point in my life without having read anything by Salman Rushdie. Like just about everyone else, I’ve read plenty about him, from the issuing of the notorious fatwa to the ghastly knife attack at Chautauqua in 2022. When I started seeing notices of a new work of fiction by Rushdie, I decided it was time to remedy this omission in my reading life.
The stories in The Eleventh Hour range from just a few pages in length to almost novella length. (Two of the shorter tales appeared originally in The New Yorker.) Rushdie makes liberal use of what is usually termed magical realism. This is a device that I’m not ordinarily fond of, but Rushdie’s artistry and humor won me over right away.
My favorite story in this delightful collection is “Late.” It begins this way:
‘When the Honorary Fellow S. M. Arthur woke up in his darkened College bedroom he was dead, but at first that didn’t seem to change anything.’
Rushdie’s narration of what happens next is strangely convincing, not to mention oddly compelling. I felt grateful to him for this tender, almost lighthearted evocation of an afterlife, for a character that I came to care about deeply.
(That opening sentence reminded me a bit of Kafka’s Metamorphosis:
‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect’
But the element of fear and desperation so vivid in Kafka’s chilling novella is absent from “Late,” replaced instead by a sense of wonder.)
The writing throuhout is beautiful and contains welcome touches of wit.
Highly recommended.
Photo above from an article in The Guardian
Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida, by Gilbert King
It was August 2017 when author/photographer/investigator Gilbert King made his way to Naples, Florida. He was slated to deliver the keynote address to the Florida Conference of Circuit Judges, which was taking place at a venue in that city. During a lunch break, as King was chatting with some of the judges, a man approached and handed him a business card. On the back of the card was written the following:
LEO SCHOFIELD #115760 HARDEE C.I.
NOT JUST “WRONGFULLY CONVICTED,”
HE’S AN INNOCENT MAN.
As the man walked away, he turned to King and indicated that he should call him.
As summarized on Gilbert King’s website, here is how matters stood:
‘In 1988, 22-year-old Leo Schofield—a heavy metal guitarist from Lakeland, Florida—was arrested and charged with the murder of his 18-year-old wife, Michelle. Leo maintained his innocence from the beginning, but he was failed at nearly every turn: the investigation was shoddy, the defense inadequate, and critical evidence was overlooked. Convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, Leo exhausted his appeals and seemed destined to remain in the shadows.’
Author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning narrative Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, a Pulitzer-Prize winning narrative, as well as Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found, Gilbert King was a busy man with a full schedule; nevertheless, he was immediately intrigued by this situation. He followed up on the lead he’d been given. The result was a podcast, the exoneration of a wrongly imprisoned man, and ultimately the book Bone Valley.
Highly, highly recommended.
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
‘”Mr Toby! Mr. Toby!”‘
A chance encounter on a London street causes Juliet Armstrong call out excitedly to a man she’s sure she recognizes – someone she worked beside in ‘the old days.’ But Godfrey Toby frostily informs her that she must be mistaken – he does not know her, has never seen her before. Juliet is bewildered. Why would he refuse to acknowledge her? It must have to do with their former employment….
For Juliet and Godfrey Toby worked in Intelligence, during the Second World War. They were installed in an apartment directly adjacent to where a cell of collaborators were busy passing information to the enemy. Juliet’s group secretly recorded their conversations; it was Juliet’s task to generate transcriptions of these forbidden revelations.
Type, type, type…
Juliet came to join this operation at a very young age. She was guileless and naive, at the time. As she burrows deeply into her remit, this changes. Unavoidably, her mindset alters, and her whole life changes.
‘Juliet had been easy to recruit. She had believed in fairness and equality, in justice and truth. She believed that England could be a better country. She was the apple ripe for plucking and she had also been Eve willing to eat the apple. The endless dialectic between innocence and experience.’
Kate Atkinson is an author I have long admired. An early novel, Case Histories, was hugely entertaining and highly irreverent. Then came Life Histories, a completely different kind of a novel, on a grand scale, profound and riveting.
Transcription boasts that rarity in contemporary fiction: a terrific conclusion. In fact, the whole novel is terrific – I loved it!
;
A New Novel by a Master of the Craft
Ian McEwan is beyond brilliant, and, in my view, he is currently writing at the height of his powers .In What We Can Know, his subject matter ranges widely – environmental degradation, personal deceit and betrayal, and just general unease and bewilderment at the state of the world – as seen from a hundred years in the future.
And the writing – ah, such writing!
‘As was noted long ago, we are all innocent children in the tall forest of our clever inventions.
What brings our students round to the beginning of a mature understanding of history and an appreciation of what the past has imagined is – simply – detail. The everyday life of, say, a mid-twenty-first-century junior doctor as told by her digital traffic, recording her week: dropping her young children at nursery, dealing with intractable illnesses, difficult patients, useless or gifted colleagues, low pay, constant pressure, keeping watch on troubling political developments, meeting friends, loving or ceasing to love her husband, paying bills, streaming new music, planning a holiday, worrying about a pain, ordering the shopping – and so on, a picture made up of countless points of different colours, like a landscape by Seurat, whose work we display and explain, can arouse even the dullest of our students into an acceptance of shared humanity across an immensity of time.’
Much have I traveled in the realm of Ian McEwan’s novels and loved every one of them. (Yes, this is an unapologetic rave.) I began with The Comfort of Strangers, then went on to read Black Dogs, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, Atonement, Saturday, On Chesil Beach, Sweet Tooth, The Children Act, Nutshell, Machines Like Me, Lessons, and now finally, What We Can Know, his latest masterwork.
In 2009, I wrote a post entitled Ian McEwan, Connoisseur of Dread. I was prompted to do so after reading “The Background Hum,” a New Yorker profile of McEwan written by Daniel Zalewski. In that post. I quote this passage from a review of Atonement in The Toronto Globe:
“There are characters you follow with breathless anxiety; a plot worthy of a top-drawer suspense novelist, complete with jolting reversals; language that unspools seemingly effortlessly, yet leaves a minefield of still-to-be-detonated nouns and verbs…. rife with…unforgettable tableaux….”
Stay tuned for another short write-up of yet another terrific new novel. I feel blessed….
‘As they sailed away, it seemed clear that their old life was ending and their new life beginning. He was free.’ A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst
The full title of this book is A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck. It is nothing less than an astonishing tale of loss, harrowing danger, near death – and steadfast love.
It was 1973, and Maralyn and Maurice Bailey did not want to settle for a humdrum existence in England. They wanted an adventure. They wanted to sail away! They acquired a boat, fitted it out with their needs, and set out on their journey.
Unfortunately, in his desire to minimize dependence on ‘civilization,’ Maurice made a fateful decision: no radio. After their ship was wrecked by a breaching whale, they barely managed to save themselves. They stowed what provisions they could onto a life raft and towed a dinghy behind. They had no way to call for help. Days passed, then weeks….
Alone, alone, all,all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
This poignant plaint from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner kept reverberating in my brain as I read this astonishing tale. Altogether the Baileys endured 117 days floating aimlessly on the vast Pacific Ocean. Ultimately they were sighted sand rescued by a Korean fishing boat This unassuming vessel was certainly not marked out for a heroic role in this, or any story:
‘The Wolmi 306 was not a beautiful ship. Paintwork that must once have gleamed white was now patchy and worn. Rust bled down her sides. She needed a rest, as did her crew, who had been at sea for two and a half years catching tuna on behalf of the Wolmi’s owner, the Korean Marine Industry Development Corporation.’
The Koreans were immediately aware that they had made an extraordinary find. The crew were extremely kind to Maralyn and Maurice, both of whom were in desperate need of nourishment and nursing. (This does not surprise me. I lived in South Korea for a year back in the 1970s; the people were gracious and generous.)
An amazing story, from start to finish, beautifully told and completely riveting.
Mysteries Recommended for Book Discussions
The following post came about when I was asked to suggest works of crime fiction for a book group.
The first seven titles date from the Golden Age of Crime Fiction:
Brat Farrar and The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey
The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
The Nine Tailors, Strong Poison and Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. Here is a delightful compilation of moments from the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane romance. Edward Petherbridge is Lord Peter; Harriet Walter is Harriet Vane.
Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh
‘I’ve read several Roderick Alleyn novels and led discussions of two:
Death in a White Tie and The Nursing Home Murder. My favorite of all
of them is Death in a White Tie, for two reasons. First of all, that book
depicts the London “season” in all its vivid glory – the endless round of
parties and the blatant husband hunting carried on by the young debs
and their mothers; it is as much a novel of manners as a murder
mystery. Secondly, the murder victim is someone who moves in those
circles and is known and liked by Rory (Roderick), Troy, and numerous
others. The grief at his untimely passing is thus genuine and heartfelt. I
don’t understand why more crime fiction authors don’t create a known
and sympathetic victim. To my mind, it causes the reader to be more
emotionally invested in the story. That’s certainly what happened to me
as I was reading Death in a White Tie.‘
The above is an excerpt from the following post:
I’ve written about Ngaio Marsh before. It’s my pleasure to be writing about her again.
A Famine of Horses by P.F. Chisholm (historical fiction)
Simisola (Inspector Wexford series) and A Judgement in Stone by Ruth
Rendell; A Fatal Inversion by Ruth Rendell, writing as Barbara Vine
The Girl of His Dreams and Suffer the Little Children by Donna
Leon
The Crossing by Michael Connelly
Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet
The Escher Twist by Jane Langton
I’ve written several posts on classic American crime fiction. Here are three of them: American Mystery Classics, selected by Otto Penzler and published by Penzler Publishers; “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter” – the cynical, knockdown, take-no-prisoners universe of Dashiell Hammett; and Ross MacDonald, The Underground Man, and Other Works
And here is an article that I wrote for the Crime Writers’ Association
– CWA, the British counterpart to the Mystery Writers of America. The
occasion was the honoring of one of my favorite writers, Reginald Hill.
As you can imagine, I was gratified to be asked to contribute to this very
worthwhile effort.
The Dalziel and Pascoe Series: A Personal View
The novel that I consider to be his masterpiece is On Beulah Height.
In addition to crime fiction, I recommend one of the best contemporary works of literary fiction that I’ve read in years:
Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux. Theroux is a terrific writer who deserves more recognition than he normally gets.
Of course I have to include several titles that represent my current obsession with Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers, The Small House at Allington, and Mr. Scarborough’s Family. There’s more coming on Trollope, you may be sure!
A (Welcome) Return to the Golden Age of the British Mystery, Part One
The occasion of this return is a program I’m doing here at The Garlands next month. Here’s the sign I created to announce this program:
The Golden Age of British Crime Fiction!
Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane – Meet these memorable characters in the works of two great mystery writers.
Join Roberta Rood for a lively discussion of their works, Wednesday August 6, 11:15 to 12:00, in the Eastlake Dining Room.
[Sayers is pictured holding Eric, the official mascot of the Detection Club. I read recently that Eric was re-christened Erica when forensic examination indicated that the skull was most likely that of a female.]
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I’m going to start my talk by reading the opening paragraph of The Body in the Library:
‘Mrs. Bantry was dreaming. Her sweet peas had just taken a First at the flower show. The vicar, dressed in cassock and surplice, was giving out the prizes in church. His wife wandered past, dressed in a bathing suit, but as is the blessed habit of dreams this fact did not arouse the disapproval of the parish in the way it would assuredly have done in real life….’
I will then recount my sweet victory of finally gaining access to Dame Agatha’s lovely country house in Devon, where she was born and grew up. The full story is told in the post entitled Torquay, Greenway, and Agatha Christie. Be sure to read the story of John Curran’s discovery of Christie’s notebooks; it’s as dramatic as anything she ever wrote.
Below is the content of the first page of the handout I created to accompany my talk:
FIRST GOLDEN AGE OF BRITISH CRIME WRITING
The First Golden Age of Crime Writing in Great Britain – in one case, including a member nation of the British Empire! – began during the years between the two World Wars: 1920 to 1939.
The following five are usually considered to be “Les “Grandes Dames” of crime writing; they each began publishing during that era:
I feel that it’s important to make clear that although each of these five authors wrote her first mystery novel in the years between the two world wars, all but one continued to published through the Second World War and beyond. That single exception is Dorothy L. Sayers, whose final Lord Peter Wimsey novel, Busman’s Honeymoon, appeared in 1937. She continued to write, almost exclusively nonfiction, including a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy; however, she never again produced a work of crime fiction.
With Sixty-six full length mysteries and fifteen short story collections, Christie leads the pack in regard to sheer numbers. She also wrote six novels under the name Mary Westmacott, as well as several nonfiction works and plays. That comes to somewhere between two to four billion titles, outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible. Ngaio Marsh clocks in next, with thirty-three Roderick Alleyn titles. Margery Allingham wrote nineteen mysteries featuring Albert Campion. Dorothy L. Sayers produced twelve crime novels, eleven of which feature Lord Peter Wimsey.
And then there is Josephine Tey. Although an author of numerous plays for stage and radio, Tey wrote only eight crime novels; these were published between 1929 and 1952. Six of them featured Inspector Alan Grant.
Two, possibly three, of them are, in my estimation, masterpieces. The most famous of these is The Daughter of Time. Published in 1951, this is the novel in which a bedridden Inspector Grant takes an interest in the one of the most notorious incidents in English history. Known as ‘The Princes in the Tower,’ the story of the disappearance and almost certain murder of Edward V, twelve, and his brother Richard, Duke of York, age nine. Their older brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester, had them confined to the Tower of London in1483. They were never seen alive again. The Duke of Gloucester later became King Richard III. History has long considered him to be guilty of killing of the two boys so that his ascent to the throne would be unimpeded. Grant decides that since he is hors de combat due to injuries to his leg and back, he will enlist the help of friends and colleagues as he investigates this mystery from the confines of his hospital bed.
I first read The Daughter of Time many years ago. For a long time, it was the only crime novel I had ever read. I believe my mother passed it on to me; she was not really a mystery fan either, but she made an exception for this novel. So I’m currently reading it again and am now almost half way in way in. The serious investigation into this mystery is now under way. And frankly, the going is really sluggish. Anglophile that I am, I’m having trouble following the permutations and combinations of late medieval royalty.
I can’t help feeling that The Daughter of Time continues to inspire reverence because the author came up with such a unique plot conceit. Have the injured policeman conduct an investigation, of necessity, from his inert predicament. And have the investigation concern a notorious mystery from British history. Well, okay, give it an ‘A’ for originality. But at this point, I confess that I am rather bogged down.
Nevertheless, I shall continue, at least for a while, and see how things play out. One does wish to keep an open mind…
(It’s worth noting that Colin Dexter borrowed Tey’s idea for the plot of one of the most inventive and cunning of the Morse novels: The Wench Is Dead. Laura Lippman also got in on the act in her novel Dream Girl.)
Two novels by Tey that I hold in very high esteem are The Franchise Affair and Brat Farrar. I’ve written about both of them in this space – see the links above.
Meanwhile, back to The Daughter of Time: this novel figures on two lists of ‘the 100 greatest Mysteries.’ The first list was compiled by the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain (CWA) in 1990; the second, by the Mystery Writers of America MWA) in 1995. Both lists can be accessed at this link.
The Daughter of Time actually tops of CWA list; it appears at the number 4 position on the MWA list. The Franchise Affair is number 11 on the CWA list, and number and number 81 on the MWA list. MWA also has Brat Farrar as number 90; it’s not on the CWA list at all (??).
I expected to find books by Agatha Christie well represented on both these lists, but I was pleasantly pleased to find that the same was also true of Dorothy L. Sayers. These days, among crime fiction aficionados, Sayers’s name does not have the same resonance as Christie’s. And yet there is the splendid Gaudy Night – a novel as relevant today as it was in the 1930s – proudly occupying the number 4 slot on the CWA list! (It’s number 18 on the MWA list.)
My program next week will concentrate chiefly on Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers; the other three Grandes Dames will be covered in a later presentation.
My Garden here at Garlands, Summer 2025
So the garden this year has not exactly been a roaring success. Forr floral interest, I planted three Lantana plants. These produced a profusion of blooms last year. This year, for whatever reason, their showing has been very lackluster. The two sweet pepper plants have languished, just as they did last year. I’m never planting them again – so there! The single sweet basil plant is struggling.
On the other hand,,,the tomatoes are flourishing, although they are falling all over themselves due to the cages I provided for them being too short. Little round green balls are currently presenting themselves, especially on the cherry tomato plant. But the summer squash plant…well, it is completely out of control, growing like a wild thing! Leaves the size of dinner plates. Still waiting for the actual vegetable to make its debut, though there are several flowers hopefully peeping out from below the gigantic foliage. I keep thinking of the man-eating plant in the musical “Little Shop of Horrors”…
Anyway, here I am, standing beside this dubious achievement.
Books to the Ceiling