You know how I was just saying that I felt like my short story reading was all over the place this year? Now that I am about to say that I feel as though my spring reading was all over the place too, doesn’t that suggest something is afoot? If it’s an element of my short story reading, and a factor in my themed reading—could it be…me? Maybe *I* am a little all over the place this year… and I’ve only just noticed it in my reading?
Whether or not that’s true, spring started popping up all over the place in my reading. Even in books that I hadn’t selected as spring reads. Like Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song (2023), which Lauren B. Davis recommended when it was new—and, also, more recently—which finally got it into my stack. (I’m warning you: her recommendation list will have a noticeable impact on your TBR list.)
“She finds herself wishing for a stop to spring, for the day’s decrease, for the trees to go blind again, for the flowers to be taken back into the earth, for the world to be glassed to winter.”
And I also wasn’t expecting to find springtime in John A. Williams’ The Man Who Cried I Am (1967), which is likely to be on MY list of recommendations for this year. It’s available in a lovely Library of America reprint or from Fitzcarraldo overseas.
“The sap of the earth began to run beneath the ground that Friday; spring teased the air. Windows that had been bolted against the winter were opened briefly. A few elderly people bundled themselves up and sat on the park benches, their pale faces lifted to the sun.”
Even though there is a solid thread of melancholy in Nina Berkhout’s This Bright Dust (2024), Abel’s thoughts on spring focus on the possibility of new beginnings:
“He wished to start over. As the crocus did each spring. Abel never tired of searching through the disappearing snow for windflowers, as the Peloquins called them.”
Whether on the prairies or in the Maritimes, what’s now eastern Canada, that first glimpse of spring does allude to promise and potential. As it does in Ernest Buckler’s The Mountain and the Valley (1952):
“The touch of sun at the hollow of his throat made Joseph’s heavy jacket for the first time this year a winter thing. For the first time the soft wind in the stirring trees was close and of this place alone.”
And speaking of receding cold, spring’s temperamental nature makes an appearance in Thomas King’s Black Ice (2024), the latest in the Dreadfulwater series:
“Spring on the high plains was a magic act. Now you see it. Now you don’t. Today, spring was back again, and this time it had brought summer with it.”
In which it is also noted that “[s]pring would be a bad time to die. Spring is a time for enthusiasm.”
Where I expected to find some enthusiastic seasonal descriptions was Lucy Maud Montgomery’s The Blue Castle (1926) which Bill and I read at the beginning of May because that’s where the story begins, but only later do we have this curious statement:
“Aunt Isabel thought the springs were changing and couldn’t imagine what had become of our good, old-fashioned springs.”
It reminded me that change is slow and long, until it is not. And, yet, this spring has been the first in many years which was a true spring to my mind.
In recent years, the lilacs were no sooner blooming than they were crisping. This year they have been lush and are long-lasting. The forsythia bloomed for two weeks. The crabapple has only just burst forth, and I have never gotten such a good look at its blooms.
For well over ten years, the loads of laundry in May have been filled with shorts and tank tops; this year, the laundry is stuffed with such an assortment that one wouldn’t be able to guess what season it is: everything from heavy fleece and fuzzy socks, to summer pyjama pants (and only one load with a pair of shorts).
But not one of these books was in my stacks because I have been making a point of reading more seasonally this year. But I have been. I’ll have more to say about that soon.
Which of these feels most akin to your most recent experience of spring? (Although, that will be a half year ago, for southern hemisphere readers, of course.)
Well we’ve had rain with a thunderstorm warning today and I was in a fleece and quick-dry trousers and a raincoat!
Echoing Madame Bibi, and hoping we didn’t have all our summer crammed into May. Change seems to be happening rapidly and unpredictably.
It’s been a really changeable Spring here too Marcie, jumpers one day, t-shirts the next. It’s my favourite season so I really enjoyed hearing about your Spring reads.
This was my first full spring in our mountains home, so for me it was all new and novel as I took note of what bloomed when and for how long and which plants I might like to eventually plant in in our garden. I did fall in love with the long-lasting colourful azaleas though, so will have to have a few of the pink/purple varieties in my garden for sure. And thanks to my perimenopausal hot flushes I certainly thought a few times (like in the Lynch Book) that it would be easier for me to go back to winter days – hot flushing on a hot summers day is VERY uncomfortable!
Did I see Spring in The Prophet or in The Blue Castle? No I was too busy reading, paying attention to the story.
In Western Australia trees don’t lose their leaves, well not except the plane trees councils grow up the centre of suburban streets, and their annual releafing is forgotten in the great purple blooming of the jacarandas.
Out in the deserts where I work spring is heralded by the yellows of all the different wattles and by carpets of pale wildflowers, just a couple of months away now, winters here are short.