Unraveled Wednesday: 8/10/22

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday, with very s-l-o-w progress on the Baby Surprise Jacket. I knit in the car on the way up to my SiL's and then got to the somewhat crazy row 80: k124, turn, k90, turn, k90, [turn, k90] 18x, knit up 10 sts from edge of flap, k34. 

I didn't feel like I could keep track of where I was and get this row knit correctly during John's stop-and-go driving during 12 miles of construction on Route 80, so I put it away for the weekend and just started working on crazy row 80 yesterday. I only have a couple more k90s to do, and then 17 more rows before the end, but I will be glad to see the end of this project. My fingers are itching to work on a Hitchhiker!

I finished a book from the Booker Longlist, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, and even though I wrote a review, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. There is a very fine line between pushing the form of the novel and becoming so inventive that you create something far too strange. I can't tell which side of the line Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies lies on. The book starts out telling the story of Lia who has been diagnosed with recurrent breast cancer and her relationships with her daughter Iris and husband Harry. Iris is a very perceptive child and some of her experiences at school are more than a child should have to bear. There is a disembodied voice in bold type that I took to be the personification of Lia's disease - disorienting but effective. There is also interesting non-linear typography that I found to be mostly distracting. Lia's story of growing up in a vicarage, her parents taking in a young man named Peter, and their eventual sexual relationship is told in bits and pieces. As Lia grows sicker, the voice of her disease begins to take over the narrative. My mother died of metastatic breast cancer, and the malevolent voice of Lia's disease was almost more than I could stand to read at times. Maddie Mortimer has written a unique, sad, and poignant debut novel, based on her own experience with her own mother, but I don't think it was a book for me.  I couldn't settle on anything new that I wanted to read so I decided that some re-reads were in order. The Shipping News is an old favorite and I'm also re-listening to Everything I Never Told You. Sometimes special re-reads are just what is needed.

What are you making and reading this week?