Like Ribbons Left Fluttering: My 2024 Octoberish List
No tricks; only treats!
I once again live in a place with a long, glorious autumn! I’m reveling in every moment, whether blustery or misty, chilly or cozy, golden or gray. Longtime readers know that for me, October isn’t just spooky season; it’s the somber, savory beginning of the global north’s graceful descent towards darkness at the year’s end.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting increasingly irritated with AI taking over the internet. Fake images and ersatz, circular writing dominate, doing nothing but wasting my time and making me mad.
For me, even the cleverest algorithm can’t take the place of honest, human, word-of-mouth suggestions. Accordingly, here are 13 wonderful things I’ve collected the old-fashioned way over the past year to help you get your saudade on this fall. As always, I don’t get paid for my recommendations.
ONE: I went through all my past Octoberish posts to double check, incredulous that I’ve never featured The Gloaming before. I did write about them once for TGIFantastic, but my strong recommendation bears repeating here.
First of all their name, am I right? One of my favorite words ever. And check out their album covers: One, Two, and Three. Whenever they’re together, these Irish virtuosi remake the very best of traditional music in ways that feel both surprising and inevitable. Start with “Song 44” (below) and don’t miss “Necklace of Wrens” or “My Lady Who Has Found the Tomb Unattended.”
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TWO: A few months ago, I finally watched 2019’s brilliant Saint Maud, written and directed by Rose Glass. Jennifer Ehle is a world-weary cancer patient and Morfydd Clark is her devout palliative care nurse; both actors stun here with their depth and range. Good psychological horror depends on walking ambiguity’s unforgiving tightrope, and Glass and her cast navigate it perfectly through the very final frame. Rated R.
THREE: I wish I had a lifetime supply of slow-burn haunted house novels. Sadly, I only come across maybe a couple per year. Kate Collins’s A Good House for Children is one. It follows two families—one in 1976 and one in 2017—who move into one desolate Dorset mansion. The interplay between the two timelines is ingenious, each casting light—and shadow—on the other, and Collins expertly maintains tension throughout both.
FOUR: As the Founding Artistic Director of the University College Dublin’s Choral Scholars, Desmond Earley has committed to realizing a dream of the school’s most famous alumnus, James Joyce: setting the poems of his 1907 collection Chamber Music to actual music.
So far, he’s succeeded brilliantly with Volume I, commissioning composers from around the world, then leading the Scholars in exquisite performances of the settings. I’ve featured Earley’s own “Silently she’s combing” below, but don’t miss Ivo Antognini’s “The twilight turns from amethyst” or Eoghan Desmond’s “Rain has fallen all the day” or, really, the whole album.
FIVE: In Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds, a teenaged indentured servant faces an impossible choice: almost certain death by starvation and violence if she stays in a 1609 settlement (very like Jamestown), or almost certain death by starvation and exposure if she flees.
She chooses the latter, and the reader marvels at her insight, courage, and ingenuity, all described in Groff’s spare but vivid prose. The loneliness and privations, though bitter, are the price the girl is willing to pay for the hope of freedom and the marvelous witness of the vast, wild world all around her. (And if you haven’t read Groff’s Matrix, read that one next.)
SIX: Do you know the Icelandic band Sigur Rós? Their meditative, spacious anthems, sometimes sung in a made-up language they call Vonlenska, hit me right in the heart. If you’re unfamiliar with them, the documentary Heima is the ideal introduction. The band’s dreamy music evokes both home and homesickness is accompanied by images of Iceland in all its bleak glory. Put the film on and curl up with a mug of hot chocolate for the ultimate in autumnal coziness. Unrated.
SEVEN: Whether the result is a grand slam (Wylding Hall) or strike out (Hokolua Road), the gifted Elizabeth Hand always swings for the fences. In A Haunting on the Hill, an authorized (by Shirley Jackson’s heirs) sequel, Hand once again dares greatly—this time to enter and take for her own the most iconic haunted house of all time.
Her gamble pays off handsomely. Holly, a struggling playwright with a secret past rents a crumbling mansion for two weeks in order to develop a witchy musical she hasn’t been able to finish. Holly’s ambitious lover and her troubled best friend (who are secretly cheating on Holly together) and a neurotic has-been actress accompany her; what could possibly go wrong? You’ll dread/enjoy finding out.
EIGHT: Back in 2005, I fell in love (and probably gave my children nightmares) with Andrew Bird’s mesmerizing single “Fake Palindromes.” Bird’s music is always fascinating, but his latest venture, duets with Grammy-winning folk singer Madison Cunningham, is on a whole other level. Listen to the mournful, eerie “Crystal” below and if you like it, the full album comes out on October 18th.
NINE: I’ve got even more Irish than usual on this year’s list! There’s no way I wasn’t going to include Damian McCarthy’s fabulous Oddity. A blind medium can’t rest until she’s uncovered the truth about the brutal murder of her twin sister the year before. McCarthy weaves exploration of all kinds of vision and blindness into his skillfully constructed plot. The conceit is given life by excellent performances, especially that of Carolyn Bracken, who plays both twins. Rated R.
TEN: If your taste runs more to the mournful than the creepy, please pick up Nobel prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, a book I’ve been meaning to read for years and finally got to when I found a copy at a used book sale this summer.
Kathy reminisces about her young life at an exclusive English boarding school while pondering fundamental questions. What makes us human? Can you lose something you only thought you had? Gradually, through Ishiguro’s adroit exposition, the reader learns that Hailsham was not the idyllic haven Kathy initally presents.
ELEVEN: But let’s get back to horror. What if an abused, lonely boy starts showing off his telekinetic powers to win friends among his new neighbors? Set in the long, dream-like days of a Norwegian summer, Eskil Vogt’s 2021 film The Innocents doesn’t rely on special effects or a manipulative score to bring the shivers. Instead, through a tight script and expert directing and editing, Vogt elicits astonishing performances from his young cast. Not rated.
TWELVE: Yes, this short list has another superb historical novel about an extraordinary young woman battling the lone and dreary world. But Nicola Griffith’s Menewood, a sequel to the excellent Hild (which you should also read) is set in 7th-century Britain as opposed to America a millennium later. And while Groff is a brilliant minimalist (The Vaster Wilds is a mere 272 pages long), at 720 pages, Menewood has lavish heft. I predict you’ll want to stay in Hild’s earthy, fascinating world even longer.
THIRTEEN: I raved about Otto Totland last year. Luckily for us all, this year he’s graced us with yet another haunting album: Exin. Sparse, modest, intimate, contemplative—these are all words reviewers use in connection with Totland’s music. All I know is that his albums are the perfect soundtrack for almost any activity, from writing to cooking to driving. Keep ‘em coming, Otto.
That’s it for this year. I wish you all the best October ever. Thank you for reading! Curiouser has been on hiatus since January, but I hope to send it out more regularly now that we’re more or less settled. And if you need even more pleasurable melancholy, I’ve listed all my past Octoberish posts below.
And Soon the Darkness Long: The 2023 Octoberish Lists
Things Unseen: An Octoberish Quiz
The Wind is Rising: The 2020 Octoberish Lists
Octoberish Music: Classical Edition
In Dreamful Autumn: The 2017 Octoberish Lists
All Things Dark and Beautiful: The 2016 Octoberish Lists
Thirteen Octoberish Pilgrimages
I love Matrix and Never Let Me Go. Will have to check out the rest of the recs!