11. "Rest is essential to life; it’s essential to being alive."
Reframing creative restorative rest, longer thoughts on Anne Tyler's latest, and some things that have recently brought me joy
Dear reader,
One week there’s so much to write about (I present to you my March 2 newsletter issue), another week you want to write a lot but much of it still needs to simmer and isn’t yet ready to be shared (what can I say, it takes as long as it takes). What I’m trying to say is that this issue will be shorter, so prepare your accompanying beverage and snack accordingly!
Rest as restoration
I’ve sent off one of the commissioned book reviews mentioned in the previous issue yesterday, so there’s more space in my brain again—which will, of course, be filled again before I even finish typing up today’s issue, but that’s part of the job description). Every time I’m amazed anew at how physical the taking up of mental and emotional space feels and how tangible the free-ing up feels.
This time around, I’m very keen to avoid burnout and so am actively wary of how and when I need to insert recovery and restoration into my schedule, whatever that looks like. It’s not an easy achievement when you’ve got a strong perfectionist streak combined with feeling like you need to give yourself permission to rest—to have “earned” it, with the parameters for said earning shifting according to the whims of your exacting internal critic.
But I know that my way isn’t the smart way, or the sustainable way, especially given the state of *gesticulates everywhere around me* and also given just how much I want to do with my time and life. I’ve been in situations where I’m forced to rest and take a break that wasn’t entirely on my own terms (though I’ve usually had the privilege to take it) enough times in the past that I’m earnestly focused on a concentrated effort to dodge it in the future and, when possible, nip it in the very very early stages.
Esme Weijun Wang’s February 2025 essay on ‘Rest as a Creative Tool’ has felt really timely in coming to my aid—I particularly love how she defines rest (spoiler alert, it doesn’t always mean to sleep). I’ve written down many quotes from it in my journal; peeking at them often enough that the wise reminders become ingrained in me, reasoning with and overriding that internal critic.
I’ll leave you with one of my favourite excerpts from the essay:
“For those of you who can’t fathom having any amount of rest in your fully packed life, perhaps, instead of a fully-fledged nap, you can use smaller pockets of pausing—five minutes of waiting for your kid at after-school pickup spent closing your eyes and doing a brief meditation instead of fretting about your latest stressor, or a few deep breaths while you’re in the bathroom stall at work. Remember that you don’t have to earn rest. Rest is essential to life; it’s essential to being alive.”
I’ve discovered Esme’s Reasons for Living newsletter fairly recently, but it has fast become one I look forward to (even as just a free subscriber). I also love her Notes and her beautiful bird drawings.
Anu Recommends: Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
If you read the previous issue, you know that my review for the book was published in the New Sunday Express Magazine on February 23. The editor needed 500 words, which is what I submitted, but my draft before the final version was closer to 690 words (I always prefer to draft up and edit down; it’s the only way I can find and strengthen the narrative overview as well as individual theme threads), and I thought that you might be interested in reading that, so here goes.
I am not the kind of woman who dreams of doing things, thinks sixty-one-year-old assistant principal Gail Baines, summoned to the principal’s office on a Friday morning in late June and encouraged to do something she’d “always dreamed of”. This isn’t a statement designed to solicit our sympathy; Gail is simply bemused—what on earth did her boss imagine she’d want to do? Marilee, her boss, is retiring before the new school year in September and hasn’t recommended Gail to be promoted to her old position because, as she gently but matter of factly puts it, “social interactions have never been (her) strong point”. But surely Gail had dreams of her own outside of the school?
And so it is that Gail finds herself in a gaping an existential free-fall on the day before her only daughter’s wedding—and he can’t even bury herself in preparations. Despite it being Debbie’s “Day of Beauty”, something Gail didn’t even know was a thing, she hasn’t been invited. Everything has been planned by Sophie, the groom’s mother, who being “about three degrees too vivacious in her “louder and more brightly lit” level separate from the others is Gail’s opposite; she who is “a right-angled, pale-faced, straight-haired person who doesn’t care in the least about looks”.
Later that morning, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, will show up on her doorstep with a foster cat in tow since Debbie’s fiancé Kenneth is allergic and he doesn’t have anywhere else to stay. Much later, a few hours away from the rehearsal dinner, Debbie will arrive at her mother’s, having learnt of a potentially devastating secret, which triggers Gail’s own past and casts its shadow over the wedding weekend.
Anne Tyler has always grasped the potency of passing time and used it to her advantage (“Time passing is a plot. You can’t not have something happen if the years go by,” she told the Guardian in 2020). Three Days in June compresses itself into The Day of Beauty, D-Day (the wedding), and The Day After, and yet, just like the author’s other works, spans decades. Deeply nostalgic but simultaneously narrowed down to the present minutiae and also looking ahead. Also visible here is her trademark focus on the seemingly quiet and mundane details of her characters’ lives that belie just how much they reflects wider truths about the human condition. And, of course, this story too is set in her beloved adopted hometown of Baltimore.
Gail is a worrier, she candidly admits, always jumping to the worst-case scenario. “Do you keep an itemised list of things to worry about? How do you remember them all?” From the way Tyler has written her—her “lack of people skills”, the exhaustion she feels after social occasions, the surprise she registers every time she is privy to what actually goes on in other people’s minds—she could very well be on the spectrum. She’s quick to form judgements and can feel like a frustrating point of view to be stuck in over 176 pages of a character-driven narrative.
Yet, there is no absence of moments that feel universally relatable, and endear us to her. When she worries about losing her daughter more than she already has to this new family. “I should have offered to bring lunch (to her daughter while she and her bridal party got ready for the wedding) myself. I didn’t know mothers could do that.” Or when she wonders why she couldn’t ever settle for “just okay”. Or when she, towards the very end, berates herself, “Oh, why was I so bottled up?”
Nobody understands better than Tyler that we live many lives within our earthbound years; that no matter how seemingly still the surface, our inner lives house overlapping, interlocking, conflicting, and complicated mosaics. Readers familiar with her work know what to expect of a new Anne Tyler novel, though this one has a surprisingly saccharine, and dare I say it, unearned ending. But it is to the author’s immense credit that even in book number 25, she continues to craft compelling portraits of ordinary existence—richly realised, deftly written, keenly observed, and with a biting humour to boot.
Three Days in June*
Buy print (India) | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)
But where is Middle-Earth March, Anu, where?
… is what some of you might be asking.
And I’ll get to that as soon as I catch up those who weren’t reading this newsletter back in 2023 and hence won’t know what Middle-Earth March is.
Without further ado, it’s an annual month-long celebration of the worlds and words of Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, started a few years ago by the wonderful tolkien.folk on Instagram.
Why March, you may ask—and fairly so. Well, that’s the month when Frodo, against all the odds, succeeds in his seemingly ill-fated impossible mission of destroying the One Ring and bringing about the fall of the Dark Lord Sauron (the actual day, in fact, is March 25 of Third Age 3019 which is celebrated internationally as Tolkien Reading Day).
I couldn’t participate in 2024 (nor could I participate instead in the annual Hobbit Week in September with this newsletter on a hiatus), and despite my best intentions I’m not sure if I can this year either, but there’s still half of the month and one newsletter issue left (after this one), so I may surprise you (and myself). Here are this year’s prompts:
You can catch up on Middle-Earth March 2023 below—
Middle Earth March: journeys, core themes, and choices in Tolkien's work
Middle Earth March: desolation and darkness
Middle Earth March: epic moments and battles, and an ode to hobbits
Middle Earth March: homecomings, partings, the power of storytelling, and a personal essay
Three things currently bringing me joy
A slow read of Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the first book of her well-received cozy sci-fi space voyage Wayfarers series. It has all the charm of her Monk and Robot novellas coupled with a more defined plot, more intricate world-building, and a much wider cast of characters. I started it in February and am enjoying taking my time with it.
A rewatch of Modern Family (need I say more?).
Muji lay-flat notebooks (I do not miss the elbow and palm contortions that took away from the actual act of thinking and writing).
From the archives
Since I reviewed her upcoming adult fiction debut in the previous issue, here’s my interview from 2023 with Gloria Chao.
If you’ve enjoyed today’s issue, here’s a few things you can do:
click on the heart to like it
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Let me know what you’re currently reading and watching, send me rants/ramblings/recommendations/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) 🤓 and let me know if there is anything you’d like me to write about.
Take care and I’ll see you next on March 30!
Anu
*the book buying links I share on here are affiliate links (barring the links for my own published work for which I will earn royalties instead), which means that if you make any purchases through those links, I will receive a small commission from the sale at no additional cost to you.
A beautiful issue. Thank you for mentioning me! I’m terribly honored.
A lovely issue perfect for a mild, if rainy, Sunday March morning. Keep up the good work.