First Book of 2009
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:48 pm (General Fiction, Reading Challenges)
My first book of 2009 is one that I just bought using the bookstore gift card that was in my stocking: Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking, by Aoibheann Sweeney. It is the story of Miranda, a young girl who grows up on an isolated island in Maine with her emotionally distant father, Peter. Her mother, we learn very early on, died when Miranda was quite young. Her father is consumed with his work on translating Ovid, when not mired in bouts of alcohol-infused depression. A local fisherman and friend of her father, Mr. Blackwell, provides a parental presence when Miranda is young, but by adolescence Peter’s petty cruelties have driven Mr. Blackwell away, and Miranda is left to grow up primarily on her own, and it seems she spends more time taking care of her father than the other way round.
As a teenager, she struggles with feelings of isolation, trying to find her place with her peers, and her unorthodox relationship with her father. After graduation, he announces that he has arranged a summer job for her in New York City, at the Classical Studies Institute he helped found before she was born. There she learns not only about her father’s personal history but about herself and the woman she has become.
Sweeney writes about serious and sensitive issues with empathy and Miranda is someone with whom many will identify, whether it’s the awkwardness of being a teenager, the conflicted relationship with her father, her sexuality, or any other number of issues that make her a fully realized character. Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking was an auspicious beginning to my reading year and a promising debut from Sweeney.
Among Other Things was the winner of the 2008 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction, so it counts as one of my selections for the Book Awards Reading Challenge.





























