Widow's book club

A while ago some of the folks on my widow list were talking about how "widow's brain" had prevented them from reading for pleasure, in some cases for as long as a year. It made me very glad that I never lost my ability to read, not even when the worst was happening. Sure, I have trouble concentrating these days, but I put down to spending too much time online.

Now I'm not so certain. Coinciding with this reason bout of aboulia I've been more diffuse than usual with my reading. Here's an overview of what I'm bouncing between right now:

• Y pla, Wiliam Owen Roberts. I haven't technically given up on this but it's been a couple weeks since I made a serious go at tackling it. It's turned out cheesier than I anticipated. The one narrative culminated in a scene reminiscent of a zombie film that was confusing as hell to read whereas the other is devolving into picaresque tomfoolery. Maybe next month when I'm feeling more Celtic again?
• Le village de l'Allemand, Boualem Sansal. Still reasonably engaging. I'm creeping up on the halfway point and I'll probably have enough momentum to carry me through. I'm being pretty lazy about learning the new vocab; if I can get the gist of a passage, I call it good enough and move on.
• Silence (沈黙), Endō Shūsaku (遠藤周作; translated by William Johnston). I felt like something Japanese and narrowed it down to this or the last major Mishima I haven't read, and this seemed like the easier project. I wasn't impressed with the last Endō I read. This is fine, if nothing revelatory. I took it out of my bag which doesn't bode well for finishing it.
• The old gods waken, Manly Wade Wellman. Something spooky for Halloween which so far isn't very spooky at all. The one female character just got kidnapped (sigh) which hopefully means he's finished smothering the story in exposition. I'm struggling to see why Silver John is his most beloved protagonist.
• Iza's ballad (Pilátus) by Szabó Magda (translated by George Szirtes). A recent impulse buy. I don't know why it didn't occur to me that a novel about an elderly country mouse widow coming to live with her big-city daughter would begin with the story of how she first got widowed, but the first couple chapters were tough going. They also got a hook in me that was starting to dislodge with all the relentless humiliations being piled on the poor woman by her devoted but oblivious daughter. Now the POV has switched to the daughter so while I don't expect the narrative to get less bleak, at least it will be more nuanced.
• Best European fiction 2011, edited by Aleksandr Hemon. It's become something of a compulsion to buy (and read) these books because the contents are consistently albeit not uniformly interesting. This has been by my bedside for a while but I've begun picking it up again now that my ability to concentrate on more sustained narratives is flagging.