April 1, 2022 · 4:10 pm

Beautiful World, Where Are You: No really, Where Are You

Back for more Sally Rooney. It’s because I’m so fancy. OR it’s because my S. suggested I read it. And she was right.

At one point early in the novel one of the women (Alice or Eileen) is writing to the other woman (they write a lot of letters back and forth) and observes that because human civilization is collapsing all that we can do, really, is focus on the small moments of our life and the relationships. And so goes the novel – this absorption with the intensity of the personal – all while the large (often captured in final sentences in the chapter to the pulsing of the universe etc) and the impending hovers just outside the frame.

It’s a relief, in some ways, to have a novel that lets you admit that the small and selfish is not only still relevant, but is worthy of absorption. Instead of (always) feeling guilty for not worrying about the climate catastrophe, or war, or the crumbling of democracy, or systemic racism, or the global pandemic, or or or or (always) feeling guilty for not doing more/anything about the same, the novel doesn’t abnegate responsibility, but affords space for both. You can be both filled with existential despair and obsessed with why your boyfriend hasn’t said I love you. You can be utterly exhausted by political ambition and greed and exhausted by your routine argument with your sister.

And, incredibly, you can also be happy.

One night while reading it just before bed (and perhaps a little compromised by my legally purchased and consumed cannabis product) I decided it was the book I’d like to have read aloud to me on my deathbed. And it’s not actually – it’s too mixed up in critique of capitalism, celebrity and catholics – but it is extremely beautiful. I mean, some of the writing, yes, but also the idea of the sustaining meaning through friendship and without giving away the ending, of something akin to hope.

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April 1, 2022 · 2:16 pm

Five Carat Soul: Failure of Focus

I had to look up in my library borrowing history the title of the book I read on an off for the last month and then eventually put aside. And it’s Five Carat Soul by James McBride. Would I have ever remembered that on my own? No. I remembered the cover was kind of bright. NOT HELPFUL And no fault of the book, which is, on its own, great – smart writing and unique premise and funny – but each chapter was its own thing – loosely connected by the Five Carat Soul band and their stories – and from one night to the next I couldn’t keep them all connected and in focus. So don’t not read this one on the account of my lagging attention span. Go get it and read it when you are not exhausted or have an hour so you can read it in focus and enjoy the romp.

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February 22, 2022 · 2:05 am

Conversations with Friends:

I’m going to start with a quote from a Vox article about Sally Rooney, because I think it captures pretty well my read and sometimes let professionals do their jobs:

The result is that it is now aspirational to be the kind of person who has read Sally Rooney. She is a signifier of a certain kind of literary chic: If you read Sally Rooney, the thinking seems to go, you’re smart, but you’re also fun — and you’re also cool enough to be suspicious of both “smart” and “fun” as general concepts.

Constance Grady, Vox, “The Cult of Sally Rooney” -https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/9/3/20807728/sally-rooney-normal-people-conversations-with-friends

It doesn’t have to be aspirational. Conversations with Friends is short, totally absorbing and delightful. And the whole time you’ll find yourself asking ‘is this how novels normally sound?’ ‘am I high or is this how narrative reads’ etc Sometimes you may be high. And that’s fine! It reads even better this way. Not that I know.

So in this one it’s a love quadrangle focused on Francis and Nick having an affair, but Francis really loves Bobbi, but Bobbi has a thing for Melissa, Nick’s wife, who he also loves. It’s pretty simple to keep track of in the book because they’re usually in the same room/house and almost always talking explicitly and plainly about what they are thinking or feeling about themselves and the others.

[It’s so refreshing for a character to just be like: this is what I’m thinking! Forget ‘show don’t tell’! Just tell us! It’s a joy!]

And there’s such great stuff on age/coming of age, maternity/parenting and the distance between ideals about not needing money and actually… needing money.

And oh my god the sex scenes are very well written. (sorry, mum!)

In sum: even if you don’t want to be fancy pretentious reader you can read this one because it is just great. And if you do have aspirations for what to talk about at a cocktail party, because those are happening again, read on! (Even though it was written ages ago. Whatever! Some of us arrive late).

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February 22, 2022 · 1:26 am

That Summer: When the bathtub is the beach

If beach reads are those you tote with you to the beach (though let’s be clear, my beach days are all toting toddlers, and why is it ‘tote’ for the beach – like you never just carry something from your car to the sand, it has to be ‘toted’ I DIGRESS) what is the name for books you read in the dead of winter? For me it would be deep-bathtub-to-soak-the-cold-from-my-bones reads. I have this memory of reading The Kindly Ones almost exclusively in the bath in the winter of 2010 – memorable because it was close to 1000 pages and my bath was then (and now) Not Big – and probably because reading it was a purposeful diversion from the thesis writing I was meant to be doing.

[spoilers and sexual violence]

Now the diversion is from equally existential threats – will my floor ever not be covered in yogurt? (ha ha – we all know the threats are… much more substantive, but really, the menace of yogurt) – and the desire to sink in to anything else is high. And it’s So Cold. So we find ourselves with our bathtub read: That Summer by Jennifer Weiner – famous for beach reads. And it is one you can sink into with little effort and find yourself immersed (how far can I take this) in a decently plotted and reasonably thoughtful consideration of the long, irrevocable change wrought by a rape.

It follows Daisy and Diana and how their lives cross and the ways single events ricochet throughout the rest of their lives. It purposefully explores the privilege of class and gender – most clearly the threat of violence that underwrites too many sexual experiences and explicitly grapples with how #metoo upturned what many women took for granted as the way things were and had to be, and the safety of some men in imagining they could carry on being and doing horrendous things.

All while offering lush descriptions of Cape Code and picturesque cottages with bleached wood frames and outdoor showers. And too many descriptions of a pan fried steak. (for the record: one description of a pan fried steak is too many).

Where it doesn’t attempt any commentary and just takes for granted the assumed is in the whiteness of the book. And maybe that is fine, no book has to be all things or do all things. It just read as remarkably… focused on the particular threat for young white women running along a beach. Maybe more perplexing given the effort in the book to see the woman reading it – frustrated with a partner, irritated by a tween, struggling with Purpose and Meaning – and to myopically miss the possibility of additional complexity.

Anyway – probably all beach reads are marketed to rich white women (anyone written a Masters thesis on that?). But yes, this particular rich white woman needs another thing to read in the bath, so send me your suggestions.

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