Literary Vice

Say you find yourself in an unexpectedly stressful situation. Like maybe you’ve started a new job after a decade of comfort and familiarity at another one. And maybe that new job proves to be at the outer limit of what you had imagined it would involve and what you think you might be capable of pulling off. AND that job requires you to wear dress pants Every. Day. And say that as that job is starting your dad falls off a ladder and spends two months in hospital with differering diagnosis and prognosis such that you are just certain enough that you should be uncertain. Say, too, that your partner’s job – also stable and predictable – for the last decade is suddenly also now different. And your furnace breaks. And your children attend a school that generously offers to hold holiday theme days of different kinds each day in December such that you are absolutely going to forget sparkly hat day in a way that will undoubtedly feature heavily in future therapy sessions because my god the tears.

What would you read then? Take out menus? Horoscopes predicting when this could possibly end? Great Canadian Baking Show show descriptions before you watch yet another episode where someone battles the stress of their dough rising on time?

Forgive the long lead in. I am certainly aware that my life has not been as stressful as whether the dough will rise.

Should you find yourself in this circumstance you might also read The Paris Wife or Here One Moment. Both are great bad books. What’s a bad book, Erin? A bad book is one that you read knowing you are reading only for plot propulsion. You are reading to be taken for a ride that will not involve any introspection on your own life, not require you to empathetically inhabit the challenging experience of anyone else. You will not learn anything new about the world, other people, or yourself. You will, instead, be entertained. You make your arguments – go ahead – that this is not, after all, a bad book. And I will persist in my belief that unless a book makes you feel something it’s a bad one. Even if it’s a joy to read.

And these are both joys to read. Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife an utterly ridiculous thriller romp of a young woman arrived at a fancy Parisian apartment to meet her brother, Ben, only to discover him missing. The rest of the book follows her amateur – and overwrought – attempts to track him down. Lots of gasps and dun dun duns and so many moments of absurdity. Though absorbing enough that even if it is fancy-hat-day-and-you-forgot-the-hat you can be taken out of your circumstances.

And Liane Moriarty might best be known for those books that are plot driven and well written enough that you are not distracted by bad writing (which is sometimes the case in The Paris Wife) and has a thematic core at the centre – though very, very clear in the theme. Like you do not have to worry about subtly or nuance or layers here. The theme is as bold as your mother-in-law in asking about when you might start a diet kind of bold. In this one it’s a maybe fortune teller on board a flight predicting the cause and date of death for the passengers on board. And then how those passengers live differently (or not) in the wake of her prediction offers the theme of what choices we make (or can make) and what we owe to random fate or luck.

Anyway. Should you find yourself in any one stressful situation enjoy one of these terrible books and know with absolutely certainty they will not add one bit to your concerns and may even – briefly – help you escape them.