Welp, the end of September came and went, and this newsletter got the best of me for a few extra days. By way of apology, please enjoy this tweet:
Personally, I do find it suspicious, and why aren’t more people talking about this???
Sooo anyway. Below you’ll find the nine books I made it through this past month, with a microview of each, as well as three short reviews of my favorites. To be honest, they were all really great (except the one that was part of my continuing mass shooting research, explained in last month’s post, which was distressing and tough to get through), but I ran out of time/energy to write a review for each them and had to get a little cutthroat about things as time dragged me further past my self-imposed deadline (maybe I’ll add a Bonus Reads post a little later this month with more reviews, because they’re all deserving). I also was nearly finished with a couple others but didn’t *quite* get there by the end of September, so in the interest of accuracy I’ll add them to next month’s list.
The Books, in the order I read them:
None But the Righteous (2022) by Chantal James - Novel (Literary Fiction/Fantasy)
Slim post-Katrina novel that follows a literally haunted, restless character who tries to come home, or find home, or right the wrongs he’s committed, or try to change, or make peace with his inability to change, all with the voice of an ancient spirit sometimes guiding his thoughts and actions
The Candy House (2022) by Jennifer Egan - Novel (Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi)
Follow-up to 2010’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, with some character overlaps, definite thematic resonances, similar disjointed style, and meditations on what it means to be authentic in a world increasingly mediated by technology
Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters (2009) by Peter Langman - Nonfiction
Not my favorite of the depressing mass shooter research I’ve been doing, but with a lot of insight on eight individual school shooters. Not really recommended unless you’re also doing sad research
The Last White Man (2022) by Mohsin Hamid - Novel (Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi)
Something is causing white folks’ skin to darken, literally overnight. So what happens to individuals and societies as the outward markers of “whiteness” fall away?
*The Women Could Fly (2022) by Megan Giddings - Novel (Literary Fiction/Fantasy)
Dystopian witchy tale about mother-daughter bonds, friendship, escape versus resistance, personal safety versus the risk of uplifting others, all wrapped in often poetic prose
*Build Your House Around My Body (2021) by Violet Kupersmith - Novel (Literary Fiction/Fantasy)
Magical realism, bordering on horror at times, set in Vietnam bouncing between events and characters of 1986 and 2011: fascinating folklore and satisfying, deftly woven narrative
*The Answers (2017) by Catherine Lacey - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Bizarre and delightful novel in which a woman takes on an odd job (the emotional girlfriend of a celebrity who has split the idea of the perfect partner into individual roles [angry girlfriend, maternal girlfriend, intellectual girlfriend, etc.] played by multiple women) to finance an odd therapy for a chronic ailment
Honor (2022) by Thrity Umrigar - Novel (Literary Fiction)
A journalist returns to Mumbai after having emigrated to the U.S. to cover an “honor killing” as a favor to a colleague, dredging up a past that she has hoped to forget and coming to grips with the ways in which her former home has changed and the ways it hasn’t
Acts of Service (2022) by Lillian Fishman - Novel (Literary Fiction)
A woman in a relationship posts nudes and gets drawn into a throuple when a woman comments on her nudes: rich and complex characters that explore the bounds of relationships
(Note: starred entries above are reviewed in more detail below)
My Top Three (in no particular order):
The Women Could Fly (2022) by Megan Giddings - Novel (Literary Fiction/Fantasy)
You may have noticed from several previous bonus reads posts (like this one and this one) that I’ve been *very* excited to read this, Megan Giddings’ 2nd novel. Part of that is definitely because I overlapped with her in my Master’s Program for a year and I love seeing her star continue to rise, and part of it is because her first novel, Lakewood (2020), rocked my socks right off my feet and neatly into the hamper. I’m thrilled to report that The Women Could Fly did not disappoint. Like with Lakewood, in which Giddings takes a piece of the real world and holds up a slightly darker, distorting mirror to it (pharmaceutical trials/experiments in that case), in this novel we see the way this country treats “nontraditional” femininity, twisted into a Salem-witch-trials-never-ended dystopia. “Nontraditional” here meaning queer women, women not interested in (or less interested in) heterosexual marriage by the age of 30 at the latest and bearing children, women who might question authority, or women who might dabble in witchcraft. Add into the mix nonbinary and trans folks, gay or bisexual men (anyone, really, who might face the wrath of Margaret Atwood’s Gilead), and, of course, an outsized proportion of the state’s scrutiny and violence tends to fall on people of color. With the recent Dobbs decision and Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion, as well as the decades of very clear intentions from certain emboldened and surging segments of reactionary society, Giddings’ novel takes on even more heft and depth rolling into upcoming midterm elections, etc. etc.
So that is one aspect of the novel. The others are equally important. The protagonist, Josephine, is a joy to spend time with, as we see her thoughts and feelings laid bare in these pages. The impetus for the novel is Josephine’s missing mother, gone now for 14 years, whom she and her father are going to finally declare dead, legally anyway. That, and Josephine is rapidly approaching the deadline to marry or register as a witch. We also see an amazing friendship where they produce incredible videos but never show them to anyone. We see humor and hope and the ways in which people carve out niches for themselves. The overall arc of the novel grabbed me from the opening pages, hauled me through some gorgeously written passages, made me think deeply about what it means to be happy, what the costs of escape are, what complicity looks like, and what the thrill of overcoming huge obstacles might feel like, depositing me into the best kind of book hangover where I sat in those final pages for a good long while.
Good quote: “We walked through the night together. Preston started talking about how he didn’t trust anyone who could say things like ‘my parents are my best friends.’ He knew the term was gross, but he said the best way to describe his relationship to them was, ‘They’re my frenemies.’ Maybe this could work, I thought, and squeezed his hand. I could tell he had moisturized it for our date. Thinking about him taking the time to put lotion on his hands, considering how they would feel to me, made me smile. Then, I paused, and wondered if my standards were too low.”
If any of that piqued your interest and you want even more, there was a great hour-long virtual event with Megan from September 28th, which you can watch here (they do a great job of avoiding spoilers):
AND, Megan was a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers on September 12th, and you can watch that 6-ish minute clip here:
Build Your House Around My Body (2021) by Violet Kupersmith - Novel (Literary Fiction/Fantasy)
There are several reasons I loved this novel. One is that it felt so fresh and unlike anything I’d read before: the magical realism in this novel is steeped in Vietnamese folklore and history, which is not something I was super familiar with. I also found the way the story unfolds, and the ways in which Kupersmith takes seemingly disparate storylines of past and present and slowly brings them together, leading the reader through the connections between them in a completely satisfying forward momentum until you finally see what’s really going on. It’s masterfully done, and from a writer’s perspective, I would occasionally pause to just appreciate the artistry of what is revealed when and how. That might be my favorite aspect actually—the architecture of this novel is phenomenal. And then I really enjoyed the depth of these characters, especially the two female leads. Utterly different though they are, I felt like I knew them so well as the novel progressed, and could see the best and worst aspects of their nature rising and then retreating, and then rising and rising carrying us to the climactic moments. There’s thwarted love, the overwhelming desire for revenge, aimless ennui, and the call of adventure. I was absolutely along for the ride and enjoyed my time steeped in this world.
Good quote: “Winnie was incompetent. She went blank when confronted with the unnerving stares of twenty bored teenagers. Her own English came out sounding wrong, her students couldn’t understand her, and if she tried switching to halting Vietnamese for them—gleaned from seven years of childhood Sundays spent at language classes in the purple-carpeted basement of suburban Maryland’s Our Lady of La Vang church alongside two dozen other young American Nguyens and Phams and Trans whose parents feared they were losing their mother tongue—it only confused them more.”
The Answers (2017) by Catherine Lacey - Novel (Literary Fiction)
I think I saw something about Lacey’s forthcoming novel Biography of X (expected release date in March 2023) and it sounded super good, but then I saw it wasn’t out yet and got sad. So, as one does, I looked to see what else by her my local library had available, and I found The Answers. And I’m mighty glad I did—this was such a delightful surprise of a novel for me. It reminds me a little of the surrealistic qualities of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman (which I reviewed in my first newsletter here) that I loved so much. There’s a certain funhouse mirror aspect to this version of the world—super familiar but warped a smidge. The protagonist, Mary, is dealing with chronic illness (something I was excited to see depicted so well in fiction, since I think it’s something most people who don’t live with it don’t really understand, though I’m trying), and finds that a new-agey guru type character is the only person who seems to be able to help. The skepticism-mixed-with-relief is really well drawn. The only catch is that it’s wildly expensive, and Mary is decidedly not rolling in wealth. So she does what people do—trying to find a second job to make up the difference—and stumbles into a secretive gig that turns out to be part of study, devised by a famous actor, to achieve the perfect relationship by breaking it into distinct pieces, each played by a different woman. He wants someone emotionally open and intelligent and maternal and sexy and a dozen other things. And, having a unique background where she is completely divorced from pop culture and has no idea who this famous actor is, Mary turns out to be the perfect “Emotional Girlfriend” for him to lay his soul bare to. I loved every second of this novel, found it thought-provoking and well written, full of lovely turns of phrase and surprises, and I think I may have to dig into more of Lacey’s back catalogue waiting for Biography of X to come out.
Good quote: “I got used to it, in a way, being this sack of skin full of problems, because having a body doesn't give you the right to have one that works correctly. Having a body doesn't seem to give you any rights at all.”
In Case You Missed It:
Well, I guess there isn’t really anything to have missed since I didn’t do any mid-month posts this time, but I did want to mention the lack of an audio version for this month’s newsletter. My lack of a decent mic and audio setup has meant the quality has been, ahem, less than ideal, so I will try to work on that. I’m sure someone out there tried podcasting, gave up, and wants to sell their gear for cheap, right? So anyway, I’m hoping to have more mid-month stuff coming up in October, and have a better quality voiceover for them, but who knows? If you’re jonesing for an audio version of this one, leave a comment, and maybe I can Zoom you and read it aloud or something.
This is so fun to read! The Answers sounds intriguing and zany - like Maggie Waz's book in the odd-ways-to-make-ends-meet theme. Thanks for sharing!