The Fake

 

Shelby finds Cammie’s performance in the group almost terrifying. She watches her speak and realizes that she has no idea what Cammie’s limits are. Who knows how far she would go to preserve this fake identity. She feels like she might throw up, so instead she stands up and starts towards the door. As she walks she tries to breathe steadily and picture being home, with Coach Taylor, in her grounded place.

Told from three points-of-view — the narratives of the two “marks”, Shelby and Gibson, and opening and closing statements from “con artist”, Cammie — The Fake is a thoroughly compelling and perceptive examination of just what it is we desire and expect of one another, and what we’re willing to do or ignore to get what we want. Author Zoe Whittall has crafted something rather interesting here: Instead of just giving us another dirtbag female protagonist in the vein of Gillian Flynn or Ottessa Moshfegh — although Cammie’s actions do give us that same cathartic girl-behaving-badly-by-proxy vibe — Whittall goes on to ask whether Cammie was really responsible for her behaviour (could her actions be neurological or a trauma response?) while also wondering whether her “victims” didn't actually get the most out of their relationships (just who is using who in the end?) A shortish and easy read, with quick, propulsive chapters, I found this to be interesting on many levels.

Who are you going to believe? Someone like me, who has survived so much, and has nothing to lose? Or a pathetic man who could barely tie his shoes after his wife left him? Or a woman who always thinks she has a brain tumour and has panic attacks in the grocery store? You’re going to believe them because they have perfect teeth and never had to do anything they didn’t want to do in life. I am tough because I have had to be. You’re a smart person, obviously. You read books. I’m just trying to give you the basics right now. I have the right to defend myself. Doesn’t everyone, even these days?

In her Acknowledgements, Whittall makes cryptic reference to a time when she had had to “figure out the truth”, and in this interview she explains, “I have had experiences with people like Cammie in my life. That’s why I wrote the book. But it’s also why it took me a really long time to be able to fictionalize the experience. I needed to find the coherence and the humour and the irony in it.” So, apparently, Whittall knows of what she writes and the ironic humour is the point. It’s easy to look at a pathological liar and say that her actions are evil and manipulative, but consider the bigger picture: Just why would the recently-separated middle-aged Gibson — living in a dingy apartment filled with unpacked boxes — think that the gorgeous young Cammie found him irresistibly attractive? And why did the recently-widowed anxiety-prone Shelby believe that the larger-than-life star of their grief support group would go to great lengths to bring her back to life if Cammie didn’t also want something out of the transaction? When Gibson and Shelby insist on meeting each other (over Cammie’s protests, but Gibson and Shelby eventually demand all of “their girl”), they start to put together inconsistencies in Cammie’s stories. But instead of leaving us with the conclusion that Cammie was wholly in the wrong for using the pair for housing and a bit of spending money, Whittall insists that we consider what Gibson and Shelby (two stable but hurting adults who should have known better) gained from Cammie (a younger woman who probably has psychological challenges): there's nothing black and white in this story and that’s what makes for interesting reading.

He watches from the window as she crosses the street and lies down on her back on a bench at the bus stop, her knees up, one arm over her eyes, the other arm putting her flat purse under her shirt to keep from getting robbed. She looks like she’s done this a million times. He knows then that all the times he’s protected her, saved her, bought things for her, it was theatre. She never needed him, even once, to save her from anything.

In addition to the interesting plot and what it left me to ponder, I enjoyed all of the Canadiana: from shopping at Winners and Dominion, listening to the Weakerthans and a Tribe Called Red, I smiled at the mention of Owen Sound — the small town my mother-in-law is from — which I’m sure I’ve never read in a novel before. Much to like here.

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music

 

Having never heard the song, I followed along as best I could but had to wonder why the hell he was going to all the trouble of teaching me something that no one would ever hear. Maybe he was just lonely and wanted to jam? Maybe he was graciously making some no-name kid’s dream come true by inviting me to play along with him, knowing that it was a story I would get to tell for the rest of my life? As strange as it seemed, I kept focused on his strumming hand and locked into the arrangement, banging it out like we WERE in a sold-out stadium. We ended in unison on a triumphant final crash.

I was recently on a long road trip with my brother, Ken,  and The Storyteller is the only one of the several audiobooks we listened to that I liked enough to want to log. Read engagingly and conversationally by Dave Grohl himself, he comes across as a likeable guy; and as he’s about the same age as me and my brother, the cultural touchstones Grohl references were all familiar to us and cemented rapport. Listening to this memoir is like talking to a stranger at a bar — a stranger with an interesting catalogue of stories dealing with coincidences and celebrity encounters (that opening passage is about being asked to jam with Iggy Pop at the Rivoli in Toronto when Grohl was the unknown teenage drummer for the indie punk band Scream: Grohl has countless stories like this) — and because he is a stranger, it’s understandable that he doesn’t get too personal; Grohl is also talking to strangers here, not a therapist or trusted confidante. This might not be what Nirvana (or even Foo Fighters) fans are looking for, and I had enough moments of irk to think of this as a 3.5 star “read”, but Grohl is just so undeniably likeable that I’m rounding up to four.

I noticed Paul McCartney out of the corner of my eye, chatting away with friends, and I couldn’t help but stare. There. He. Was. I don’t know what it feels like to see a UFO. I don’t know what it feels like to see a ghost. I don’t know what it feels like to see Bigfoot. But I know what it feels like to see Paul McCartney, and if that’s not a supernatural event, then I don’t know what is. I tried to avert my eyes, but it was no use. I was mesmerized.

Most of my moments of irk are referenced by this passage (which comes from a bonus story after the credits in the audiobook). I see many other reviewers were put off by Grohl’s habit of jumping around in time, which really didn’t bother me until this story — of being invited to the celebrity tribute concert for George Harrison and feeling out of place at the VIP afterparty until he saw some familiar faces. And when he mentions Paul McCartney here, it’s because it was the first time they met, even though we had already heard many stories of the two of them becoming the best of friends over the years (Sir Paul even gave Grohl’s daughter an impromptu piano lesson while visiting his home), and I realised I had no idea where in the timeline of Grohl's career this story occurred. More context would have helped.

I was also irked by Grohl’s persistent insistence that he’s surprised every time “real” celebrities know who he is. Just as he apparently couldn’t believe that Dhani Harrison would give him box seats to the tribute concert and access to that “Valhalla” of an afterparty, Grohl was shocked when Tom Petty asked him to back him on drums for an SNL performance, didn’t understand why he would be asked to play Blackbird at the 2016 Oscars (which Paul McCartney declared to be “cheeky” with a finger wag), or that Elton John would get out of his car and walk down the sidewalk to shake Grohl’s hand in London. Yes, Mr Grohl, just as you get excited to meet Little Richard and Joan Jett, it’s hard to believe that you’re always surprised when other musicians are excited to meet you.

And I was also a little irked to realise that Grohl is a bit flaky. He believes that he manifested his eventual success during a teenaged ceremony before his literal shrine to John Bonham, he used a ouija board to contact the spirits haunting his Seattle home, and he shares the fact that a French psychic once told him that his lifelong dreams of alien abduction are no dreams (which begs the question of why this former resident of the Pacific Northwest also denies ever seeing Bigfoot in the last passage…) I also found his nonstop alcohol consumption to be flaky: it’s not counterculture punk to complain about being charged with a DUI when you actually blow over the limit, even if you’re driving a moped that you consider to be “as much of a motor vehicle as a riding lawn mower” (which is also illegal to drive down the street while impaired; I don’t care how high you think your “tolerance” is.) Honestly: Grohl seems to drink a lot (his pre-show ritual includes three Advil, three beers, and a shot of Crown Royal), and this constant reference to unexamined excess feels flaky.

On the other hand: you get the sense that Grohl totally earned his place in the rock ‘n roll pantheon. He had an authentic early connection with music, practised drumming on pillows in his childhood bedroom (where he had no space for an actual drumset) ‘til his fingers bled, dropped out of high school to tour with Scream with his mother’s qualified blessing (“YOU'D BETTER BE GOOD”) and his absent Republican speechwriter father’s condemnation (“AND STAY OFF THE DRUGS!!!”), sleeping in a van as they toured the country and then the world, surviving on the three-for-ninety-nine-cents corn dog special at the local gas station while jamming with the yet-to-break-through Nirvana. Kurt Cobain was only one of the close friends that Grohl would lose over the years (and the book was written before Taylor Hawkins’ sudden death), and overall, I was left glad that it all worked out for this relatable, likeable, hard-working guy. He earned this.

I firmly believe that your understanding or “version” of love is learned by example from day one, and it becomes your divining rod in life, for better or worse. A foundation for all meaningful relationships to stand upon. I surely have my mother to thank for mine. I LOVE MY CHILDREN AS I WAS LOVED AS A CHILD. AND I PRAY THAT THEY WILL DO THE SAME WHEN THEIR TIME COMES. SOME CYCLES ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN. SOME ARE MEANT TO BE REINFORCED.

(I also read reviews in which people were bothered by Grohl’s frequent use of all-caps. Having listened to this on audio, I wasn’t affected by them, so I was surprised to see that this passage included all-caps in this way; make of them what you will.) Many of the stories here are about Grohl’s mother and daughters (curiously, others — like his wife and sister — are only mentioned in passing), and I think that this cycle of love and support is the main message that Grohl wanted to get across in The Storyteller. This isn’t really a no-holds-barred rock ‘n roll memoir (although there are plenty of rock-related stories), and this isn’t really an introspective and intimate examination of a life (although I now know more about Dave Grohl than I ever expected to), but if you met a stranger at a bar — congenially knocking back Coors Light and tequila shots — who spent the evening telling you a bunch of crazy-but-true stories, a stranger who has spent a long time on the road and might therefore be forgiven for wanting to show you pictures of his family, you’d probably have a pretty good time. And I had a pretty good time with this. Audiobook recommended.

Clear

 

James had soon become as enthusiastic as his father about taking the same big broom that others had been busy with all over Scotland, from Lanark in the south to Sutherland in the north, and it was galling to him now that they were so behindhand with their own removals when others — first in the Lowlands and then in the Highlands — had been making improvements, sweeping clean the countryside for decades and reaping the rewards. Like his father, he’d become impatient to make up for lost time — for there to be more and more portions of the Lowrie state that were rented out to a single flockmaster — where you could stand on a hill or rise and look out over clean, productive country that was quietly replete with sheep, instead of cluttered with the ramshackle dwellings of small, impoverished, unreliable tenants scraping a profitless living in a manner that no longer made any sense.

Author Carys Davies sets her historical fiction, Clear, at the intersection of two movements: the Clearances of the mid-Nineteenth Century (in which Scottish landowners removed small tenant farmers from their lands — many of whom had lived in the same place for countless generations — in order to put the pastures out for more profitable sheep grazing) and the Great Disruption in the Scottish Church (in which nearly a third of its ministers rebelled against the tradition of rich landowners installing ministers of their own choosing to local parishes, creating the Free Church of Scotland). Into this disruptive time, Davies imagines a solitary resident of a farflung northern island (“halfway to Norway”) — a blonde giant who is the last speaker of a unique Norn dialect — and the meek Free Church minister who takes on a paid contract to inform the islander of his impending eviction (a critical source of money for the man who hasn’t seen much income since the schism.) Davies writes beautifully of the wild landscape and its weather, she sympathetically crafts her characters with understandably opposing goals, and she absolutely captures the time and place with details large and small. On the other hand, this is a short novel and events play out as one would imagine, until suddenly they don’t, and then the whole thing ends in a way I didn’t really believe. For the detail writing — the landscape and characters — I was prepared to give four stars until the ending bits pulled me back to three. I’m glad I read this, but it’s not a favourite.

He stood for a long time in the softly falling rain and eventually he spoke to himself silently inside his own head: I have the cliffs and the skerries and the birds. I have the white hill and the round hill and the peaked hill. I have the clear spring water and the rich good pasture that covers the tilted top of the island like a blanket. I have the old black cow and the sweet grass that grows between the rocks, I have my great chair and my sturdy house. I have my spinning wheel and I have the teapot and I have Pegi, and now, amazingly, I have John Ferguson too.

I did love everything about the islander Ivar and the way that Davies richly painted his life through his unending routine of tasks and contemplation. When the minister, John Ferguson, first set foot on the island, he felt completely confident in the rightness of his task: after all, as a believer in providence, John knew that anything that happened on Earth — including the eviction of a poor recluse into the maw of civilisation — was nothing less than God’s will. But when John nearly immediately has a bad fall and awakes under Ivar's capable and generous care, John decides not to tell him immediately about his true purpose on the island. As the weeks go by and John learns a bit of Ivar’s language, helping him with his tasks and marvelling at his self-sufficiency, John becomes increasingly hesitant about his task — all while Ivar is reawakened to the beauty of companionship and hopes that John will never leave. Meanwhile, John’s capable wife, Mary, has heard stories of evictions gone wrong and she determines a rescue mission: there was good dramatic tension as these three characters’ storylines converge.

(I will parenthetically note that I did not like when John first woke up in Ivar’s hut, not quite remembering recent events, and muses that his doctor friend would tell him that temporary amnesia is nothing but a novelistic devise. That’s not meta or ironic: it’s annoying.)

There was a word in Ivar’s language for the moment before something happens; for the state of being on the brink of something. He’d tried several times to explain it using words John Ferguson already knew — with mimes and charades involving the water and the weather — but John Ferrguson had never been able to grasp what it was he was trying to tell him. In due course, John Ferguson will understand it. In due course, after a fair amount of back-and-forth and to-ing and fro-ing, he will arrive at a precise and succinct definition of it — a definition in which he will give, as examples of the sort of moment it describes, “the last moment before the tide turns; the last moment of day before night begins.”

It is undeniably a fact that true understanding between people can’t be achieved without a common language — that the death of a language is a tragedy because its specific vocabulary reveals the unique worldview and lived experience of a people — so I really did appreciate how Davies employed the Norn dialect in Clear, and how John’s increasing understanding of Ivar’s speech led to greater empathy for his position (though I don’t know if I believed they’d be having meaningful conversations after a few weeks.) For what I learned about the Clearances as it applied to the remote Orkney Islands, as well as the hardscrabble life eked out there at one time — as demonstrated by a thoroughly likeable character — I found this to be valuable. But Davies loses the plot along the way, and I can’t say that I enjoyed this over all.

Long Island

 

She wished that Rosella and Larry were coming now and not weeks away. She wished her mother would let her talk about them. But she barely let herself think about what she wished for most — that she were not in her mother’s living room trying to write a letter, hearing her mother move with difficulty in the room upstairs, but rather at home, waking to the soft light of early summer that appeared through the curtains of her bedroom on Long Island.

I hadn’t previously read Colm Tóibín’s hugely popular Brooklyn (although I thought I had), but even so, there’s enough backstory recapped in Long Island that I was never lost or confused; it’s just that straightforward. Mostly plot-forward, Tóibín isn’t heavy on dialogue or setting (I love an Irish storyteller, but this could have honestly been set anywhere), and the characters are for the most part self-interested and unlikeable, keeping secrets, telling lies, and always running other people’s statements through their minds trying to see what kind of game they’re playing (and while there might be the shine of truth in that — especially when dealing with difficult family members — it makes for exhausting reading.) As a story, I thought this was fine: I assume it’s a bridging step between Brooklyn and the conclusion of Eilis Lacey’s adventures, and while the middle of a trilogy is often underwhelming, I spent a few pleasant hours with this book without ultimately leaving impressed. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

When the doorbell rang, Eilis stood up lazily, presuming that it was one of Larry’s cousins calling for him to come and play. However, from the hallway, she made out the silhouette of a grown man through the frosted glass of the door. Until he called out her name, it did not occur to her that this was the man Francesca had mentioned. She opened the door.

‘You are Eilis Fiorello?’

The accent was Irish, with a trace, she thought, of Donegal, like a teacher she had had in school. Also, the way the man stood there, as though waiting to be challenged, reminded her of home.

Set twenty years after the end of Brooklyn, Eilis lives with her husband, Tony, and their teenage children, Rosella and Larry, on a quite cul-de-sac whose only other residents are Tony’s extended Italian family; the matriarch Francesca watching and controlling everything from behind her kitchen’s cafe curtains. When a man comes to Eilis’ door to deliver life-changing news, Francesca arranges a response behind the scenes that sidelines Eilis’ agency, so she decides to grasp some power over her life and spend the summer back home in Ireland, taking the kids with her. Once back in the village of Enniscorthy — and in the home of her own watching and controlling mother — Eilis mostly avoids the gossip-mongering locals (everyone is whispering about how she can afford a fancy rental car for weeks, she’s not going to let them know about her troubles back home), and when she does run into old friends, Eilis is careful not to share too much (which leads to Eilis’ insouciant disruption of other people’s lives, as her own had been disrupted.) The questions unasked and unanswered, the omissions and lies, gossip and game-playing — Eilis is just one of many characters with hidden agendas and their interactions were consistently frustrating:

Eilis appeared puzzled, as though she hadn’t heard him properly. But he knew not to repeat the question; instead, he should give her time to take it in. He kept his eyes on her and let the silence linger. She didn’t move at all. He wondered if she was thinking about something else or if she was working out how to reply. He began to count the seconds as they went by, until he got to a hundred and then two hundred. He could feel that his own face was burned from the midday sun at Cush. But Eilis’s colour had not changed. She was pale. She looked around the room and then directly at him. He sensed that his question still hung in the air and then it became obvious that she wasn’t going to answer it.

Again: I understand that this is a middle volume of the “Eilis Lacey Series”, and without having read the first volume, I didn’t get the pleasure of catching up with beloved old characters, so my underwhelmed response is only to Long Island as a standalone. I will say: if the next volume promises a clash of titans between Francesca Fiorello and Mrs Lacey, as hinted at in this book’s ending, I wouldn’t miss it.

The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us

 

This is the genius of Judy Blume. It’s the single most important aspect of her legacy. Her work as a children’s writer did something nobody else could manage: it helped ensure feminism’s longevity…A movement requires a multigenerational buy-in to maintain its momentum. And over in suburban New Jersey, a soft-spoken stay-at-home mom was listening. Writing cutting-edge books for kids, Judy Blume became the Second Wave’s secret weapon.

There are several biographies of Judy Blume out there — most written thirty or more years ago — and author Rachelle Bergstein quotes from all of them. But what makes The Genius of Judy a special read is the way that Bergstein, with the benefit of looking back across the intervening decades and their shifting social and political climates, is able to give us the context in which Blume filled her literary niche and was able to positively influence countless young readers. From S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders paving the way for more realistic young adult fiction to Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying giving voice to the modern woman’s existential malaise, Bergstein sets Blume in her cultural moment, explaining what a necessary force her books were for allowing girls to understand and take control of their own bodies. That’s no small thing; it’s everything, and it’s somehow under threat again today. The Genius of Judy traces Blume’s releases — sharing the stories of their inspiration, their plotlines, and reception — while also giving us the story of Blume’s life throughout the years; from unfulfilled suburban housewife to free speech activist. As a Gen X woman, Blume’s novels were hugely influential in forming my own outlook, and I have to admit, I took her for granted: I never once considered that for me to read these books, someone out there had to be thinking deeply on what was needed and taking risks to get them published. I truly appreciate the context that Bergstein supplies here and that I had the opportunity to revisit, and better understand, these formative reads from my youth. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Are You There God?, Deenie, and Forever form a triptych, with eleven-year-old Margaret, thirteen-year-old Deenie, and seventeen-year-old Katherine creating a progressive portrait of the new American girl. All three are smart, spunky, and in touch with their bodies. They’re all white, middle class, and from the suburbs — Judy wrote what she knew — but together, they embody an ideal for Blume that transcended race or class. The trio offers a vision of how the up-and-coming generation could digest the feminist and sexual revolutions. They’re good girls with a twist; they’re all in touch with sexuality, but they have futures.

Those three novels were hugely influential to me as a girl in the late 70s, and mostly because I read each of them, years apart, at the exact right time — I needed the information and was ready to absorb it — and I remember that something about reading them felt transgressive; as though I was uncovering secret information about my body (how shameful!) that had been actively hidden from me. But I wasn’t reading Judy Blume anymore in the 80s (I never have picked up her adult novels; I think I want to preserve my memories of Blume in an unexamined amber of nostalgia) and I was oblivious to the periodic, and ongoing, bans that her novels have been subject to since then. Bergstein tells a fascinating story of those who have attempted to remove novels from schools and public libraries — from the Reagan era Moral Majority to Florida governor Ron DeSantis — and Blume’s efforts, in conjunction with the National Coalition Against Censorship, to keep not only her own novels but other often often-banned books (Slaughterhouse-Five, Catcher in the Rye, etc.) available to those who want them. Whether or not you’ve been reading Judy Blume, she’s been fighting behind the scenes to promote feminism and fight censorship.

In the end, Bergstein acknowledges that Blume’s books have fallen out of fashion — even the 2023 theatrical release of an adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a nostalgic blast from the past — and she laments that despite the YA book market exploding with lots of frank and explicit material (Forever, which shook teenaged me, is so sweet in retrospect), there’s something essential in Blume’s novels that is missing in today's cultural landscape:

What’s still missing from a lot of contemporary sex ed is an exploration of the way sex intersects with relationships, experts say. Even today, very few parents and educators are prepared to discuss the way dynamics of care and safety and vulnerability all contribute to true intimacy, which is crucial for a satisfying love life. That’s what Judy innately understood how to do. She taught us about our bodies and our hearts through her stories. Periods are something that happens to a whole friend group. First teenage love affects the entire family. Boys experience heartbreak, too! Truly safe intercourse requires talking and planning. You can’t go back to holding hands.

I’m so glad I read this book: I am delighted to have both learned so much more about Judy Blume’s true legacy and to have had this journey back to my own younger self; in so many ways, Judy Blume set key stones in the foundation of who I am and I hope that the young readers of today find their way to similarly good, foundational material.

I am mostly nostalgic for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever — because each of them did come to me at the right time (before I experienced their core experiences) and years apart — and I don't even remember how they fell into my hands (I think I stumbled onto Margaret, maybe in fourth grade, and maybe my high school best friend, Kasia, loaned me Forever?) Reading about Deenie here, I definitely didn't remember that it was a controversial book that normalised masturbation, but I totally remember Deenie's scoliosis and back brace (and the crush who wanted to touch her breasts but got a hand full of hard plastic medical device instead; c r i n g e.) And I was surprised to be reminded that I had read so many other Blume books, too, even if they weren't core memories for me: Blubber; Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great; Then Again, Maybe I Won't; The Pain and the Great One; and Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself.  It's simply fascinating, now, for me to consider that these books — many of which would see Blume accused of pandering and pornography — seem kind of retro and sweet, but they actually shook the world. Is anyone writing this thoughtfully for young readers today? Or is there nothing between Captain Underpants and Haunting Adeline? (Beacuse that's how it seems from my vantage behind a bookstore till.)

Elaine

 

A woman who cannot, or will not, accept the conditions of her servitude naturally and gracefully, deserves what has happened to me.

Entry from Elaine’s diary, February, 1956

The publisher’s blurb describes Will Self’s Elaine as “Perhaps the first work of auto-oedipal fiction” as it is a heavily novelised treatment of the private diaries of Self’s own mother, Elaine. (Brief research shows that Self has a brother and was raised in London, whereas the “Billy” in this novel is an only child, raised in Ithaca, New York, etc.; this is not straight auto-fiction.) I don’t normally love when a male author writes from the female POV — and particularly in a case like this where gender-based power imbalance is the main focus — but with access to his mother’s diaries and a front row seat to her life, Self has more than usual insight into his “character’s” psyche (and the case could be made that perhaps he approaches his mother’s story with an outsider’s objectivity that has allowed him to explore her life with something like clinical detachment unavailable to other women?) Ultimately: this is a compelling story of a 1950s American housewife, thwarted in her own ambitions and suffering mental illness, who isn’t quite emotionally stable enough to endure the swinging parties of her husband’s Ivy League faculty crowd without humiliation. With elevated language, intimate psychological exploration, and unusual literary devices, Self is an obvious master of his craft; and with a mother whose story is at once both unique in its details and broadly typical of its time, this is a novel that feels both revelatory and necessary. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms. ALSO: I usually put my quoteblocks in italics, but here I present them as found because Self’s use of italics is too integral to the novel for me to mess with.)

Her hysteria is mounting — and as Evelyn Tate’s screen door snaps shut, Elaine says it a third time: Can it be . . . that the acme of success . . . for me . . . is being able . . . to do my job as a housekeeper? Each phrase is separated by a troubled gasp — but it doesn’t matter how fast she babbles or deeply she breathes, the panic has the better of her: I’m going to collapse, she thinks, then be swept up into the sky with my goddamn nightie up around my shoulders . . . The last anyone will ever see of me is the first anyone did: my bare behind, waiting to be smacked.

Suffering from migraines and panic attacks and unresolved childhood trauma, Elaine Hancock routinely relies on her husband, John, to help care for both her and their nine-year-old son, Billy; but as even Elaine’s former therapist noted that John and Billy’s relationship was “unusually close”, Elaine is often made to feel both chained to and surplus to their family arrangement. Dreaming of being an author, Elaine fills her time alone by writing stories in her secret notebooks; but as she can tell that her writing is “worthless and banal”, Elaine burns her fiction, only hanging on to her diaries, filled with secrets and schedules and sexual fantasies. And these are sexed-up times: Between feeling disgust at her husband’s clumsy overtures and like a second-tier prize at Cornell faculty parties (where folks swap spouses for slow dances and drunken necking), Elaine is ripe to fall hard for the manly new Sociology professor when he and his glamorous wife both join the faculty; a crush that will not end well. Spanning the period of about a year, with Elaine thinking back on earlier episodes from her life, this novel explores all of the ways that society, and Elaine’s own mental fragility, conspired against her fulfilment and happiness.

That’s the plot, but as for the format, the most striking feature is Self’s use of italics:

Dressed in slacks and a sweater she descends . . . she descends, dressed in slacks and a sweater — in sweater and slacks dressed, she descends: each thought corresponds to a word or words, right? Mix ’em up and you get a wordy sorta salad, like the mess in my head . . .

In a recent(ish) interview with The Sydney Herald, Self explains that although he is a Professor of Modern Thought at Brunel University in west London, he has stopped teaching literature because, “I cannot find students that are capable of understanding what literary influence is. They simply haven’t read enough and don’t have the [required] fine grain of understanding.” So at the risk of demonstrating my own failings, I’ll share that whenever I saw these paragraphs that contain italics, I assumed they were references to other sources. I recognised some references to Steinbeck and Shakespeare, The Odyssey is gestured to beyond the setting of Ithaca, Paradise Lost beyond it being the focus of Elaine’s husband’s academic career; I felt clever when I recognised Venus in Furs. But I didn’t recognise most of the italicised bits, and while some phrases like “bitter as the cud” prove to be from poems a better read person might know (Wilson Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est), phrases like “red and scummy patches in a stainless steel kidney dish” and “a chill cold blast of sunlight” don’t have any google results. Are they simply all phrases from Elaine’s diaries, the “wordy sorta salad” that made a “mess” in her head? Whether they were the results of her own reading and study or original phrasing, that’s what I decided to go with, and it did serve to make Elaine an even more intriguing character. Having studied under the poet Ted Roethke, discussed writing with Nabokov and Bellow at faculty events, and serving an invaluable role as transcriptionist and editor for her husband’s academic writing throughout her marriage, Elaine is understandably frustrated to be entirely judged (even by herself) by her competence as a housekeeper.

Yes, she’d been unhappy — upset, often, as well. But in those far-off days of a fortnight ago, with her complaisant old man, her girlish crush on his colleague, and her catty best friend, Elaine had been a goddamn poster girl for the Modern American Woman: posed in her kitchen, skirts stiff as crinolines, smile plasticized, a penis in one hand . . . a spatula in the other.

This is the kind of novel one can imagine being taught — all those literary references tracked down by students more relentless than I in pursuit of their sources — and the type of novel that’s submitted for awards. But unlike some novels that bore or soar right over my head for the sake of being different, Self has crafted Elaine to be unique in form while totally relatable in substance. I felt I got to know his character “Elaine” (whether or not she is very faithful to the known facts of his actual mother) and hers is a story that I am glad to have been told.

We Burn Daylight

 

Tut, dun's the mouse, the constable's own word.
If thou art dun, we'll draw thee from the mire,
Or — save your reverence — love, wherein thou stickest
Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!

 

Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet

Although author Bret Anthony Johnston states in his Acknowledgements at the end of We Burn Daylight that this “is not about David Koresh”, this is the story of a charismatic leader — named Perry Cullen, aka “The Lamb” — and the doomsday religion that he founds on a shambolic ranch outside of Waco, Texas, which was eventually subject to siege and deadly raid by government forces in March of 1993. Told in short, alternating chapters by a pair of fourteen-year-old “star-crossed lovers” (hence the source of title) — Roy is the upstanding son of the local Sheriff, and Jaye is the (barely) more worldly daughter of a woman who was drawn to the Lamb from California; both Roy and Jaye being good, innocent kids, hungry in that familiar adolescent way for love and validation — and although the reader knows where the escalating standoff between law enforcement and the residents of the highly armed ranch must lead (and to be sure, there is plenty of foreshadowing along the way), this is a heart-wrenching, pulse-pounding, deeply philosophical exploration of faith and social constructs and the real limits of freedom. Johnston’s prose is clear and propulsive — the cold, barren landscape is masterfully captured without a hint of sentimentality — and his characters are real and relatable; even those who would knowingly follow what others might call a “cult”; even the so-called cult leader himself is simply following his own fate. Thirty years after the raid on the Branch Davidians, it might be easy to blame the debacle entirely on government overreach, but here Johnston explores the events that led up to that day — the growing unease of the local community (I hear he has illegal weapons, I hear he’s impregnating underage girls), the mounting paranoia within the ranch (These are the end times, the prophesied opening of the Seventh Seal), and a government that feels its authority under scrutiny (with recent fiascos in Montana and Idaho) — there’s an inevitability to the ensuing tragedy that feels Shakespearian in the end. This was an outstanding reading experience (especially for someone like myself who watched the raid on the Branch Davidians with confused horror as it played out in the day), and it could have rated five stars, but I did not like the way that Johnston wrapped his story up. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Hidy there, everybody. Good afternoon. Or evening. Sorry to be tardy, but we’ve had ourselves a dustup at the ranch. As you’ve heard by now, people have taken to calling me the Lamb, which is sure nicer than other names I’ve been called. Anyway we’ve had these pork choppers flying at us. I don’t mean to tease. I appreciate y’all tuning in, I do. Well so, okay, it’s the eighteenth day of February 1993, the year of our Lord, and I’m talking at you, through your radios, in your homes and cars and places of commerce, about the revelation of Jesus Christ. That’s the big to-do.

As creepy and delusional as The Lamb may seem, he doesn’t actually appear to be breaking any laws: His visions have called for him to propagate the “New Light, which seemed to be children who would inherit the earth after the Wave Sheaf scrubbed it of sin”; which does involve him sleeping with everyone of breeding age, including underage girls (with theirs and their parents’ consent; so not technically illegal in Texas), and although the community does make their money by reselling weapons on the gun show circuit (and by having a popular shooting range on the ranch), the weapons are all registered, and is absolutely in keeping with the local ethos of “God, Guts, Guns”. The local Sheriff, Eli, sees nothing of concern on routine visits to the ranch, CPS sees no reason to remove any of the children when they follow up on reports from concerned citizens, and even “the taxman” is kept at bay by the group’s tidy bookkeeping and tax exempt status. Even so, the feds will eventually want to have a look inside, and that’s exactly what the prophecy of the Wave Sheaf predicted: and it’s hard to put normal pressure on a people who want be deemed worthy of “translation” to the afterlife.

But all of that happens in the background as Romeoyal and Julietaye tell the alternating stories of their backgrounds, meeting, and adolescent instalove. And in Johnston’s hands, their stories really are compelling, as mundane as they probably are: these are two recognisably nice young people, suffering under recognisably universal pressures at home and at school, and like probably all fourteen year olds, all they want is to meet someone who will make them feel worthy; loved and seen; you can’t help but root for their happiness. Yet there is something forbidden, or at least foreboding, about this love, and as it is difficult for them to actually meet in person, this is more the story of fantasy and yearning than actually getting the chance to hold one another and experience those first hesitant touches and kisses (this is a sweet love story with nothing graphic). Even so, we understand this is a tragedy, and as the siege of the ranch draws out into weeks, this becomes the tense story of Roy glued to the news coverage, looking for signs of Jaye’s expected release, and the even more harrowing tale of what life is like for Jaye within the compound:

And still more noise — the walls absorbing what they could, the helicopters and yelling and sobbing and coughing, my breathing coming too fast and the awful high-pitched gurgling of our chickens as they were being shot and people pleading with God and barking orders and information: Get down ! Over here now! They’re still coming! I can see them and they’re still coming! Then a single shot and the sickening muffled thunk of its impact, a sledgehammer into a sandbag. Then an enormous gasp — like someone breaching the surface of water after too long below. The gasping continued and turned wet, and a man cried out, “No! No no no no!” Then, as if all the agents were ordered to aim at the same thing and hold down their triggers at the same time: The dinner bell tolled tolled tolled tolled until it dropped to the frozen earth and silenced.

In a stroke of narrative genius, Johnston also has intermittent transcripts from a modern day podcast called “ON THE LAMB”, which sees its host interviewing people who had been involved in the raid, trying to learn what lessons might have been gleaned by thirty years of contemplation on those events. This includes an interview with a defensive retired Special Agent:

What happened was tragic, no question, but there’s also no doubt about who bears responsibility: Cullen. We can debate tactics and strategies, tanks and tear gas, but if Cullen hadn’t abused those kids, we wouldn’t have been there.

But even the attorney general testified there was no evidence of child abuse.

The responsibility is Cullen’s. He did this. The tanks went in because he wouldn’t come out.

And an interview with one of the few survivors among the Lamb’s followers, recently released from prison:

Didn’t they run out of ammo? Isn’t that what being outgunned means?

I think it means we had some help.

God, you’re saying.

What’s the alternative? Some Bible thumpers defeated Uncle Sam? That so much planning and training and equipment was no match for little old us? Sounds fishy, but what do I know? Either way, it sounds like something I can shake hands with.

And an interview with Roy’s long-suffering father, retired Sheriff Eli Montaguereland:

We aren’t built to matter. That’s the surprise here. That’s the big finale. Tell the story a million times, a million different ways, but the ones who were punished and the ones who were pardoned ain’t switching places.

And it all serves to satisfyingly explore both how something like this could have actually happened in the “Land of the Free” (without needing to be 100% faithful to the truth of Koresh and the Branch Davidians) and what it all means in the end:

Did we win or lose? Are we damned or saved? We occupy a liminal, leftover world, and we live off scraps. We build our religion, our very existences, with salvaged and stolen parts, waiting for the next fire. To survive is to know what no one else does: Nothing is forever. Not an alibi or shelter, not bloodline or prayer, not nation or sacrifice or any glad-hearted dream of God.

A well-written and compelling narrative, with a sweet and relatable love story at its heart, this isn’t quite a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, but it is definitely Shakespearian in its tragedian format and philosophical heart; this leaves me with much to think about and I’m looking forward to exploring johnston’s earlier work.

Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood, and the Fight to Save an Old Science

 

The knowledge base of natural history is under threat as research funding is increasingly focussed on fast-paced, short-term experimental work over the slower-paced, longer-term observational work necessary to build and maintain it. I felt compelled to write this book because it seems to be a problem that everyone in biological research and almost no one outside of it is aware of. Like many of the extinctions quietly proceeding around the world, it just isn’t something we hear about. We as citizens and stewards of this planet owe it to ourselves and our children to be aware not only of the issue but of the opportunities we have to contribute to its solution.

Unrooted is one scientist’s story of what led her to the field of Botany, the changes she witnessed within the grind of academia as she pursued her PhD, and the impossibility of finding employment in her field after proudly earning her doctorate (a situation made dramatically worse once she became a mother). Erin Zimmerman writes in a clear and engaging voice — whether describing the electric jolt of reading Charles Darwin’s own handwriting on a specimen’s label at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, or the indignity of having to squirrel herself away in a musty change room to pump breast milk as a postdoc, this is a beautiful blend of memoir, science history, and an impassioned defence of the importance of her disappearing field of expertise. This is exactly the sort of thing I like — I learned a lot and was affected, heart and mind; I couldn’t ask for more and wish Dr Zimmerman nothing but success. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Sitting down to my stack of herbarium specimens and alcohol-preserved flowers every day felt like losing myself in a good book. Scientific research topics can seem narrow to the point of absurdity, like an entire career spent on a single species, but ask any scientist, and they’ll tell you that there really is a lifetime’s worth of discovery there. It speaks to the complexity of our universe that even the thinnest slices can be so expansive. To me, sustained, close attention to a little-regarded slice of that universe felt spiritual, like time spent in quiet worship before a vast and intricate cosmos, trying to know it just a little bit better.

Technically a taxonomist (Zimmerman could spend whole days in close scrutiny of plant parts, sketching what she saw with the delightfully anachronistic use of pen and ink) with an eventual focus on Dialiinae (in the legume family, but more exotic than just peas and beans), Zimmerman’s work was not unlike that of the early collectors like Joseph Banks and Alexander von Humboldt. What was particularly fascinating to me was to learn that Herbariums around the world are filled with thousands of samples dating back to the days of these early world-wide adventurers, some of them hundreds of years old, which have never been through the hands of a trained taxonomist (and even if some of these sample types have already been described, each unique sample — with its known date and location of collection, along with anything peculiar to the sample itself — would contain a wealth of information about climate, the environment, and challenges to growth). But as Zimmerman made her way through her postgraduate work, she watched as the discipline of Botany was folded into generic Biology departments, those researchers who were known in the field as taxonomists were changing their focus to computer-aided dna analysis (because that’s where the funding is), and even her own future husband dropped out of academia to pursue an education with a guaranteed job at the end. Zimmerman makes the case that the sort of work she did — slow and methodical, at the human scale — is imperative for making the kind of discoveries that make people care about the world and its disappearing species; as Damon Little of the New York Botanical Garden said, “If something doesn’t have a name, you can’t conserve it.” (It is estimated that there are 350 000 or more unknown/unnamed plant species.)

I appreciated everything Zimmerman shares about her experience as a woman in science — from some incredible female mentors to the male supervisor who patronisingly spoke to her with a hand on her knee — and her historical overview of women in the field (from sample collecting seen as a gentile hobby for gentlewomen, to men erecting an ivory tower around the field when they decided to make Botany a “serious” science), and as she watched the pathway to tenure become ever narrower in her field of expertise (less than twenty-five per cent of PhDs will eventually find themselves with a tenured position), the reality of motherhood seemed to close that door to Zimmerman for good.

There was no one dramatic incident that extinguished my desire to be in research. What I’d faced was an environment in which I was under strong pressure to never need accommodation, to never let anyone see that I had other loyalties in my life. It was a death by a thousand tiny cuts. And that’s what makes this story important, because I suspect that’s how it is for many of the nearly half of all women in science who leave after becoming mothers. Each time you’re made to feel unprofessional for having caregiving responsibilities, each time you’re made to feel like a burden for requesting minor accommodation . . . it wears you down a little more. You believe that you are the problem. And when the reward at the end of those years of hard work and low pay are far from assured, it doesn’t take a PhD to figure out you might be happier and better off elsewhere, no matter how much you loved the actual science and the questions you were trying to answer.

Unrooted ends on a positive note — Zimmerman has found a career in science writing that allows her to balance her work and family responsibilities — but she continues to stress that Botany matters in our threatened world. I loved everything about this — the science, the exposé of persistent sexism and grant-chasing in academia, and Zimmerman’s personal history — and would recommend this to anyone who enjoyed Lab Girl or Braiding Sweetgrass.

The Third Realm: A Novel

 

Valdemar wasn’t a Nazi, even if a lot of people thought he was. When he spoke about the Third Realm, it wasn’t the Nazis he was talking about but something people had believed in the Middle Ages, that the First Realm was the age of God, the Second Realm the age of Christ, the Third Realm the age of the Holy Spirit.

My sensibilities haven’t really jibed with Karl Ove Knausgård’s writing (I didn’t get past the first volume of his much-lauded “Min kamp” series), and while I need to admit that I didn’t realise that The Third Realm was the third book in a new series when I decided to give it a try, I also have to state that I liked this a lot (and that there doesn’t seem to have been anything lost in starting the series here; this seems to be an alternate view of the same fantastical events from the first book, The Morning Star, with many of the same characters, and enough backstory that I never felt lost.) This reads as Sci Fi: a new star has appeared large and bright in the sky (but is it actually a star?) and it seems to be having some strange effects on Earth below (or are they all coincidences?) And like all the best of Sci Fi, Knausgård uses his concept to explore the human condition — consciousness, madness, the basis of reality — while exposing moments of relatable truth in mundane interactions, writing engagingly of the fells, fjords, and mountain pools of the Norwegian setting, and propulsively describing strange and uncanny events. My mind was piqued and entertained throughout, and I can definitely see myself going back to catch up on the other books in this series. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

The psychosis occurs when the mania exhausts itself, when the encounter with reality is the only thing left for it (and mania fears reality more than anything else). The psychosis is like one of the three doors in the folk tales, the one that must never be opened no matter what. It mustn’t be opened. Everyone knows. And yet it always gets opened in the end. When faced with nothing and something, you choose something first.

The novel begins with Tove — a painter, on seaside holiday with her family — who has a history of psychosis, and has decided to stop taking her meds. This leads to dark depression, terrifying voices, and when her mind shifts to mania, an upsurge in creativity with inspiration from Norse mythology, Jungian archetypes, and unbridled eroticism. Her husband suggests that she’s a “neosymbolist” or a “postmythologist”, with Tove retorting that while he’s interested in categorising, she focuses on decategorising. And I think that’s important because anytime an author writes a conversation like this, I assume he’s speaking for himself: throughout The Third Realm Knausgård has various characters discuss and create art, architecture, and music, and whether it’s a memorial building, third wave black metal, or a bipolar artist painting nude self-portraits, these characters consider and reject cultural touchstones (trolls, crofters, and underground halls) and strive for something more authentic and unformed. Tove says of her work (and I’m assuming this is Knausgård commenting on his own writing efforts):

I wanted my drawings to smell, to stink, to seep and bleed, writhe and squirm. But I hadn’t succeeded. I told myself it was the fault of drawing itself, the very form of expression. The pen stroke served only to encase and bring under control, rationalising everything and thereby rendering it tame.

So the plotline of this novel — often fantastical, with the mysterious new star seemingly affecting affairs below — seems very free form, with people going about their routine lives (drinking wine and eating prawns and putting the kids to bed), while outside these ordinary walls, other people are going missing, enacting bloody rituals, having strokes, and refusing to die. For every weird happenstance (a young woman who opened the door to her landlords’ hysterical son now wonders if he was even real, people seemingly stopped dying as soon as the star appeared, a round-faced stranger keeps popping up who seems to know everyone’s business) there are rational people investigating, and explaining, what’s going on: the detective, the journalist, the neuroscientist. While I started by calling this Sci Fi (because of the star — or is it a comet? A UFO, as one character muses?), this novel kind of defies categorisation; Knausgård seems less interested in neosymbolism than in decategorisation; in unshackling his ideas from the chains of the mode of their expression (which, yes, could be argued to be what he was aiming for with the “Min kamp” series, too, but autofiction on the minutiae of his ordinary life was less interesting to me). This shackling — the inability to express oneself without resorting to the artificiality of language — is the key conflict of the human experience, and this ironic discord is present down to the level of our brain tissue, as seen on an MRI:

It was like looking into the unknown. It was a language, but one so foreign and incomprehensible it might just as well have been delivered to us from outer space. The truly unfathomable thing was that it was ourselves we were looking at. That what was made manifest to us was our very coding of the world around us and all that we were. The mystery was that from the inside it didn’t feel like code at all, but the world itself.

The nature of reality (and especially its inconstancy between different minds), the division between life and death (and what comes after), what makes a moral life: these are all important questions being explored by this novel. But as the star continues to shine, and people continue to mysteriously suffer strokes, there is excitement in the plot as some of those sufferers awake with a message:

“The ddoor …” he said.
I held his gaze.
“... is oop …”
“He’s saying the door’s open,” said Mum. “Yes, you’ve said so a number times already, Mikael, but I really haven’t a clue what you’re talking about!”
She gave a laugh and glanced at me.
Her cold eyes were full of unease.

It turns out that starting at book three in this series was a good thing: I find myself compelled to go both backwards and forwards with this strange story. Happilt jibing with Knausgård on this one!

Tell Me Everything

 

They stood there for a few moments, not looking at each other, and then Lucy finally looked at him and said, “I am so glad to see you.” The day was sunny, and Bob put his sunglasses on. And then off they went for their walk. Lucy said, “Tell me everything. Tell me every single thing. And don’t leave anything out.”

I find something so soothing about Elizabeth Strout’s voice, and as she keeps returning to the same handful of characters over the course of her writing, I always get the feeling of catching up with old friends when I sit down with one of her books. Tell Me Everything has the feeling of a capstone narrative — all of Strout’s characters are now living and interacting with one another in Crosby, Maine — and as they visit together, telling each other stories — mostly old stories of lost loves, heartache, and women done wrong — it would be easy to dismiss this as unserious or trivial; gossip and blether. But as they talk together, and really listen to one another, it seems a demonstration of uncommon grace and I came to feel that there’s likely nothing more important than dissecting human connection through such discussions of the human heart. I don’t know if this would be as satisfying for a reader who hasn’t spent many long and pleasant hours in the company of these characters before, but for me, it was sublime. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

A thought had taken hold of Olive Kitteridge on one of these days in October, and she pondered it for almost a week before she called Bob Burgess. “I have a story to tell that writer Lucy Barton. I wish you would have her come visit me.”

That’s right: Olive Kitteridge (now ninety and living in a retirement community), Lucy Barton (still living in the big house by the sea with ex-husband William), and the Burgess boys (Bob having stayed home in Maine, now married to the Unitarian minister, Margaret, and Jim still living with his wife, Helen, in New York) are all in regular contact with one another. And as Bob and Lucy have their walks in the woods and Olive and Lucy have their living room chats, one thing seems to be certain: The Boomers are not okay. The seasons are noticeably out of whack, there’s an unfathomable homeless encampment behind the Walmart, there are drug and housing crises — not made better by rich out-of-towners like William and Lucy buying up property during the pandemic and deciding to stay on — and everyone’s adult children have moved far away. As they approach retirement, these folks are exhausted and stooped with care, forever haunted by failed marriages, unhappy childhoods, and what might have been: life is hard for the sin-eaters and the linchpins, those with repressed or false memories, and those who find themselves living with ghosts in their marriages. There’s a criminal case at the heart of the plot, and over the course of the novel we are caught up with the lives of all of the kids and ex-spouses, but Tell Me Everything is mostly about the grace-filled moments in which our familiar old friends Olive, Lucy, and Bob talk and really listen to one another.

Once again, there’s a conversational lightness to the tone, as though it’s Elizabeth Strout herself, shrugging off her parka as she settles onto the uncomfortable couch across from us, who can’t wait to tell us these stories of lost loves and heartache and the beautiful strangers she has encountered. New sections often start “Here is what had been happening to Pam: ... Then this happened, and it was ridiculous: … Her defense — as you might recall — was that…” And I found this technique to be charming and engaging; an invitation to participate personally in the moments of grace. Again: I know that sounds lightweight, but true experiences need not be heavy.

Lucy stood up and pulled on her coat. “Those are my stories,” she said, and then bent down to put her boots back on. “But you’re right. They are stories of loneliness and love.” Lucy stepped into the tiny kitchen for a moment and returned with a paper towel and she bent down and soaked up the drops of water on the floor left from her boots. Then she picked up her bag and said, “And the small connections we make in this world if we are lucky.”

Strout might not have come up with the meaning of life here (indeed, the question itself caused a rare spat between Lucy and Bob), but she certainly demonstrates how to find meaning in life, and I feel lucky to have formed such a deep connection with her body of work. Sublime.