Baby’s First Tana French

Title: The Witch Elm
Author: Tana French
Genre: Psychological crime
Describe it in a sentence: A young Irish man’s life is upended after he sustains a brain injury during a robbery, then is sent swirling further when a skull is dug up in his family’s Dublin estate. 
TV/movie character who would like it: Stella Gibson in The Fall. She’d appreciate Toby’s journey because she probably knew he’d been deceiving himself all along. She’s smart like that.

The Witch Elm was 500-page dream I didn’t want to wake up from. So often first person is deployed to approximately 30% of its full potential (yes, this is a scientific blog). The Witch Elm, conversely, featured was masterful, deceptive first-person that wanted to make you feel really comfortable, only so French could spin you around and make you dizzy.

This first-person was like a couch. You sink into it. You take Toby’s perception of the world at face value, for a while. Then it turns out the couch has rotted at the bottom. It’s not even a couch at all, but a bunch of pillows balanced over a void. If you think about it too much or lean in too hard, then it’ll collapse and you’ll be floating in a universe askew.

In a phrase: I loved it. I love Tana French! And so does Stephen King, by the way — in case my word doesn’t quite convey the authority as King King’s does.

What did I like about The Witch Elm? So much. I liked that it was a crime novel concerned with pressing existential concerns — most fundamentally, who are we? Are we separated from our brains? If our minds are injured, is our “self,” or the self we know as our “self,” lost? How much of our selves are constructed by memories, selected carefully and constructed into fortresses of personality? If all of that psychic construction is shattered in a moment, what kind of Frankenstein self takes its place?

If this sounds lofty for a crime novel, that’s because it’s a dense, lofty book. Yet French manages to carry along the scenes with such pace and wit that it doesn’t feel dense, just exhilarating. There are some pages-long sequences in which Toby is poring over the past with his two cousins. All their dynamics are so raw, unspoken. There is underbrush to their conversation we’re only just beginning to sense. And yet the conversation itself travels quickly, hops along. She balances depth with sheer pleasure so well.

I don’t want to give any major plot points away. But the book is about a young Dubliner whose life changes when he’s gravely injured in a robbery. He moves out to the country to take care of his ailing uncle. While there, they make a discovery about hidden remains in the backyard. But that only happens at like, page 200! A lot of this book is about Toby and his crisis. Which to me was a very interesting crisis. I understand why someone looking for a standard crime novel might get tired of his circuitous thoughts and hospital descriptions.

However, if you’re looking for a genre-defying book that is as thought-provoking as it is engrossing, I recommend The Witch Elm wholeheartedly.

23 Celebrities & Their Imagined Reading Habits

I spend a lot of time thinking about celebrities for work. I spend a lot of time reading, too. Here’s what I imagine celebrities, rare creatures that they are, are reading.

1. Ralph Fiennes: Collects rare books, reads them with gloves in a special rare book reading room which he keeps locked so “grubby hands” can’t get to it.

2. Reese Witherspoon: Only reads the books from her book club — after they’re chosen.

3. Willow Smith: Exclusively reads what she, herself, has written.

4. Pete Davidson: Old copies of Mad Magazine from his childhood bedroom. They smell bad but he can’t tell.

5. Leonardo DiCaprio: Michael Lewis, pop science books about global warming, obscure biographies about egomaniacal men which he then sends to Martin Scorsese with the note, “Let’s make this!” Subtext: Another Oscar?

6. Justin Bieber: Annotated Hillsong Bible with scribbles on the side.

7. Kate Winslet: Multi-generational family epics that might be classified as intellectual beach reads.

8. Cate Blanchett: Doesn’t read novels published past 1950, except for The Price of Salt (1952), and that was for research.

9. Jon Hamm: Finishes a crossword puzzle book a month; is working his way up to Wednesdays.

10. Angelina Jolie: U.N. Whitepapers

11. Jennifer Aniston: Jennifer Weiner

12. Kim Kardashian: Instagram comments

13. Madonna: Unauthorized biographies about Madonna

14. Dev Patel: Contemporary literary fiction that his women co-stars recommend

15. Jennifer Lawrence: A healthy mix of psychological thrillers and Man Booker Prize winners, which she devours in bed on many Saturday nights

16. Brad Pitt: Accrues pottery coffee table books for his many coffee tables in his many homes

17. Saoirse Ronan: Is in a book club with her mom and her mom’s friends; when she’s not in Dublin, she Skypes in.

18. Timothee Chalamet: Is just getting into Henry Miller.

19. Rooney Mara: She carries a tattered copy of an Anne Carson book around in her pocketbook and pulls it out whenever she’s in between Things

20. Chrissy Teigen: Has a collection of heavily underlined semi-motivational books written by women.

21. Taylor Swift: She’s actually working on a rom-com novel right now, funny that you ask.

22. Beyoncé: Warsan Shire, feminist discourse, Instapoetry

23. Meghan Markle: Harry bought her a chest where she can lock away her books so we can’t judge her character. (But it’s Danielle Steele, that’s who she’s reading).

Literary Names I Might Steal For My Future Daughters

Let’s be clear: I never want my future children, should I have them, to feel like they have to grow into an impossible mold. I want them to grow into themselves, not, say, into a literary icon. That said, why not use a pleasing combination of sounds and syllables that just so happens to have an epic connotation? I like all these first names. I like their legacies. If I should have a daughter I’d want her to have these books on her side.

1. Luna, Harry Potter
2. Ramona, Ramona
3. Zelie, Children of Blood and Bone
4. Calypso, The Odyssey
5. Denver, Beloved
6. Lisbeth, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
7. Astrid, Crazy Rich Asians
8. Matilda, Matilda
9. Lara Jean Song Covey, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
10. Jane, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, why not
11. Oryx, Oryx and Crake
12. Katherine Clifton, The English Patient
13. Serena, The Trumpet of the Swan
14. Hero, Much Ado About Nothing
15. Camille, Sharp Objects
16. Portia, The Merchant of Venice
17. Natalia, War and Peace
18. Arya, A Song of Ice and Fire
19. Daisy, The Great Gatsby 
20. Jo, Little Women
21. Madeline, Madeline series
22. Tacy, Betsy Tacy
23. Zora, Their Eyes Were Watching God
24. Lyra, His Dark Materials

Yes, yes, you’ve got me — in addition to collecting favorite books I also collect a) paint chips b) baby names and c) pretty words. This is a collection of b) and c).

Maybe next up I’ll match books with colors….

These Short Poems Have Been Saving Me

Lately I’ve had to call on words for little shots of strength. Some use tequila; I use poems short enough to memorize. Their lines float around in my head, counteracting the insidious words that are less productive, less kind.

Yes, I’m talking about the kind of life & soul rebuilding that comes at the end of one life phase and the start of another. Me, right now — I’m on a ship in new waters. Before, I’d been on a really nice boat. The kind that you’d point at if you were on the shores and say wow, how’d she get so lucky to score a place on that very plush Axelrodian yacht? It had beautiful interiors. But it was not going to any of the islands I wanted to visit; I was locked away in my suite and never could feel the wind flapping around my face. Now I’m in a scrappier sailboat, jumping from island to island. It’s rugged. The wind is temperamental, sending me off course occasionally. My hair has never been crazier, and I’ve never been happier.

By this I mean to say, I’m in the uncharted territory that comes after a break-up. So I’ve been navigating by constellations, and by poems I can call on for spiritual guidance. I don’t always know what they mean; I just know they speak to a part of me that does.

“Failing and Flying” by Jack Gilbert

 

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It’s the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.

^has there ever been a poem that better captures the bittersweet fondness that crusts over the end of a relationship? That you can’t call it failing, really? Just the end of something that might have once been good? “Coming to the end of OUR triumph.” It’s taught me not to beat myself up so much. It wasn’t a failure, really.

“Rain” by Raymond Carver

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgiveable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

This poem, too, teaches me to be kind to myself. It’s all been wonderful, this life — I’d make every choice again.

“may my heart” by ee cummings

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

And this little poem reminds me not to let my heart freeze over.

What are your favorite short poems?

But That’s MY Favorite Book!

The past few weeks have unpeeled some ugly layer to my personality. Ugly, perhaps, because it’s not surprising. I take pride in having read things First. Sometimes I forget I’m not in monogamous relationships with my favorite books. I approach the books I love with a little flag of my heart and stick it in the pages and say okay, this book is my favorite. Go to the library. Find your own.

Only that won’t work anymore because suddenly Call Me By Your Name is everyone’s favorite book! This book I’ve cradled in my heart – turns out other people have been cradling it also. And even more are flocking to read Aciman’s book now that the (resplendent, sublime, perfect, I’ll admit) movie is coming out. Now when I see Elio I see Timothee. Now when I see the book I see everyone else’s hands on it.

Ultimately YES, I’m thrilled because I get to talk about books with people. The same sentences rocked different lives. The same paragraphs woke people up from their lives and into some higher plane. Am I allowed to feel possessive over those hours on the train I spent reading CMBYN? Can it be my book, still? Even though I’m sharing it with everyone?

Do you ever get possessive over a book? Like you’re not reading the book so much as you are creating an experience, and you want to own the experience? This doesn’t happen to me with movies. I think it’s because you walk towards a book. You create the book. It’s a process of which your imagination is a part. Think of how many CMBYNs exist. Each person who read it put their flag in its pages, I mean, marked it as theirs.

I did lose street cred, though, now that the book is so main stream. Have to start reading weirder and weirder and more obscure and “this is never gonna be made into a movie” stuff. I just love books that are going to be made into movies! What can I say? I guess I’m not that original at all.

How To Talk About Talking About Books

My college days are behind me. A year behind me, to be precise, though sometimes I still trip on campus’s uneven stone pavement and I remember the lecture hall chairs’ stiff backs and my professors’ stiff upper lips and I wonder, what’s a year, anyway? Some years are fuller than others. My four years of college filled me up, and I’ll be running on that mileage for ages.

Luckily for me, many of my friends are little walking universities, in the sense that they don’t let my mind fall asleep. Otherwise, who knows: I might turn on Bravo one day and never turn it off. We all wrestle with temptation.

Today, a friend texted me out of the blue asking whether I could send her a critical essay I wrote in college. The specifications were broad. She just wanted any essay in which I responded to a work of literature with precise language. I sent her a short paper on Virginia Woolf’s The Waves.

My friend, C., is many wonderful things, but perhaps my favorite thing about her is that she is a Capital R Reader. The first time I spoke to her about books, we were on a beach in Greece. We began playing “What Have You Read?” ping-pong, my favorite mental sparring game. I found we had the same taste. I also found myself desperately out of my league. C’s one of those readers who makes me want to be a better (and more voracious) reader.

Both now out of college, C. and I love reading — and yet we have no outlet with which we can intellectually analyze books. I frequently recommend books to people, or gush about them. I say things like, “I missed my train stop, this book was so good!” Or, “I couldn’t get out of bed because I was devastated when it ended!”

But what about the part of my brain which could X-Ray into the book’s machinations and the author’s manipulations? Read for craft, as well as general effect? What about the endless exercises in close-reading and poring through the part to understand the whole?

When reading literature in college, I often fought against the tyranny of close-reading. As an intuitive, emotional person, I would always trust my first instinct first. I was more interested in the general impression of the book. Whether I was moved. Whether I liked it. Now, out of college, I find myself pulled to the opposite camp. It’s not enough to know that I liked it. I want to know why, and speak to the book until it speaks back.

In college, I was reading books that I didn’t always want to be reading. I was relieved when I found a book that I liked at all, so I savored it. Now, I read a lot of books that I enjoy because the syllabus is of my own choosing. I pop books like candy. Sure, it’s better than TV, but how much depth am I plumbing from each book? Is it a hearty mental exercise if I’m skimming sentences?

My goal is to begin writing pieces for each book I read. More than reviews, really, but something between a reaction and an analysis. Something voice-driven, but also data-driven. A mash-up between my conflicting desires when reading books: To understand the language, and to feel the narrative.

I’m sure C. and I will be alright, so long as we continue to read, converse, and keep an aura of undergraduate naivety about us.

The Left Hand Of Darkness, Or: Maybe I Don’t Like Sci-Fi, After All

About halfway through Ursula LeGuin’s classic novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, and about halfway through a snore, I realized that maybe sci-fi wasn’t for me. Don’t get me wrong: I’d read fantasy as a kid, and now and then read some sci-fi short stories. I gobble up dystopias; anything that whiffs of magical realism is added immediately to my queue. I like dabbling in the fantastical. The real world is real enough, thank you!

But The Left Hand of Darkness is a whole ‘nother ballpark. It’s not fantastical so much as it is scientific. Through the eyes of Genly Ai, an envoy from a different planet, LeGuin sketches out a world wildly foreign from planet Earth. Nothing is comfortable or easy on the the planet Winter, for Genly or for me. First, it’s essentially always winter (hence the name). LeGuin invented a new calendar, and a different name for each day of the week. In the limited inhabitable latitude, two countries with radically different philosophies and societal structures compete. For diplomatic reasons, Genly traverses the border. All that is just accompanies the juicy bit, though, and the one part that made The Left Hand of Darkness an interesting thought experiment.

What makes Winter so unique, though, is its inhabitants. While human, the population isn’t gendered. They are both man and woman. Once a month, during the “kemmering” mating process, they become sex-crazed and shack up with whomever else is in kemmering, be them a partner or stranger. This leads to some situations that seem askew: The king gets pregnant; characters embody both typically “male” and female” traits. LeGuin has fun skewering the notion of gender, and how it boxes us into learned behaviors. Genly flops around, not understanding. A typical man!

To be honest, I picked the book up because I thought it would be juicy (I know! Naive). I wanted LeGuin to really explore life without gender. And for the most part, she did. I guess my big complaint is — there is no sex in The Left Hand of Darkness! The characters, when not in kemmering, are completely subdued and almost behave as if they have zero sex drives. HellLO Ursula, why didn’t you take us into a kemmering sex den? While the rest of us down here are stewing in monogamy and trapped in our bodies, you could’ve showed us an alternative.

As a result of LeGuin’s chaste writing, Genly’s diplomatic trip is just that: Diplomacy. No snogs. No watching alien genitalia shift and morph. No trips to the kemmering houses.

I’ve realized now that sci-fi is more interested in world-build ing than in making out. While I respect the genre, I’m going to retreat to my erotic thrillers, thank you, where authors are more interested in warm-blooded planets than winter.

While I’m happy The Left Hand of Darkness exists as a thought experiment, I can’t deny its effect on me. Alas, it was to snooze.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Some books I love because I can’t shake them off. I enter into the dense patchwork of prose and emerge altered. I love those books, though sometimes their barbs bristle and make me uncomfortable. Other books I love because they’re beautiful, and that can make up for many other structural foibles. There are other books I love because they are true, and others because they’re indulgent. And yet other books I love because I wish I’d written them.

Then, there are books that I love because they come into my life at just at the right time.

On November 8 of 2016, I happened to be reading the perfect book. I had started it only a week before, heading to the bookshelf to choose the chunkiest paperback I could find for my first morning train commute. The book was called A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. As a sucker for epic books set in India (of which there happen to be multitudes), this novel had been on my list for a while.

That said, I’m happy I delayed reading the novel for the time of Donald Trump’s election. While on the one hand, I feared that my country was spinning so fast that we were all going to slide off the surface of the earth, I had a book that told me: it could be worse.

In A Fine Balance, the lives of four characters are thrust together when they all briefly stay within the house of Dina Dalal, an independent widow attempting to hold on to her old apartment by running an illegal clothing factory. She employs an itinerant uncle/nephew duo, whose comedic timing and camaraderie is darkened by an undercurrent of caste violence in their hometown. Then, they’re joined by the quiet student studying air conditioning, who feels adrift in the big city and longs to return to his father’s store in the mountains. Or, better put, to his childhood in the mountains, before everything changed.

Accompanying Mistry’s four main characters is a chorus of vivid, fantastic ancillary characters who are just as memorable. There are characters lurking the backstories and memory, usually cloaked in nostalgia. And boy, are there villains. There are villains who raze entire settlements; people with violence in their guts; the erosion of soul that occurs from a prolonged lack of kindness.

 “The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying.”

The greatest villain in A Fine Balance, however, is everything that is done to the four main characters without their consent. Aka, the economy. As it turns out, no matter how lovely and fantastic your personality is (and they are all so lovely), they are at mercy of external circumstances. And external circumstances in India in the 1970s were just, well, not so great. Mistry’s world is bursting from the seams with detail — Dickensian detail — and that makes the status quo all the more horrifying. The nephew and uncle, for example, are completely bound in by their class and status. It haunts them with violence and injustice for the rest of their lives.

Individualism — people’s personalities, quirks, idiosyncrasies, what makes them human — is steamrolled under Great Economic Forces. Only in Dina’s confined apartment can the four characters live in a briefly society free from the pressures, assumptions, and that govern the outside world, especially for the poor.

As the best fiction does, A Fine Balance made me get outside myself. It showed me more convincingly than any non-fiction ever could that it could be worse.

 “Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”

My DT-induced anxiety, while bad, was tempered by this incredibly realistic account of India as it crawled towards independence. As in: my family didn’t face violence for trying to vote. As in: I wasn’t sleeping on doorsteps, or confined to the whims of my demanding older brother, or my home wasn’t being deforested by the British.

In A Fine Balance, being an individual is only possible if you have money. Otherwise, you’re crushed under the wheel of corrupt, conniving, and indifferent bureaucracy.
And what makes the book so damn effective is that in Dina’s apartment, we see these four characters — lambs to the slaughter of the economy — in their full individual glory. I highly recommend reading this book. It’s an exercise in empathy.

For a more in-depth analysis of this incredibly plotted novel, check out this blog post.

Why I’m Reading Dear Sugar Today

There are some books that you pass on like good deeds. In fact it’s almost a crime to keep these books on your shelf, because they’re working books (as opposed to leisurely books that are ruined on beach vacations, their soggy carcasses left in hotels). Worker books shouldn’t be lying around unread. Their pages should be turned, their words making people stop pause consider and change. One such book is Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed.

For years, Cheryl Strayed fielded questions from the “lost, lonely, and brokenhearted” under the guise of Sugar for The Rumpus magazine. Her empathetic, personal responses gained a huge following, and add to the myth of Cheryl herself.

“I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

Since reading that book the summer before my senior year of college, I’ve bought about 10 copies to give to friends. There is no inappropriate time to receive this book. Even if none of the advice columns directly relate to situations you find yourself in, Strayed’s responses are universal. They’re about striving to be a better, kinder person. She makes the specific apply to everyone.

Right now, many Americans find themselves in a surreal situation, something universal that feels like it’s also rocking your whole personal life. While the same footage of Voldemort getting sworn in is aired on TVs across the world, it’s all still very specific. I found myself this morning shaking my head and just being like: what the…

Then I caught myself. I caught myself because once, someone wrote Cheryl Strayed a letter that said, “WTF, WTF, WTF.” That’s all the letter said. Apathy and nihilism personified. Apparently that letter haunted Strayed. She didn’t know how to answer it. Then, she figured it out.

I give you her response. Read it the whole way through.

Yes, I’m Angry: Reading Men Explain Things to Me By Rebecca Solnit

The last time I attracted this many glances while reading on public transit was my sophomore year of college, when the entire sophomore class had to read the Bible and the Qoran as part of Contemporary Civilization. Naturally, being maniacal about schoolwork, I brought the books along on subway rides. So there I was, flipping through the Bible on the 1 Train, attracting the stares of people who though they knew me.

A similar dynamic happened on the mornings I brought Men Explain Things to Me on the crowded train I take each morning to work. Only this time, I didn’t mind being typecast. I didn’t mind that men were looking at me reading a bold blue book with a bold white title. I’m happy everyone got to watch me nod righteously, be righteously angry, know that I wasn’t alone. I hope that all the men who gawked at me googled the book.

The essays are about how the cards are stacked against women, always have been. The essays are about the patriarchy and history and domestic violence, about power struggles and how individuals can be crushed under forces of apathy and cruelty. Such violence against women is structurally embedded into the system: how men behave, how law enforcement works. Such violence is allowed. Solnit is angry, yes, but her essays are based with facts and with proof, not emotion. This, of course, makes the essays scarier.

On the one hand, reading this book was satisfying because Solnit identifies a pervasive concept: mansplaining. But mostly, reading it made me angry. Putting a word on “mansplaining” doesn’t make it go away. Listing the awful statistics about domestic violence doesn’t make domestic violence go away. Lately I’ve been inarticulately angry — an anger so looming and large I’ve never been able to gather it into my hands, but like vapor it swirls around me as I walk through the world. I’m angry at the Big Powerful Forces, at having to live through this. How are we going to endure when Voldemort becomes president?

This book came out in 2014, back when I still thought we were headed towards some glittery land in the horizon called “progress.” In the essays Solnit concluded that while feminism has come a long way, there is so much longer to go. But she assured me that we were going there.

And yet. It’s 2017 now. Voldemort, tomorrow, will become the leader of the free world. In light of this, many of Solnit’s optimistic pronouncements ended up reading remarkably dated, like the whole book has been dipped into the present-day situation and came out dripping cruel irony.

Take an excerpt from this essay that she wrote condemning Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s assault of a maid.

“The United States has a hundred million flaws, but I am proud that the police believed this woman and that she will have her day in court. I am gratified this time not to be in a country that has decided that the career of a powerful man or the fate of an international institution matters more than this woman and her rights and well-being. This is what we mean by democracy: that everyone has a voice, that no one gets away with things just because of their wealth, power, race, or gender.”

And yet. It’s 2017, and 20 women have accused Voldemort Trump of sexual assault. A recently married Voldemort Trump said that grabbing a woman “by the pussy” was an acceptable means of seduction. All of this came out before November 8, and yet he still got elected. And to think — we could’ve had a woman in the White House. It’s not just that he won — it’s who didn’t win.

So, yeah, I’m angry. And confused. And want to reread this book and give it to anyone I know so they don’t fall asleep on what is happening and what will keep happening if we keep falling asleep.