April report

Is there a greater high than reading several novels in a row that are so good you want to do nothing else but be reading those books? Probably! But after what feels like many months of “meh” I was thrilled to get back into a groove.

What I read in April:

Lily King, Writers & Lovers (2020)—Shoutout to Friend of the Report, Sam, for giving me this book sometime last year because she “thought [I] might like it.” I feel so seen! I loved it!1 

Set in Boston in 1997, Writers & Lovers is narrated from the perspective of its protagonist, Casey, as she struggles to finish her six-years-in-the-making novel during the year after her mother died unexpectedly. Most afternoons and nights, she works as a server at an upscale restaurant, and in the early mornings she writes and walks her landlord’s dog (for an extra $50 off her monthly rent). At the restaurant, she experiences verbal abuse from her coworkers, sexual harassment from the chef. Her apartment, actually a shed in her landlord’s backyard, doesn’t have a kitchen, only a bathroom and a hotplate. Midway through the year, her landlord—a friend of her brother!—raises the rent so high that Casey won’t be able to afford to re-sign her lease. BLEAK, I KNOW.

The titular lovers are also writers (of course!), some more professionally successful than others, all with their own personal issues and hang-ups about writing. For a very long time in this book, it seems like Casey might not end up with any of the things she wants—financial security; a stable/happy/fulfilling relationship; the publication of her book, or even just an agent; her mom, and if not her mom, then some relief from the overwhelming grief of missing her mom. HEAVY!!!

It’s not so much the drama of her trying to achieve these “goals” as it is the way King writes about this journey that makes this novel so compelling. Lily King is an exceptional writer!! People say this about her all the time! Why did I wait until now to listen? It’s like how I was with Ferrante—I read the praise but was resistant, for absolutely no clear reason, to reading her books. And, just like with Ferrante/the Neapolitan novels, Writers & Lovers is so quiet and powerful and revelatory.

I think we know by now how I feel about a happy ending, especially one that feels “unearned”/unexpected, but I loved this novel’s ending, which is hopeful and happy and peaceful. Also, this book is funny. Dark! And funny. What a delight.

Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility (2022)—Maybe it’s the time travel and recurrences in this, Mandel’s sixth novel and third that contains characters from her other novels, or the fact that I read her last novel in April 2020, right after it was published, or that I re-read her first pandemic novel, Station Eleven (2014), in December 20192 and recently watched its television adaptation, or that this month, like April 2021 and April 2020, was so ghoulishly and cosmically unnecessarily busy at work, but reading Sea of Tranquility really had me thinking hard about time, trauma, pandemics, and the theory that we are all living in a simulation!3 It felt very:

But what about the book itself? Well, I liked it a lot, though it did feel a little short? It’s very meta in many ways, particularly with the novelist character who is on tour to promote the adaptation of her novel about a pandemic while the early days of an actual pandemic are unfolding. The novelist’s experience of lockdown must be drawn from Mandel’s own. I think she depicts it well, but I could also see how it might be too soon for some people to relive Spring 2020, however thinly fictionalized.4 I’m still figuring out how I feel about pandemics in contemporary fiction!

There is much more to Sea of Tranquility than that one character’s storyline, however, so I don’t want to give the impression that it’s primarily about a pandemic. It’s not! It’s more about time and “reality.” I continue to love the way Mandel writes and the way her mind works.

Min Jin Lee, Pachinko (2017)—If this novel isn’t THE best generational saga ever written, then it is at minimum in the top five all time. I loved this book so much when I first read it in January 2018 and I loved it just as much this time around, when I read it in order to be able to watch the television adaptation5 with a fresh memory of the plot and characters.

What is there to say about this novel! It’s nearly 500 pages and it reads like a breeze. There’s zero bloat. All of the sentences work purposely toward the overall narrative. Every character is so fully realized and compelling. There’s history but it never once feels like the novel is merely a vehicle for a history lesson.

One thing I love about this book is how its descriptions of food are so vivid that I couldn’t think about eating anything other than Korean food when I was reading. It’s very much the same vibe as how, when I was young, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books made me obsess over cheese and bread as a snack or how Little Women (1868-1869) made me think nothing was more luxurious than oranges in the winter.

Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (1959)—I certainly wasn’t the only one who needed to read more about Shackleton + the Endurance when I learned about the discovery of the ship in March—my Libby hold for this audiobook finally came through this month.

Like, yes, I knew the basics of the story, and that business bros are obsessed with Shackleton’s LeAdErShIp/love to think they are little business Shackletons themselves, which is why I hadn’t previously felt called to learn more. Also, yes, I low-key thought it was amazing how disastrous that voyage was and how all the people managed to survive, but that was about it for me until I saw those mesmerizing videos of the ship, which has sat at the bottom of the Weddell Sea for over 100 years.

So! This book rules IF you can handle hearing about what happened to the dogs and the 1 cat6 that started out on the voyage. I handled it with much displeasure. Aside from that? Riveting. Gripping. Hard to say whether Lansing is good at writing because it would take a lot to mess up a story this sensational. Simon Prebble, who narrated the audiobook? I think he must be good? Since I wasn’t even annoyed at him doing Irish and Scottish accents?

I get it now. I get why the business bros are obsessed. Who among us, in the midst of a launch,7 working with a team of many different kinds of people/skills/temperaments, toiling into the late hours of the night, eating garbage, getting stuck into a sitting position from so many hours in front of the computer,8 has not thought at least once—this is exactly like what Shackleton and the crew of The Endurance experienced?

☝️ This is the only other thing I knew about Shackleton prior to reading Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage.

Allegra Hyde, Eleutheria (2022)9—I don’t want to say anything that would discourage people from reading this book if they are interested in the premise—a woman raised by doomsday preppers runs away from her breakup with a sociology professor to join an “ecowarrior” community in the Bahamas, and mystery ensues—but it wasn’t doing it for me.

It was hard to visualize the setting, since the imagined time in which it takes place draws from recent history (mentions of the president staring directly at the sun during an eclipse, eg) and likely events in the future (wider-scale infrastructure collapses, food shortages, superstorms) and mashes them together to make something that’s more disorienting/distracting than it is foreboding.

Aside from all that, the novel does explore interesting ideas, and I like that the primary romantic relationship isn’t hetero (which can be boring! just saying!) and how what Hyde does imagine of the near future is unsettlingly precise.

All ecofiction can’t be A Children’s Bible (2020), The New Wilderness (2020), or Something New Under the Sun (2021), now can it?

Also the cover is pretty:

What I didn’t finish reading in April:

Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism (2022)—Had about an hour left in my audiobook when Libby returned it :(

It’s not that I disliked it. It’s more like it covers a lot of ground that other things I’ve listened to/watched have covered (ie, The Dream re: MLMs, Decoder Ring on the rise of modern “fitness” culture, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, etc), so I wasn’t really rushing to get through the book. Also, I finished the puzzle I’d been working on during “my Shackleton book,”10 began attempt #2 at the hardest puzzle I own,11 and the NBA playoffs started. The stars weren’t exactly aligning for me to be enthusiastic about this audiobook.

But what I did listen to was informative, engaging, and well written, particularly the bits about Jonestown.

What I’m looking forward to reading in May:

Elif Batuman, Either/Or (2022)

Ali Smith, Companion Piece (2022)

Vauhini Vara, The Immortal King Rao (2022)

Elaine Shieh Chou, Disorientation (2022)

Whatever we pick for book club