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We interrupt your regularly scheduled program of me discussing my time in San Francisco to bring you part one of my 2024 book review.
Welcome back to This Book, That Book, the place where I tell you whether or not you should read this book or that book.
Last year, I read 43 books, topping my reading goal of 30 books.
This year, so far, I’ve read 36 books.
Hold your applause.
I’d be lying if I said that I enjoyed every single one of these books, but I loved so many of them and am excited to spend the latter half of the year reading more so that I can reach, if not surpass, my goal of 50.
Many of the books I read were about sad, desperate people, and only occasionally did the authors restore hope in the end. So many of them featured ugly people doing ugly things, depicting people as they are, and not always how they ought to be. Regardless of the type of novel, I frequently got inspiration for how I should write my own books and how I should live my life.
So, here is my review of all 36, keeping it light on the spoilers and constructive in the criticism.
Judge for yourself:
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter– Positions itself as a dystopian novel based in our modern times. It depicts the soul-crushing, cut-throat tech companies that exist around homeless encampments, the need for recreational cocaine to keep up with the grueling demands, and the ridiculousness of modern-dating. The message is clear: we live in dystopian times. Craftwise, the dialogue is a little weak, at times bordering on cartoonish for the evil tech bosses. The ending, as bizarre as it is, firmly cements the story in the magical-realism genre.
Short People by Joshua Furst– gets to the crux of how children are: the literalness, the earnestness, the honest-to-a-fault-ness, and the fundamental desire to do no harm. I’m a tad biased, having taken this professor’s class, but it remains a very good collection of short stories.
Favorite story: This Little Light
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann– A famous German writer ventures to Venice, where he promptly falls in love with a young Polish boy (and by “young” and “boy,” I am being literal). The story is him obsessing over the child and, at times, making the effort to interact with him. It is a short, well-written novel, using the high-falutin language of the time, even in translation.
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine– I had read this book years ago for class and had to read it for another class this year, but it is worth reading twice. This “American Lyric” dives into Rankine’s personal experiences as a woman of color in America.
Exalted by Anna Dorn– *spoiler alert* This was a super light and rompy book about astrology up until all of the incest. On a lighter note, this novel will teach you everything you need to know about zodiac signs, and is a love letter to Leos in all of their attention-seeking glory. Meanwhile, I was likened to a wounded puppy, as a cancer. This novel has it all: a self-loathing lesbian character, an obsession with Heathers-era Winona Ryder, incest, and a shit-ton of astrology.
The Dead by James Joyce– The takeaway: sometimes your wife is a person too.
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore– This novel takes place in Ireland and examines the life of one Judith Hearne, a woman who has not done much with her life. This book is deliberately offensive, using racial slurs. It will depress you, by asking questions about your life decisions and whether or not you’ve truly lived a life.
The Pure and Impure by Colette– opens, like many great stories, in an opium den. In what is one of the earliest examples of autofiction, a writer gets inundated with all of the things that the people in her circle do and writes about them.
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Peter Handke– The takeaway: sometimes your mother is a person too.
The Ha-Ha by Dave King– You will not ha-ha very many times during this book. A man who cannot speak or write due to an injury sustained in Vietnam is tasked with looking after the nine year old son of his ex-girlfriend when she goes into rehab. He is profoundly lonely, being completely articulate in his head, but not out loud, the one place where it counts.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast– Written in comic-format, this memoir outlines cartoonist Roz Chast’s experiences taking care of her aging parents. Chast takes you panel-by-panel, showing you how difficult taking care of elderly relatives can be, especially when they were always difficult people to begin with. After reading this book and seeing what was in store for me, should I make it to my 90s, I bought bok choy with apple cider vinegar and started doing laps in the pool. This book had a real eat-your-greens-and-do-some-push-ups effect on me. I also then proceeded to call my parents to tell them how much I loved them and to also recommend that they start putting aside some money for assisted living right now.
In A Free State by V.S. Naipaul– Anyone who says they have an interest in colonization, emigration, and dislocation should read this book. It’s a fictional story about people living in an unnamed African country, Haiti, and Washington D.C. and covers what it is like to be in those places.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw– When I first started reading this, I was expecting something more dramatic and exciting, but as I read along, I appreciated the lack of pretense and melodrama. This collection of short stories was down to earth and realistic, telling the stories of desperate people trying to get through life. Each story was a fascinating character study.
Favorite story: How to Make Love to a Physicist
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin– This cleverly-titled novel tells the story of a profoundly lonely book shop owner who is tasked with looking after a child. The novel is wholesome and hopeful. I read it in a day, which is a testament to how good it was. Reading a book in a day is what a sick day is for. This novel really tests your knowledge of books, making near-constant references to classic literature in a way that is not pretentious.
The Guest by Emma Cline– After she is ditched in Long Island by her rich boyfriend, a young woman can’t move back to the city, where her abusive ex-boyfriend, whom she robbed, is on the hunt for her. Instead, she plots to have her nice ex-boyfriend take her back, staying in Long Island by intuitively flitting from one group to the next and putting on airs as a blasé member of the same social circle. It was hard at times to read as the character inconceivably makes a mess of things. Syntactically, Cline uses copious amounts of fragments that weaken her work, while also, at times, writing lines that are too wordy and overwritten. This, oftentimes, lulls the reader instead of compelling them to read further. Cline always has beautiful, glittery descriptions, but they occasionally get lost in the less special details that clog her narration. I still recommend this book as it was very entertaining and hit the right pressure points when there’s tension in the story.
Writers and Lovers by Lily King– Generally speaking, I do not like novels in which the protagonist is also a writer (yes, the title should have tipped me off). Like everybody else, I read to escape, so I don’t want to read about another person’s crippling bout of writer’s block, which the author probably had while writing the novel in question, along with a contractual obligation to write the novel in the first place. It is the quintessence of “write what you know,” taken to the upteenth degree. The end result is usually a few ramblings about the creative process, and, in this case, a starving artist who ends up victorious with a book deal. Writers and Lovers is a far less egregious example, but an example nonetheless.
The Fox by D.H. Lawrence– Have you ever watched that scene in North By Northwest and thought to yourself: this is cool and all, but is running someone over with a crop duster really an effective way to kill them? I had a similar thought when reading The Fox, namely *spoiler alert* is chopping down a tree and letting it fall on someone an effective way to kill them? Still enjoyable to read.
The Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya– A political-exile must edit thousands of pages of testimony from witnesses of the genocide of indigenious people for the Catholic Church, an institution that he hates. Naturally, this story grapples with some serious themes, so only read it if you too are angry with the world and in need of having those feelings validated.
Chronicle of A Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez– I read (skimmed) Chronicle of a Death Foretold in high school and had to give a group presentation in which we invented a literary interpretation as to what really happened in the book. Between me and my two group members, we’d read enough of the book to come up with the idea that Angela Vicario was actually a virgin who broke her own hymen. (If you haven’t read the book, I cannot imagine what that must sound like to you). The three of us stood in front of our class and, with complete confidence, told everyone that the female character in the story broke her own hymen to get out of a marriage, something that is not at all supported in the text, and could only be said by three fifteen year old virgins who thought that hymens were highly-breakable pieces of the female body that would shatter like cut glass stemware when, one day, a penis poked it. Actually reading the book as an adult leaves you with a *slightly* more nuanced impression. You focus more on the senselessness of the crime being committed, the sense of community, the culpability of bystanders, the way that the information is laid out so effectively despite the novel’s commitment to ambiguity, and the many, many layers of commentary that Marquez brings to the story. But the hymen thing is good too.
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys– I barely understood what happened in this one and not just because so much of it was in French.
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton– Poor Ethan Frome, man. In between a rock and a hard place with a marriage that he hates and a woman that he loves, Ethan navigates some treacherous waters and does so very poorly. It is not exactly a warm-and-fuzzy beach read, but it is still a worthwhile read.
The Pisces by Melissa Broder– I love dysfunctional women stories and this novel about a codependent woman who is court-ordered to go to group therapy after punching her boyfriend in the face hits that target pretty well, in my opinion. Some of you may remember that last year I read a book that had a naked woman spooning a dead bird on the cover, so it is only fitting that I should pick up this book in which a fully-clothed woman, in the throes of passion, embraces a silhouetted fish. Reading the description, I learned that it was actually a story about a woman who has a lot of sex with a merman and I thought to myself, “I’ve never read a book like that before.” That said, there was so much mermaid sex in this one. (The word pussy gets thrown around a lot). It was snarky and scathing at times in the narrator’s internal monologue, never going full-tilt, tawdry romance novel. And in case you ever wondered about the rudiments of sex with a mermaid, this book answers those questions for you in vivid detail.
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, trans. D.P. Costello– you read the book by living inside the narrator’s opium-addled waking-consciousness. I would like to ask my professor what the deal is with many of the books he assigned dealing with opium. There was a lot of existential nihilism in this one, so get ready to feel depressed.
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates– Blatantly based on the Chappaquiddick incident, a woman dies in a car after being left there by the drunken senator that left her there to die. RIP.
The Chill by Ross Macdonald– Is a noir-style mystery. It uses some dated terminology and describes the appearance of every woman he meets in ways that you couldn’t get away with today. The vibe is very much I-went-out-looking-for-dames. The novel has sparse details and is very dialogue heavy, but I appreciated the lack of meaningless stage directions. There is a complicated cast of characters, making it difficult to keep the names straight at times. The ending will take you by surprise.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy– underedited in the best possible sense, being lyrical, fragmented, and non-linear in an almost un-authorial way that maintains the novel’s style. It is completely uninhibited in its descriptions, using unique details to describe a scene. I was most interested in Sophie Mol’s place in the story. It takes over a hundred pages for her to appear, we learn very little about her, and her death, which the entire story revolves around, happens so quickly it has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-quality.
Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen– This novel had such a satisfying ending that’ll make you believe in second acts in old age and karma for those who abuse animals and women. After being tormented by the evil business practices of a dysfunctional circus, animal cruelty, and the cruelty of age, the story redeems itself in the end and will make you believe that you truly can run away and join the circus.
Hula by Lisa Shea– There was so much I appreciated about this novel, such as how the idyllic moments of childhood are juxtaposed against horrifying ones and the narrator’s incomprehension of them as a result of her age. The father is treated like a mythical figure throughout the story, in and out of the girls’ lives for better and for worse in equal measure. At times I thought that the prose were a little over-groomed, the result of meticulous editing, but I still enjoyed reading about these girls’ tumultuous childhood.
Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren– Like many novels in the contemporary romance genre, Love and Other Words is about as formulaic as a Hallmark movie, but still very fun to read. The girl’s mother who always lit up a room is dead, the heroine runs into the guy from her youth who was her first love and has suddenly turned dreamy, she keeps hinting at the big event that went down in their past that you must wait hundreds of pages to read about, and, guess what: they both love books. I was impressed by how she could always find new ways to wax poetic about the way the guy smiles and blushes. Apparently men with “lopsided smiles” are straight up perfect.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune– I had deja vu while reading this one, as it was nearly a shot-for-shot remake of Love and Other Words. It was not like the author lifted whole passages from the text, but the premise was unmistakably derivative. Both stories go back and forth between “now” and “then,” telling the story in both past and present tense, and tease the reader about “what happened” between the protagonist and her love interest, for whom they were each others’ whole world. In both stories, the man grows into a flawless adonis who listens to every word she says and comes back even dreamier once they’re adults, at her beck and call. It is female wish fulfillment in its purest form. The parents were so much more fun in this novel than in Love and Other Words, as they were drinking red wine on their dock and eating hot fondue at the drop of a dime. That’s the dream right there.
Beach Read by Emily Henry– All hail Emily Henry, the patron saint of the contemporary romance genre. I don’t consider myself to be a romantic person, so making me read a contemporary romance novel is a little bit like making an atheist read the Bible; I might like parts of the story, but I’m just not a believer. This book did not convert me, but I still enjoyed it. The novel tells the story of two writers and I typically hate novels about writers (scroll up in case you’ve forgotten), but this one was so much more charming. Once again, the male character is attentive and perfect, being attractive, good in bed, and head over heels for the female protagonist.
Happy Place by Emily Henry– Here we have another rom com full of people in a situation that I would never find myself in. There is miscommunication, selfishness, and going with the flow just to appease others. The main character made terrible life decisions in this book, in my own personal opinion. I give it about a year before her character realizes the massive mistake that she made and gives up on life. I preferred Beach Read over this one.
The Sabotage Cafe by Joshua Furst– In an ode to punk rock culture, Sabotage Cafe tells the story of a delusional mother imagining what her teenage daughter is going through after she runs away from home. I appreciated the way in which the mother’s imaginings of what her daughter is going through reflects her own adolescence and how it is made clear throughout the story that the mother is deeply confused. Even though I knew it wasn’t real, I was still engrossed all the way through, wondering what was going to happen to the daughter even though nothing was actually happening to her. I also appreciated the suburban kids, fighting the system, despite not knowing anything about the system in question.
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector– is a 70 page hailstorm of a novel that waxes poetic about the secrets of the universe over a very thin plot that turns a simple girl into something complicated through the narrator’s perception of her.
Book of Eve by Carmen Boullosa– reimagines the book of Genesis from Eve’s perspective. In doing so, Boullosa challenges the Bible’s ideas of womanhood. It depicts Adam and Eve out in the wilderness following their exile from the garden of Eden. Boullosa offers creative new interpretations about what really went down in the Bible, such as Cain being created in Eve’s image, as a lover of fruit. I felt that there were some missed opportunities to comment more on pregnancy, menstruation, and Eve’s role in that as the original giver of life.
Moving Kings by Joshua Cohen– After getting out of the IDF, Yuav and Uri work for Yoav’s cousin David King (an inverted King David) at his moving company, Moving Kings, where they evict predominantly people of color from their houses following the 2008 housing crisis. In doing so, the novel makes the comparison between the occupation of homes in New York City and the situation in Gaza, with occupation and displacement being the central themes of the novel. At times, I wasn’t sure what the author’s views were on Israel and Palestine, although trying to psychoanalyze a writer through their novel is usually a fruitless task. (It’s worth mentioning that the novel also came out in 2017). I know that it’s pretty low hanging fruit to compare Cohen to Philip Roth since they both write about the Jewish experience, but I think that with this novel it is an apt comparison for several reasons: grotesque writing about sex, total lack of political correctness, flippant tone, and not having very many plot points in what still manages to be an eventful novel.
My three favorites were:
The God of Small Things
Water For Elephants
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
A few honorable mentions:
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Black Water
The Ha-Ha
The award for most original book I read goes to The Pisces. Again, mermaid sex.
Book of Eve was a close second.
Have you read any of these books? If so, share your thoughts (nicely) in the comments.
Happy reading!
The Tragic Queen,
Raquel
P.S.: Check out my previous blog post: An Escape to the Golden Gate
The Tragic Queen 