To All The Octopuses I’ve Loved Before

a review of The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery

Animals are perfect for all the gifts they give us: empathy, serotonin, the beak of a dead duck poking out of his soft jaw (Snickers M. Balmuth). Most of all, they gift us with tasty metaphors that help us, mere humans, make sense of a world we cannot understand despite our big ol’ brains and opposable thumbs. I’ve been lucky to know so many animals. When I was 7, I kept a caterpillar in a glass jar to prove to our landlord I could look after a dog (ultimately, I did not look after the dog). I relocated a batch of garden snails after they were eating my mom’s plants to the park, luring them with a good time (a bottle of Heineken poured into Tupperware) and moving their soggy bodies to the green space around a playground on my walk to school. It was The Hangover in snail format. Of course, aforementioned Snickers M. Balmuth. In primary school, I wept into his fur saying “nobody understands me, snicky!” and he’d look back with a trademark skeptical stare that said “Stiff upper lip, old chap. Less tears, more kibble. Thanks.”

Sorry guys

Even animals we do not know—lions, tigers, bears, and the like—we can connect with on a deeper level than some second cousins. *Gets on soapbox* I mean… MONKEYS?! THEY ARE AMAZING. Animals remind us we are part of a vast interconnected ecosystem of wonder and not vapid silos in desk chairs waiting for texts back. Anything that accomplishes such vital work is perfect, except for outer space of which I’m not a fan.

In The Soul of the Octopus, aka “To All The Octopuses I’ve Loved Before,” Sy Montgomery writes about the lives and deaths of the octopuses she befriended. These octopuses lived at the New England Aquarium, which is a great place to go whilst astronomically stoned. Octopuses live around 2 years on average and are fated to these slow deaths in which they have the worst amount of cognizance of their impending demise.  First of all, they rarely mate in captivity. When male and female octopuses are placed in the same tank for mating purposes, it often ends in a bloodbath which is #girlboss vibes but bad for procreation. Aging female octopuses feel their narrative arc turning and start gathering their eggs for fertilization that will never happen. They tend to the eggs meticulously, dusting them off or whatever with their many tentacles. And then they die, holding on to their unfertilized eggs and I am left with a new metaphor to articulate my deepest fear.

Montgomery’s love for octopuses is contagious but lacks humor. Sorry, but it’s objectively hilarious that people keep getting squirted upon by octopus and we’re just gonna move on from that to talk about your scuba expedition…? More octo squirting, more fun. Finally, I’m sorry about all the times I ate octopus at Mediterranean restaurants. I promise never again.

Anonymous Jumping Upstairs Neighbor

a review of Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

There are only so many hours in the day and no one tells you how much time to spend on introspection. And what counts as introspection? Journaling about desires, surely (which is not something I do anymore, because any desires I once had have been extinguished like a spent Winter Balsam Yankee Candle). What about scrolling through the profiles of insta-baddies and thinking “If aliens came down to earth (likely) they would not even believe me and this 21 year old were the same species?”  Contemplating a shower? Anything that comes before the words “I pondered”?

I am constantly moshing around my own mind, like it’s a Girl Talk concert at Perry’s. When I spend too much time thinking about myself, I start to worry I’m not a Female Protagonist but a  Funny Best Friend or just like, that girl journaling in the some independent coffee shop b-roll. Or worse than anonymity, what if I’m Bizarre Bratty Enemy. I was working out in my top floor apartment, where I am truly ALL OF THE TIME,  doing a sequence that was essentially JV soccer practice on a yoga mat. Between high knees and squat jumps and that inside outside feet thing that they do in Gatorade commercials, I was realized who I really was: Anonymous Jumping Upstairs Neighbor.  

Weirdly this is me doing JV soccer drills in my top floor apartment in a desperate quest for endorphins.

Willis Wu is the protagonist of Interior Chinatown but Generic Asian Man to everyone else, including himself. Everyday events take on a low-budget, cinematic quality because it’s written like a screenplay. I don’t really understand why people on Good Reads use the word “disturbing” like it’s a bad thing… good art makes you uncomfortable, babe (which begs the question, is the meat-themed erotica I wrote in the body of an iMessage good art? Because it definitely makes the reader uncomfortable).

Yu bequeaths us a wonderful gift: a title with multiple meanings. Unlike our Dying for an iPhone? friends he doesn’t need to erect a literary billboard to explain it. To what extent is our understanding of the who we are shaded irreparably by how we’re seen by the outside world? Should I start a lucrative, plagiarism-based business writing English papers for high schoolers? The answers to both questions are not clear cut.

This Is, As Always, Sent With Love From My iPhone

a review of Dying for an iPhone by Jenny Chan, Mark Selden and Pun Ngai

The year is 2134. The climate apocalypse came and went, and now there are like 70 people left and I’m still working in technology product marketing. My new project? Go back in time and explain the iPhone to medieval people. The instructions? Move fast, break things, start-up culture girl boss! My slack message says “Looking forward to getting started!” but my heart says I don’t want to go back to a time where people didn’t shower or eat vegetables year round. It probably smells really bad and I don’t like game meats. I step into a LA Tan tanning bed that has been repurposed into a time machine and I’m in York, England.

I push the town crier off his haystack and grab his bell and I’m like “hear ye, hear ye: in 500 years there will be a $1000 piece of glass you will carry in your pocket. It will bring you much joy, and then, very little joy at all, yet you will still be prodding at its cracked face with sanitized fingertips, imploring it… Please one more image of a Washington DC panda (Mei Xang) frolicking in the freshly fallen snow…” Before I have time to expand upon the value proposition of the iPhone 82XXX, the townspeople burn me at the stake for being a witch which honestly, is their prerogative.

When you’re using 3 or more apple products at a time, you’re in the orchard zone.

The writers of Dying for an iPhone bluntly state “the title has two meanings” because they never learned show vs tell. It’s all horrifying though not really surprising, because of course a big corporation like Apple is prone to malfeasance to increase profit, and it’s annoying that they have cool ads with fun celebrities and good music. I seize up every time I see the word “geopolitical” because it’s a harbinger for something I will not be able to talk about without sounding stupid (filed alongside “tariffs,” “IPO,” “escroe” [sp?]). So I’m not going to explicate the trampling of Chinese labor rights using a stickered Macbook Air, with my iPhone, as it always is, an arm’s length away like a spurned lover. You need to know who makes your dumb products like you need to know who picks your lettuce, makes your clothes, because unless it’s my mom (who grows her own lettuce and makes slightly ill-fitting knitwear) malfeasance is likely.   

This is, as always, sent with love from my iPhone and hope workers of the world unite or whatever.

A Ridiculous Concept Still Worthy of Sociological Study, No?

a review of Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

I walked into Homeslice with my food service targeted resume, wearing a red-and-white striped shirt dress that I thought was chaste but have since cut into a shirt because I realized it barely covered my butt. The bro-ish owner (heretofore referred to as “bro-wner”) told me to come back at 4 for the evening shift. The worst part about the job was when I knocked a glass of red wine on a woman’s white pants, a vignette that’s so comically bad I’m worried it was conjured by my subconscious and never really happened. I was like “omg I’m so sorry” and the woman was like “oh it’s fine! It happens!” as if it were a sun shower or errant bird poop. The best part was the illicit breadsticks the chefs left me underneath the heat lamp, which I crammed into my mouth with the gusto of an underfed shelter puppy. The job was cool; at a party I told this girl I was working there and she said “oh my god that’s like my dream job,” to which I thought “you gotta aim higher girly-girl.”

Jean Kyoung Frazier’s protagonist, Jane, also works in a pizza shop, albeit one that seems less instagrammable with fewer gluten free options. She is pregnant and sad but no one seems to notice the latter, not her mom or her boring but doting white boyfriend, who I can only assume looks like Topher Grace. I have this disease where whenever anyone references a male character, I immediately assume they look like Topher Grace. The diagnosis is dire; everyone’s boyfriend/cousin/hinge match/dentist/uber driver looks like Topher Grace to me. But truly worse things have happened to better people and I must press on.

Me if my mom was less supportive.

 On a pizza delivery, Jane meets this kooky suburban mom type named Jenny, who is absolutely shitting the bed when it comes to parenting. I mean obviously parenting is a 5,000 piece gradient puzzle that you’re doing in the dark of night with ski gloves on, but still. I know this not from being a parent, but from having them near me all the time. On vacation a few years ago, my mom was watching me lose a game of pool to my cousin because I play pool maybe once every 2 and a half years. It was carnage. My cousin was sinking every ball and I was growing more sour and frustrated with every passing minute of this supposed “leisure activity.” Finally I hit one good shot, and my mom was like “that one was good!” and I was like: UGH, MOM! Maybe if you hadn’t been so blindly SUPPORTIVE of me all my life I would be BETTER AT POOL!!!” Which is such a ridiculous concept but I think still worthy of sociological study, no?

According to a brief internet search, middle aged moms find this a dark and unsettling read but to me it’s like… another Tuesday night, baby! Good night to everyone except my mom, who doomed me to be bad at pool by being so supportive.

My Thesis Is It Is January

a review of Writers & Lovers by Lily King

In between googling “what job should I do,” I like to chart out my professional trajectory by googling people with cool jobs and seeing how they got there. Actually I dislike it, but I know it’s good for me, like sitting in extended child’s pose or not texting suitors back in .3 seconds. I’ll come across someone with accolades/accomplishments/bylines to spare and think “that’s nice! Maybe this could be a good goal in 2-5 years.” Then I find out the person is only 24 and suddenly the room feels like a sauna, except there is no cucumber water or eucalyptus steam; only my own sad coffee breath and a stale smelling Nalgene. Enviable-career-trajectory is not my assigned role in this whole karmic enterprise (heretofore referred to as “life”) but I raise my $3 cabernet sauvignon to everyone riding that wave. 

Casey Peabody is a wonderfully loveable female protagonist, saddled by student loans, grief and overdue doctor’s visits with no shortage of drive and self-awareness. She’s a writer who serves annoying clientele at a restaurant near Harvard. One time when I worked at Darwin’s I accidentally showed up to work at 8:00 am high on edibles. I was eating oatmeal in my kitchen when I smelled brownies through the tinfoil on the kitchen table and thought “a little breakfast dessert never hurt anyone.” Then I did that thing that you do when you have roommates, where you cut pieces from the end in equal proportions so to the untrained eye, it doesn’t look like anything is amiss. I was just past Central Square when I thought “this bike ride feels long.” Then I was locking my bike for 10 minutes and staring at my phone screen reflection thinking “do I have allergies? Why are my eyes inflated like tiny bao buns?”

It wasn’t until I j-walked across Mass Ave that I came to the conclusion: I was poisoned, because I was unwittingly an enemy of the state and they had to take me out. Maybe it was because I just read a book about private prisons. I walked in the door and feigned normalcy with a very loud “Hello good morning!!!” As I walked past the wet bar (my dominion), I realized: I am not poisoned for my political views! I am astronomically stoned from brownies made with the THC infused oil my roommate posted on her snap story last night. This guy ordered 4 croissants and a chocolate chip scone and I handed him a bag and said “here, six muffins.”

enemy of the state eats breakfast dessert

Thankfully this is a “me problem,” and Casey Peabody didn’t have to endure a weed-brownie-infused shift serving people with extremely marketable skills and corporate credit cards. My thesis is it is January, and I can’t fathom feeling joy again even though I have everything I need. While I cannot feel joy at the moment, but I can live vicariously through this character who works in the neighborhood I used to live in, and to whom good things happen. Maybe because we both conducted cost/benefit analyses on sandwiches while in line at the Central Square Au Bon Pain, things bode well for me, too. Read this book! It will make you feel good.

Is it because I got a C+ in psychology 101?

a review of The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner is so masc it reeks of axe body spray and will not order a piña colada under any circumstances (even on vacation! At sundown! By the beach! It’s like… come on… live a little). If The Lord of the Flies/A Separate Peace/Catcher in the Rye all convened to play pickle ball and needed a fourth, it would be this book.  

It’s autofiction, a genre that sounds like stories about a Mazda and a Nissan who overcome adversity and fall in love. It’s just autobiography with a name change here, two people combined into one character there and we’ll call it fiction. It’s a genre I contributed to when I was 8 years old and wrote a “book” about a girl who won over the most popular guy in school with her personality despite weird looks and bookish inclinations (Nicknamed by Amy Balmuth… a tight 250 words).

Why did I not like this book? Is it a) because I got a C+ in psychology 101? Is it b) because I’d prefer not to spend my time reading a six page re-cap of a high school debate tournament? To use the language of the psych exams that I did so terribly on: it is c) all of the above.

In my college senior seminar, this guy would never do the readings, sauntering into our 6:30 – 9:00 pm class with PDF print-outs still warm from Case Printer West. Despite my bookish inclinations, I get that reading 200 pages about women of soviet air force is objectively less fun than drinking keystone light in a UV lit basement. But when you choose the keystone option you yield your right to speak for 10 minutes about the soviet air force ladies. It was not the case for Zack* who was the Simone Biles of verbal gymnastics. “Well, the way I see it is… let’s just say you’re a kid… maybe you’re an 8 year old boy… maybe you’re 12…you’re in Afghanistan… maybe you’re in Iraq, or maybe you’re in Kuwait… you’re hiding in your house… an American soldier comes in…,” Zack would say, the preacher all military history hypotheticals and the 8 people in class who actually did all that stupid reading, his congregation. Considering the topic is soviet air force ladies, perhaps at “you’re a 12 year old boy in Afghanistan” you’d think the professor would intervene but no! The professor implicitly declared it a safe space for tomfoolery as Zack monologued about “war in general,” unabated until someone piped up with the “just to build off that last point.”

 And to build off that last point, while The Topeka School is more enjoyable than listening to actual pseudo-intellectual male monologues, it is less enjoyable than reading vegetarian ragu recipes, Yelp reviews of bakeries near me, and national weather service alert for Cook County. 

*Name has been changed because honestly I’m embarrassed I remember this person’s in class performance :/

 I Related to the Endless Quest to Find a Restaurant

a scathing review of The Joke by Milan Kundera

There was a stretch when I was 12 where my favorite book was The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I would tell my parents’ friends, beaming, like the smarmy only child I’m destined to be. I liked TPDG, but I loved TTYL by Lauren Myracle, a book written in IM messages with no discernable plot and mostly white space on the page.

I didn’t read this book to be snobby, I read it because I want to be the kind of person who enjoys Czech literature. That person has a direction in life, doesn’t ruin dinner with boredom popcorn, and knows excel and SEO optimization. But alas. I am glut with soft skills and did not like this book. My eyes glazed over like blueberry munchkins as I crawled towards the 267th page. And now, the central question of this piece: Was this book poorly translated into English or just bad…?  

Czech lolla.

Kundera says it’s a love story, which it is not. I’ve read enough Sarah fucking Dessen to tell you that. However, I don’t know enough about Czech communist rule to parse the satire, so to me it’s a book about a sad boy who if alive today, would listen to Phoebe Bridgers and Radiohead and have a lot of opinions on Big Tech. Mostly, this book is proof that male writers should never write about sex again because it is either creepy, clinical, or both. The best part of this book is when he was looking for somewhere to eat breakfast. “From early morning I’d had my heart set on a good solid breakfast of eggs, bacon, and a shot of alcohol to restore my lost vitality,” is a concept familiar—and vibey—as hell. I related to the endless quest to find a restaurant that fits the moment (ugh, only small plates! Not enough vegetarian options! Too loud! Waitstaff wears checked shirts!).

Ludvik is our very eastern European protagonist, though the narration is tossed around as the story culminates in an event that seems like Czech Lolla. It ends… badly for Ludvik who tries to use sex for revenge as if that hasn’t ended badly for everyone, 100% of the time. But fair reader, waste not your tears on Ludvik, he is a deeply unsympathetic character and our girl Lucie dodged a B staying away from him. 0/5 Cimbaloms and I’m never going to Prague again.

The Pomeranian/Parker House Roll Space

a review of The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

Delight is the cotton candy of emotions and the linchpin of the Disney-Pixar industrial complex. It’s the feeling you get when you see someone on the bus smiling at their phone, or when you drink coffee alongside a fig and crushed walnut danish, or when any baby interacts with any dog. And Ross Gay collected a whole book of them! There are enough comma splices to muddle a middle schooler’s conception of the English language, but he is a poet so it’s no matter.

Bread vibe

It is easier to find gravitas writing about negative emotions. I was watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade even though it’s infinitely subpar Thanksgiving television compared to the Westminster Dog Show. Savannah Guthrie was introducing the next float, talking about the timeless beauty of Coach bags, when a sooty blanket of sadness fell over me. First of all, coach bags are, like, fine but they’re not permanent examples of aesthetic excellence. Second, a month ago Sav was holding Trump’s flat feet over hot coals at a televised town hall and now she’s plugging Coach bags with Hoda Kotb? Come on!! She’s already proven herself! Give the girl a hard-hitting assignment for once! Third, it was such a transparent ploy by Big Coach Bag to get us to buy more shit!!! During a pandemic, of all times! As a highly susceptible member of the most targeted marketing demographic in America (female, 20s), I would love to bathe in the heavenly blue light of a screen and not be beseeched to buy something frivolous.

“This parade is bumming me out,” I declared and changed the channel to the Westminster Dog Show where I was greeted by a Pomeranian who shares a name with my friend Ben. I baked a squirrel’s mattress of buttery parker house rolls and tried to push those pesky Coach bag subliminal ads out of my cobwebbed mind. 

Gay, in The Book of Delights, inhabits the pomeranian/parker house roll space. The book is asimmer with good things: independent coffee shops, “toddling” as a way of movement, and interactions with strangers that make you feel less alone, instead of an awkward speck in our increasingly atomized existence. It is nice to be reminded of the good things, to remember to seek them out even if they’re hidden.

At one point, Gay notices he’s hoarding delights to present them as delights he’s prepared earlier. He stops himself, because part of the exercise, he decides, is trusting that delights will present themselves even on the cloudiest, most Coach bag sponsored days. It’s easy to sink into a scarcity mindset when it comes to life’s purest pleasures. If that random Outdoor Voices influencer on instagram is happy, surely I cannot also be. But what Big Coach bag doesn’t want you to know, is that delight/joy/success/love exists in abundance and there is enough of it to go around, like bread at the Cheesecake Factory. I finished this book the same day I watched Joy and I felt like saying I love you to the three fat squirrels who live outside my apartment. 

Life Is Starchy

a review of Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit

All the writers I love depict their twenties as gritty and amorous, soused off of cheap wine and sweet with kisses on public transit. Missteps morph into successes by the next chapter. Like an am*zon pr*me package, independence appears overnight as a package deal with an apartment or  job or break-up. There is no mention of the silliness or the boredom, or when independence pulls back and you’re in your high school bedroom again, Robert Pattinson’s ashen face looking down at you from a 2009 Vanity Fair cover taped to the wall, his eyes saying what you both were thinking: this isn’t where you’re meant to be, beautiful girl! (he insisted I keep that in…)

I have never kissed on public transit though I did kiss outside a T stop once, and he held my face in his hands like a farmer holds a prized acorn squash. I am not a prized acorn squash and he dumped me 3 weeks later. I look for nonsensical metaphors in grocery stores and waste brain cells trying to decipher the thoughts and feelings of 23 year old men who had none, not about me at least. I wanted to write that sentence past tense but like the price of bulk almonds at whole foods, it wouldn’t be fair. 

Rebecca Solnit’s Recollections of My Nonexistence is smart, obviously, and a dusky portrait of San Francisco and herself in it. But if I wanted to read the writing of a sad woman I would read my own journal (or the the first draft of this essay *pulls at collar*). Female writers reflecting on their youth sometimes take on the sisyphean task of being taken seriously. There are metaphors in the grocery store, clouds in the coffee etc. But so much of life is meaningless and starchy: tapping through face filters on instagram and deciding whether or not to buy raspberries in the grocery store (they were on sale but I didn’t have a Marianos card so ultimately they were...not a good deal. And they were Driscolls which is unethical, I think). The raspberries are not a metaphor for my capricious lifestyle. Should I, like, write about them anyway?

Solnit does a good job at delineating the actually meaningful from the life starch, but even so, there is a heaviness to this one. I read this book but I got lost in all the words and then commas and then more words (sentences, even) and found myself thinking about how I should eat the raspberries and whether I should buy bread and smush them on peanut butter like an old-timey PBJ.

*1940s newsboy voice* New York City babay!!!

a review of City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Ah, the famous City of Girls, where the trash smells like Santal 33 and city hall meetings are just people apologizing for no reason. It’s not a real place but if it were it would be perfect for a long weekend with loved ones or with shallow acquaintances for your cousin’s Bridesmaids themed bachelorette party (get it? It’s meta! She says). 

Gilbert’s City of Girls disappointingly takes place in *1940s newsboy voice* New York City baby! It’s written in How I Met Your Mother format; the narrator, Vivian, intermittently addresses this figure-in-the-mist named Angela (not Merkel, unfortch). Viv is a Vassar dropout who moves to NYC and ~sees life anew~ in a manner that is very familiar for anyone who follows people from their high school on instagram. It’s the 1940s and no one has phones to look at yet, so they’re constantly swilling martinis and singing along to songs called “Let Me Knit Your Booties, Baby.” If you’ve ever wondered what the second world war looks like through the eyes of a privileged nincompoop, Viv’s your gal. She is a well-meaning but frivolous narrator who blunders through life in a way that makes you think: lol why? But that’s the point, after all. Young people, particularly young women, are so often treated like idiots on a stick. It is really easy to be an idiot on a stick when you don’t know what the fuck you are doing. 

(No spoilies because the only person who reads these is Conley and she hasn’t read the book yet.)

Good ol Viv is a khaki wacky who flips her wig and goofs up in a strictly from dixie fashion. She is from Clinton, NY, where I visited Hamilton College and they gave me a free black and white cookie<3, and has never met an Italian American person before. We’ve all been there! 

The route towards adulthood is a slip-and-slide set up on a bald rock face, and that’s if you’re lucky. I know this from experience. Junior year of high school, I was wearing American Apparel at one of my first cool parties (only entered sophomore year and it took me a sec to curate my personal brand) when I saw the guy I liked making out with someone else. Because I was young and insecure and had one light beer, I was like “I’m going to react the most bonkers way possible to these stimuli,” which meant talking everyone’s ear off about the injustice we had collectively witnessed. Unlike Viv, I tilt towards annoying rather than cruel--which is a blessing, I think. Everyone in the vicinity was like: “I don’t like your response to the stimuli and I don’t care about the stimuli” and I alienated everyone close to me (except for Conley who was grounded and did not attend the party) for ~2 weeks because that is the lifespan of an incident in high school.

WomanScientist.jpeg or me finding out the most bonkers way possible to respond to simuli.

The best part about City of Girls is that we get to see Viv grow into a real person, and make more accurate judgements. WWII happens and she is celibate for no reason except there aren’t any dudes, and this experience knocks some sense into her. It’s a long, charming story about a girl who becomes less insufferable over time and loves NYC, baby! It is cringeworthy like all women’s literature is fated to be and has a pink feather on the cover. I bought it in a fit of desperate escapism in May because I knew lifestyle blogger Lee From America loved it so I figured it would be...a light read (sorry if that’s mean). Also because People magazine calls it “Vibrant, sexy and wise,” which is like… I trust them on “sexy,” but who died and made People mag become the arbiter of what’s wise. Anyways, 2.5 pink feather boas for this shipdiddly doodad of a book!!!

Humans Are Paper Table Cloths at Homestyle Italian Restaurants

a review of The Mothers by Brit Bennett

In this house we worship at the altar of bildungsroman!!! Hence, we loved The Mothers by Brit Bennett. It’s set in an alternate universe, one in which going to the University of Michigan is exotic and thrilling. That universe? Southern California. 

The past few months have driven me to loathe making decisions, something I never liked in the first place. It’s not indecisiveness; I wish my life was more like a raffle or advent calendar and less like a choose your own adventure. I find it easier to make peace with reactions to stimuli than my tendency to choose bogus adventures that aren’t even adventures in the first place, but rather “options that people won’t think are bizarre so it will all be fine.” Nadia, the protagonist, does make decisions (and chooses adventures).

The Mothers is set in a Black community in California, anchored by a church with a pastor’s son whose personal brand is “Friday Night Lights re-runs.” There are a few, fantastically architected characters, one of which is this amorphous chorus (ok that’s the name of my a capella group…) known as the mothers. The mothers are women who belong to the church and stage whisper about other people in the room like my grandma does at Thanksgiving. Gossip is a narrative force in The Mothers, but not in a Bravo way. We humans are like paper table cloths at homestyle Italian restaurants, colored and stained by people we meet.

It’s not a rote love story, rather The Mothers is an excavation of the many relationships that shape us. They are good and they are bad. Some people show you how to drink coffee, some buy you blue gatorade while you stumble through a work shift hungover, others tell you that your dead dog is “fine” when he was clearly GQ handsome. But often, it’s the closest relationships that teach us the most. Bennett mines the shared histories of Nadia, Luke and Audrey for gold nuggets of realism that made me be like: “I hope they’re all doing well now.” 

It ends like the season finale of Insecure (no spoilies… iykyk) and it’s impossible not to feel your stomach lurch like you ingested bad ham when you read the ending. Thank you Grace for letting me borrow this book and sorry I’ve had it for a dog’s gestation period.

58 - 68 days in case you were wondering.

Friendship is Big, Like How I Wish The U.S. Government Could Be

a review of Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

When I first learned about the concept of death, I thought “I do not like this.” I’m still not a fan but it consumes me less; I’ve decided to use my bandwidth on more pressing concerns like: whether or not people are mad at me and if that thing I said once about vacation houses was weird. But when I was 10 I was obsessed with the Ramones, pigs, the handwriting from the opening credits of Legally Blonde and the prospect of my own death. I am nothing if not risk-averse, so I prepared for the inevitable premature death by writing a will in grey felt pen.

The will is an unfinished 16 bullet point list in a half-filled journal, on one side of the page I correctly solve 50 minus 32 and show my work. I bequeath my all my books to my mom, my sports equipment to my dad, and crafts, wristbands, board games, CDs, DVDs, to my elementary school friends and my family. I love the concept of my grieving grandma grappling with the news of my premature death but feeling consoled by her newly inherited glass collection (that she had given me in the first place). For item number #9, I ask that my stationary go to Lauren Volpert, a girl I met on vacation once. I think it must have been that we were penpals but I don’t recall exchanging letters, only meeting in a hotel once and saying “we should be penpals.” To be 8 years old and receive a box of pig notecards, erasers that look like hamburgers, and notepads that tell you to “follow your dreams…” from a girl you met once in a hotel…

For an official legal document, it’s a little hard to find. It’s sandwiched between journal entries in which I lament not getting as many house points as my best friend (sour jealous woman!!!) and hope that the same friend will be allowed to come over for dinner. Friendship, per my journal, is a wracked enterprise and everyone’s names are spelled wrong. Sure, there are best friends who you bequeath all your clothes to, but they’re really no different from your cousin or a girl you met once in a hotel. You might share “Best Friend” necklaces you bought at Disney World with one person, but everyone is still invited to your birthday party.

This is the cliff’s notes version.

But friendship evolves. There are countless odes to girlhood friendship and the lifeline it provides, but so little for its adulthood iteration. Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman answers the call with a bedtime story of their own friendship—one that is “big” like how I wish the U.S. government could be. It’s engaging but stops short of the guts-on-display personal essay. There’s so much it doesn’t divulge, which is fine but makes the whole book feel like an appetizer. They write with a motive: to tell the world (people who follow the wing on instagram) about their friendship and its trials, tribulations and triumphs. It's a bunch of stories about two people on FaceTime. Every time I started reading this book, I felt like: why don't I just FaceTime one of my friends right now instead of reading this book.

I do care deeply about friendship and think it hasn’t received its just adoration in the public’s consciousness. I admire Big Friendship as an attempt to do this (but think Broad City/Fleabag did it better). I tried to write this 5 separate times with different stories about my best friends: when Vedrana and I went to sleep at 8 pm at a sleepover, when I woke myself up laughing because Jess was in my dream, when I met Anthea sophomore year and felt so nervous in the lounge full of boys but thought “Ok it’ll be fine because this girl is here.” Every story fell flat, sinking like a pinpricked air-mattress. I think we’re all so addicted to love stories that we try and shoehorn friendships into the same narrative to imbue them with the same gravitas. Sometimes this works—if you feel like wrecking yourself read Jared Misner’s “My Best Friend Is Gone and Nothing Feels Right.”

Friendships done right are so perfect and funny that they defy narrative! It’s hard work to be so soft. Big props to Aminatou and Ann for trying.

I Will Milk the Cows and Move On Thusly

a review of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

As if I realized I forgot my mask halfway to the grocery store, I’m baaaaack! First off, honorable mention to Chicago Public Library for acting with unforeseen compassion and extending this book’s return date twice. Every time I tried to finish this book, I put it down to read Nate Cohn’s analysis on the new round of sunbelt state polling. The woman on the book’s front cover eyed me as if to say “You have no control over this situation, you beautiful little fool.” I know she is right but still, I search “early voting” just to see if Ohio Democrats are energized. Suddenly it’s 4:45 pm and another day has slipped from my grasp like a well-greased hog. Life is a precious flower and I am acid rain! 

Anna Frith is a sturdy protagonist. Awful things happen to her and she’s just like: “My two sons died :( But it is has been an hour since so I will milk the cows and move on thusly.” Meanwhile, I read a sad article and I’m like: something bad happened to someone once, so for the rest of the week I can only sleep.” That’s probably why Anna Frith has sheep and I don’t. Anna lives in a croft (unclear what that means, can only picture a mound of dirt with a door) in a village stricken by the plague. Everyone’s dying and no one knows why, so they decide to lock down the village.

Tensions run high because everyone’s sick of dying and not having enough sex. The townspeople kill the old woman with useful herbs because society hates women, useful herbs, and old people in that order. The only thing holding the folks back from utter chaos is the village Rector, Michael Mompellion, who’s name sounds like an $85,000 watch. He seems like a nice guy but ultimately, like so many nice guys before him, he is a gaslighter of epic proportions. After they bone, Anna learns he never had sex with his wife (now dead from fatal stabbing… long story) because he condemned her lust and ladled out a life of celibacy as her atonement. 

In desperate times, we learn about skills we never knew we had. For example, I can spend 6 hours on my phone and make chocolate babka. Anna Frith learns if she can midwife a sheep, she can midwife a human, which is honestly my vibe in every job interview I’ve ever had. This book confirms the idea that “not dying” should be on everyone’s resume because it is really quite a feat.

Much like my new journal, Year of Wonders a plague story rife with witchcraft, blighted romance, and drunkards. I avoid historical fiction because I think it’s corny, but the medievals are my weak spot because I admire their pragmatism and think it’s funny that everyone smelled terrible and made peace with it. I’ve been to more mock medieval villages than I’d like to admit; I’ve done my research. Every medieval person deserves a medal for living through a miserable time when the most popular song was bald monks humming. 

That Which We Call a Guido Gorilla Juicehead / By Any Other Name Would Look as Tan.

a review of A Shore Thing by Snooki (of all people)

The past three summers have made me question the common assumption that summer = joy. They have not been good times for me. I have felt uncertain of the future and itchy in the present. Sometimes literally itchy. In 2018 I thought I had bed bugs for the second time in my life, waking up every night, face illuminated by Wikihow, flipping my mattress and running my library card along the seams looking for bugs. There were no bugs. But I always felt itchy and my apartment had no central air and I didn’t have a job and didn’t want to spend money but I couldn’t sit on the bed and my apartment had no living room. This year there are no bugs, not even a thought of bugs, but there is the same uncertainty that makes me feel stuck, joyless, like I’m sinking into the quicksand of life because I make the wrong decisions. Haha I am gloomy!!! Maybe if I were tan I would be less gloomy.

A Shore Thing written by the mononymous Snooki of “We’re going to Jersey Shore, Bitch!” fame (and an assumed ghost-writer) reads like a Sarah Dessen book blasted with fake tan, drenched in tequila, and inexplicably rhinestoned. Everything that happens you’re like “ok, why” until you flip through your cultural Rolodex to Jersey Shore season 1 and then you’re like “nevermind, checks out. WAa!” 

Gia and Bella are italianate cousins from Brooklyn spending a summer at the Jersey Shore. They have a Honda and a landlord named Stanley Crumbi which is a hilariously made-up name, second only to the hotel manager named Al Fresco. Hijinks ensue as they look for love aka gorilla juiceheads, reignite an old rivalry with high school enemies, capture the attention of a fireman and gym owner respectively, reinvigorate a tanning business and decide whether or not to go to NYU. 

Gia gets a job at a tanning salon under the management of Maria, who I can only imagine as Magda from There’s Something About Mary. If we do the math, Gia must work .5 hours/week because most of her time is spent on hijinks. Like when she walks the beach to watch the gorilla juiceheads work out and comes across a beached shark at the mercy of annoying teens. Gia steps in to protect the shark, warning it “Don’t eat me, Bitch!” The whole thing is captured on flip phone video and becomes a viral sensation.

Magda (of all people).

Incidents of eco-justice and economic analysis aside, gorilla juiceheads drive this story. That which we call a guido gorilla juicehead / By any other name would look as tan. Different strokes for different folks, but these dudes do not seem appealing to me at all? Still, A Shore Thing adds to the consensus that we must stay away from rich white preppy dudes with BMW’s at all costs because they are incapable of basic human empathy. Bella happens upon “Bender” who at first seems like a “nice kid,” but calls Gia a “fucktard” and is actually pursuing Bella as part of a game with his friend Ed where they pick one random girl to try and bone, and if they fail it’s the other one’s turn, etc. Worry not, fair reader, these two twots get their just desserts by the end of the book when they are stripped naked and shot! With paintball guns. That’s shore justice.

If there’s one thing I crave amidst covid-induced solitude and living-at-home induced immaturity, it is a big ol house filled with friends, friends of friends, and hot dudes with late night talk show host personalities. Until then, I will be watching Jersey Shore season 1, using my cheeto-dusted fingertips to respectfully skip intro :(

Keep Tabs on your Friends Don’t Keep Tabs For Your Friends!!!

a review of Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

I find that life takes on a stagnant pond-like quality: scummy on the surface, nothing exciting happening except for some garbage, perhaps those are tadpoles but maybe someone dumped spoilt bubble tea in the pond instead. Hence the allure of the rapid downward spiral, where everything tanks and the shitty problems in different corners of your life compound to make something much worse.

Queenie’s spiral begins with her slow peel of a breakup with her (I’m assuming pallid) white boyfriend, Tom. She has to move out of their shared apartment and moves into a housing situation with grimy craigslist roommates. A downward spiral that begins with a breakup is stupid. Everything interesting about this book has nothing to do with PWB (pallid white boyfriend) yet Carty-Williams uses flashbacks to rehash his suckiness and I’m not sure what else. How ill-suited they are together? Queenie and Tom met in a park while she was reading, which is what I have been trying to do all of Quarantine but now I’m like… I’ll pass if it leads to PWB. If I am ever that obsessed about a guy who sucks, I’ll eat my hat, she says, her mouth full of hat. 

There are a lot of brave and cool things about Queenie, one of which is not when she makes a group chat with random friends from different parts of her life and uses it exclusively to complain about her problems. And I’m saying this as a long time advocate of complaining. When you describe your problems to trusted confidantes, they can help you put them in context and serve as a check and balance on your most self-sabo instincts. Which is just… not what happens in this book. Queenie huddles friends from different areas of her life (vibey) into a groupchat called the Corgis, named after the fluffy-butted dogs that are dutiful followers of the queen (not vibey). One of her friends bankrolls her in lean times (good) and then, during a friend divorce, SAYS SHE WILL SEND QUEENIE A TAB SHE CAN PAY (very bad!!!!). Keep tabs on your friends don’t keep tabs for your friends.

Anyhoo, Queenie’s demise was not for me. The Queenie blurb self-promotes as “Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Americanah,” which begs the question… should the two have ever met in the first place? No! The interesting threads of this book were buried in a banal quilt of a breakup story. 

The Self Needs Help

a review of Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

When I was 10 (actually, not sure what age… substitute whichever you think would be most normal), I wrote this weird and wide-ranging list of New Years’ resolutions that I called “T.N.I.A.” I have no idea what it stands for. The New Inspiring Amy? This is Not Interesting or Advised? Tasks No-one Is Advertising? Whatever. It’s a typed, double spaced bullet point list in 11-point Arial font that implores younger me to “stop pulling peoples hair” and “be especailly [sic] friendly to friends” and “improve work by millions.”

I have written reams of these lists over time--in journals, on scrap paper, on report cards, and on post-it notes stuck to my bedframe. I have stopped pulling people’s hair, and I am especially friendly to friends; I go out of my way to make people feel good, special, and not taken for granted. I strove for effortlessness for 25 long years; and felt the entire catalog of negative emotions when it did not manifest. I quit instruments rather than running scales, abandoned math in 4th grade, proceeded with the bare minimum in sports because I could never be as good as Nicole Wanty. I never resigned myself to mediocrity, instead keeping my nose to the ground for quick tips on how to skyrocket towards general excellence, fame, and a widely beloved reputation. I. LOOKED. EVERYWHERE.

I’m not alone, dear reader. The self needs help! Enter: advice columns and Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. Her column Dear Sugar ran on the rumpus.net, an online publication that may have published me but is now defunct so it is a moot point. These columns are perfect in their specificity and universality. Our problems are all hand-molded, so uniquely us, but so mundane. They’re urgent but not newsworthy. They capture the breadth of human experience, framing out relationship fissures and trolley-problem decision making. And they all show that no matter how much we wish for a “YOU ARE HERE” sign, it will never appear. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: we are all groping around in the dark like a freshman boy in the jug [a grimy underage college bar].

I know Dear Sugar, because when I was making a life decision that would ultimately create a relationship fissure, I scoured her columns for an identical situation. I felt like when you make a big decision, you do all the research you possibly can beforehand. I read Modern Love columns back to 2009 and asked friends for advice. There was nary a barroom acquaintance I didn’t tell: Yeah, I think I might tell my best friend that I have feelings for him. The constant secret sharing was short-sighted and ill-fated and all the negative multi-hyphenates you can conjure. People didn’t f*cking care!!!! It was a juicy story for a moment until I brought it up for the twelfth time over Allagash Whites.

Coming to a middle seat near you.

No matter how many WikiHow articles I read (with helpful graphics to boot), there were no answers. Ditto Dear Sugar. I think that sometimes it just feels good to have someone noodling through the personal dilemma along with you. Sugar doesn’t have skin in the game, but she thinks as if she does. It feels like when you have Sugar in your corner of the ring you can’t lose. Good advice makes you like even if you bungle the situation it’s still a life experience filed under “personal growth.”

Enough about moi. Long live advice columns and the big hearts and minds who run them. I’m a big fan of The Cut’s Ask Polly. And I give fantastic advice, particularly if you have an issue with pulling people’s hair (stop).

Yejide Knows For Certain That Polygamy Isn’t for Her; The Jalapeño Poppers are Enough.

a review of Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo

I may look like a nice girl, but I’m actually a sour green monster teeming with envy! Not all the time, but often enough that it makes me uncomfortable. Keep your greed, lust, sloth, pride, wrath and gluttony (kind of) and let me drink bubbling green slime with Envy at a table set for two. Jealousy and Envy are not the same thing; envy is when you want someone’s strawberry buttermilk donut, jealousy is when you want someone’s strawberry buttermilk donut so badly that you toss it into the dirt like a caloric frisbee so that they cannot enjoy. Both are bad, and can manifest in equally destructive ways. Bad feelings are beautiful in their diversity. 

I don’t think I would do well in a polygamous marriage situation. I should probably start with one relationship and then add from there, like a family of four ordering appetizers at Applebees. I don’t know for certain. Yejide, a protagonist in Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo, knows for certain that polygamy isn’t for her; the jalapeño poppers will be quite enough. Yejide’s husband, Akin, isn’t into polygamy either, but in the name of peacekeeping and Akin’s mother the plan moves forward. But familial and cultural forces that prioritize mothers-in-law, progeny, and patriarchy mean that her desires are sidelined. Enter Funmi, wife #2.

Puppetry szn

Jealousy is a fantastic puppet master and I am a willing marionette. So is Yejide, I think. She’s gripped by jealousy and beholden to her past, having grown up without her own biological mother. Yejide and Akin have trouble conceiving--enter Funmi, Akin’s second wife. The book is really sad in a way that’s like… I actually can’t think about how sad this is because the sadness will take over so it’s in my best interest to withhold empathy for a mome and treat this like a story in a book (which it is).

Jealousy of a strawberry buttermilk donut is bad enough; jealousy in relationships is devastating. I’ve felt jealous at the pregame before, watching attention that I ascertain to be MINE drift and land towards someone else. The whole night takes a scripted, daytime soap bent to it: 1. I ramble insecurities to a friend, 2. brainstorm absurd hypotheticals, 3. try to insert myself in a way that is neither charming nor effective, repeat steps 1-3 until I am 4. Weeping uncontrollably in the uber home and 5. Tipping said uber accordingly for emotional damages. 

Yejide suffers a rapid descent towards powerlessness. She believes she is pregnant even though she is not (ok relatable AF am. I. RIGHT. ladies????). Her family takes shape, then disintegrates. Like the bar in The Sims indicating how much we have to pee, every person has a bar above their heads indicating how much devastation they can take. When the bar becomes orange, things start breaking down. Yejide takes a pummeling in Stay With Me, but so does Akin, Dotun, and safe, fair elections (oof). 

Adebayo’s writing is fantastic, her storytelling gasp-worthy, and ultimately she is only 29 and I am envious of her sense of direction and the brilliant theory and practice of her career. There! Brought things full circle. Now gimme donut.

A Sharp Right Turn like a Reckless Uber Driver

a review of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Like many other people on the internet, I read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. It’s a book that seems to be everywhere these days, like industrial-grade hand sanitizer. Unlike industrial-grade hand sanitizer, it’s crafted with care and does not make your hands smell like a vodka soda. Bennett has created a story that dances between sur- and hyper-real worlds where coincidence is natural.

 The story is about a pair of twins, which exist via coincidence. I am not a twin, but I did have three sets of twins in my kindergarten class of 15 people (weird). Bennett has spun personal histories that speak to racism, redlining, colorism, the queasy feeling you get when your relationship with a family member spoils over time and then all at once like forgotten milk. These stories intersect like a hand-me-down patchwork quilt, more than the sum of its parts.

After growing up in a fictional town of light-skinned Black people, Stella and Desiree move to New Orleans and Stella becomes white--more specifically, the human embodiment of Lilly Pullitzer matching separates. Stella performs and eventually becomes a white woman who seems to have 911 perpetually keyed in to her phone, unafraid to weaponize whiteness and a failed experiment in basic human decency. She blows a gasket (?) at a neighborhood association meeting when a Black family tries to buy a home in her L.A. neighborhood, partially because she fears they will recognize her and her Blackness that she has spent years shedding.

This print…. so garish… flatters few and far between…

Stella’s daughter is named Kennedy *collective wince*, and never grows out of the childhood stage where a kid says “wanna watch me perform my show?” and proceeds to dance like microwave popcorn and sing atonal Jojo Siwa. No one ever tells Kennedy “girlie your show sucks” so she grows up and becomes an actor and bungles through life violently ignorant. Stella’s daughter is split-screened with Desiree’s daughter, Jude (cool name), who grows up the only dark-skinned girl in Mallard, treated unfairly at every turn with no means to escape until college. She makes it, though, and while challenges don’t recede she masterfully builds a meaningful life for herself and those around her. 

This book is like… really good. It bubbles over with thoughtful detail. When you think it’s headed in one direction it takes a sharp right turn like a reckless uber driver. Read it before or after another extraordinary book, The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. Ultimately, you don’t have to spend 45 minutes looking at people to be jealous of on instagram when these perfect books exist!

Formerly Friendly Midwesterners are Stabbing People

a review of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

“What is to be said other than… coronavirus vibe on our vibes,” I journaled on March 11th. More prescient words have never been written. Now, as we grind our teeth through month 5 of glöb pandem, is a good time to ask ourselves how things could be worse.

I don’t seek out dystopian fiction because my brain can dispense potential horrors for free, so it’s like why spend $11.99. Station Eleven is a story involving a pandemic worse than ours, because there was no “let us everyone bake sourdough” or kitchen-counter scallions phase. People succumb to the virus in 3 hours, like a slow-release edible. I couldn’t help but wonder: what if everyone wore a mask? 

The story centers on this traveling troupe that performs Shakespeare and classical music because it seems in a post-pandemic world “the arts” are boring again. Would love to rewrite this about a group of improvisers and soundcloud rappers. I don’t know why the post-pandemic world has to be so glum! 

As in Severance, the midwest is the post-pandemic place to be. Fresh water, no hills, malls, etc. But as with most aspects of the post-pandemic world, the vibe is off. Formerly friendly midwesterners are stabbing people and joining cults and generally appealing to humanity’s basest instincts. Station Eleven is also missing the pandemic cohort who vacation in the Hamptons and ignore how crises lay bare society’s inequalities. You KNOW that while Jeevan was reckoning with the death of his wheelchair-bound brother, there was a crew of 20-somethings drinking scorpion bowls at Montauk End of the World.

This book tells lots of lofty truths about humanity: we are all interconnected, if you read the bible without a critical eye you might start a cult, material objects are simultaneously meaningless and extremely important. It was missing a sappy ol’ love story, and served a weird platonic friendship in its place instead which is like…. ok that’s nice, but I feel like more people would be boning... Romance lacuna aside, St. John Mandel’s writing creates a swift current for the plot, and you could read this book in 3 hours if an all-consuming virus required it.

Ghosts are too pedestrian for Armfield

a review of Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Salt & Slow is a book of spooky stories for girls. It’s perfect for anyone self-described as “witchy” or “the ghostess with the mostess.” Julia Armfield’s work has been described as “magical realism.” She sits at the proverbial lunch table with Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and other Stories) and Kristen Roupenian (“Cat Person,” You Know You Want This). Armfield’s work asks the question: “What if life were more scary?” to which I say “no thank you mood.” 

Fantasy has no appeal for me, and that’s why I’ve only kind of read one Harry Potter book. I don’t want to be cursed, enchanted, bewitched etc. I just want normal-style good things to happen to me and literally everyone else (except for M*tch McC*nnell). 

Two paths diverged in a wood, and I--took the path less spooky. Nonetheless, the supernatural is terrible at respecting boundaries. In March PC (pre-covid), I was home alone. It was not sexy or cheeky but rather quite lame that I at 24-years old am afraid of empty rooms. I came home on Friday, unlocked the door, put down a case of key lime la croix (most embarrassing of all), and saw the fireplace was on. “Uh… ok,” I said aloud, turning off the fireplace. “I just came home and the fireplace was on,” I said to my absentee parents. 

“Did you turn it on,” asked my Dad.

“Obviously not,” I said.

Summer 2K20 I’m on some minion shit.

“Maybe you sat on the remote,” he said. “TRUST WOMEN!” sang a Hercules-style Greek chorus.

No one had been in the house. Who turned on the fireplace, you ask? A hygge-ass ghost.

I like that multiple worlds exist simultaneously within Salt Slow. In one story, masses of people can no longer sleep and lug around a “sleep” with them at all times, a mischievous being of indeterminate corporeality that I think looks like a minion.* Ghosts are too pedestrian for Armfield. 

Here’s to Spooky Women (and Hygge Ghosts)--may we know them, may we be them, may we raise them (?).

*Has there been a study on the morality of minions? Note to self.