what I read last week
writers & lovers, the silence of the girls, bunny, hot milk
It was a big week of literary fiction for me — set in Spain, (Ancient) Greece, and New England. (The cover photo is a Hot Milk reference.)
Writers & Lovers by Lily King
After reading (and loving) Euphoria last week (see my review here), I decided to try another book by Lily King — I also loved this one.
Writers & Lovers is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late 1990s. As the title suggests, it’s a novel about writing and love. The narrator is Casey, a 31-year-old aspiring writer who has been working on her first novel for six years. In another book, her emotional baggage may seem almost cliché. She’s grieving the sudden death of her mother. Her boyfriend breaks up with her, and she starts dating two men — a famous widowed writer (with two kids) and one of his literary workshop students (who is her age and whose kisses “melt your bones followed by ten days of silence followed by a fucking pat on the arm at the T stop.”). She’s in a mountain of debt and works as a waitress in a Harvard Square restaurant. But in Writers & Lovers, King’s elevated prose makes her struggles feel monumental.
Rating: 4.3/5
Genres: Literary Fiction - Messy Women
Movie/TV pairings: Everything I Know About Love; Normal People; Fleabag
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Greek retellings have been incredibly popular thanks to Pat Barker and Madeline Miller (Circe and Song of Achilles). While I was very into Greek mythology when I was younger (and I love The Iliad and The Odyssey), The Silence of the Girls was my first foray into retellings. Now I’m hooked.
Barker recounts the events of The Iliad through the clear eyes of Briseis. Briseis was queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms until Achilles sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Achilles takes Briseis as his concubine, and Agamemnon later demands Briseis for himself after being forced to give up his concubine, Chryseis. Their fight over Briseis culminates in Achilles’s protracted withdrawal from battle.
This is a feminist retelling, but men are still at its center. Barker twice quotes the Trojan King Priam’s haunting words (directly from The Iliad) to Achilles: “I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.” But in Barker’s retelling, we also get Briseis’s thoughts: She weighs this encounter between these two great men against the silent horrors endured by countless women in war: “I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers.”
I devoured this book in just a few days, but I had some frustrations with it. The male characters felt flat, and Barker’s writing inexplicably switched from academic to colloquial language. But overall, I loved it. It was well-written and binge-able. (But I want to point out for Greek retelling fans that, unlike Madeline Miller’s works, there is no love story.)
Rating: 3.9/5
Genres: Fiction (Greek Retelling)
Movie/TV Pairings: Obviously, Troy with Brad Pitt (Why aren’t there more Greek retelling movies?!)
Audio: This would work as an audiobook (good British narrator 10 hr 44 min).
Bunny by Mona Awad
Bunny has been on my TBR list for a while (especially after I read this random Elle article where Margaret Atwood recommended “Mona Awad’s hilarious and creepy novel Bunny.”). Bunny takes place in New England on the fictional Warren University campus (which resembles Brown). Samantha, a self-described outsider, befriends a clique of rich women while in a creative writing MFA program. The women call each other “Bunny.” The Bunnies are sickly sweet. As Awad writes:
How fiercely they gripped each other’s pink-and-white bodies, forming a hot little circle of such rib-crushing love and understanding it took my breath away. And then the nuzzling of ski-jump noses, peach fuzzy cheeks. Temples pressed against temples in a way that made me think of the labial rubbing of the bonobo or the telepathy of beautiful, murderous children in horror films. All eight of their eyes shut tight as if this collective asphyxiation were a kind of religious bliss. All four of their glossy mouths making squealing sounds of monstrous love that hurt my face. I love you, Bunny.
The Bunnies invite Samantha to their “smut salons.” The boundaries between fact and fiction blur as the novel progresses — Bunny gets increasingly weird, dark, and twisted. This book is fun (but not perfect!). It’s definitely a black licorice book (aka not for everyone).
Rating: 3.7/5
Genres: Messy Women (Dark Satire/Horror); Black Licorice
Movie/TV pairings: The Heathers; Carrie
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
This week, I also finished Hot Milk, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016. Hot Milk is set in Almería, a sun-bleached coastal Spanish fishing village on the Mediterranean, and Athens, Greece, shortly after the 2008 financial crash. It’s a slim novel (218 pages) focusing on a codependent mother and daughter from England. The mother suffers from a mysterious (possibly psychosomatic) paralysis and is seeking alternative treatments at a clinic in Almería from an eccentric doctor.
Sofia, the daughter (and narrator), suffers from her own psychological issues. She abandoned her anthropology PhD program (the subject of her thesis was memory) and has been most recently working as a waitress. Sofia swims in the clear waters of the Mediterranean, where she is stung by medusas (jellyfish) and becomes obsessed with Ingrid, a German seamstress. She struggles with her identity, her duty to her ailing mother, and her complex relationship with her estranged father. More than once, Sofia says, “My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep.” She is lost — “I am living a vague, temporary life in the equivalent of a shed on the fringe of the village.”
I loved this book — Levy’s descriptions of Almería are gorgeous, and she vividly portrays Sofia’s struggles and inner life. It reminded me of Virginia Woolf.
Rating: 5/5
Genres: Literary Fiction; Messy Women
Movie/TV pairings: The Lost Daughter
Articles I couldn’t stop thinking about: This New Yorker article on prosopagnosia (face blindness) fascinated me.
Also, an Oklahoma couple spent two days floating lost in the Gulf of Mexico. A current swept them away from their downline. Remarkably, the Coast Guard rescued them. Their first stop was Kenny & Ziggy’s Deli in Houston for a pastrami sandwich.
Megan Agnew, the author of The Times article on Ballerina Farm (which I wrote about last week), published a follow-up article.
What I’m cooking: I’ve been cooking from Gregory Gourdet’s Everyone’s Table this week. His cauliflower puttanesca recipe is incredible.