what I read last week
the most, shred sisters, exhibit
Good morning! I have been pretty busy traveling and working this past week, so I read three relatively short literary fiction books that were published this year. Some of these worked for me, and some really did not. Let’s get into it.
What I read:
The Most by Jessica Anthony
The Most is set in Newark, Delaware, over eight hours on an unseasonably warm November day in 1957 (November 3, the same day Sputnik 2, carrying the doomed Soviet dog, launched into space). The novel opens with Kathleen Lovelace Beckett telling her husband, Virgil, to take their two sons to church without her since she is “feeling poorly.” Kathleen puts on an old red swimsuit and gets in the swimming pool at their bleak apartment complex in Delaware. When her husband returns home, she refuses to get out.
Through the recollections of Kathleen and Virgil, we learn that Kathleen is a former college tennis champion who met Virgil at the University of Delaware. She chose to marry him (the “safer” choice) instead of pursuing a career in professional tennis. But nine years later, their marriage is on the brink. Virgil is an indolent insurance salesman. The family is struggling financially — six months earlier, they had to sell their home in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and move into a tiny apartment in Newark.
Bombs, tennis, and bridges are key motifs in this novel and frequently emerge in the character’s memories. Virgil recalls seeing a man jump off a bridge in his childhood. Kathleen recounts the stories told by her old Czech tennis coach, Viliam “Billy” Blasko, of his hometown being bombed in World War I and World War II. Is a bridge a path or a trap? Billy also teaches her a tennis move called “The Most.” He tells her that in Czech, the word most means bridge. The move consists of forcing your opponent to the net through a consistent volley and then surprising them with a “bomb.” Kathleen’s pool stunt is a similar mousetrap — she’s blowing things up.
The Most has received rave reviews and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Barnes and Noble has also been pushing it as one of the best books of the year. Despite this marketing, this book is not for everyone. It is a quiet, nuanced domestic novel about marital strife, tradeoffs, and middle-class disappointment. I enjoyed The Most, but it did not meet the high expectations set by the reviews and awards praise. I expected tighter prose or something more thematically complex, like Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home or Hot Milk. While I would suggest other books over this one, I still recommend The Most to someone who likes this type of domestic literary fiction (or to someone trying to complete their 2024 reading goal).
Rating: 1.7/5
Genre: Historical Fiction (Messy Women; Domestic Novel)
Notable prizes/book clubs/lists: National Book Award Longlist (2024)
Page count: 131 pages
Audio: 3 hours 37 minutes
Movie/TV pairings: Mad Men; Revolutionary Road
Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner
Shred Sisters focuses on the relationship between two very different sisters, Amy and Olivia (“Ollie”) Shred, from the 1970s through the 1990s. It is set in Connecticut, New York, and Los Angeles.
Amy (our primary narrator) is an assiduous student, a rule-follower, and introverted. “Movies” is one of her favorite games — she drops garbage on the floor and sweeps it up.
Ollie is popular, beautiful, and wild. She runs away from home periodically and steals things. She also struggles with mental illness and is eventually sent to a psychiatric hospital during her teenage years (which the family calls “The Place”).
The novel opens with the two sisters (Amy is 10 and Ollie is 14) living with their parents in New Haven, Connecticut. A hyperactive Ollie jumps on a couch and accidentally shatters a glass window, resulting in a trip to the emergency room. This incident is the first of many Ollie-triggered crises in the novel. The Shreds struggle with Ollie’s constant disappearances and the resulting chaos: “With every disappearance, my parents recalibrated the idea of normal as it shifted beneath us.”
I chose to read this book because Blue Sisters had me craving another book about complex families and sibling dynamics. Shred Sisters is a smart novel filled with sharp, taut prose — Betsy Lerner is a book editor who worked on Patti Smith’s Just Kids. However, the real strength of this book is how real the characters feel. Anyone with siblings can relate to the early fraught sibling dynamics. I also recognize parts of Ollie and Amy in people I know. In one instance, Amy discusses her parents’ divorce with a therapist:
She said it was not uncommon for parents to wait until their children went to college before splitting up, believing they had stayed together “for the sake of the children.” Instead, many newly arrived freshmen were confused and destabilized by their parents’ split. “I see it all the time. The rug pulled out from under them.”
Shred Sisters shows how an entire family can be unbalanced when one member is unstable, but it also portrays deep familial love: “No one will love you or hurt you more than a sister.”
The only thing I did not love about Shred Sisters is that it is a little depressing. To be fair, this book is about family dysfunction, so that is to be expected, but I wanted it to be more uplifting, like The Wedding People and Margo’s Got Money Troubles, both of which I read last week. Nevertheless, Shred Sisters impressed me, and I highly recommend it!
Rating: 4/5
Genre: Historical Fiction (Messy Women; Bildungsroman)
Page count: 272 pages
Audio: 7 hours 31 minutes
Movie/TV pairings: In Her Shoes; Rachel Getting Married
Exhibit by R.O. Kwon
Exhibit follows two storylines. Half of the book is set in San Francisco and traces a love affair between two women — Jin Han, a photographer, and Lidija Jung, an injured professional ballerina. The two meet at a party that Jin attends with her husband, Phillip, a half-Argentinian film producer. Phillip and Jin attended Edwards University (the fictional college in R.O. Kwon’s debut novel, The Incendiaries). When Jin meets Lidjia, Jin is struggling to find inspiration as an artist and has broken with her religion. Her marriage is also in turmoil after her husband has suddenly decided he wants children.
The other half of Exhibit is a narrative of Jin’s family curse. These chapters are titled “The Kisaeng’s Story, as Told to Jin Han.” Jin’s mother first recounts the traditional version of the curse. A kisaeng (a Korean courtesan) and one of Jin’s ancestors, a firstborn son, fall in love. However, the differences in their social ranks doom their relationship, and they hang themselves from a pine tree. The “kisaeng’s spirit, abiding, hostile to all Hans,” curses the Han descendants and destroys their relationships. The kisaeng herself then retells the story — she was actually in love with another kisaeng, not the Han son. This curse haunts Jin throughout Exhibit. She and Lidjia begin a torrid affair that becomes a BDSM relationship.
I bought Exhibit randomly at a bookstore after skimming a quick list in The Guardian about “Five of the best novels about art” and seeing that R.O. Kwon, the author of The Incendiaries, wrote it. Unfortunately, I struggled to get into this book and really only finished it because it is just over 200 pages.
I liked some of the thematic ideas in Exhibit — I thought the interplay of religion, art, and sex was interesting. I also liked the idea of the Korean ghost haunting Jin, but these short kisaeng chapters were ultimately distracting. I feel mixed about Kwon’s stylistic and poetic writing style. She pushes the outer limits of language in Exhibit (nude swimmers are described as “blue nereids, plume-tailed”), but her word choice can feel obscure (she refers to a trash can as a “shied”). I might be missing something here, but I would not recommend Exhibit to anyone I like.
Rating: 2/5
Genre: Literary Fiction (Messy Women)
Page count: 224 pages
Articles I cannot stop thinking about:
“If Icarus wore lingerie” from Books and Bits by Pandora Sykes
The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is back for the first time since 2018. I enjoyed reading Pandora Sykes’s take on the show and am excited to check out the new book on Victoria’s Secret.
“After Marie Kondo: The return of Japan’s joyful clutter” by Matt Alt in The Guardian
Clutter is back!
“The Jefferson Bottles” by Patrick Radden Keefe in The New Yorker
This article is from 2007, but I reread it this week because my husband is currently reading Patrick Raden Keefe’s book, Rogues, which includes this piece. Radden Keefe tells an incredible story of wine fraud. The wine collector in question claimed to have multiple bottles of Thomas Jefferson’s 1787 Lafitte (now spelled “Lafite”).
What I cooked:
A Molly Baz meal
Orzo al limone: the perfect pantry meal.
Cold and crunchy green beans with a garlicky pistachio vinaigrette: one of my favorite side dishes for a dinner party since this dish is best served cold.
Chicken thighs marinated in Aleppo pepper, smoked paprika, and garlic: I was inspired by this Molly Baz recipe. I marinated 2 pounds of chicken thighs in 1 tbsp Aleppo pepper, 2 garlic cloves, 2 tsp of salt, 2 tsp of smoked paprika, and a glug of olive oil. Then I just grilled them!