WILD GAME by Adrienne Brodeur

Words fail me on this one. The publishers have gone with a kind of cheesy womens-fiction cover, which is really to undersell how wild and weird this memoir is. It opens with the author as 14 year old being woken up by her mother in the middle of the night. Her mother excitedly tells her “Ben Souther kissed me!” She wants her to share in her happiness. You may wonder who is Ben Souther, to which I will tell you: Ben Souther is her HUSBAND”S BEST FRIEND. What?!

Now it’s slightly less bad than it first appears because the husband is the 14 year old’s stepfather, not biological father. However, he’s been in her life since she was 8, and they have a good relationship. The mother still expects her daughter to not only be happy for her but to actively help cover the affair up. So for example she always invites her mother and Ben to go for a walk after dinner, so they can go to the guest house and ‘talk.’

This messed-up situation goes on for TEN YEARS. Her brother does not know, so she also has to lie to him. She is incredibly lonely and increasingly crazy with the buden. Eventually the stepfather dies and the mother gets to marry Ben. Now she has what she wants, she sort of cuts her daughter out. It’s hard to describe how awful this is. And yet the book is not bitter. Towards the end, she says something along the lines of ‘my mother loved me as much as she was able to love anyone.’ This sounds bleak, but you come to understand how actually it is kind of an acceptance and a way to peace.

SURPRISED BY JOY by CS Lewis

Here is an unusual memoir: a memoir of a religious conversion. There is a prologue, apparently designed to put us off, in which he describes this – his first attempt at memoir – as the most ‘suffocatingly subjective’ book he has ever written. I loved this phrase. Everyone acts like our subjective experience is so important, like we should try and understand ourselves, and etc etc – and I just love how he sort of dismisses this whole idea out of hand, as if your own personal experience is self-evidently extremely limiting.

He has other interesting observations. Try:

“Dates are not so important as people believe. I fancy that most of those who think at all have done a great deal of thinking in the first fourteen years.”

And, on what drives some people to fear insects:

“we see fully realized the two things that some of us most dread for own species -the dominance of the female and the dominance of the collective.'”

That’s more ‘interesting,’ than interesting, perhaps.

Let’s get into how much sex there was happening at his high school. The older boys were called Bloods, and we got into a long discussion of a second group, the Tarts:

“A Tart is a pretty and effeminate-looking small boy who acts as a catamite to one or more of his seniors, usually Bloods. . . They were not like slaves, for their favours were (nearly always) solicited, not compelled. Nor were they exactly like prostitutes, for the liaison often had permanence, and far from being merely sensual, was highly sentamentalized.”

He does note how, given he is known as a religious writer, people might be shocked that he is writing of these “impure loves” without condemning them. However, he says “the sin in question is one of the two (gambling is the other) which I have never been tempted to commit. I will not indulge in futile philippics against enemies I never met in battle.”

I love the generosity of this idea, that he won’t comment on sins he has never had to fight against; its unexpectedly humble. He has a lot of bad things to say about the Bloods, who were mostly bullies, but ends the chapter with something rather unexpected. I was not paying attention to my dates, nad did not realize we were in 1914:

Peace to them all. A worse fate awaited them than the most vindictive fag among us could have wished. Ypres and the Somme ate up most of them. They were happy while their good days lasted.

You will see we have not even got to the conversion yet. In the prologue, he says: ‘”I never read an autobiography in which the parts devoted to the earlier years were not by far the most interesting,” and I guess he’s correct. The conversion was in itself quite unspectacular, happening on the top floor of a bus in London one evening in the 1930s. I find something rather beautiful about that. I am sure that bus route is still running. It should get its own blue plaque. I just love the idea of how full London is of dead people’s personal history. I am sure every square of sidewalk has its story of heartbreak and first kisses and murder and etc.

HEAVY by Kiese Laymon

This memoir is much beloved, but not by me. I’m sure there is an interesting life story in here somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. For me it was kind of buried under style. For example: he addresses the whole thing to his mother ‘you wanted me to be a strong man’ etc. Which I guess sounds cool in theory but I wasn’t feeling it. One thing I will recall from this book though is the one day when he came home from school and drank an entire bottle of ranch dressing in one go. I’ll leave that with you to think on.

IMAGINE ME GONE by Adam Haslett

Honestly readers are just so difficult. Here is a work of great artistry that I whipped through. It’s a sad story about the long shadow of a father’s suicide. And yet I hardly remember it. I mean honestly I feel the author: what is it readers want!! I did like this part, where a thirty something is reflecting on the Ansel Adams in his New York apartment:

“I was reminded how little I done to make (the apartment) my own . . One of thousands of adult dorm rooms in Manhattan, where credentialed children performed their idea of adult lives.”

EXIT LANE by Erika Veurink

I seem to be reading more genre fiction these days. Does this mean brainrot? I fear so.

In any case, this one’s a romcom. Interestingly, it’s from a startup with >$4m in investment, that’s basically a publishing imprint with associated income streams (e.g., buy the wine mentioned in the book). I can only be amazed that anyone would look at their investment dollars and think: I know, lets go make money in literature.

The founders of this imprint apparently cold call writers who have never written romatic fiction, or in some cases any fiction at all, and ask them to write for them. (This author, Erika Veurink, is I guess a brand consultant?) Seems an odd approach, and something of a slap in the face for aspiring writers, but there you go.

It compares itself on the cover to NORMAL PEOPLE and YOU, AGAIN. This is very hopeful. It’s not close to their league. However I read it in a single day, while half-dozing in the sun on the Common, eating ice cream, so no complaints here. If this is brainrot, rot away.

THE WRECK OF THE MENTOR by Eric Jay Dolin

I am just massively into shipwreck non-fiction. Who knew. This one is not so much about the shipwreck, which happened in Palau in 1832, but more about what happened after: I’m sorry to tell you the survivors were enslaved. The island was struggling with food insecurity (unclear why) so they weren’t fed very much, but they sure were tatoo-ed a whole hell of a lot. Eventually they were rescued.

Two things I found interesting. One, the Europeans conclude that the locals must have met Europeans before, because they know exactly what they want to get from the wreck: iron. I found this fascinating. I was obssessed with THE LAST DAYS OF THE INCAS, where I learnt that one of the most important advantages the Spanish had was iron (armour, swords, etc). It’s interesting now we don’t really think of it as ‘precious.’

Two, and this really blew my mind: apparently the whole South Pacific was just absolutely bristling with Robinson Crusoes. I always thought that lone shipwreck survivors were a rarity, but apparently not! Even more interestingly, quite a lot of them had actually chosen to stay on the islands. I guess I can kind of see it – you’re a 14 year old from Glasgow pressed into service as a cabin boy; I can well imagine a tropical paradise dripping with coconuts looks like a pretty good option.

Enjoy this vignette, of someone the enslaved men meet in Palau:

“The old man, who was entirely naked and barely five feet tall, walked briskly with an upright, almost regal bearing, “indicating that he felt himself a person of not a little importance.” He looked to be around sixty years old, with long gray hair, and tatoos covering his legs, arms, and breast. He had no teeth, and his very dark red, almost black, mouth – the result of chewing betel nuts incessantly – appeared like a void in his head. While the whalemen were trying to figure out who this specter was, he exclaimed, “My God, you are Englishmen, are you not?” Barnard quickly corrected him, and then the old man asked: “What year of the Lord is it?””

CONTRAPPOSTO by Dave Eggars

I spent the first 150 pages of this book mildly bored and the last 250 entranced.   The last 250 I read straight through, on a night when I couldn’t sleep, which raises the worrying idea that the quality of my attention is what is driving my perception of the quality of the book. 

On the plot level, this is a book about a boy and girl who get to know each other in high school and are friends (and sometimes lovers) for the rest of their long lives.  On another level, it is a book about what artistic success means.  The girl is extremely career focused, and is a  big success as a curator.  The boy loves to draw, and while he would like to make a big success as an artist, he just doesn’t want it enough to do the non-drawing leg work this requires, such as e.g., making ‘contacts,’ creating things because they are ‘saleable,’ and etc.  He often does not draw for long periods, and she gets very frustrated with him, especially when he, in her view, ‘checks out’ by moving to Thailand. It was an interesting way of thinking about what your life is really for, and what it’s worth spending your time on.

Rather touchingly, he dedicates the book to those friends of his he’s had for ‘forty or fifty years.’  I’ve passed thirty years with some. I hope I get to fifty with them all.  

CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING by Dorothy Baker

This book comes draped with reviews calling it a modern American classic.  I wasn’t feeling it.  It tells about a woman who goes to her twin sister’s wedding, and once there tries to commit suicide, because she is so unhappy about being left alone.

I don’t know what to tell you, I just found it kind of – meh.  I think I am just tired of books about people being so tortured all the time.  Stop drinking so much and go to therapy for god’s sake. 

SKIN CONTACT by Elisa Faison

Here is a book about a woman who pushes her husband to open their marriage.   It had some funny bits, like: “Her face was smooth and shiny in the right places, like she hadn’t put on any face makeup or like she knew the best makeup to buy.”   But mostly I wasn’t so much into it.  This is partly because I am not sure I can relate to all the negotiating about sex, but more because I couldn’t relate to the whole world.  The main character is in her early thirties, and there is a lot about how she misses her life with her friends in college.  Back then, she says, they were “around each other’s apartments all the time, and it never felt like a special occasion or anything.  We wouldn’t wash our hair before getting together.”  I mean who are these people in their thirties who only go to their friend’s houses on special occasions?  And feel they have to wash their hair first?!  Sounds exceedingly lonely. 

Also strange was how worried she is about getting older.  One thing driving her desire to open her marriage is how she is depressed by no longer being the focus of male interest, now she is so old, which is – wait for it – 32.  Honestly I can only conclude that some womens’ appearance really meant a lot to them in their early life.  I am much older than her and this has never worried me once.  Maybe I was just really ugly in my twenties?