Tag: Female writer

WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor

Here is a book that involves a man in a gorilla suit using an umbrella skeletron as a weapon, a hit-and-run accident that is not an accident, and some self-blinding with lye. Unsurprisingly, it is in fact a book about religion.

It’s a strange, Gothic Southern story, that I did not enjoy but some how admired for its insanity.

I guess what I took from this book is that human beings have a very high level of baseline crazy. Sometimes this comes out in belief in god, sometimes it comes out in belief in ghosts, sometimes in QAnon.

WE ARE NEVER MEETING IN REAL LIFE by Samantha Irby

Here is the third book I have read by a vetrenarian’s receptionist in Chicago. I liked the other two but I LOVE THIS ONE. Like, get ready, because when I really like a book I like to quote from it AT LENGTH.

It’s a series of comic essays about what is a fairly difficult life. Where most people dedicate their book to a spouse, her’s is dedicated to her anti-anxiety medicine, Klonopin.

We learn about what goes on in a vet’s office. Sample

Question: Why is there a worm coming out of my dog’s penis?

Answer: That is his penis.

She is “fiercely private IRL. Which is to say that . . I never want anyone to see my actual pores or clothes.” Eventually therefore she meets the woman who will be her wife online . . on Twitter (do people meet people on Twitter?):

We moved the conversation to DM, and I really need you guys to know that it physically pains me to both have participated in something called a DM and to recount what happened in one to you now.

MWAHAHAHA. Why is this hilarious? I don’t know. She has never been with a woman before, and it is not as easy as she had thought:

I expertly slid my female hand under her bra and unhooked it with the flick of a wrist in one smooth, effortless motion. JK, FOLKS. I wrestled with that clasp like an alligator, finally resorting to the use of a chain saw and my teeth.

Eventually she agrees to move to rural Michigan with her. I love this vision of country life:

I could wake up to the sound of crowing roosters or methheads at sunrise, consume a platter of buttered carbohydrates, hitch up my overalls, and grab my watering can from the shed. That would be a dream. I’m sick of news, and buying stuff, and trying so desperately to have fun all the time.

 I think what I most admire though is the honesty of the book, even among the jokes. Here she is on being fat:

I wish that I was an emotionally healthy human without years of accumulated trauma, one who just decided to be a fat caricature of a person perched gleefully atop a mountain of doughnuts, shoving candy bar after candy bar between my teeth while cackling demonically over how much money my eventual care will cost taxpayers or whatever it is comments-section trolls always accuse fat people of doing. And I don’t need sympathy or special attention because, ultimately, who even cares? You hate me, and I hate me too. We are on the same team. I guess what I’m saying is that maybe we could all just mind our own fucking business for once, and that when you can actually see a person’s scars, maybe be a pal and don’t pick at them.

Who knew so much went on inside receptionists. Of course, so much goes on inside everyone. But we rarely get to see it

THE DUD AVOCADO by Elaine Dundy

Here is a book about how we should all be grateful to the women who came before.  It tells the story of a young American woman on what is basically  a gap year in Paris in the 1930s (funded of course by family money, try not to feel too enraged).  It is just incredible what goes on.  People make her dance with them when she has told them no, they expect her to ‘know how to cook,’ some guy announces that:

All tourists are she

And she still falls in love with him.  Wtf.  Later we find out he was trying to traffic  her into sex work but she still has fond feelings for him (?).  I mean how did these girls get anything done?  The issues are plenty. 

The book is fun and insightful. Try this:

It’s amazing how right you can be about people you don’t know; it’s only the people you do know who confuse you

Or this, which I think is true about many people who begin, but do not finish, a career in the theatre:

The thing about him, though, was that he thought he was in the theater for Art, whereas he was really in it for laughs.

Apparently Dundy’s husband, theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, encouraged her to try  writing a novel, as he thought her letters good, but was then horrified when THE DUD AVOCADO was a bestseller and instructed her to never write again.  Meanwhile he was cheating on her left and right and spanking her though she was not into it.  She began her second novel immediately.

I mean I didn’t enjoy this book that much but I am just amazed and impressed this lady held it together for long enough to get it written. Truly earlier generations were fighting some battles. 

MEATY by Samantha Irby

I avoided Irby for a long time, having some impression that I was going to get a lot of self-important lecturing about everyone’s wokeness levels.  I have no idea why I thought this, and I was totally wrong.  I enjoyed her most recent book WOW, NO THANK YOU so much I immediately ordered her first one, MEATY.  It’s not quite as fun as the other, because I think she was herself much less happy.  This is the book of her rough twenties, the other of her much happier forties. 

I have been struggling to articulate for myself quite what is so appealing about these books. I think it’s partly that’s its very freeing to have someone be so honest about themselves.  I am not sure I need to know about her diarrhoea or about how she eats her dinner over the sink while masturbating or about how she sucks her thumb during sex, but it makes you feel like it’s possible to tell the actual truth about your own life without exploding. 

I think it’s also the almost perfect contemporariness of the tone.  I’ve never read anything quite like it.  For example, here is part of a cocktail recipe:

Mix everything together in a punch bowl, then drink.  And I feel you, I DON’T HAVE A PUNCH BOWL EITHER.  But I do have a set of those nesting mixing bowls, so what I like to do is wash it really well, to make sure all the cookie dough crumbs and dried cereal milk is out of it, and let it double as a vessel for the booze.

Like, what is that CAPS LOCK?  I love it. 

Side point, she refers to her largish under-chin area (she’s on the bigger side) as her meatbeard.  I am scarred and know this word will stay with me forever

STAY SEXY AND DON’T GET MURDERED by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

Here is a book by Karen and Georgia. I’ve never met either of them, but I feel like I know them. This is because I listen to their podcast MY FAVORITE MURDER every week.  It’s a true crime comedy podcast (don’t ask).  This is their spin-off book about their private lives.  Karen and Georgia moaned a lot in the podcast about how hard it was to write a book, and that does kind of show a bit.  They’ve added lists of stuff, a sure sign you are struggling to fill those pages. I was only surprised there were not recipes.  (In fact Georgia did try to add her dad’s bbq chicken , but then he revealed it was just whatever generic bbq sauce happened to be on sale)

Reading this book did make me realize how much MY FAVORITE MURDER’s magic sits not in either host, but in the relationship between the two.  There is some kind of special sparkle that makes those two add up to three or even four. I find it interesting when that happens, like it did for Simon & Garfunkel.  Of course leaving aside their special chemistry, it’s also true that we live in a lonely age, and are hungry for friendship, even if it is the friendship of other people. I suspect that’s a big part of why the podcast got to be so big.

The authors mention how when they met they had both coincidentally been reading DARING GREATLY by Brene Brown.  This is a book about the power of vulnerability.  They both say reading that book made them more open to new people (and thus each other), and to new projects (and thus MY FAVORITE MURDER, the project that took them from struggling to millionaires).    I also see how it translates into their show, which is often surprisingly open about all sorts of topics (mental health, pets, fat).  I had thought this was just ‘how they were,’ and its interesting to find how much it is actually a choice. 

BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU by Sally Rooney

Regular readers know I love Rooney’s CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS, which is gnaw-you-own-arm-off wonderful.  I didn’t love BEAUTIFUL WORLD as much, but then there is not much I do love as much.

BEAUTIFUL WORLD is a book about romantic relationships, and seems to have a lot of anxiety about the fact that it is about romantic relationships.  It seems like there is a concern that this is a non-serious topic to write about.  I mean I have that concern myself, but this is just because I am trapped in patriarchy like everyone else, and what women choose to write about has long been dismissed as unserious, unlike, for example, the rape-and-murder that men like to write about in airport thrillers.

The story focuses on a pair of female friends, who are living some distance apart.  It chronicles each of their relationships with their boyfriends, as well as their own friendship, which is largely conducted by email.  The emails are every alternate chapter, and are full of self-pity and trite criticism of ‘capitalism.’   For example, one character says she was in the local shop when suddenly she:

thought of all the rest of the human population – most of whom live in what you and I would consider abject poverty – . . . And this, this, is what all their work sustains!

Leaving aside the high drama, it’s just not true that most of humanity works to sustain the Western way of life.  I can think of a good billion Chinese people who have a few other things going on. Or try this:

. . . we’re living in a time of historical crisis, and this idea seems to be generally accepted by most of the population. 

Anytime someone tells me we are living in a particularly seminal moment of history I always mark them down on the moron list.  This is the over-privileged view of someone who has not lived through a war/recession/genocide.

I won’t even get into how mystified I am why these thirty-somethings are writing emails to each other.  Is this supposed to be historical fiction? Does anyone other than one’s parents write emails? 

Actually I enjoyed this book more than this makes it sound. It still sharp and heartfelt, and powerfully reminded me of the power and importance of human connection. I am not sure why I have bashed on so much

OUR SPOONS CAME FROM WOOLWORTHS by Barbara Comyns

This is a strangely inspirational book about failed painting careers, poverty and abortion. It tells the story of a young female art student who marries another art student. She gets pregnant and they are both horrified. Bizarrely, because it is the 1930s, or because he does not understand biology, the husband blames her. He refuses to take any responsibility for the baby, insisting he must focus on his art. The wife understands, because she too wants to be an artist. But instead she gets to do menial jobs for money. Eventually they split up and she ends up on the street with her baby. She manages to pull herself out of the situation by leaving London and getting a job as a cook.

Reading this summary you might think this is a depressing book. What is strange is that it is written in a light, comic tone, and can only be described as uplifting. For example, right near the beginning, speaking of her husband’s aunt, we suddenly get onto:

She even like my newts, and sometimes when we went to dinner there I took Great Warty in my pocket; he didn’t mind being carried about, and while I had dinner I gave him a swim in the water jug. 

Her what? Her newts? Or try this:

The book does not seem to be growing very large although I have got to Chapter Nine.  I think this is partly because there isn’t any conversation. I could fill pages like this:

“I am sure it is true,” said Phyllida.

“I cannot agree with you,” answered Norman.

“Oh, but I know I am right,” she replied.

. . That is the kind of stuff that appears in real people’s books.  I know this will never be a real book that business men in trains will read. . . . I wish I knew more about words.  Also I wish so much I had learnt my lessons at school.  I never did, and have found this such a disadvantage ever since.  All the same, I am going on writing this book even if business men scorn it.  

I looked up the author afterwards and found the book was indeed quite autobiographical. What filled me with huge joy was to find that her husband does not even have a Wikipedia page. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. All that selfishness (sacrifice?) and apparently for nothing.

I am also really inspired by Comyns biography. It said she “worked in an advertising agency, a typewriter bureau, dealt in old cars and antique furniture, bred poodles, converted and let flats, and exhibited pictures.” It makes other author bios, involving lists of novels/essays/teaching posts seem maybe more ‘successful’ but somehow rather narrow and sad.

MARIANA BY Monica Dickens

First of all let’s try to come to terms with the fact that Dickens was only twenty-four when she wrote this novel. And it wasn’t even her first, but her second, the first having been a BESTSELLER.

I can’t comfort you with the reflection that it is not good, because it is really rather good. It’s a coming-of-age story that mostly mirrors Dickens’ own. The section on her childhood is particularly impressive. I love this:

Mary climbed into the neat little cattle-pen and pretended she was a horse, which meant standing quite still and feeling like a horse inside, without any outward pantomime

Her early adulthood is interesting too, especially her unsuccessful stint at drama school. I suspect many can relate to her bleak summary of what happened to those who did not give up on that particular dream early enough:

(They) battered out their youth against the doors of agents, did crowd work for films or sacrificed their so-called innocence for a walking-on part or chance in Cabaret.

There is a particularly wrenching scene where she realizes the boy she has had a crush on for years is not seriously interesting in her, but has just been enjoying her devotion. The quality of the book takes an abrupt nosedive when, in her early twenties, she meets the man she will marry, Sam. Dickens has these two characters ludicrously simpatico. Allegedly even when apart they wake at the same time, eat the same food at the same time, speak the same words and even hear the same songs (?). Clearly this is drivel. Also imagine anyone you know getting a new boyfriend and having this view about a night out with friends:

Mary was longing to get away with Sam and discuss them all. That was the only point now for her, of going to any party.

I can only assume that the first part of the book was based on her actual experience, and this last part is what she hoped real love would be like. I googled it and indeed she did not get married till her late thirties. I can only imagine her views evolved. On my side I observe people in love can often hardly agree on the same way to load the dishwasher, never mind have the same sleeping/eating/ghostly song (?) hearing schedule.

THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY by Laura Jean McKay

This book has an amazing sounding premise:

. . . a strange pandemic begins sweeping the country, its chief symptom that its victims begin to understand the language of animals. Many infected people lose their minds . . .

No one doesn’t wonder what their cat thinks of them, and I loved the idea of finding out. Unfortunately I sort of struggled with this book. What the animals have is say is stuff like this:

My front end

takes the food

quality.

Muzzle

for the Queen

(Yesterday).

I’m not sure I’m much the wiser. More than that though, I found the protagonist almost unbearably annoying. She lets her obviously infected son into their compound, and doesn’t feel any guilt about it. She loves her granddaughter, but in a creepily sentimental way. She contracts everyone’s names (‘Ange’ for Angela, etc). She is often described as ‘gulping’ her drinks. These are things I don’t like. It’s not super defensible, but okay. I maybe could have handled it, but then she rear-ends a truck full of factory farmed pigs. I couldn’t face hearing what they think of us, so I quit.