Reading, Writing, and Me

Audition  by Katie Kitamura *preface: the way I've seen this book talked about before interviews sees what happens at the second half of the book as a spoiler. I, personally, don't think you can have a meaningful and honest discussion about what this book does without acknowledging the entire second half, so I'm going to talk about it. You've been warned.* Overview: The actress at the center of the novel is in the middle of a career high in middle age, about to open an incredibly successful play. She lives in a nice apartment with her husband and has a fairly settled, if not boring, life. And then she's approached by a 25ish-year-old man named Xavier at the theater. He wants to know if she could possibly be his biological mother. She explains this is impossible, but Xavier remains in her orbit as the director's assistant and intrigues the actress, making her image if her life had played out differently. In the second half of the book, the script flips and sudden...

Good Girl  by Aria Aber Overview: Nila enters a world of partying and drugs as a young teenager, but it's the year she turns nineteen that she fully immerses herself in the underground techno-club-rave world, sometime in the early 2010s. She escapes the strict rules at home in the Bunker, one of the famous Berlin warehouse techno clubs with a strict door policy. There, she meets an American writer, once famous, named Marlowe. She spends the next year in an electric, dark relationship with him, surrounded by his friend group and ex-girlfriend that define Nila's first adult experiences. Overall: 3.5 Characters: 3  What frustrates me about this book is that it feels like the ending of this novel is the true beginning of Nila's story. When I got to the end, after wondering where the book was heading, I got the distinct impression that I'd read a novel's worth of backstory and got dropped off right at the true turning point. While it could be argued that facing an abusiv...

April was the longest month and then May appeared out of nowhere and has moved at light speed. That's partially owing to the fact that April is the armpit of off-season where winter activities have ended but summer fun and summer jobs haven't started yet and everyone leaves town. I got in a bit more reading than I anticipated in April because my summer job start date kept getting pushed further and further back due to a flooring remodel in our office space that went on longer than anticipated. That was a double edge sword, though, because while I had nothing but time, I wasn't mentally in the best spot. I'd really looked forward to going back to work, so the delay wasn't exactly welcome. I tried to make the best of it, but April is a month that I, emotionally, hope to never return to.  Much like the blah state of my month, the actual books I read also left much to be desired. It was an interesting reading month in the sense that every book was lacking in some fundam...

My Year of Rest and Relaxation  by Ottessa Moshfegh Overview: The narrator is stuck in a period of stasis. She's suppressing the grief from her parents' close together deaths. She's afforded the luxury of not having to do anything by the inheritance they left behind, so when her job at the art gallery feels like a drag, she puts in little effort until she's fired. Her friend is so embroiled in her own problems that there's no one in the narrator's life to keep her in check, and finding a dubious psychiatrist who's willing to medicate her to near death opens up the possibility to unsubscribe from life for a while through pharmaceuticals that send her into deep sleep. The narrator secretly hopes, though, that by the end of the blackouts she will have found a sense of purpose, an idea of life's meaning in her reset black hole. Overall: 4  ReReview Notes: For the last few months, I've wanted to reread My Year of Rest and Relaxation . I owned a copy of th...

The Coin  by Yasmin Zaher Overview: The narrator arrives in New York City with a curated designer wardrobe and her mother's Birkin bag to teach at an all boys charter school for promising underprivileged children. The narrator recounts her first eight months in New York after her lover convinces her to move from Palestine to America while on a trip together in Cuba. The novel follows her eccentric teaching practices, the middle schoolers she teaches, and the bond that she forms with a homeless man who takes a liking to her Burberry trench coat. This is a novel of a young woman's undoing that scratched a somewhat similar itch to My Year of Rest and Relaxation  in a new tone. Overall: 3.5 Characters: 3 The narrator takes all the oxygen in the novel. It's a very close first person, and she has a very big personality. Everyone who comes into her life is a side event, therefore, her perspective doesn't leave much room for their development. Unfortunately, there isn't muc...

I went to New York City to see A Streetcar Named Desire at BAM, spend time with my grandmother, and see as many bookstores as I could plausibly drag her to way back at the start of March. That meant doing way more book shopping than I should be months before an international move... I've discussed my impression of all the stores in a previous post, but I thought I'd recap what I bought at each. I will say, since I'd only traveled there with an oversized backpack and also bought clothes and brought way too many pairs of shoes to start with, my guiding principle was "pick slim, light paperbacks that would be easy to pack". I only caved on one hardcover in the end, so I'm pretty impressed. Also, my grandmother bought the copy of White Teeth  I'd contemplated purchasing and promised she'd send it to me when she was done, so hopefully, I end up with one more book from this trip one of these days.  It turns out the unintentional theme was French translation...