I have no words about the election, and it’s impossible to console the young women in my life. My comforts are walking and reading. Here are my latest thoughts and recommendations.
I was, and then I was not, a fan of Sally Rooney. I loved Conversations with Friends but not Normal People and didn’t bother to pick up Beautiful World, Where are You after reading an excerpt in The New Yorker. My son, then managing a Manhattan bookstore, told me customers would come in and whisper, asking for the latest Sally Rooney. It felt like he was dealing crack.
So what led me to Intermezzo? Probably a Dwight Garner rave.
I have this to report: Intermezzo gave me and a friend (hey, Naomi!) book grief. We didn’t want it to end.
Here’s the story: two brothers grieve their father in present-day Dublin. There’s 10 years between them. Peter is a barrister; his younger brother Ivan is a chess master. Ivan, 22, is a bit awkward and still wears braces. At a chess marathon, Ivan meets and falls for Margaret, who’s in her late 30’s, divorced and living in small-town Ireland. Peter objects to the relationship, which drives the brothers apart. Peter has his own problems: he’s involved with Naomi, a college student who supports herself associating with older men like Peter, and the likes of Peter, via the Internet. He’s also involved with Sylvia, his college sweetheart and intellectual peer. Chronic pain from an accident keeps Sylvia from having intercourse with Peter. (A night they spend together not having sex is one of the most wrenching sex scenes I’ve ever read.) Kicked out of her squat, Naomi moves in with Peter. Yes, the two women know about each other. The brothers’ impasse and their respective love stories (plus the fate of Ivan’s dog) propels the story, and asks us what we — and these characters — can live with. It’s a masterpiece.
I devoured Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, the story of a young woman imprisoned for killing her abuser. Of course I bought her newest, Creation Lake. Sadie is a for-hire American spy working in France to disrupt a cult of ecoterrorists. I liked but didn’t love this read. It’s well and thoughtfully written and I was right with our heroine in Paris and Marseille and mostly in the Guyenne Valley, where the action takes place. It works like a thriller: will she disrupt their plot? Will she be found out? This read fell short for me because I didn’t understand Sadie’s motives outside of a pay check. Where’s the itch she needs to scratch? What’s her basic wound? I’m not alone in this thinking. It was short-listed for the Booker Prize, announced this week.
My friend Deborah pressed on me Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, because she wanted to talk about it. “My heart was in my throat the whole read.” Yup. In a dystopian Ireland, union leader Larry Stack is seized by the military police. When will he return? Is he dead or alive? Ignoring the draft, 17-year-old son Mark joins the resistance, which further endangers the family. Wife Eilish has three other children of various ages who wonder and grieve and suffer the everyday loss of father and brother. A sister in Canada sends Eilish cash so she can flee. But how can she leave her husband, son and elderly father? When a third child is taken by the state, and her father has already left, Eilish takes her daughter and toddler on a harrowing journey that ends — or begins again — on an inflatable raft. Will they survive? “To the sea, we must go to the sea, the sea is life.”
And now a different kind of terror. I love just about any Frankenstein story, because the monster always wins, and scares the bejesus out of us along the way. (My favorites are Frankenstein in Baghdad, by Ahmed Saadawi and Machines Like Me, by Ian McEwan.) The latest entry to this genre is Mason Coile’s William. It’s a tight 213 pages, and its twist is an unexpected thrill. Here’s the tale: Henry is a housebound inventor, who creates an AI robot named William, who’s needy and funny and vicious. William insists that he and Henry are “brothers.” Henry’s wife Lily is a pregnant tech executive who fully supports Henry’s projects. One day, she brings home two co-workers to meet Henry and William — and that’s when trouble begins. This is a deliciously dark romp.
Thanks for reading.
Signing off, from from beautiful Chicago.