Volcanos and Irish Rapscallions
Break glass in case of emergency when you need a book you'll fly through
I just got back from Costa Rica where I partook in my favorite adventure activity on vacation: reading relevant Wikipedia facts about where we travel to my husband as he navigates us where we need to be. I like to research a little before we go anywhere, of course, but I also love to save some surprises for the trip. For example, as we arrived at a park of huge swinging suspension bridges, it was a comfort to read about how Costa Rica has health care quality that ranks above that of the United States. How nice to discover we were in a not so horrible place to make a big fall, relatively. Somehow both shocking and not surprising at all?
Maybe more germane to this newsletter, I was delightfully surprised to learn that Costa Rica has a literacy rate of 97%. (The United States comes in at a rate of 79%, by comparison.) This is partially due to a nationwide referendum in 1949 when Costa Ricans (demonym: Ticos) voted to disband the military to make it one of a few sovereign nations without a standing army. It was said that “the army would be replaced with an army of teachers." This has ensured that primary education is obligatory, and both preschool and secondary school are free. Perhaps this is why Costa Rica ranks as the 23rd happiest county in the world? Thanks Wikipedia!
We also ended up staying somewhere with an outdoor shower that had a view of an active volcano. Pros: a lovely view which you can see below (pardon the bedhead), there is something objectively luxurious about an outdoor shower, said volcano created a bunch of hot springs in which we were able to lounge and absorb their healing properties. Cons: I did end up showering with at least one unwelcome visitor - the largest insect I’ve ever seen in real life. It was a rare drawback of being in one of the most biodiverse places on the planet - yet another fact I learned on Wikipedia.
When not showering with strangers, I was able to read a bunch of books, including a couple 5-star reads you’ll find below. I tore through these 3 - the pages absolutely flew. (I’ve also banked a bunch of books for future newsletters, so stay tuned.)
THE LIBRARY IS OPEN
The Torqued Man
by Peter Mann (2022)
I usually have my finger on the pulse of queer book culture; they’re my favorite things to read, after all. So it’s rare that I come across a queer book and think: How on earth did I miss this? I rarely find a book years after its release that’s so in my lane that I feel the anger of: How could no one have told me about this? Tearing through this book, I felt both the genuine joy of a book discovery occurring poolside and the betrayal of having been left in the dark for a couple years about its existence.
Just when I thought we’d left no literary WW2 stone unturned, there comes a spy novel with humor, heart, and innovative plot twists that seems fresh. We’re in 1940’s Berlin where a sensitive document translator has been forced by the war economy to become a spy handler for Nazi intelligence. He’s pretty awful at his job and a homosexual to boot. Unfortunately for him, he falls in lust with his latest charge: a sexually omnivorous Irish resistance fighter with a chronic inability to make a good decision. We learn all about these two as they become friends, sometimes lovers, and reich disruptors through two separate interlocking narratives - a journal written by the handler and a draft of a mysterious novel found at the end of the war. Like two sides of a zipper, you must weave them together to be useful - in this case to understand the truth behind the whole story.
(Let’s pause a moment. I was nervous too, but this book makes it very clear that Nazis are very much the bad guys, even though the characters are working for them when we meet them.)
This novel gets bleak, of course, but often hilarious, and it’s the rare, unpredictable WW2 novel that feels like a unique take on the era. It’s a queer chimera of dark humor, true historical facts, and fictionalized liberties. Someone please make this a movie stat.
Read it if you like: WW2, gay historical fiction, very dark humor, unreliable narrators, smutty sexual blackmail.
The Happy Couple
by Naoise Dolan (2023)
First things first, it’s pronounced NEE-sha.
Second, yes, she’s another in the growing line of young Irish authors regaling us with tales about how the young Irish live these days. Comparisons to Sally Rooney abound, of course. This novel feels a lot like Sally’s latest, but with much less Marxism and a whole lot more queer people contemplating the meaning of love. That too - pretty much everyone in this novel is queer, except for parents, all of whom are square but mildly approving. So, if you read Beautiful World, Where Are You and thought, “Not enough chaotic bisexuals,” this book is most certainly for you.
We land in Dublin where we are immediately embroiled in a classic marriage plot. This one involves Celine, an emotionally distant pianist, and her affianced recovering f***boi Luke. We meet them mid-courtship at the point of their rather practical engagement, and we spend the novel wondering if they’ll actually get married through the various perspectives of other wedding guests. There’s the bridesmaid, Celine’s very suspicious sister Phoebe, the Best Man who used to date the groom and can’t get over him, and a guest who’s the best friend and former paramour of the groom. By the way, the bride’s ex-girlfriend shows up to cause trouble too. Kids these days.
I mean it in the best possible way when I say that this is a novel of overthinking. Each perspective goes on and on with their opinions about the engaged couple, whether they should marry, and life and love generally. They’re a witty and acerbic ensemble, and I loved spending time with them all. I genuinely didn’t know how the novel would end - with a wedding reception or not. And since a character remarks that humor is the “central force that prevents us from killing a) each other and b) ourselves,” I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how funny the book is.
Read it if you like: books you can tear through in a day, that genre of Irish women writing about Irish women in bad relationships, wedding plots, sexual fluidity, Dublin/London commutes.
Yellowface
by R. F. Kuang (2023)
In the acknowledgments of this novel, R.F. Kuang says that, “Yellowface is, in large part, a horror story about loneliness in a fiercely competitive industry.” Yikes! And although it’s been marketed mainly as a meditation on cultural appropriation in publishing, that description sells the novel short. It’s also a scathing critique of a great number of things. Here’s an non-exhaustive list of the topics she touches on and drags: editors, publicists, Goodreads*, book awards, Asians who only date white people, people who criticize Asians for dating white people, social media, activists, social media activists, the far right pretending to care about books, own voices, weaponizing trauma, cultural leeching, pandan, white lady book clubs**, and so much more.
It’s not a spoiler to tell you that June Hayward watches her frenemy Athena Liu choke on a pancake and die. June’s white, Athena’s Asian, and they’re both writers with varying levels of success. Read: Athena is a superstar, and June is flailing. All of these facts are important because before June leaves Athena behind in a bodybag, she takes an unpublished draft of a novel about Chinese labor camps in WWI, which she transforms into a novel she sells for a hefty amount of American dollars. Her publishing company’s publicists suggest that she start anew in the industry with the Asian-sounding name Juniper Song. Her wild success is met with a bit of skeptical feedback, as you can imagine. If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you can probably see the layers of problematic piling up.
“Who is allowed to write about whom?” becomes a central question in this novel. Another question is “Who on earth would ever want to go into publishing?” Even back in the halcyon days of twitter, authors were the occupation that complained the most about their jobs - like, even more than doctors complained during a worldwide pandemic. (Ironic that authors must be on social media to sell books, but it does so few of them any favors for their brand to be there.) It always felt like exaggeration. I still think it is. But this novel feels too close to reality to be a satire, yet I cringed in a good way on almost every page. Juniper is a self-delusion queen, and this book flies by as she narrates you through this delightful shit show. The hype was real.
* This book won the Goodreads award for Best Fiction of the Year
** This book was a selection in Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club
Read it if you look: reading between the fingers covering your eyes, cultural appropriation debates, books that read fast, dark humor, ghosts?
LIGHTNING ROUND
I saved this to read on the plane: Patricia Lockwood meets the Pope.
I’m so happy that Kacey Musgraves has returned to wistful and clever Country music for a bit.
Until next time…happy reading! And here’s another Costa Rica pic for the road.