We Are So Back

Patriotism makes a return, but can it stick the landing?

My head is reeling. Oh, what is this feeling? Does it have a name? Yes! Patriotism. I’m as surprised as you are that I’m maintaining peak patriotism these days. On July 4th of this year, you would have found me wearing all black after the latest SCOTUS term if I had bothered to stay in the country. Which I didn’t. But all of a sudden thanks to two major events, I’m sticking a feather in my cap and calling it macaroni.

First, the political vibe shift. We all know where we were when we got the texts from friends that our president had decided not to run and endorse his VP for the job instead. I, myself, had a summer cold and was settling down for a day of aspiring to be a low information voter, watching I Kissed a Boy. (Deeply stupid, highly recommend.) What followed was an intense data dump from cable news into my brain, a renewed unhealthy relationship with social media, and of course a swell of something I haven’t felt in a minute: Hope. (Readers alive in 2008 will remember that was the year hope was invented.) Writing this, I am days from just waiting hours in the rain in line at the Philadelphia rally to see the new nominee and her choice for VP, but I didn’t make it in. That was my fault - I got there late. But even this disappointment felt hopeful, as there were thousands in line behind me who also didn’t get in. This is both because it felt like a real movement, and also because misery loves company. Can I keep up this political optimism? I don’t know. Watch this space.

And second: the Olympics. SO many questions about the Paris games. Would I lay my life down for our gymnastics girls? Yes! Would I need to? No! They’ve got this. How does France’s swimming hero Leon Marchand have perfect square pectoral muscles? Unclear. Have I ever been happier for a butch queen boxer from Algeria? No. (Side note: you can tell reactionary conservatives and TERF authors never watch Top Chef because that’s where America curates and celebrates its hottest talented butch queens.) Was I aware of how beautiful Mexican divers were? No! Must I give credit to NBC Universal for their Gold Zone innovation? Unfortunately yes! Did the Opening Ceremony make sense? Not really! Should more host cities use the lay of the land better like Paris did? Yes, a must. Why do we continue to allow Ralph Lauren to dress our best athletes as NASCAR pit crew mechanics? Truly an embarrassing mystery. Will I survive cold turkey without a full 10 hours of fringe sports delivered directly to my eyeballs? I don’t know. Watch this space.

I’ve also had time to read. See below.

THE LIBRARY IS OPEN

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

by Rufi Thorpe (2024)

The description of this novel doesn’t quite do justice to how simultaneously delightful and deep it gets. Margo, 19-year old daughter of a Hooters waitress and professional wrestler, finds herself in a bit of a pickle as she gets pregnant by her married English professor at community college. Not wanting to add the father to her already more complicated by the day life, she decides she’s going to keep the baby and raise him on her own without any help. Enter, as promised, money troubles. In order to stave these off the best she can, she allows her father, aforementioned professional wrestler, to move in with her and her gamer roommate in exchange for childcare.

Oh, and one other thing. She starts an OnlyFans account as an experiment to try to bring in some extra funds, and it ends up taking off as a wild success. Her father even starts to advise her on her “character” with his expertise spending a life in the ring. As you can imagine, the plan is not seamless, and Margo has to decide whether to give up a good livelihood for a new mom and the only remaining creative element of her life for all of the people on the outside of her situation judging her. Including her mother. Not to mention the custody issues that occur for women who turn to sex work in a world that literally and/or figuratively criminalizes those actions.

I loved this book. It’s fun and formally inventive. We switch from first to third person, based on the moments when Margo decides it’s easier to write in the third person based on how close she wants to feel to her own actions. The characters feel real (possibly from my hometown) and complex, and the sharp insights made me think a lot about the ways I reflexively judge others without knowing everything about their lives. I ended up rooting for Margo as if she were an American Olympian. It’s no wonder that this book has already been picked up by Nicole Kidman and David E. Kelley to make it into an Apple TV series. You should read it before then. It’s one of my favorite books of the year.

Read it if you like: the good seasons of Roseanne before she went insane, laughing, great dialogue, future adaptations, learning about alternative economies without judgment.

The God of the Woods

by Liz Moore (2024)

I was already in the tank for this one. It was one of my most anticipated reads of the year because 1. the author lives in Philly, 2. I really enjoyed her previous novel Long Bright River, and 3. it’s a mystery that takes place at a summer camp in the 1970s. When I picked this one up, I was also in the mood for a novel that felt like a full meal: intricate mystery, flashbacks, multiple points of view, nonlinear timeline. And this novel has all of that and more. It’s on the bigger side, but the pages move fast enough that it feels like an airy summer read.

We’re dropped off in the thick Adirondack Woods of New York, famous for their ability to bewilder even the most seasoned of hikers. In these woods is Camp Emerson, a place for children of most ages to learn to be one with nature, make a couple of friends, and survive a tradition of being dropped into the woods as teams and being expected to make it out alive. Fun! The owners of the camp, living in their palatial estate adjacent to it, are the wealthy Van Laar family. (The estate is named Self- Reliance because rich people are allergic to irony.) They’re a little sinister, as most rich people in novels are, but everyone gets an empathetic fair shake in backstories.

Everyone’s life is interrupted and many of their secrets are reveals when a camper goes missing. And wouldn’t you know it, the missing camper is a Van Laar. To complicate an already messy situation, more than a decade earlier, another camper went missing and was never found - also a Van Laar. Someone get the Van Laars a compass!

The mystery is intricate, and the author generously gives so much detail about the lives of all the the characters that it feels like a character study novel trojan horsed by way of literary thriller. I swallowed the second part of the novel whole, wanting to find out what happened. I kept guessing until the very end, but that doesn’t end up feeling as important as all of the character development that occurs. Most threads are wrapped up by the end, but we’re still left to wonder a bit. One thing is clear, though - like Rufi Thorpe (above), Liz Moore has become an author I’ll follow wherever she decides to go next.

Read it if you like: mysteries with tons of characters, books that will almost certainly be adapted into something prestige, summer camps, the 70s, being attracted to that one tomboy for some reason.

Evenings & Weekends

by Oisín McKenna (2024)

Here’s another novel in the Rooneyesque tradition of allowing a of a bunch of young folks, some of them queer, to live out their lives, establish deep connections, and talk about it a lot at every turn - this is a compliment. In this one, much like how the joke went that the fifth character on Sex and the City was NYC, here London plays a character in all of its resplendent and maddening glory. In this novel, Ed, Maggie, and Phil, all of whom grew up in a town outside of London, have made their way to the city as young adults and are flailing in unique ways. Over the course of one weekend, they and their supporting casts of (often more) interesting characters confront a bunch of secrets that will change them forever.

Maggie is a frustrated artist turned waitress who is convincing herself she’s ready to move back to her hometown of Basildon to raise the child she just realized recently she’s about to have. Said child is the accidental result of sleeping with her boyfriend Ed for the first time in many months and acts as the connection to bring this distant couple back together again. For Ed, it’s time to grow up and get a job that’s not a bicycle messenger so he can support the child he’s about to have. A bonus of moving for him is that he also believes it’s time to leave behind his secret life of hooking up with men in bathrooms and his complicated history with Maggie’s best Phil. Phil moved to London to live out loud as his gay self after years of small town abuse, but his family at home are going through tough times and he’s not especially fond of chasing after his boyfriend just to have to share him with this boyfriend’s boyfriend. Young folks.

Maybe unsurprisingly, these folks are living for their…evenings and weekends at a time when connection to each other seems like the most important thing in their lives. They just have to learn to be honest about it. But in novels, as in life, honesty begets more honesty, and they’re all in store for more information than they might be able to handle. The world expands as more and more characters get point of view perspectives and what you see is how chosen family and blood relatives intersect to make life lovely and complicated no matter where you are. I dug this one, even if, or maybe especially because, it made me a bit wistful.

Read it if you like: vaguely Rooney books, gay characters who can’t get their life together, London as a city and concept, never being able to go home again, Crashing by Phoebe Waller Bridge.

LIGHTNING ROUND

Without a doubt, I’m confident each year that I could guess 5 of the selections on any of Barack Obama’s reading list. This time, his summer reading list.

I enjoyed a bunch of the essays in this book called Mean Boys.

IN addition to all the other word and geography games I play daily, I’ve really been enjoying playing this cute 5-question trivia game.

Until next time… happy reading!