I’m not going to talk about how fast November went by because I’m afraid I’m becoming a bit tedious. I read slowly this month. I went home and ate oysters and sat in the sun. I didn’t write anything hardly at all and it’s fine but I don’t like feeling so separated from something that means so much to me. Oh my god, I’m in such an earnest mood today! What’s the word? Unmoored. I think I’m feeling unmoored. I saw two movies in a movie theater over the weekend, a Jacob Elordi double feature, and felt giddy: cookie dough bites in a squeaky chair. I’m getting on a plane again this week and I will miss the spindly, scrawny tree that is currently twinkling from one of the window in our den. We have four ornaments and one string of lights and you know what? It is more than enough.
The books I liked
The Three of Us by Ore Agbaje-Williams
This slim novel is divided into three parts: woman, woman’s best friend, woman’s husband, and is a delicious portrayal of their complicated, resentful triangle. I could not put this one down until I was finished, and it’s less than 200 pages so it’s easy to get through in a sitting or two. If you have the willpower to put it down once you begin, you are stronger than I. If you liked the novel Asymmetry or Big Little Lies (book or show) or if your favorite part of The Other Black Girl was the relationship between Hazel and Nella, this might be a good one for you.
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
I loved telling people I was reading this novel almost as much as I loved actually reading this novel, originally published in the eighties. People who have read this book have very strong reactions to it, probably because it is a wild, winding, quick-moving ride about some very horrible men living in New York. The story centers on a hit and run in the Bronx and the downfall of an obscenely rich bonds salesman (and self described “master of the universe” lol) and the people—mostly men—who become entangled in the incident. It reads almost like satire—there is so much attention and description to the expensive clothes and interiors of the rich, and a cast of over-the-top characters, such as an opera singer from Tennessee who borrows a private plane, then calls the owner from the plane to ask where he keeps the scotch. But it isn’t satire, and perhaps that’s what makes it almost sickening, albeit in a cannot-look-away way. The book has been described in the thirty years since as almost prophetic and the gluttonous and gory details are salacious because it becomes easier and easier to imagine that these characters actually exist. I broke my no reading in cars rule (I get carsick) to read the last few pages because I had to know what happens in the last harrowing scene. And I immensely enjoyed this review by Frank Conroy. I’m glad I read this book but fair warning, it is not for the faint of heart. These characters are all completely offensive, which is the point.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton
Listen, I will follow Dolly Alderton into a dumpster behind a Walmart. I did not read anything about this novel before I received it and when it came in the mail I was thrilled. And then I opened the book to discover it’s about…a struggling male comedian. The protagonist equivalent of a dumpster behind a Walmart? Joking! Kind of!