Category: Book reviews

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I reviewed The Disaster Tourist for the LA Review of Books

If you’re looking for a dark summer vacation read, check out my latest book review in the Los Angeles Review of Books — “Too Close to Home: On Yun Ko-eun’s The Disaster Tourist.”

Here’s a little excerpt:

All the upheavals of 2020 perhaps make now the perfect time to read Yun Ko-eun’s latest novel, The Disaster Tourist. This slim work centers around Jungle, a Korean travel company that caters to people’s love of gawking at accidents. Jungle coldly quantifies natural catastrophes and human suffering into tourist dollars, designing tour packages that tug at people’s heart and purse strings. 

Read the rest at Los Angeles Review of Books!

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‘The Idiot’ makes me want to do college over again

Of all the many bad decisions I’ve made in my life, one of the most baffling was my decision, at seventeen, to go to college in Indiana.

What was going through my mind then? What was I thinking — or was I not thinking at all? I did have a full ride — that played a role in the decision, sure — but it was a real culture shock, going from sunny, cosmopolitan Los Angeles to a tiny university in a tiny college town, where students walked around wearing shapeless khakis and fleeces and corduroy pants, by choice. There was absolutely nothing to do there except get drunk at frat parties, which is basically what I did — for three years! Such parties are not as fun as they make them out to be in the movies. I escaped a year early by doing an extended internship at a public relations company in New York to earn the last credits I needed for my degree. I never went back, not even for the graduation ceremony.

Even now, when I talk to my college friend Anne, we often find ourselves asking each other, incredulous: “But WHY did we go THERE?”

Which is to say, reading Elif Batuman’s The Idiot (Penguin, 2017), I found myself growing wistful for the college experience I never had. The Idiot follows a young woman called Selin through her first year at Harvard, where she signs up for a random assortment of classes and develops a gigantic crush on a senior called Ivan, who already has a girlfriend and never really makes a move on Selin. This isn’t a sexual coming of age novel. In fact, there’s no sex at all! No big parties either, or much drinking. Mostly, Selin reads and writes and hangs out with her friends. And she obsesses about Ivan, musing about things, like this:

“I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time — the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back.”

And yet in all that so-called emptiness, so much happens, if mostly in the life of the mind. Selin’s strange relationship with Ivan begins when they’re paired together in Russian class to practice the language by pretending to be characters in a story they’d just read. Later, on a whim, Selin sends an email to Ivan, in the voice of her Russian character, and a correspondence begins. Soon, they start emailing each other philosophical musings on language and stars and time.

The “relationship,” if you can really call it that, doesn’t actually go anywhere, though the two do end up spending quite a lot of time together, going for drinks and swims and walks. There’s really nowhere for the relationship to go. Ivan even says explicitly he shouldn’t be stringing her along — He has a girlfriend, after all.

What I love about this novel is the question it brings up about agency. Are we decisive actors in our lives, making things happen? Or do things just happen to us? There’s an aspect to Selin that seems incredibly passive. She lets herself get dragged into things — a friend’s tae kwon do class, little excursions, conversations she’s not particularly interested in having. In fact, Selin doesn’t decide to teach in Hungary so much as just end up in that teaching program. Ivan tells her about it, so she finds herself at the orientation meeting, and then the next thing she knows she’s in the Hungarian countryside, teaching Beatles songs to a motley group of students.

Yet what is determination, really, if not the decision to follow your crush halfway around the world? Isn’t that basically the definition of following your desire? She did send the first enigmatic email, after all —

What The Idiot does really well is capture the porousness of youth, that time when anything and everything feels like it could be significant, momentous, whether it’s listening to records or waiting for a phone call or reading Dracula, that time when the potent cocktail of emotions you feel hit you so urgently you think might crawl out of your skin if something doesn’t happen, right this second!

Though really, does that time ever truly end?

“I hadn’t learned anything at all,” reads the last line of The Idiot, though the message of the book, if I can call it that, is the opposite. The epigraph is a quote from Proust, who praises the “ridiculous age” of adolescence when we do silly, regrettable things as “the only period in which we learn anything.”

And throughout, Selin does learn — about life, and longing, and love. When her friend Svetlana develops a crush on a not-particularly-impressive guy, Selin muses, “wasn’t that itself the miracle — that love really was an obscure and unfathomable connection between individuals, and not an economic contest where everyone was matched up according to how quantifiably lovable they were?”

That’s one lesson that took me a long time to learn; I learned it well after college. Surely I learned other things in Indiana — though I do still wonder sometimes if I really had to go through three years of life in the Midwest to learn that I never want to do anything like that again.

Maybe to some degree, those years helped me learn that a life of reading and writing and having conversations with people who cross my path might, in itself, be enough, that that, in itself, might be life. No need to actively try and make anything happen, no need to worry about what to do or who I might become, no need seek out the momentous parties or dramatic affairs or life-changing experiences, as whatever experiences I have, they’ll inevitably be life-changing anyway.

Maybe all I need to do is openly throw myself into whatever comes my way. The Idiot makes me want to do that, even as I fear that was the kind of thinking that took me to Indiana in the first place —

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My favorite 11 books of 2018

I used to post brief reviews of books I’d read on a monthly basis — until January this year, when I abruptly stopped for a hodgepodge of vague reasons ranging from getting a “regular job” to focusing on my novel to investing more in my relationships. But I couldn’t let 2018 go by without sharing books I loved that I think you might love too.

Here are my 11 favorite books of the year — along with photos of what I ate or drank while reading them. Why 11? I like the number better than 10, perhaps because my birthday’s in November. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:

Severance by Ling Ma (FSG, 2018)

“The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving.”
*
This apocalyptic novel is insanely good. The world is in the grip of a new disease called Shen Fever, which causes people to mechanically repeat rote tasks they did in their lives lives, then after a few weeks, to die. Most of the US is decimated over the course of a few months — and a small caravan of survivors band together to travel to a safe house of sorts — but the guy leading them slowly reveals himself to be a religious autocrat.

But this novel is so much more than an apocalyptic story — it’s the story of Candace, a twenty-something girl who moved to NYC after the death of her parents, her memories of family, her loneliness, her search for a sense of being — and it’s about our world, the rote repetitiveness of our jobs, our lives, and the meaning and purpose of all of it.

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, trans. Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, translated to English 2015, originally published 2014)

“Everything moves. A wish, a fantasy travels more swiftly than blood.”
*
I put the last of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels here, but really, I loved all four of them. They remind me of how short but also how long a life is — long enough for the things that matter to you to completely change, for relationships that seemed unalterable to alter dramatically, for fortunes to reverse and reverse themselves again, long enough really to live several lives, each almost unrecognizable from the rest. I want to remember this — it seems like an important lesson in life — not to hold on to things so tightly because I have no idea what will happen, how I will change or be changed.

The Power by Naomi Alderman (Viking, 2017)

“The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.”
*
The Cosmopolitan blurb on the back of this book calls The Power a cross between The Hunger Games and The Handmaid’s Tale — and I agree! The premise is this: In an age not too far from today, girls start developing this power that lets them discharge electric charges from their fingertips — powerful enough to hurt, torture, and even kill. Basically, women become more physically powerful than men — a change that alters all the gender dynamics, from who gets elected to office to who is expected to join the army to how couples have sex.

To be clear, this is not a novel about how the world would be better if ruled by women. In fact, Naomi Alderman’s view of human nature is sometimes quite bleak, with people hurting, subjugating, and murdering people — just because they can. But it’s a powerful read that’ll make you question all the assumptions you didn’t even know you had about men and women, what is natural biological evolutionary or even socioculturally ordained.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, Trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori (Portobello Books, translated into English 2018)

“I was taking on the form of a person that their brains all imagined as normal.”
*
An oddball woman who’s worked part time at a convenience store all her life — a job that she actually likes that gives her a sense of purpose in life — tries to change to fit in better in a world that thinks her strange for not being interested in a better career or dating and marriage. This book really lays bare the unspoken — yet strictly observed and punishing — societal expectations that push people to strive for a typical upper middle class life, with discontent of the present and a desire to reach some higher next level of wealth and status as the only acceptable norm. Loved this strange and bold book so much I read it in a day.

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (Scribner, 2018)

“Looking at someone who is looking at you was a drug as strong as any other.”
*
A woman is in prison with two consecutive life sentences. The story starts there — and unwinds with the backstory of her growing up poor and neglected in the shitty area of San Francisco, making a living as a stripper — plus her present day life in prison where she tries to work any angle she can to figure out what’s happened to her son. It’s grittier than Orange Is the New Black — more dispassionate, more visceral, more lonely. Loved this book and can’t wait for the next one by Kushner.

The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis, Trans. Michael Lucey (FSG, translated into English 2017)

“People talk as if what makes it hard to run away is that you feel homesick or that you are attached to people or to other aspects of your life, but no one mentions that it can be hard to do because you simply don’t know how to do it.”
*
A riveting novel about a boy growing up gay and impoverished in a tiny working class French town where men are hard drinking toughs, women babymaking caretakers. A town riddled with alcoholism, domestic violence, and some really painful bullying — based very much on the real life experiences of the author, who was born in 1992. It’s a really different view of life in France than you get from urbane stories set in Paris.

Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson (FSG, 1992)

“Some of the most terrible things that had happened to me in my life had happened in here. But like the others I kept coming back.”
*
People have been recommending Jesus’ Son to me for years — and now I know why. These stories follow lost men — drug addicted, alcoholic, down and out men living chaotic, grasping lives — that still have an odd wide-eyed, schizophrenic kind of charm. Read the book to be transported to a surreal sort of hell that’s half dream, half the hallucinatory underside of America.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (Jonathan Cape, 2018)

“The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn’t exist yet. I was making it, standing there, breathing.”
*
Ottessa Moshfegh is one of my favorite writers and her new novel didn’t disappoint. For a story about a depressed, disconnected girl who decides to sleep a year away on heavy duty tranqs to “heal” after her distant parents die, it’s a pretty hilarious romp of a book. The ending which coalesces around Sep. 11 was oddly uplifting.

I’ll Tell You in Person by Chloe Caldwell (Coffee House Press, 2016)

“I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I not published that essay collection, because almost all of my best friends, and everyone I’ve slept with since then, I met through that book.”
*
Should I write an essay collection? Loved this one by Chloe — intimate and freewheeling and hilarious stories that run the gamut, from going to the homes of random craigslist guys who’ve agreed to buy her steak to snorting heroin to cope with really bad cystic acne. I still don’t get why you wouldn’t just meet the guys who’ve agreed to buy you steak at a steakhouse, which makes me think maybe I have too pragmatic a brain to write crazy essay collections like this one.

Motherhood by Sheila Heti (Harvill Secker, 2018)

“I know I cannot hide from life; that life will give me experiences no matter what I choose.”
*
To have a child or not — a woman nearing 40 tries to figure it out, interrogating her own desires, ambitions as a writer, hopes, FOMO — and alongside them, the pressures put on by the culture at large, her friends, her lover. I love how Heti lays bare the often unspoken pressures put on and assumptions made about women who choose not to have children — and the honest vulnerability with which she details her own sense of uncertainty.

Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro (Grove Press, 2018)

“I admit that unless something is forbidden I cannot want it with any intensity.”
*
On the surface Fire Sermon is about a married woman who has a few brief assignations with a man married to someone else. Beneath that plot is a gorgeous work about desire and longing and obsession and writing and memory and sin and sublimation and time. Loved this book — reminded me a bit of Lydia Davis’ The End of the Story and Elizabeth Ellen’s Person(a).

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The Perpetual Motion Machine by Brittany Ackerman — October giveaway

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Melanie in Allegan, Mich.! ***

Growing up, I wished I had an older brother — The cool, reckless kind that took me along on his crazy adventures and introduced me to new, adult things I didn’t yet know about — and also the protective kind that took me under his wing and made sure nothing bad happened to me.

Those idealized yet contradictory qualities — Is it possible to find both in one brother? Desirable? That’s what I thought about while reading Brittany Ackerman’s brief memoir-in-essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine.

This book tells the story of Brittany and her older brother Skyler’s childhood — a fairly idyllic, placid upbringing, punctuated by sudden moments of crisis, like when the siblings’ mom goads young Skyler to ice skate faster and faster, until he crashes and busts up his face.

And then, of course, the kids start growing up. Skyler finds drugs and addiction, with Brittany following suit — except Brittany finds her way back while Skyler falls further into depression, repeatedly threatening suicide.

The Perpetual Motion Machine was the winner of the Red Hen Press 2017 Nonfiction Award, and comes out on Nov. 20, 2018! The Los Angeles launch reading happens at Book Soup on Dec. 7, 2018 — when I and Nicelle Davis will join Brittany to celebrate her new book. Hope to see you there!

I’m giving away a copy of The Perpetual Motion Machine to one of my readers! All current email subscribers will be automatically entered to win the copy. Subscribe now if you’re not yet getting my occasional newsletters. The giveaway closes Nov. 20, 2018 at 11:59 pm PST. US addresses only.

Come back later this month to read an interview with Brittany Ackerman.

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Coldwater Canyon by Anne-Marie Kinney — September giveaway

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Ryan in San Diego, Calif.! *** 

A thing about Los Angeles: Even after you’ve lived in this metropolis for decades, there are areas that will remain entirely foreign to you — even while they feel vaguely familiar because you’ve driven through them a bunch of times. I can conjure up an image and aesthetic and stereotypes of many L.A. neighborhoods without having any real clear sense of what it might be like to live there.

Which is to say — If you’re curious about what it might be like to live in the valley, pick up Anne-Marie Kinney’s Coldwater Canyon. Of course, this novel describes one unique person’s  experience of the valley — Shep, a former Midwesterner who landed in Los Angeles after serving in Desert Storm, who suffers from Gulf War syndrome and lives off his disability checks while hanging out with a buddy at a liquor store and stalking a girl he believes to be his daughter.

Sleepy strip malls with failing stores that serve as fronts for shadier businesses, wide and empty sidewalks punctuated by the occasional grocery cart-pushing denizen, some mute and benign, others loud and frightening. Coldwater Canyon takes you all over Los Angeles, really, from a line of actors signing up to serve as extras on TV shows, to a tiny theater hosting an experimental theater piece, to a well-secured studio lot, guards running around with headpieces.

The novel comes out from Civil Coping Mechanisms on October 4, 2018, and I’m giving away a galley copy of Coldwater Canyon to one of my readers! All current email subscribers will be automatically entered to win the copy. Subscribe now if you’re not yet getting my occasional newsletters.

For a second chance to win, comment on this post below, recommending your favorite exit off the 101 — or any other freeway. The giveaway closes September 30, 2018 at 11:59 pm PST. US addresses only.

Come back later this month to read an interview with Anne-Marie Kinney.

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Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong — July giveaway

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Juli in Los Angeles! ***

Goodbye, Vitamin is one of those novels that sound super depressing when you read the back cover — but then ends up being funny and full of joy and love when you start turning the pages!

Which is to say — I realize the premise of Goodbye, Vitamin sounds bleak. Ruth, a 30-year-old who just got dumped by her fiance and feels lost and sad, moves back in with her parents in Los Angeles — partly to help her father who has Alzheimer’s, partly just to escape her life.

There’s wry humor, though, even in the melancholy moments. To help her dad cope with no longer being able to continue his job as a professor, Ruth conspires with one of his former students to organize a fake class. Through mischief, hilarious subversion, and a hell of a lot of maneuvering, and the pair manage to make the charade work — until they get busted.

In the end this novel is about family and connection — what keeps people together, how we’re able to forgive, why we make sacrifices for each other, what makes it all worth it.

Goodbye, Vitamin just came out in paperback — and thanks to Picador, I’m giving away a copy to one of my readers! All current email subscribers will be automatically entered to win the copy. Subscribe now if you’re not yet getting my occasional newsletters.

For a second chance to win, comment on this post below, naming your favorite vitamin. The giveaway closes July 31, 2018 at 11:59 pm PST. US addresses only.