4 minute read
Beach Read tO BOOk cLuB
I love a frothy book as much as anyone, but sometimes, you need something with a little bit more heft. These books feel at home both on the beach and in your book club.
Detransition, Baby
Advertisement
Torrey Peters
We follow three women in DETRANSITION, BABY: Reese, a trans woman who longs for a child; Ames, Reese’s ex who has recently detransitioned and is living as a man and Katrina, Ames’ boss who reveals that she is pregnant with his baby. Ames devises an unconventional plan: maybe Reese, Ames and Katrina can all raise the baby together. I really enjoyed this one! It’s super characterdriven but has the perfect punch of plot: what is this unconventional family going to look like? I’m a biiiig fan of a character-driven novel and I really liked getting to learn so much about the backstories of these characters through the flashback format. The characters are often messy and chaotic and flawed, which is just how I like them!
Interior Chinatown
Charles Yu
Written in a screenplay format, INTERIOR CHINATOWN follows Willis Wu, an Asian man who lives and works on the set of Black and White, a cop procedural show set at The Golden Palace, a restaurant in Chinatown. Willis sees himself as Generic Asian Man. He’s not a protagonist in both the show and his own life. The screenplay format was so inventive and smart. The writing is sharp and smart and sarcastic and perfect for the tone. The commentary on family, immigration and race was really fascinating and I loved seeing how Willis’s position as a bit player on the show translated to the way he perceives himself in life as an Asian-American.
True Story
Kate Reed Petty
In late 1990s Baltimore, a successful high school lacrosse team is plagued by a rumor of a sexual assault that took place after one of the team’s legendary parties. Over a decade later, Alice Lovett, a reclusive ghostwriter, continues to be haunted by what she can’t remember from that night. Petty did a really incredible job writing about not only the lingering effects of sexual assault, but rumors, misunderstandings and the lines between our memories and the truth. TRUE STORY plays with format in one of the most original ways I’ve seen in a long time. This novel is told in college essays, emails, memoir, audio transcripts, screenplays, a dual narrative that switches between first and second-person— basically this one has it all. It might seem overwhelming at first, but it works SO well.
All Adults Here
Emma Straub
Astrid Strick, a widowed mother of three adult children, witnesses a bus crash that causes her to reexamine her own life. She’s been harboring a pretty major secret from her children and she decides it’s prime time to tell them. Elliot, her oldest, is struggling with his twin boys, his construction business, and a long-time grudge against his parents. Porter is pregnant but can’t seem to give up seeing her high school ex-boyfriend. And Nicky, who lives in Brooklyn, sends his teenage daughter Cecelia to live with Astrid after an incident at school. Straub writes families so well. Everything in here felt so realistic and plausible, from grudges quietly held for decades to the urge to blurt out your huge secret even though you know it has the potential to fracture your family.
The Kindest Lie
Nancy Johnson
In 2008 Chicago, Ruth and her husband Xavier, a successful Black couple, are on the cusp of making their next big step: having children. Xavier is overjoyed, but Ruth is harboring a huge secret. Back home in the Indiana factory town where she grew up, Ruth gave up a baby born during her senior year of high school. She knows that in order to start a family with Xavier, she must make peace with what happened in her past. As she returns home, she befriends Midnight, a young white boy with a fractured family. As the friendship between Ruth and Midnight deepens, Ruth comes closer to uncovering the truth about what happened to her child, until a devastating incident reveals the severity of the racial tensions in town.
Good Neighbors
Sarah Langan
What an absolutely bizarre book! Don’t get me wrong, I liked it but I thought it was SO weird. Billed as a book in a similar vein to LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE (which I loooooved), it follows a neighborhood spat turned deadly. When a sinkhole opens up in a Long Island neighborhood, it ignites a firestorm of controversy as two feuding families are put at odds when a teen girl falls into the hole. We see their entire neighborhood take sides and then go so far as to protect one family, even though it will fracture the lives of their neighbors. This book takes place in the distant future (2027) with articles + mixed media from the 2040s-2050s, which was pretty trippy, not gonna lie!
