Quick notes on recent reading
From Lorrie Moore to Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (Lorrie Moore) – This made me think of Ferrante. An acutely and absorbingly wrought USAmerican tale of girlhood, alienation, sexuality and social class. Some very beautiful lines. I’d recommend.
Intermezzo (Sally Rooney) – My first Rooney. I’d not really bothered with her before, owing to a vague expectation that her work centred on European 20-something city life in ways that don’t particularly interest me – zeitgeisty, overstated sexual/romantic intrigue and potentially requiring more interest in drug use than I can muster. These elements were all present, but it was also okay, I guess? I would neither object to reading another Rooney nor rush to do so.
Careless People (Sarah Wynn-Williams) – i.e. the Facebook whistleblower memoir. I inhaled this rapidly, pausing often to pick my jaw up off the floor, and have been thinking about it ever since. The author’s journey resonated a lot for me: from idealistic enthusiasm about early social media to a recognition that corporate greed has sought to foreclose many of the democratic possibilities that the tools of digital communications once seemed to offer. I remember the transformation of political imagination that blogs caused in Singapore; I remember the hopefulness of the 2009 Iranian protests; I remember Tunisian and Algerian classmates joyfully watching the unfolding of the Arab Spring in realtime; and of course we also all know, now, the attentional and deliberative dysfunction that our new ways of communication have also brought. Wynn-Williams’ tale from inside the corporate structures that shaped these dynamics is both an entertaining read and I suspect an important one for understanding global developments of the last 15-20 years.
Velvet Was the Night (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) – My fourth Moreno-Garcia outing. I think I now qualify as a fan. I really enjoy how she builds the cast of each novel around a different set of historical, cultural and fantastical enthusiasms, even as she remixes certain core elements (the young heroine; the unsuitable yet sexually alluring man; the seeming loser who nevertheless comes up romantic trumps; the sinister and oftentimes colonially inflected patriarchal elder). She also has a superb command of pace and density. Each chapter, each unfolding piece of each mystery, each relationship, gives you just enough to anticipate the colourful, attractive, satisfying step around the corner – and then stops, leaving you wanting. She never once overplays her hand.
Alien Clay (Adrian Tchaikovsky) – I picked this up in a dry spell as I kept seeing Tchaikovsky likened to Greg Egan. I’d be more inclined to say “a poor man’s China Miéville”. I see the imaginative and political angles he’s going for, but it’s all rather tendentiously written and not nearly as original as the Egan comparison implies. The far-future narrator from a supposed global authoritarian regime was also distractingly steeped in late 20th-/early 21st-century Anglophone cultural frameworks. I don’t think I’ll be reading more.
I’m also in the midst of rereading Jude the Obscure for the nth time, which probably deserves a piece of its own. Till next time, here’s a watermelon which was really good on a hot, hot day.
