What I read in May
Sayaka Murata-inflicted trauma, and I'm late to the party on Either/Or
Hello!
Books
The Dream Hotel, by Laila Lalami1
I really liked the premise of this, but unfortunately it felt like it lacked something for me. It’s speculative fiction that feels worryingly plausible; a woman travelling home from a conference overseas is pulled in for questioning and she ends up in a detention centre for potential criminals. It turns out that the implant she has had installed to help her sleep better as a new parent of unexpected twins has been tracking her dreams, and has flagged her as a risk to her husband.
On top of capitalist dream-surveillance, there are interesting threads throughout the novel - Sara’s relationship with her husband, their differing ideas of what a marriage looks like, how they approach spending and responsibility; a horrible accident in Sara’s childhood which completely changes the context of the dreams she has been detained for; her racial profiling at airports and the positive use of AI to stop it; the other women at the centre and their backstories; the interesting angle of the not-prison officers and their motivations - but these are kind of overshadowed by the *AI JUSTICE IS BAD* and by the end, many of the threads were left hanging.
I think this will pop up in “if you liked Black Mirror, you’ll love this…”, and it is a solid concept for that genre of dystopian/speculative fiction, but I wanted more from it.
Until August, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A little break from kindle reading, this was a speedy read about a woman who travels to visit the cemetery her mother is buried in every year and finds a new lover each year, for just one night, before returning home to her life and her family.
It’s billed as “the lost novel”, but it’s not really either of those things — it was intended to be part of a bigger book, a set of four stories which would’ve centred around the same protagonist, Ana Magdalena Bach, but they didn’t come together before García Márquez’ death in 2014. He had read some chapters aloud to an audience early on, before putting the drafts aside to work on Memories of my Melancholy Whores instead. This story was edited and published (against his wishes, it should probably be noted) from a “final” draft — the only manuscript left in his archive.
I enjoyed it but it does feel unfinished, and — unsurprisingly — doesn’t live up to the brilliance of the other novels I’ve read of his. I have very mixed feelings about posthumous publishing (if I’ve had a conversation with you recently about Joan Didion, you’ll know) and this did feel like a draft, but it’s nice to have more GGM to read, so maybe I’m part of the problem.
Either/Or, by Elif Batuman
I *LOVED* this. It picks up where THE IDIOT left off; Selin is in her second year at Harvard after deciding to drop her language classes after returning from her summer in Hungary. Ivan isn’t physically in this second novel (he send s couple of emails, but he’s pretty much absent). I loved every little tangent, as Selin picked up books from her Russian Literature classes, and read her way through various philosophers and classic novels. It made me want to go back to school, in the best way. Only took me three years to get to it.
Vanishing World, by Sayaka Murata2
Murata does write weird exceptionally well, and this is another of her slightly off-kilter worlds. The strength of her writing (and of Ginny Tapley Takemori’s translation) is what keeps me reading when things get gross. This one is, I’ve read, an earlier work than Convenience Store Woman or Earthlings, and that makes sense on the Murata-weirdness scale (I think that after Earthlings, it’s probably good to rein it in a bit for the next book. IYKYK.) In a near-future, sex has become almost extinct - couples sometimes have extra-marital affairs, but usually with characters from books or tv shows, and sex within a marriage is seen as incestuous; a belittling of the family unit. All pregnancies are the result of IVF, and a new city is taking applications for residents who want to take part in an experimental society, where men can become pregnant and where all adults are mothers. It’s an interesting concept, explored in an interesting way, and Murata’s points on modern relationships and societal norms are always spot on. I enjoyed this one right up until I got to 97% (I was reading on my kindle, but The Thing happens in literally the last couple of pages). Murata’s books are always unsettling and veer off into disturbing, but that very final scene - albeit a full-circle to the idea of sex between married partners being incestuous - came as a shock (and I’m honestly surprised it’s not had more mention!)
Also: the Wuthering Heights buddy read has given me a fun rabbit-holey month; I read THE LAMB by Lucy Rose for book club and discussed it IRL over wine and pizza; I’m weighing up options for July’s book club pick; and I bought HEART LAMP ten minutes after it won the International Booker Prize.
Online reads
“The magic lives close to the edge” Lorde and artist Martine Syms on the beauty of the self (Document Journal)
MORE POST ALWAYS. Here’s an amazing resource from
for finding more ways to write to people. (Shoot me a DM if you want to be penpals.)Real book recommendations based on those fake AI ones, from LitHub
To Be Loved Is To Be Known, gorgeous.
Terri-Jane x
This was a Netgalley arc, but I think it’s out now!
From Granta/Netgalley, this one came out at the end of April