Sunday Bookmarks #6
As someone who once prided themselves on their type A personality, I struggle to let go of perfection, although illness is doing its best to show me how to do that. An unintentional missed newsletter last week, as I turned 25, visited another city, saw friends outside for the first time in a long time, and I felt good. Really good. In fact, I think I had two weeks of pretty consistent good health for the first time since November. That isn’t to say this all goes away, my version of pretty good versus your version, if you are a healthy reader, will differ greatly. Pretty good doesn't mean symptom-free, without pain or no longing for a body that acts its age, it just means no bed-bound days, no limbs too heavy to carry to the bathroom, it just means being able to be myself, without the anxiety cloud of illness hovering.
If I were a believer in God or something up there, I would say the universe had my back these past couple of weeks, I needed reminding who I am aside from illness, the jokes I can make when I am not worried about meds, the joy I can find when my world seems a little less heavy, and for that I am very grateful.
This week (& last) I have been:
READING //
Run The Tides by Vendela Vida (Out on 6th May from Atlantic Books). I began this late Friday night and quickly fell into its relaxed and often simplistic writing style. It is narrated by a young girl, who is for some reason, reminding me of the protagonist from Elena Ferrante’s most recent, The Lying Life of Adults, albeit lacking the small semblance of self-awareness Gianni had. The sea-top Californian neighborhood is drawing images of the Big Little Lies vista to mind, although here we follow 4 childhood friends on the cusp of adolescence, with a keen focus on two, who are struggling to navigate the changing power dynamics of young friendship. It is interesting so far, lightweight enough to read for multiple chapters in a row, but the jury is still out on whether it will linger much afterward.
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton (out now). I had a day last week where I needed to recoup, to restore energy after a weekend of participation in life, and I turned to a new audiobook to pass the time. Fiction on audio is often a conundrum, the narrator’s voice must be distinctive but not irritating, the storyline must be interesting but not overly complex, the characters must be distinguishable from each other in order to avoid further confusion. In some rare cases, a single narrator will do, Take Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall and Summerwater, both brilliantly narrated in regional accents. However, my preference for narrated fiction is full-cast audio, that is, individual voices for individual characters. My only run-in with The Archers was as background noise to my grandma having an afternoon siesta, but the premise feels much the same, a story told through voices so distinctly different, you could be watching TV with your eyes closed.
Opal and Nev is being dubbed the new Daisy Jones and The Six, and although I find such comparisons a lazy form of cultural critique, I can see the similarities. Daisy Jones followed a fictional band, eerily similar to Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, through turbulent tour dates, album releases, and the messy bits in between, in short, I loved it, but I know I only loved it because I listened to it, something about the faux-documentary format, the clashing voices all wanting to share their side of the story and the background hum of rock and roll drama, I ended up devouring in 24 hours whilst down with a fever. Much of the same tonality is seen in Opal and Nev, however, Walton punctuates her version of an Oral History of a fictional band, with sharp takes on racial tension in 1960’s America, Black womanhood in the music game, and each person’s desire to get ahead for themselves, or their community. Arguably not as footloose and fancy-free as some readers may be hoping for, given the aforementioned comparison, but for the better, I think.
THINKING ABOUT // The desire to be across it all.
Every so often we have a Twitter storm occur in the book world, a small echo chamber of the internet that I end up explaining to some very well-meaning but bored-looking faces of friends who do not partake in bookish discourse, rather they just read the books I lend them and send me their 3 line reviews via WhatsApp. A tangential side note for those who love Roxane Gay, I hope would have been equally distraught when my two friends couldn’t remember if they had DNF’d Hunger, Bad Feminist or Not That Bad, and failed to recall any meaningful feelings towards any (heartbreaking I know). I am now about to explain this week’s discourse and apologize in advance to those same well-meaning friends who subscribe to this newsletter hoping I will write about things other than books, that they can relate to.
A few newsletters ago, I wrote of my disdain for Joyce Carol Oates’ takedown of autofiction, please see here. This week, I was informed (over 13 times), via DM, of another author’s Twitter rampage, which sadly I cannot link as it has been deleted, I imagine rather swiftly given the rant’s collision with the author’s debut publication date. I have never read any Joyce Carol Oates, nor is she high on my radar, as we all know, I am a greedy reader of the here and now, failing to backtrack on names of the past. Thus it was no skin off my nose if people chose to boycott Oates, or stand fervently in her favor. This latest rant, however, concerns a book I was very much anticipating, and without employing my own cryptic subtweeting, you can see some of the now-deleted messages on here, and the synopsis of Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing by Lauren Hough, here. The previously mentioned (in jest, in case that isn’t clear) DM’s, arrived in my inbox as I had already requested and received an advance copy of the book, prior to twitter events, thus I posted about the book, acknowledging on the next slide (won’t do that again), that I had seen the events, and would review book in due course. The book concerns the author’s upbringing and later escape from the Children of God cult, and the numerous identities she took on in adult life, reinventing herself so to speak.
I am not writing here to defend the views Hough broadcast, In fact, I am happy to say, from the narrow slice of her mind I was exposed to in 300 or fewer characters, she isn’t someone I would want to meet in real life. Then lies the question, this author seems like a bad person, will I still read their books? I have stopped reading and promoting Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, following her doubling downing on TERF views. Jessie Cave has her first novel out next month, one I am not inclined to pick up following a podcast stance she took on R*pe and trigger warnings, that left me reeling for days and I will not touch David Foster Wallace with a barge pole, on account of his abuse towards women, So it seems we can assume, I am a reader who values the morals of their writers. So will I still read this book? Is the answer yes because I already own a copy? Is the fact I was sent it for free in exchange for a review impacting my decision? Is it my fascination with cults and the lack of these stories that override my compass telling me her story is not worth listening to because she made comparisons with sexual assault victims, and called my beloved book community super nerds? I am hesitant to mention the obvious, but thousands of readers will pick up her book in coming months, the appetite for cult memoir is rife amongst even less obsessive readers, those people may google her name, but more likely will see it in a bookshop window, or on a table by the till, and decide to give it a whirl. Do we, we being those who dwell on the book internet for far longer than we like to admit, have a duty to inform others, of authors that are no good, in hope that will filter through to staffers and shop owners? It is unlikely to impact the Amazon or NYT lists, as much as we like to inflate our influence over part-time readers, the cogs of capitalism and consumption spin much faster than we can keep up with. So where does that leave me? Wishing sometimes I was ‘just a reader’ so that I could remain ignorant to an author's opinions? I guess not. Does it sometimes feel like a 3rd job, keeping abreast of the restless production of discourse? Certainly. Am I still fighting an internalized hierarchy of ‘problematic views’, entangled with my own experiences of the not-so-nice parts of life? Absolutely.
This is very much thoughts in progress, I am never one to commit to strict rules of absolute, and it has never served me well in the past. So I suppose I am still contemplating what I will do, and I suspect so are most people who already have a copy of the said book at home.
Further Watching: Why Lauren Hough (and Goodreads) are *both* Bothering Me
are authors okay? the answer is no
LIVING WITH // The looks
Last weekend, the first as life in England starts to resemble pre-COVID living, I went out for the first time in a while to places that were not medical appointments. I put something other than tracksuit bottoms on, had a bow in my hair, and even some mascara, in other words, I didn’t look ‘sick’, but it was the first time I used my wheelchair in the company of friends.
The most defining feature of wheelchair usage for me, is the drastic change in vertical height I experience. Standing, I am almost 6ft, and thanks to an early growth spurt, and what I now know is my genetic health disease, I was a gangly long-legged thing as a teenager. I was used to towering above friends, clattering around in heels too high and stooping in group photographs, so being spoken down to, quite literally, took some getting used to.
I laughed to myself at the awkward way no one knows how to walk, and this is not a gripe against my beloved friends, they are learning alongside me, most without lived experience of sickness or disability, do we walk in one straight line? do I talk to the person pushing me or the person trying to walk alongside? who can carry the chair down the stairs? What do we do when I need a wee?
As I was pushed back from the beach, it occurred to me the sheer vulnerability involved with ambulatory wheelchair use, unlike someone who uses a chair as an extension of their body, a replica of legs, I use one mostly for fatigue and joint pain, hence mine is not self-propelled (i.e it doesn’t have wheels with handrails designed for me to push myself), I am entirely reliant on the person pushing me, to listen and follow my instruction, and that was a terrifying thought.
Reading the phenomenal memoir, Sitting Pretty, last week, Taussig alerted me to the statistics, that a disabled woman is 3x more likely to be a victim of assault than her able-bodied counterpart. As is the case with our hyper-individualised society, you tend to only become acutely aware of injustice and harm, when it affects you, even if you try, as I and many others do, to be an ally of those more marginalised than you.
As I asked my friend to stop my chair, so I could check I had my phone, I experienced in real-time, a pang of fear, what if she didn’t want to? Decided I could wait? I am almost certainly at my pusher’s mercy, even with legs that can walk sometimes, I am beginning to understand wheelchair users when they say a stranger touching their chair feels like a violation, an encroachment on their personal space. It is my mobility aid, I use it as and when I need to, eventually it may be full time, or I will upgrade to a motorized version, or switch to a walking stick, who knows. Regardless, it has enabled me to try and get used to vulnerabilities inherent to living in a sick body that I hadn’t previously considered.
Catch you all on another part of the internet,
Hannah