Vignettes about beginnings and endings
The second Han Kang book I've picked up in the past three months (the first was The Vegetarian), The White Book will definitely not be the last I will read of Kang. This collection of meditations on whiteness—from the purity of newly fallen snow to the ripe swell of a firm peach to the thick drops of breastmilk that emerge even after a newborn's untimely death—spans the entirety of life itself, beginning to end and back again. And, in classic Kang style, the path between these two points is nonlinear at best. A read that is somehow both jolting and soothing all at once.
Hemingway's snow-crazed, outdoorsy uncle
Another day, another missing piece of my American literary canon fit into place. As my 2024 obsession with Henry Hoke's Open Throat and Emily Habeck's Shark Heart: A Love Story will attest, stories from the POV of animals have really been my jam lately. The setting feels alive and throbbing in London's writing—I found myself shivering even though I was curled up on a cozy couch in Florida while reading! In Call of the Wild, a spoiled family pet finds himself trafficked to the wintery forests of Canada to labor for the first time in his life, discovering the unalienable-if-dormant ancestral instincts within him. In White Fang, a wild dog-wolf hardens himself to the world as he finds himself horrifically mistreated at the hands of his human masters, at least until he finds his forever home with a benevolent soul.
Reading the novel literally—a relatively easy task when the prose is so straightforward and (I don't mean this as an insult) simple, rather like Hemingway, a noted London descendent—is the most enjoyable, IMO. The humans of Jack London's fiction are mostly half-baked caricatures and it is all too easy to see how schools of thought that promote any notion of "alpha male" masculinity ala the manosphere could find easy fodder in his pages (you know...if they ever actually read a book). And though these ideas are hardcoded into London's writerly DNA, his works are hardly agenda-pushing creations (a line Hemingway toed, crossed, and hammered multiple times over). Darwinism and white male supremacy aside, these stories are a great read.
The pinnacle of absurd thought
If Kurt Vonnegut published Cat's Cradle for the first time in 2025, the front jacket quote from N+1 editors would call it "blisteringly original" while the New York Times book review section would ignore it completely. Somehow, I think that would make Vonnegut smile.
I honestly don't know if I can describe the events of this book without spoiling the joy of reading it...In no particular order, Vonnegut's story weaves through the apocalypse, a cult island, a university science lab, an airplane tiki bar, and, of course, deep into the heart of the Hoosier diaspora. He explores meaning, life, love, God, humanity, and morality, though if you've read any Vonnegut before, you already knew that. Fair warning: If you're not a fan of toes and/or feet, certain passages of this book will be difficult for you.
A tapestry of medieval women
Over the course of the three-day weekend celebrating the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., my friend Tessa and I made fish and chips from scratch, baked chocolate soufflé, and binged approximately 2 full seasons of Netflix's The Last Kingdom. (I refuse to watch the final few episodes + movie because I do not want the show to end.) This delightful anecdote is relevant because The Last Kingdom is set during the early Middle Ages in (soon-to-be) England when King Alfred the Great is battling Vikings in his attempt to unify the various British kingdoms. A key figure in the narrative of The Last Kingdom and of real life history is Æthelflæd, Alfred's daughter and the sole female ruler in the history of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.
Æthelflæd is one of the women Janina Ramirez highlights in her wonderful exploration of women's medieval history. Even if only in passing, I've heard of Alfred the Great before. Æthelflæd was a new name for me as I know it is for countless others and through her book, Ramirez is trying her damndest to fix that needless recognition gap! She not only examines the actual archeological clues and unfurls dense academic explorations of women's history in a manner that makes it digestible and fun for her audience, Ramirez's writing style is particularly well suited to her niche. She forges connections across various periods of history and genre (indeed, one of her chapters about a prominent Middle Age heroine begins with the story of a British suffragette in the early 1900s) without ever obscuring her true point. She does get a little into the weeds as the chapters go on, but it's a mark of her genuine passion that I find quite refreshing.
Sapphic cabin fever
One of the testimonials on the back of this book calls Yael Van Der Wouden's work, "Portrait of a Lady on Fire if it were directed by Hitchcock" and it feels pretty fitting. (I will also say, in the vein of being an honest book reviewer, I do not believe I have ever seen a Hitchcock film, familiar as I am with the general aesthetic of his oeuvre.) I read this book entirely in one sitting and less than 100 pages into it, I was texting my fellow book nerds to rave about it.
It's not that my excitement was premature, exactly, but I was less enamored with the resolution of this book than I was with the beginning and rising action of it all. (I am also not unconvinced that reading the entire novel in one sitting was detrimental to my opinion—like good bread, opinions usually need time to rise, stretch, and develop and reading an entire novel in less than 3 hours usually prevents that.) Set in the post-WWII Netherlands, an aloof sister is forced to share her house with her irresponsible younger brother's flighty girlfriend for a summer and the pages practically crackle like the air brewing one of those classic summer thunderstorms. The slow tension and moments of unexplained absurdity sprinkled throughout function as Easter eggs for those of us ~in the know~ (aka women who love women).
The majority of this book is slow and delicious and makes me want to press my cheek against the page to be even that much closer to the words. And then...the resolution feels like it happens extremely quickly and is relatively drama-free? Maybe I am suffering from #queerreadertrauma in wanting us to have to suffer a little more by the end. I also didn't love Van Der Wouden's decision to give us a glimpse of an entirely new perspective (an entire narrative shift) exclusively through quick diary entries. It reminded me a bit of Lulu's chapter in Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, another decision that felt awkward to me. I rarely think books or movies should be longer than they are (RIP 90 minute films) but this story could've benefitted from being ~50 pages longer, IMO. I still purchased the paperback on preorder because I want it as a permanent part of my collection.
Apocalyptic existentialism, but make it magical realism
Brave of me to tackle a novel about living through the apocalypse at this particular moment in time, I think. Less brave than Muriel Leung for dedicating (I'm sure) years of her life to writing it, but I digress. This Only Murders in the Building-esque ensemble story takes place (mostly) within the walls of an apartment building as the world is literally crumbling around them. Acid rainstorms are showering New York City in a blistering hellfire every Tuesday. Supplies and morale are running questionably low, but paranormal activity has never been higher as ghosts begin to flood back to the building much as the tenants themselves seek shelter there.
A semi-closeted queer woman named Mira, her mother, their neighbor Lucinda, a headless man called Sad, and Sin, the ghost of a gay cockroach, are only a few of the characters that populate the forged community that comes together in the wake of, well, unnameable disaster. As Leung herself phrases it, "A disaster oftentimes refers to a big momentous thing that happens once and then everyone suffers the repercussions of it...But what happens if disaster is an incessant event that happens every Tuesday?”
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