Summer required reading used to fill me with its own brand of dread. John Irving and all these prep school novels I had no basis for in my balmy Florida high school. Catherine Called Birdy, though… that bitch RULED. She could stay. Adult me has rebranded summer reading, thank god.
These books are so clearly hazy summer reads, ones I’ll turn to again in the dead of winter again when I find myself fantasizing about the next summer, hopefully swamped in crowds and what seems to be not just my own sweat. Maybe so close to someone strange and not vetted that they’ve spilled a bit of their Coors Light on my flip-flopped foot. Fingers crossed.
When I lived in Los Angeles, I created an alter ego. It wasn’t a method of dissociation, but more so a way I tapped into a version of myself who already existed, someone who didn’t find it hard to divulge into more sensual pursuits. She wore wrap dresses. She licked chocolate off her fingers. She relaxed her stomach. Her name was “Conchita”, which is great because I didn’t realize that translates literally to “little shell” or…. even hilariously, “little ‘c-word’”, colloquially.
It was easier for me to name her than to give myself the power directly at the time. Things have changed now, thank god; it’s not as hard to source these things in me.
Full-blown pisces that I am, I got through this pandemic summer by pretending to be someone else in my free time. These were some of my favorite women-forms I assumed this summer. I think you’ll enjoy them too.
These are one part pulpy, flowery “books on the beach house’s bookshelf (you know, the one that has the entire Twilight series on it” mixed with equal part “literary fiction your liberal-arts-college-adjunct-lecturing aunt let you borrow”.
Luster by Raven Leilani
For when you want to feel an eery sense of sexy foreboding (and don’t we all), go on a magical mystery ride with this one, wherein our heroine finds herself involved in an open (or rather, slightly ajar?) marriage, and develops a strange, tense friendship and reliance with the husband’s wife. Included with purchase: many great reflections on sex, art, race, and a surprising amount of dark humor which really hits the spot.
The Shame by Makenna Goodman
Alma, a home-steading, stay-at-home mother in rural Vermont has recently become enamored with an influencer, Celeste (who, of course, makes ceramics and wears hella linen). The obsession only grows as Alma finds herself isolated at home, wondering the limits of her own ability to self-improve as a mother, as a wife, and as a woman.
One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London
Bea, a plus sized fashion-blogger, finds herself as the lead and star of a Bachelorette-esque show, dating 25 strangers and globe-trotting around the world to find romance, yes. But it’s so much more than that. This is a powerful, fun, poignant look at self-worth, fat-phobia, reality TV production, love, and how far one is willing to go to get it. It’s equal parts “awwwwww” and “oh fuck”, which is my metric for a great romance read.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
I’m really burying the lede here, but this was my favorite book of 2020. I wish I had a fresh brain so I could read this for the first time all over again. Imagine a Greek chorus of 12 Black women across multiple centuries in England, and you’ll get a winding, poetic and polyphonic spree of voices that haunt, inform, and bolster each other.
Self Care by Leigh Stein
A great companion read / double-header with The Shame, this book dissects, parodies and reconciles the same questions of self-optimization, following two female entrepreneurs and friends as they navigate their own Goop / The Wing-esque app start up.
Queenie by Candace Carty-Williams
What people get wrong about this book is its resemblance to Bridget Jones’ Diary. While I love Bridget Jones more than some family members, this misses the mark entirely and is beyond reductive. I’d pitch this more as if the tv shows Chewing Gum and Fleabag had a baby and that baby was next door neighbors to Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Queeniee is the lovable mess in all of us. Stressful, but lovable. This book is the equivalent of a great, meaty 3-hour brunch companion.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Hot damn, I am ready for this movie adaptation. I feel ill-equipped to try and sum up this brilliant book, but here we go: two white-passing black twins in Louisiana branch off in their adolescence and one lives life as a white woman in Los Angeles, as her sister (who has a black child with a dark-skinned man), lives life as a light-skinned black person in their small town that is known for its population of white-passing Black people. It is incredible, important, and big-hearted.
Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Drake
Hot damn, I am also ready for this movie adaptation. A retired baseball player with the “yips” moves into the guest room of a widower in a cute small town in Maine. If this sounds like a sassy little Reese-Witherspoon-starring movie from the aughts, you are right. Also Linda Drake is a brilliant pop culture writer for NPR and it shows; you feel like you have inside jokes and the level of depth and conflict she gives to these characters make this a romance novel with curveballs (Ugh.)
The Bed Moved by Rebecca Schiff
There’s a quote in this amazing short story collection I want tattoo’d on my lower back: “I arrived, not tube-topped or jubilant, but cardiganned, dehydrated, on time.” Wry and sexy and clever, this whole short story collection has the feeling of a 3am confession hour at a slumber party, when the wine makes the secrets and deep truths pour out.
Writers and Lovers by Lily King
This whole book made me time-travel back to my own time of stumbling through the Boston/Cambridge worlds on the saddle of my own bike, trying to suss out where the smells were coming from as I crossed the river on Mass. Ave (mint, chocolate steam, tech steam). I’m usually allergic to books with main characters that are writers, it’s a bit meta for me, but this one has amazing reflections on the artistic focus one sources from romance or lack-thereof.
The New Me by Halle Butler
God, I love a nihilist, unlikable narrator. Especially when it’s female, this whole emergence of a subtle foreboding sense of ennui in this character feels like there are other women to be, which is always a win I think, even if they aren’t people you’d root for. The heroine of this one is free-falling through her career, her sense of self, her ambition (and lack of it), and I don’t think you can source such brilliant insights on these things unless you let your characters go off this deep end, and thank god Halle Butler does.
Beach Read by Emily Henry
This is the book I wanted most to blue-skidoo into. A romance writer competes with her hot, literary fiction writer-neighbor (who she competed with in college) in a sleepy little lake town in Michigan. Their challenge is to write and sell a book in the other writer’s genre the fastest as they cure their own writer’s block, but ay dios mio their chemistry is real dreamy. I love that they both bring their own hangups, trauma, and worries into their relationship with each other.
Also for a little treat: I’ve heard the Zoom discussion my boss Shannon and I gave last week, “What Writers Get Wrong About Women”, is great to listen to while you’re washing dishes. just something I’ve heard. Please forgive all my “mmms”. This was only my second Zoom rodeo.
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Summer Girls
Okay I love this! We’ve read a lot of the same books and a lot of these are also on my TBR list. And are there going to be movie adaptations for the two you mentioned or are you just hoping there will be?! I read them both and i was hoping the same thing as you!