Nightbitch, by Rachel Yoder: Oh boy, this was a wild and fantastic ride. A friend pointed out (when I recommended this book) that there’s an emergent body of literature dealing with domestic drama + a single element of the fantastical, such as children who burst into flames when upset or women turning into rabbits. Transmutation is the thread between them; in this case, a woman’s experience of motherhood and domestic tedium results in her turning into a dog – Nightbitch – both incrementally and occasionally all at once overnight. I wondered briefly how the author would write an ending that matches up to the conceit, but I needn’t have worried. Parts of this are hard to read – intentionally – for the sentimental, but that’s a fair price of admission.
What to Miss When, by Leigh Stein: Leigh is a close friend and I have almost her entire oeuvre, though I need to acquire her first book of poetry, Dispatches from the Future, to complete my set – especially since this, her second poetry collection, is such a fantastic experience. I read it all at once, which is probably neither necessary nor ill-advised for most collections but, I would say, enhances the event. This is an album, not a collection of singles, and the poems play off of one another in both direct and subtle ways. Quarantine, illness, the internet, performativity – these all intersect in Leigh’s work, which in this collection takes on a variety of voices – often within the same poem – both of the Decameron-era and of our post-post-modern online existence.
Empire of Pain, by Patrick Radden Keefe: In my mind, for the first quarter of this book, the title was “House of Pain,” which I realized was incorrect only when I Googled it to make sure I was spelling the author’s name with the right number of Es and was returned results for the “Jump Around” band. Whoops. I should be more careful with Radden Keefe’s titles, given this and the fact that I kept calling Say Nothing “Tell No One.” My first recollection of the name Sackler was as the name of a building at Tufts med school (which my then-boyfriend was attending) – Sackler B was where they had some of their classes. I doubt I thought much of it until years later, but I also don’t think the Sackler family itself was so heavily implicated in some of the longer works about the opioid epidemic (Dreamland, Dopesick) I’ve read (though it’s totally possible they were and this is a failure of my powers of observation and/or memory). I recall plenty of discussion about the pharmaceutical industry in general, and possibly even Purdue Pharma, but little about the Sacklers themselves. This book covers both the family members themselves and their role in creating/marketing oxycontin, comprehensively and compellingly. I heard some complaints that the first section, on the rise of Arthur Sackler and making of a dynasty, was too long, but I disagree. I think getting back to the roots of these dynastic families, especially those that end up nearly singlehandedly funding something so destructive (eg Blackwater…), is critical.
Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman: I know I’ve said this before, but I need Laura Lippman, Tana French, and Jane Harper to rotate putting out novels so that I’m never without a new one from one of them. This was a bit of a departure for Lippman, and played with ideas of authorship and ownership, going somewhat meta. It was hard for me to tell what degree of sympathy she felt (or intended the reader to feel) about the protagonist; half of the time it seemed obvious that he was the sort of change-resistant epitome of privilege that refuses to recognize his misdeeds, and the other half it seemed like he was supposed to be the one we were rooting for. Not to oversimplify…
The Premonition, by Michael Lewis: I thought I might not be up for a COVID-focused book so soon (since the others I’ve started haven’t taken), but most of this is about preparedness (or the impossibility of such) and public health and focuses on two doctors who attempted to thwart COVID when it began and were dismissed by the CDC, the White House, and their superiors. Of course this is a narrative of the events from their perspective and could be colored by how clearly Lewis respects them, but it’s fairly damning (most particularly of the CDC, US health care, and bureaucracy in general). I did prefer the first half, which takes place before 2020, although it sent me into something of a spin over the safety of things like facials (which I occasionally get) and pedicures (which I don’t, in part because I already harbored these concerns before reading this!) I can’t say I enjoyed this as much as the other Lewis I’ve read (The Undoing Project) but I put that 100% down to subject matter. The writing is delightful.
