The Weekly Croissant: Some Books I Have Loved Lately
These seem to live in the same category of book in my head!
‘Ello my croissants! I hope everyone had a lovely New Year. I was on a role with reading in December, with lots of cold days, plane travel, and loungy evenings with family over the holidays. Here are a few books I read and loved:
The Mars Room is the most recent novel by Rachel Kushner (she has since published a book of essays that I’ve not yet read). Croissant loyalists will remember that I wrote about her novel The Flame Throwers in a previous post. The Mars Room takes place in a California women’s prison and is somehow deeply scathing of the justice system without being so depressing that you don’t want to read it. The characters and their specific humor and resilience are what keep you hopeful. The scope of research needed to do this kind of novel in incredible to me, it feels vast and deep. There is not a lot of joy but there is a lot of humanity here and it’s a deeply moving and rewarding book.
A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux - My dad always gives us books for Hanukkah, a tradition which I’ve come to cherish since he’s pretty good at picking them out, and they always come with really sweet and occasionally cringe inscriptions about why he thinks we will like said story. After Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel prize in literature, I guess my dad went on a bender with her books, because everyone in the family was gifted an Ernaux novel. I read both mine (A Girl’s Story), and my mom’s (A Woman’s Story), but the first really got to me, as it tackled some subjects close to my heart; mainly how young women’s sexualities are controlled and exploited. I felt that Ernaux was able to convey all of the grey areas that exist for young women around sex, and the way that the lack of fluency in one’s own body comes to hurt you over time.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo is one that I’ve been listening to via audiobook, on the recommendation of my sister-in-law. At first, all of the modern references to specific culture wars and internet characters were really pulling me out of the story, but once I got used to the hyper-modern setting I came to really enjoy this book, which moves between the lives of different black British women as they navigate their lives in the U.K. For me, it’s an unknown and endlessly interesting perspective and the book pays homage to the myriad of experiences within the demographic.
What have y’all been reading lately?
The Weekly Croissant: Some Books I Have Loved Lately
Thank you Ray! I have been very taken by Ernaux, especially as most of her work is available in audible form on Hoopla that is available through the Oak Park public library. "Life of a Man" (sent to Lili) has a good write-up on how she developed her writing style and A Frozen Women (sent to Becca) is brilliant and insightful on the role of religion and traditional class culture in oppressing young women in France. Much Love, Dad.
Gender Queer: A Memoir: Kobabe, Maia. Told in "graphic novel" form this personal story is brave and beautiful. Plenty to ponder here, even for me, a white male cisgender geezer married since 1981. It's likely impossible to go wrong when you read "the most banned book in America" for any year you choose and this one is no exception.