What I Read in August
"Literature brings the heart and connects the heart and the mind. It brings emotional intelligence and empathy into our way of thinking." Elif Shafak
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Nantucket recently for a project I’m working on. It is a place I would go every summer (and sometimes Christmas or other holidays). My godmother is a fourth generation Nantucketer, and she was always a endless well of love and wonder for me as I was growing up, so much so that love and wonder extended to the place where she lived. She still lives there, as it turns out, after four generations it is very difficult to live “off island”.
Something that I’ve been thinking about is place. Nantucket means different things to different people, based on their own financial status and personal history with the place. My family went when it was still possible for a middle class family to vacation there comfortably. A time that has sadly passed.
Now when I see influencers, celebrities or billionaires on the Island I think “ugh! you’ve ruined it! It will never be what it was, and your very presence means that version of the island is now not only unknowable to you but also to all of us!”.
I can only imagine how that must feel for someone who grew up on the island, which is why I was so excited to see my local, Community Bookstore have Wait by Gabriella Burnham.
Wait is the story of Elise a woman who has grown up on island, with her sister and her single Mother. On the day of her college graduation she finds out her mother has been abducted by ICE and taken back to her native Brazil. Elise returns to the island where she and her little sister are promptly evicted from their childhood home, she seeks refuge with her college friend, Sheba, who’s grandfather left her a massive estate on the island.
So much of Nantucket is about confronting wealth. The people who make the island run, and a community worth visiting are constantly priced out of their homes in favor of people (and now corporations) who seek to turn their homes into vacation rentals. Wait does a brilliant job of exploring the ways in which a summer community, and summer people are necessary to the island, while also showing the risks that come with that delicate relationship.
There were so many times I wanted to throttle Sheba as she swans about a house that was given to her, complaining about her wealthy Mothers. She has no understanding of the experience or fear that is gripping Elise as she attempts to manage taking over the raising of her sister, her mothers legal affairs and figuring out a place to live on one of the most expensive islands.
I also appreciated the way Elisa’s mother, Gilda was represented. I think there can be a tendency to canonize people in Gilda’s situation (or perhaps this instinct is a trait of well meaning white liberals such as myself), either way, she was shown as a full character, who made mistakes, and was stubborn, and fully a human. I enjoyed watching her reconnect with her own sister back in Sao Paulo.
It’s a solid book, and I would encourage anyone curious to read it. Though it does suffer from an utter lack of quotation marks (why! why must we all suffer this plague of pretension!).
A great dive into a world seldom seen.
Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna
Irish Americans don’t have a great rep. Unfortunately, I do feel like it is earned. Most of us lean into a pushy individualistic Americaness, while holding on to a strange version of Ireland that never really existed, with broad accents and too much drinking. So I’m always a little sheepish to claim my Irish (Americaness) I want to make sure people know I claim Ireland in an ancient, socialist, equality, pro-repeal the 8th, pro-immigration sense and not a wearing green on St. Patricks Day and back the blue sense.
Which is to say, I read a lot of Irish literature (you may have noticed). While Evening and Weekends takes place almost entirely in London it does still feel quite Irish in nature. There is a theme of the characters thinking elaborately of the things they should say, the feelings they do have, how easy it would be to release everyone around them from the pain and confusion of things left unsaid. Rarely are they able to communicate what they really want to say.
Which makes this a deeply human book.
It feels like a book that is destined for a film or TV adaptation, and I wonder how the film makers will be able to accurately portray the gaping chasm between feelings felt and words said.
This is a debut, and I loved that Oisín calls out the various grants he received that allowed him the time to finish this book. Caroline O’Donoghue talks about the prevalence of fantastic literature coming out of Ireland as not a shock when you realize the amount of money that is put into making sure those artists are able to live while they do their work.
So, let’s all try to make sure we vote in people who are interested in allowing us all to live a life with space to create. (ahem- Zohran Mamdani for New Yorkers, Graham Planter for Mainers, Omar Fateh for Minneapolitans)
I digress.
This book isn’t an easy read, there is a knot of characters, whose relationships I did have a hard time keeping track of at times. Ultimately, it’s a beautiful book about average people living lives in the best way they know how.
Waking Up With the Duke by Lorraine Heath
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s BLEAK out there!
And when things get bonkers in the world I find it is soothing for things to also get bonkers - in my mind.
Lorraine Heath is someone who is incapable of writing a dull story. All of her plots are so incredibly off the wall (Gorilla Twins anyone? IYKYK) but somehow so completely grounded that you find yourself crying at the humanity and laughing at the bonkers.
Waking Up With the Duke is no exception.
Jayne (this is where I can go into how romance heroine’s names can be a little distracting, why the “y”?) is married to a true narcissistic “good guy” named Walfort. Everyone likes him because he throws banging parties and whenever he does something awful he does the “aw shucks, isn’t that just like me? I’m such a bad boy.”
Any yes, this did work on me from 2000-2010.
No one is immune!
Walfort is also paralyzed from the waste down (yes, including that). He was celebrating with his bestie and cousin Ainsley the fact that he’d finally gotten his wife pregnant and oopsie there was a very bad carriage accident which left Walfort paralyzed and Ainsley paralyzed - with guilt! As Walfort allows Ainsley to believe he was the one driving the carriage when the accident happened.
Jayne loses her baby due to the stress of her husbands condition.
And you can guess what happens next….
NO!
YOU CAN’T!
Because this is where the bonkers starts.
Walfort then convinces Ainsley and his wife Jayne to go off to Ainsley’s cottage for a month and bang it out trying to conceive a baby. Since Ainsley “owes” Walfort one prime dick and adequate enough sperm to get his wife knocked up. Also, since Walfort and Ainsley are cousins it’d be the same bloodline? And you know how these British people get horny for a bloodline.
And you can guess what happens next….
AINSLEY AND JAYNE FALL IN LOVE
I know you knew that was going to happen!
So now Jayne is pregnant with her lover’s baby, still with her lovable ass of a husband who is now able to admit to himself that Jayne is so nice to him even though he is paralyzed that he now loves her, though when he married her it was all about that sweet sweet dowry.
The longing.
Thhheeeee llllloooonnnngggiiiinnnggggg.
I originally bought this book back in 2017, and I honestly I’ve ready it countless times since then. I love Heath so much, and I’m so thankful she is such a prolific writer that I get to keep discovering her books.
If you’ve never read romance, start with a Heath. She might ruin you for all other romance writers, but it will be worth it.
This book is staying on my kindle for eternity.
There was a time when this book was everywhere on TikTok, I was alway intrigued. I mean who wouldn’t want to hear the story of an anthropomorphized queer mountain lion living underneath the Hollywood sign?
I read this book now because I am working on my first novel (and truly is there a more embarrassing sentence in the English language?) Right now my novel will feature an anthropomorphized sperm whale.
And we all know the first rule of writing- steal what you can!
This book straddles the line between novel and epic poem. Our narrator, a mountain lion, clearly based on or at least inspired by P-22 lives a life of observation. He watches Angelinos hike by and natter on about their lives.
He remembers his childhood, and how he ended up in the park. He cares for a homeless encampment even as the residents don’t return the favor.
The book takes a startling turn 3/4ths of the way through, when the mountain lion is forced to leave the park due to a forest fire.
This was a great book, and I was sad to see I’d just missed the author putting it up as a stage play, as I have no idea how this book could be adapted.
This is also dangerous to read as a leo who secretly believes I could pet and find kinship with any animal. Including the three black bears that live on my parents property!
Oh what if the bears are all queer and interested in figuring out the hows and whys of humanity?
Then could I kiss their little ears?
I also loved this book for the way the entire thing is presented as little couplets, our narrator never waxes poetic instead is always thinking in clipped moments. It’s always excited to read something that is formatted differently. This is the reason why reading novels is so fun and writing them (ugh, again!) can feel impossible.
There are no rules!
And isn’t that what makes them wonderful?
(intimidating?)
I bought only one book this month! Moby Dick (ever heard of her????) by Herman Melville from the lovely Portsmouth Book Nook in Portsmouth, NH!
I also set up a storefront on Bookstore.org, so if you are so inclined to buy a book I’ve mentioned and use this link I get a little bit of $$.
There you will also find a complete list of all the books mentioned on Lonesome Animals!
Lorraine the queen!