This is my monthly wrap up where I talk about some of my favourite things from the last month. What I’m reading, enjoying, looking forward to—sort of anything floating my boat.
Here is an overview of how my month went:
Got to speak on BBC Radio!!! Chatted with Naga Munchetty about young writers, books written by them, and about being one myself
You can listen to it here 🤓I spent a weekend in the Cotswolds, which is just English countryside heaven
Got to do a little feature with MIRROR WATER, a brand I love!
You can read it here 🤎Went to see Henry V with Alfred Enoch at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and it was incredible
Summer has started to happen in London and it feels like being able to catch a full breath after a long time underwater… it’s divine!
What I Read
Below is a rundown of every book I read last month. I’ll be adding a star next to my standouts, like a starred review where a star isn’t a 1 to 5 scale, it just means good!
Before the written ramblings, here is a video version of my monthly wrap up if you’re more of a visual person:
Valencia by Michelle Tea
I’ve been meaning to read this book for so so long, and I’m glad I finally got to it. The London library system comes through for me again!
Reading this feels like leaning over to listen to a stranger in a dimly-lit bar as they tell you stories from their life. Sticky floors, the smell of beer, and trying to keep up with the dramatic moments that happen at every turn.
It’s a diaristic memoir that takes us through the reality of the sapphic underbelly of the party scene in San Francisco in the early 90s. Drugs, dating, mess, sex, sex, and more sex. This was written as Michelle Tea was in the heat of all these things. It’s not about investigating them, it’s about passing them on.
It really reminded me of Women by Chloe Caldwell and Tramps Like Us by Joe Westmoreland—these books that give you queer whiplash and leave you winded.
I’ve got Michelle Tea’s new book, Little F-----, on my shelf and I’m excited to see what a nearly 30 year gap looks like for her work.
Fat Swim by ★
Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg is one of my favourite novels from the last few years. It captures the complex humanity of queer people and what it means to exist today. When I found out she was releasing a collection of fiction, I was so excited to get to it.
Sometimes when I read a collection, I’ll find myself thinking about the editorial shaping of putting this specific set of works together and I just can’t shake it. With Fat Swim, each story fits like a puzzle piece into the next. They are intentionally curated and all have so much life breathed into them.
We get stories from people in the margins, or who feel that way: A beauty vlogger, a trans librarian, a pronoun-obsessed boomer… they are all shown in ways to make the reader think about what being alive even means. Gender, sexuality and physical appearance are all put on trial with extreme precision.
My favourite stories are Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar, Lanternfly, Camp Sensation, but I think the one that stands out most for me is the title story, Fat Swim. It’s about a young girl watching fat women swim at the local pool from her apartment window. I grew up going to a pool, so mixing that with the feeling of being on the outside looking in was just the perfect mix for me.
This is a collection for anyone interested in queerness that feels jagged and in reflections of the experience of being in a body.
Summerwater by Sarah Moss
I got The Wall by Sarah Moss from at , and as soon as I finished it I knew I’d be revisiting this author’s books. She writes with nature in mind and in ways that tickle all of my senses.
Summerwater is about a dozen people in their respective cabins around a lake in the Scottish highlands. They are all from different classes, of different ages, with different wants, and we find out what it’s like to be in this place from each of their perspectives. The major commonality for all of them is othering a specific set of people around the lake (an Eastern European couple who plays music a little too loud).
Told over the course of the longest day of the year, this weaves dizzying claustrophobia into a poignant story of humanity. It’s not quite a horror, not quite a thriller, but there’s an unsettling feeling that lingers throughout. When I read this, I really felt like I was locked inside a cabin, rained in, bothered… and it was great.
I’ll definitely be reaching for more of Sarah Moss’ books because she her writing has a special quality that really works for me.
On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia (tr. by Padma Viswanathan)
This is one of the two books I read that are on the International Booker Prize Shortlist this year. It was originally published in Portuguese in 2017.
On Earth As It Is Beneath is loud, bright, snappy, and that’s exactly how I read it. At just over 100 pages, I was very satisfied with the length. In fact, I think had it been longer I might’ve found it less effective.
It is about a prison in a remote part of Brazil where, once a month, the warden releases two inmates only to hunt them down for sport shortly after. We get this story of violence, brutality, inhumane behaviour, and it puts many things into question. Who gets to do bad things? Who deserves to have bad things done to them?
This book is an exploration of what happens to the human psyche when subjected to isolation, the constant threat of violence, or, alternatively, having too much power.
The characters are slippery, hard to put into boxes, and all completely off their rockers. I kept having to adjust my thinking as things were unfolding, but the story is told in a sporadic way so I think that’s par for the course.
I enjoyed this but, as I said, I’m quite happy it was the kind of book I could be in and out of quickly.
The Stepdaughter and Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood ★
I have been toying with doing a year of Caroline Blackwood (among other choices), but I felt like I needed to read a book from her before deciding. I read two of her books this month because one just wasn’t enough, so it’s safe to say I’ve decided!
A little backstory about Caroline Blackwood is that she was an heir to the Guinness family and had a very unhappy childhood, trapped in a gilded cage. She rebelled against her upbringing by diving headfirst into the world of artists and thinkers, leaving behind what was expected of her as an aristocrat. She was married to a few brilliant men, had several children, but after all of that she wanted more. She wanted to be celebrated for her own accomplishments, so she pursued a writing career.
The Stepdaughter was her first novel, published in 1976. This feels like her holding up a middle finger to society’s expectations of women to be mothers and wives. It’s dark, funny, full of disdain, and compulsively readable.
It is told through a series of letters an unnamed narrator is writing to an imaginary friend of hers. She is a housewife whose husband has left her for a younger woman. Their daughter and his daughter from a previous marriage are in her care as he galavants around Paris.
All of the hate the narrator feels towards her husband is channelled towards her stepdaughter who is simply a normal thirteen year old girl. The girl can’t breathe without our narrator commenting on it as a nuisance. Somehow, Blackwood makes 100 pages of being hateful super compelling.
Great Granny Webster was her second novel, published in 1977. This novel is her letting the reader into her experience of high society, and is said to be based on her childhood.
The narrator of this novel is a teenage girl forced to go live with her great-grandmother, a truly awful woman. We get portraits of a few other people as well, and everyone surrounding this young girl is just rotten. It illustrates the pitfalls of the upper class in the UK, the cold and distant monsters it can create.
This isn’t a sort of Gossip Girlian tale where we get “woe is me, it’s so hard to be rich.” This is witty commentary wrapped in biting, funny, and sharp writing. It was even shortlisted for the Booker!
Caroline Blackwood writes with a shimmering sense of humour, and is a precursor to the modern day Weird Girl Lit. I’m excited to keep reading her books and seeing how else she imbues her life’s baggage into her writing.
She Who Remains by Rene Karabash (tr. by Izidora Angel) ★
This was my second read from the International shortlist, and my current pick to win! I loved it and I think it showcases a really unique point of view that I’d like to see celebrated.
The novel is framed around a journalist interviewing someone as they recount parts of their life. It’s a jaunt through memory, relationships, family, and various cultural practices. Because of this, it’s fragmented and lyrical and loose in a way that really worked for me.
We get to learn about a person who grew up in a small village in a remote part of the Albanian mountains. Their early life was ruled by the ancient laws of the Kanun, which is comprised of several practices to do with gender, honour, and more, but one is of particular interest: the sworn virgin. We find out that the interview subject renounced womanhood and took a vow of celibacy to assume the identity of a man.
Secrets, a rocky past, revelations, it all unfolds over the course of this book.
She Who Remains dances with language, there really is no other way to say it. The reader cannot lead the dance, you are being taken on this journey and it may take a second to adjust, but it’s a beautiful time.
This House of Grief by Helen Garner
I kept being recommended this book, and so I was very excited to find it in a charity shop. What I knew going in was that it was a vivid true crime story that would feel like reading fiction. I had a true crime phase in 2014 like everyone else, so I was on board.
On Father’s Day in 2005, an Australian man drove his car into a dam. He managed to escape, but his three sons who were in the car tragically passed away. This book doesn’t focus much on the day, it’s a play-by-play of the court case that follows.
The writer is present in the courtroom and tells us how each moment feels, how the different people are acting, what is actually unfolding when tragedy becomes a question of law. It is so detailed it almost becomes boring. This felt intentional to me. We don’t get many personal feelings or opinions about the case from the writer, it’s as if we’re meant to feel the dissonance of arguing blame while grieving the lives of three young people.
I had never heard of this case and, much like other true crime stories, there is no satisfying ending. The book is written impeccably and I want to read more from Helen Garner. Maybe fiction. I have Monkey Grip from her in my stacks, so might give that a whirl.
On My Bedside Table
A dispatch from my bedside table and the books that litter it, hoping to be read soon.
Dark Rides by Derek McCormack, a collection of short stories about queer kids in a small Canadian town in the 1950s
They by Helle Helle (tr. by Martin Aitken), an intimate look at the mundane lives of a mother and daughter in a small Danish town
A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan, the coming of age of two teenagers in North Carolina—one is gay and one is a minister
Heap Earth Upon It by Chloe Michelle Howarth, four orphaned siblings in Ireland in the 1960s working towards a fresh start
Fruit Fly by Josh Silver, a dark thriller about an author suffering from writer’s block takes inspiration from a gay junkie she finds on the street
Have you read any of these? Are any of these non-negotiables? Are any of them skippable?
What did you read and love in April?!
Let me know in the comments!
Thanks for reading Milking It! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
That’s been my month! Typos (if any) were made on purpose, obviously.
Until next time 🤠
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.