Waiting on a Friend (Hogarth) by Natalie Adler is deliciously magical, a retelling of queer history in the 80s that opens with Renata, the “young dyke-about-town” who has a particular talent, seeing ghosts, a practice honed through ritualistic candles and bathing in salt water, a practice learned from her mother:
My mother used to sit in the bath for hours when I was a kid. “Make sure I don’t nod off, baby,” she’d say as she slid into the water. We moved a lot, but never to an apartment without a tub. They weren’t hard to come by. Even now, Lower East Side tenements have clawfoots in the kitchen and toilets in the hallway. I remember a lot of parties where her friends took bubble baths, and if they got too loaded, they’d flood the place, and we’d have to move again. She would say that soaking in salt water was the only thing that set her straight. Salt, she’d explain, sucks up the negativity….
Adler’s prose is elegant and snaps with an understated humor that is both light and brooding, a difficult balance that Adler wields with ease. The storytelling cuts in an addictive way that keeps you wanting more. I’m completely drawn into the dark of it, immediately, especially this moment when the child must parent the parent, Renata protecting her mother from accidental, self-inflicted death.
Waiting on a Friend releases, today. Highly recommended.
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