On the Big Apple and big books

On my upcoming trip to New York for the National Book Critics Circle, recent work, and I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU.

New York:

It’s been three years since I’ve last set foot in Manhattan or rode a subway, but I’ll be back tomorrow thanks to my newly elected position as an incoming board member of the National Book Critics Circle. Please come to the awards this Thursday night and say hi! This is going to be an action packed visit full of meetings and events. I’d love to see you, but if I do not, I’ll be back eventually. The awards are a sure bet for meeting up! Otherwise, write me.

I’m so excited to join the board in order to do what I can to expand book criticism and bring attention to underrepresented voices. Yes, I’m earnest as hell, but if you’re not able to summon up all of your enthusiasm, why come to the proverbial party?

Housekeeping:

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Eleanor Catton’s blistering powerhouse novel BIRNAM WOOD for the Boston Globe and, weekend before last, my review of Sabrina Orah Mark’s transportive book of essays HAPPILY ran online in the New York Times Book Review (print to come).

Reviewing BIRNAM WOOD meant that I circled back and read her 2013 Booker prize winning novel THE LUMINARIES which was a wonderful escape. If you’re hungry for a tale in the vein of Robert Lewis Stevenson from the eyes of a 21st century woman writing about a 19th century New Zealand gold mining town, don’t hesitate. Yes, it’s a very long book, but you can do it. Hold that thought because I’ll get back to it later.

Reading I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU:

Swept up in the momentum of friends who devoured it and my new curiosity about literary thrillers, I had to read Rebecca Makkai’s latest novel I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU. There are so many swirling opinions on this book and part of the fun of reading this book was fielding those hot and lingering takes as I read it. Having never read Makkai (someone took my galley of THE GREAT BELIEVERS, but that’s another story), I came to this novel with a pretty open mind. It’s fun to stop and read a book just to be a part of a larger conversation about reading.

But before I go any further, I should clarify that I began by listening to this on audiobook—eventually, I had to plow through the print book itself in order to finish it before I left for NYC. Unlike some friends (Gautam Hans, hi!), I cannot increase the speed of audiobooks or podcasts without missing something. I listened to this book during the odd moments I was driving without kids.

The audiobook experience was unsettling. I found the narrator Bodie Kane (a woman just a year older than I am) to be an eerie echo of other chaotic ambitious mothers in media around the age of 40. She’s running herself into the ground trying to make up for lost time and failed relationships. Thanks to the internet and social media, she’s letting the past haunt her in unhealthy ways. Something about the audiobook narrator’s cadence made Bodie appear as a breathlessly intense individual. If I’m being honest, she seemed unhinged, spiraling away from reality. My initial hunch was that she was a Nabokovian unreliable narrator. I was waiting for a wicked twist or trap door.

Unfortunately, I was wrong (what a book that could have been!), but despite what sometimes felt like an indulgent exercise in various genres and an exploration of social issues, media, technology, and true crime, I found myself wholly sucked into this book. For me, it worked. I was here for it. Several people told me they felt it was too long and sluggish. I honestly didn’t feel that way, but again, I came to this book without any strong impression of what makes a thriller successful. I don’t have a set model in my mind to shape my expectations. This was a story that, thanks to the audiobook format, felt like I was catching up on the exploits of an old classmate with a good story to tell. Bodie’s cultural references are mine as well. I’m a sympathetic reader.

The book ultimately landed in a way I found somewhat unexpected given my initial impressions. How did anyone else expect this book to end? It’s a book about a murder after all. We get justice or we don’t, but either way, there’s little to no closure. I was impressed by the note that Makkai chose to close the book and felt satisfied in a way I didn’t expect. This book is so ambitious which made it also bulky. This put off some who wanted it trimmed down, but I’m here for women writers who want to take up space. After so many years of impressionistic, slim novels, I’m finding something revelatory about bigger novels. They aren’t afraid to sprawl. They don’t care if you don’t think they’re sophisticated because they’re confident (sometimes this is misguided and sometimes this is on the mark like nothing else). They’re willing to try any number of stylistic tricks to capture (almost) everything they’re trying to say—a goal that grows and grows as the book moves along. Does this always work? No! But there’s something abashedly earnest and passionate about this effort. I want more of it—for better or worse.

So, I totally side step what this book is about but you can read the description for yourself. I found its portrait of teens studying in New Hampshire to be quite familiar to my graduate school experience at Dartmouth full of exclusive history, brick walls, woods, and the Connecticut River, but this isn’t just a campus novel. Nor is it entirely literary fiction or true crime or a thriller. It’s a book that tries to do a lot at once and even when I found myself unsure about how well Makkai pulled this off, I couldn’t put it down.

In the end, I felt the book revealed so much about friendship, memory, trauma, and the myriad ways we process the world we live in today. Generation X is a mostly silent generation in the public consciousness. We straddled analog and digital worlds in our coming of age, never quite on the cool or exciting side of anything. We’re too early or too late. It’s nice to read a book where our strange experience flexes its awkwardness.

But regardless of the disappointments of Generation X, survival is no small feat. This is a book about the pain of adaptation and acceptance. It’s a tall order to ask a novel to fully address and apply effective scrutiny to the justice system. Makkai does a lot to expose how much things have changed since 1995 while also making plain how far we need to go. She’s doing so much in one book that, yes, this book is going to fall short in the eyes of some. Call me biased, but I came around to Bodie, her flawed, nostalgic, caustic memories, and the way that they influence her life as an adult. I found the stylistic breaks (cataloging the various ways women are abused, gaslit, and assaulted) to work as a counterpoint to the overriding narrative. I didn’t want the book to end. I want to read more books that elicit impassioned notes, infuriated and effusive. As much as my life has no time for big novels, I can’t seem to live without them. Now I need to read THE GREAT BELIEVERS.