What I've Been Writing/What I've Been Reading
What I've Been Writing/What I've Been Reading
I’ve been meaning to send this missive all month, but 1) January is the cruelest month and 2) I haven’t had much breathing room. That said, I did have a bunch of book reviews publish lately, and there’s some other folks’ work that I’d like to shout out, so here we go:
Over at NPR, I reviewed Katherine Min’s posthumous novel The Fetishist, a tightly crafted examination of racial and sexual politics that is at once nuanced and no-holds-barred. Min actually finished this book in 2014, five years before her death, but it feels oddly of-the-moment. I tried my best here to focus on the novel itself and less on the fact that it’s been published posthumously—always a difficult task.
Also at NPR, I reviewed Manjula Martin’s memoir The Last Fire Season, which traces four months in 2020 when wildfires in California broke records, burning more than 4 million acres. I learned so much about fire from this book and would especially recommend it to people who live with wildfires.
For The Washington Post, I reviewed Jacqueline Alnes’s The Fruit Cure, which traces her experience of falling down the rabbit hole of the fruitarian diet after unexplained neurological episodes sidelined her from her career as a Division I cross-country runner. As you’ll see, this one was uneven in its execution for me, but if you’ve ever seen people like Fully Raw Kristina on Instagram and wondered what the hell is up with the raw vegan diet, this is illuminating.
For The New Republic, I wrote about Lexi Freiman’s novel The Book of Ayn, a rollicking look at cancellation that weaves together an epic hero’s journey through New York, Los Angeles, and Lesvos; a Künstlerroman of a novelist in a midlife crisis; and a picaresque quest for meaning. Please forgive me for leading with Bari Weiss and the Intellectual Dark Web.
Finally, for Columbia Magazine, I reviewed E.J. Koh’s novel The Liberators, which follows four generations of two families from Korea to California, tracing how decades of occupation, war, and division echo in the lives of individuals. This is a human-size history of Korea’s rending, beautifully told.
On the reading side of things, I’d first love to recommend my pal Daniel Lefferts’s debut novel Ways and Means, which comes out from Overlook on Tuesday (2/6)! With an acutely observed ensemble cast and razor-sharp wit, Ways and Means explores desire as it intersects with class, sex, art, and power. The novel is at once hilarious and harrowing, a satire of late capitalism and high finance and a suspense driven by the consequences of ruthless ambition. If you’re in NYC, Daniel has a launch event on Tuesday at P&T Knitwear that I wish I could make!
In less joyful reading news, today is the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon signing the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), which cemented mandated reporting of suspected child maltreatment. It’s a bad law based on myths about maltreatment, and experts and advocates have known that it was misguided since the legislative hearings; nevertheless, they persisted. Mical Raz, a physician and historian whose book Abusive Policies does an excellent job of explaining the mess that led to CAPTA, has an essay in TIME today about why mandated reporting fails at its purported goal of keeping children safe. Consider joining me in telling Congress to Repeal CAPTA!