If you’re new here, this is probably the first personal essay from me you’ve seen since I stopped doing them in 2023! Stick it out, I promise it gets worse x

I found myself glued to an IV drip and I realized I had forgotten my phone charger with about 60% battery and a long hang out ahead of me. I also had forgotten - for maybe the second or third time in my life - a book. What was a quick trip to urgent care for stomach pain became a fun game of “Is This the Appendix or Something Scarier - Let’s Find Out in an Overcrowded Summer Waiting Room. Tonight at 10pm, followed by Wheel of Fortune.” Super excited to report that you can find a million things to think about when you’re stuck on an overflow gurney with nary a distraction.1

My current rotation of thoughts has some good range. My sister is moving, which is breaking my heart six ways to Tuesday. (She’s only going to be about two hours away but to me she’s already been pushing it by being downtown.) I have about a million shoes lying all over my apartment and about six pleas out to the universe to help me find my missing Birkenstock because they won’t let you just replace the left shoe.2 And I met someone I liked hanging out with and helped shut it down in record timing even for me because I felt sick and my vibe got thrown. It would have been really clutch if the main hyper-fixation was the sandal, but unfortunately the human brain is sometimes too complex for the bones it gets hauled around with.

If you can believe my luck, this week I also found myself serving jury duty3, a long process that according to half the people on Reddit has one really strong perk: lunch in Chinatown. (You have to admire a New Yorker’s silver lining.)

You can bring a device and books, but it’s a Hunger Games fight to the death for limited outlets and shitty wifi, and I have the resources and willpower of maybe District 11 at best. It was a real cornucopia moment post lunch. So I had time to reduce, reuse, and recycle what thoughts I hadn’t fully covered during gurney spiral when Lonesome Dove wasn’t totally hitting.4 I can’t make my sister cancel her move, shoes are shoes, but said new friend5 I recently met asked a lot of getting to know you questions.

And at the time, for every answer I gave, there was inevitably a follow up. And a Panic at the Disco for me. What stressed me out weren’t always the questions themselves, but the follow ups and clarifiers to my answers. Why? Why do you think that is? What makes you think that? Why do you like it? They’re pretty innocuous spelled out like that, but every time one was pitched to me I could feel myself freezing for a second. I answered the questions and their follow ups truthfully - I’m not really in the business of lying - but honestly every time I answered any question about myself it started to feel a little performative or surface level. What did you like so much about Wuthering Heights? (It’s campy and dramatic.) And are you always this giggly or just now? (Yikes, yeah, I guess pretty much.) When was the last time you cried, then? (Paddington 2. HRH’s judicial system really let him down.) Hardly anything newsworthy or deeply personal. Yet it all felt weirdly intimate despite being standard, and also engaged in a way that I was distrustful of.

At first I thought maybe it’s just because people don’t really ask each other good questions anymore, but I will also admit that recently I have become a bit of an uncharacteristically glass half-full person despite my life being pretty peaceful and positive at the moment. Untrusting and easily startled if you will. I also have become slightly twitchy when asked my opinion on things or worse: for my “hot take.” (Ban these.) I spend a so much of my time online in various formats sharing my opinions on things, that even I am a little bored of talking about what I like or don’t like. I somewhat stopped doing full book reviews on my work/book Instagram because I felt I was becoming less curious and inviting of other thoughts, and more analytical and judgmental.

But the other half of this and my true fatal flaw has come to be that I anticipate forms of intimacy and potential rejection the way you suspect an oncoming cold or flu. Like when your limbs ache a bit, your chest feels heavier, and you take an over the counter medicine or cancel a meeting preemptively - I do that when I feel something bad could be just around the corner because it’s been a little too good or someone’s tried to get to know me a little too well. I cauterize the wound before the skin has even broken. Which of course, just leaves a different injury. I’m mixing metaphors. The point is, sometimes in my physical life I think I am about to come down with a cold and it’s just dehydration. Or I stayed up too late the night before, walked too far, ran too fast, etc. Usually there isn’t anything I need to do for it except sleep and trust that I will either be totally fine the next morning or have whatever was coming anyway. I don’t always allow that same practice to apply to my newfound fear of rejection or openness. I thought of the times I hadn’t applied for a writing program, or I pushed a potential crush away out of this fear.6 Most recently it’s been as simple as me avoiding asking my super again to fix the laundry app on my phone. It feels so much safer to decide to shut something down before you can have it flipped back on you or feel silly for asking (again). And also my super scares me. The issue is now I am starting to deeply feel the aches and inconveniences from the aftermath of this bad approach to life. It also becomes a bit of that passive victim mentality that is really prevalent online when we aren’t brave enough to change something we don’t like, or can’t put ourselves out there. (And I really can’t keep schlepping my clothes outside this building.)

So ironically on jury duty I also had a lot of downtime to put myself on trial.

Because if I am really truthful, it’s been a minute since I haven’t felt a low pulse of anxiety or the desperate, unspeakable need to try and control outcomes. Which isn’t really my M.O. It feels easy to say that I have just gotten older and am a little less naive to the things happening around me. That I’ve been friends with the wrong people before the right ones, had the toxic jobs, dated the wrong guys, got robbed on a first date (story for another time maybe). Or that just in general the world feels so bleak and the “if you can make it here you can make it anywhere” is starting to feel more like a challenge and threat. I can say the shift in my vibe is experience based if I want to. But I think it’s because I have been so wrapped up in the performance of who I am that I have forgotten to stop, and be, and experience, blah, blah, blah. (You’re not alone if you rolled your eyes at that, I did too. I tried to come up with a less Jay Shetty/Mel Robbins way of phrasing it but it is what it is.)

As I served as my own internal jury and judge in what I swear to god was maybe the coldest room in lower Manhattan, I revisited some of the questions that I had previously answered perhaps a little too effortlessly. What did you like about Wuthering Heights? (The bizarre way it made me feel for immensely unlikeable characters, plus the haunted elements. I love a ghost motif.) And are you always this giggly or just now? (No, it’s usually a tell-tale sign I trust someone. Sometimes as scary as the aforementioned ghost motif tbh.) When was the last time you cried, then? (My upstairs neighbor and her husband - both in their 70s - hold hands every day to walk to the store to figure out what they want for dinner. They also only know me in the context of the building and refuse to wave back at me in the aisles. Good bit.) I didn’t have any wildly eye opening revelations - these answers are so boring anyway, what are we hiding, girlfriend? - but it was interesting to sit with some of them a bit longer. Especially on things I said I had preferences on or that shaped identity in someway. Or to do a little check on why some inquiries felt deeply personal when really they were more surface level. (I acknowledge I present some of the most low stakes examples here for you / what I prefer to share versus more of the deeper “why’s” or opinions.)7

And I also brought forth Exhibit A: the absolutely snarky and impulsive attitude that seems to have possessed my generally type-B minus, low stakes, sense of self in the past few months. (I can say it, I’ve been an unnecessarily complicated bitch and a half.) Sudden emotional unavailability, fatigue from my own personality, lack of confidence in answers to basic questions about myself, tinnitus (probably unrelated, won’t Google the answer to it). Ladies/gents, if it ain’t the smartphones that I kept coming back to. (“It’s these kids and their damn phones!”) And the ability to get instant reactions from people or judge the pace they respond, or the dopamine hits in seeing a text bubble pop up quickly. How disgustingly easy it is to forget that another person is on the other side of the device and become weirdly impersonal or bold. Having too much time to craft the perfect response.Or sending exactly how I feel and thinking “is that too much?” when I wouldn’t have asked that had I said it in person.

And then the posting online and watching an opinion or photo become a part of your identity to others. Having the “right” opinion on popular media or cancelling the “wrong” person or thing. Analyzing other people’s moves on social media like it doesn’t mean fuck all. Or as Mary Beth Barone so brilliantly puts it in her special, the storytelling you can do when left to your own devices for too long. (She uses casual sex as her entry point here but I think it applies to most instances where we combine our real lives and phone lives.)

I moved to New York because it’s my favorite city and I was in my 20s and when you’re young that’s honestly a good enough reason. And I am also a bit of a romcom fiend. (All of the best ones take place here, sorry.) But I moved specifically to the Upper West Side because I love Nora Ephron. (I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t though, so.) I own most of her films either on my laptop or on DVD somewhere (including Bewitched - it’s good and we’re not giving it enough credit solely because it isn’t a Classic.) I watched You’ve Got Mail at my thirteenth birthday sleepover and felt the tips of my ears get hot when I knew the answer to “who wrote the shoes books.” I like to cook to the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack, and tried to give myself the Meg Ryan curl look once which was super unfortunate. At Christmas time if it isn’t While You Were Sleeping, it’s Sleepless in Seattle. (Heartburn is a horror movie though.) And when wrote about her friendship/mentorship with Nora in Famesick, I have never wished to be someone else more in my life. Except sometimes Dua Lipa.

The Starbucks Joe and Kathleen order coffees at on the corner is still there. I once housed half a chocolate Babka in the thick of July heat at 7am outside Zabars because I had just gotten off a red-eye from California and my friend was still sleeping off a hangover, impervious to my insistent door buzzing. You can walk where Harry and Sally did past the Natural History Museum. The Shakespeare & Co is a FedEx now, but Gray’s Papaya is still a great deal for a hot dog and one of the few places that hasn’t been completely changed by time. (And well, yeah, The Empire State Building is here still.) The world has changed so much for the better and for the worse since the 90s. But the New York that Nora Ephron created is what sticks with me as the ideal.

You’ve Got Mail came up last week in conversation, which is what really prompted this next series of decisions (and conveniently timed to serve as a reminder throughout jury duty that I did in fact dream of living here even if that dream didn’t always include hours in a municipal building in Chinatown), but my number one comfort is When Harry Met Sally. Sue me, I love a really long decade spanning will-they-won’t they.

(Sidebar: I reread David Nicholl’s One Day every year because it is both a fantastic example of this trope but also just one of the best written character and dialogue studies. If you take one thing from this personal essay beyond “Riley is oversharing her lost marbles online again,” I hope it is this book rec. It sits next to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Temporary, and, The Marriage Plot8 on my all-timer podium. This has nothing to do with anything I am talking about here I just want to preach gospel if I still have any of you.)

So after a long week of spending hours with nothing but my thoughts in places I didn’t particularly want to be, I put on WHMS as a comfort watch to fall asleep to. It’s a good one for that because it’s 70% Harry Connick Jr. crooning, 18% rhythmic dialogue, 10% ambient New York sounds, and then 2% Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan loudly singing “The Surrey With the Fringe On Top” from Oklahoma! that will be the thing that wakes you if your volume is too loud.

I did fall asleep for a bit, but I woke up right around where Harry and Sally watch a movie over the phone together. And they’re watching the movie. No scrolling while it plays, no distractions other than each other as they share a communal experience. No cell phones!

And then I got to thinking: There isn’t a cell phone in You’ve Got Mail either, despite the cell phone being available in 1998. The emails are little pleasures opened and answered once or twice a day. Landlines are abundant. There are entire lives lived in between the moments of romance and flirtation that are so full (even if somewhat traumatic on the part of Kathleen Kelly) they must be lived intentionally. Sure you can overthink a smidge, but you can’t do much about it until you’re back at a computer. (Should I find an over 30s chat room by the way?)

In fact, most of the best romcoms or even dramas have stakes that are built around the fact that you can’t just use a smartphone. Or the really good ones that do have a cell phone here or there (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 13 Going on 30, etc.) specifically have dumb phones. No apps, just vibes. No texting phases or “talking stages.” And oh my god. No dating apps to quickly judge people and feel like you have either no one that will ever love you, or equally dangerously, an endless supply of people to try out.

So all of this self-indulgence is to say I think I have found the solution to my woes: a landline. Oh yeah, baby. A good old-fashioned ringing landline that’s base stays permanently affixed to one spot in my apartment. It is handheld though because I love to pace. Walk with me here.

From the hours of 7 or 8pm - 7:30am, I cannot use my iPhone - I switch to said landline. I can’t obsess over the timing of anyone’s texts or the lack thereof. I can’t doomscroll looking for nothing and somehow feeling everything. If you want to talk to me or need to contact me during these hours, you can email me or call my landline. (It’s connected to my cellphone which is buried beneath a mound of clothes in my closet.) I nearly called my best friend’s childhood home when I first set it up just for the thrill of knowing the number still and that her parents might be home. The New York lifestyle from the movies I love can still exist in tiny pockets if I just carve out time to go a little analog. Or make a point to be present.

I am super lucky. During a time where I was completely adrift and jobless, I created a public internet presence because I wanted to connect with other people about books, and that somehow became an entire career that I adore and couldn’t have dreamt up at eighteen/twenty-two/twenty-nine. And I want to keep this gig and I really do love to talk books with everyone. But the truth is, I fucking hate being overly online. While I enjoy using social media as a way to engage with the world around me, I find that the more time I spend on any given app - not even just Instagram or my messages - the more I lose sense of self and actual engagement in my real outside-the-screens community. Like, yikes - when I had TikTok I just lost hours in general to nothingness with the occasional home/life hack sprinkled in.

I spend too much time trying to keep up with cultural discourse, the books we’re supposed to read or like, the movies I need to see before an awards season. And I come up with these gut reaction “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” responses so quickly that I honestly don’t know if they live in any truth. When I am asked what I think about something I don’t want to have any other discourse floating around my brain. I want to have Lady Bird’d it (“Why don’t we just sit with what we’ve heard”) and I want to be able to give my real honest answer as to what it stirred up for me. (I shouldn’t have had to think too hard about why I liked Wuthering Heights.) And then I want to move on with my day. Or when I say things about who I am I want to mean them, not half-perform them for an audience scrolling past.9

When I am getting to know someone or setting aside time to do something with a friend, I want to be present in the moments I see them in real life, and not let the interim texting or social media chatter inform the relationship in any meaningful way. I don’t want to build relationships/friendships, solve conflicts, or flirt behind screens. That’s not to say don’t text me - and I love a group chat. But a life of wondering when I am going to get the next text, if I am being witty or engaged enough as a friend, or if I am being ghosted cannot be the one wild and precious life Mary Oliver worried about for me.

I’ve stopped using my headphones unless I am running or at home. It’s depressing that it’s news to me that the MTA agent has been saying hello to me every morning and I have been listening to a fucking podcast ad for Better Help or Article furniture. Also, my god when did we stop just being bored with our own thoughts stuck on a train? Isn’t that when the good shit happens? I’m no better than the iPad kids.

Plus I center myself more than I should be doing. I know that seems silly to say here, online, where I have just talked only about myself ad nauseam, but I promise there was a smidge of intention behind this. I sat down and spent a few days drafting and writing and editing and whittling down the parts that belong just to me (and in a journal for the therapy I am restarting this week, hell yeah), and what I don’t mind sharing.

So maybe you don’t get a landline. Maybe your relationship to your phone and all its doorways to the web is better than mine became. Or your relationship to self is on solider ground right now. And I hope maybe you feel confident in every answer to every why. I am not trying to yuck anyone’s yum or chastise you for being super plugged in. But I do wonder if more people would feel a slightly more oriented internal compass if they threw their phone in the river. (Or turned it off for a few hours at night.)

Anyway I will let you all know how the landline thing goes.

JANUARY

The Odyssey. I read whatever the standard high school translation was in 2010? To age myself. I liked it, but am definitely a little more partial to the Emily Wilson translation. Worth reading her notes on the process of translating. I feel like I’ve waited about the same time for a text back that Penelope waited for her husband so, good on her. Shit’s rough.

FEBRUARY

Wuthering Heights. This was a reread for work and one I’m glad I was forced to undertake. The first time I read Brontë’s 1847 classic I was so bored and vexed by the novel that my friend’s husband took a photo of the agony I was in reading it. (Reader: I don’t have the photo and I just can’t be arsed to ask for it right now.) The second time I kind of got the wind knocked out of me. Could be the fact that I had just been ghosted again, but: “Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

I mean, what’s hotter than a little obsession? If we’re ghosting at least make it kind of sexy and intense.

Sense and Sensibility. Went with a friend to the anniversary screening of the film since it has weirdly been a blind spot of mine. Loved the movie, less charmed by the novel. Could be that I often feel that you read one Austen and you read them all (don’t yell at me, it’s one woman’s lazy opinion). I do relate to the feeling that you encroach upon the end of your writing and want to just sum it all up really fast.

Northanger Abbey. Another Austen right after I said “read one…read them all” is a little silly but this was pitched to me as the satirical Gothic. Hard to resist. Austen is always very clever and funny, but this was her at her sharpest I think. If you have found yourself wanting more in other Austen novels humor wise you might be into this one.

The Sun Also Rises. I hated this one haha. My issue is within myself though, and not Hemingway per se. I really can’t handle the Gatsby “old-sport” kind of chatter and sharing bottles of wine with war repressed characters just trying to get into the very modern slacks a woman is bold enough to wear. I can see why others like it, sure.

MARCH

Pride and Prejudice. I am 30% sure I read this in college but 70% sure I lied. I definitely did an extensive project on it. Do with this information what you will. Anyway, I liked it a lot the “second” time around. As a devoted fan of the Joe Wright adaptation and hot off the heels of the Austen heavy February, I picked it up. Happy I did. I unfortunately see a lot of myself in Lizzie Bennet so here’s hoping for a mansion one day as a result of all this stubbornness. Of all the Austen catalogue, I do think this is the most approachable and deeply enjoyable.

Agnes Grey. Anne Brontë on aux. Forgettable. (Sorry).

MAY

A Study in Scarlet. I lived near Baker Street for a few years as a kid but never read any Sherlock Holmes. A free PDF made its way to my desk so I picked it up. Totally fine book, but I feel like none of you are going to believe me that at the 50% mark it becomes a Mormon manifesto with Brigham Young and Joseph Smith making appearances. It didn’t occur to me that we knew much about Utah in London.

JULY

East of Eden. I thought this rocked. I feel like Steinbeck would maybe roll over at that review but genuinely this was one of the more engaging classics I have read. I read a good chunk of it in California which felt very fitting. I look forward to the adaptation and the day I stop processing “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

Of Mice and Men. Saw this on Broadway years ago and it made me just as nauseous then as it did now reading this slim little number. Worth a read, but I think do as I say and not as I did (i.e. don’t read it immediately after East of Eden.)

The Hobbit. I looked it up and this is technically a classic? I liked it. It’s fun, engaging, and a little silly. I think the man I was flirting with in my DMs hyped it up a bit too much, but happy for him that it’s an all-timer. I’ll probably read the rest, why not.

The Wrath of Achilles. This is an abridged section of The Iliad I picked up in London a few months back. It was a good refresher before The Odyssey.

Housekeeping:

Watching: Furious (I worked on it, I am biased, but Rotten Tomatoes isn’t.) I’m also hoping to tap into Mary Beth Barone’s Galaxy Brain. I saw her do standup last year in Chelsea and it was great. I also just saw The Invite and if you have any playwright in you, it should be activated. (Could be 15 min shorter, but a high recommendation.)

Reading: Circe by Madeline Miller if I ever actually surface from work to finish it. Ideally next up is Lonesome Dove.

My respect but ultimate passivity toward Didion doesn’t stop me from trying to see what others do though. So I read Lili Anolik’s Didion & Babitz — a book whose only competition for the Chicest Book to Be Caught Holding Award for 2024 was Intermezzo — and I opened my heart to both women. I am loath to report that something - or rather someone - who jumped out at me from the pages several times, was a man.

Would it help if I said it was not just any man, but rather Harrison Ford? And not the Harrison Ford you know from hit movies like Morning Glory or The Age of Adeline (I’m joking! Don’t unleash a Lettboxd man on me in the comments). But a Harrison Ford who was making tables for Didion. With his bare hands. Or however carpentry works.

Most recently I know Ford as therapist Dr. Paul Rhodes on Shrinking. (A show I highly recommend and one that feels not dissimilar to what I imagine doing one of those nervous system reset facial ice plunges would feel like if you did it into a watered down bowl of Sauvignon Blanc.) He’s in his early eighties now and playing a man with Parkinson’s, but there is still a recognizable buzz when he is on screen. And sometimes when he locks in for the more serious beats of the show (or gets mad — hot) there is a weight that settles over the whole thing in a way that a lot of actors these days don’t command.

Raiders of the Lost Ark popped up on a streaming service when I wanted something to watch during the limbo of still fucking around on my computer but waiting for dinner to be ready. The December 26th - January 31st of the day if you will. Raiders is the movie you are probably thinking of when you think Indiana Jones. It has the boulder rolling right after him, the melting faces, and the World War II plot. (And the eyelid scene.) It’s a proper Blockbuster Movie with a proper Movie Star at the helm.

But then I started to think about who our big Movie Stars are today. Timothée Chalamet is definitely a heavy hitter, but is he a Movie Star? They definitely want me to believe Glen Powell is a major Movie Star, but something about that isn’t totally landing for me. They are both A-list actors, that’s a given. But why can’t I categorize them as Movie Stars? Is Movie Star a dying breed?

I guess I should start by saying to me a Movie Star is an undeniable actor who pops up and commands a screen. The movie is likely an Oscar bait vibe but can also be a Hollywood Blockbuster (see more on this later if you make it that far). They are often hot but can be just an arresting face (whatever that means to you). It’s something beyond just an actor. Like, Sidney Poitier isn’t a Movie Star. He is an Actor. Tom Cruise is a Movie Star. (Gen-Z weigh in though, is this hitting for you still or is he moving into Celebrity territory?) Leonardo DiCaprio has been and will probably always be, a Movie Star.

My working theory is that celebrities are too accessible and less mysterious now. Social media presence is becoming more and more of a prerequisite to fame, and those who achieved celebrity status prior to the boom of platforms like TikTok and Instagram are now appearing on algorithms in droves. I don’t have TikTok (not a stance I am taking, I just don’t have enough storage on my iPhone 12 for a data heavy app) but Kevin Bacon doing what I can only imagine is a big trend on the Tok made its way to Reels. Kevin Bacon! Is doing internet dancing!

Movie stars used to step out of limos like Anna Scott in Notting Hill and cameras would go haywire along the side of the red carpet to see what they were wearing and marvel at the people who -- to the public -- always look perfect. Now, before they even have toes on carpet I feel like I have seen a carousel of twenty images of their glam experience, the outfit posed on a balcony, a perfectly “candid” photo of them noshing on a hotel french fry in a robe while one of the forty people tagged does their eye makeup. I’ve practically seen inside the celebrity before I’ve seen the movie.

Our obsession with celebrity as a culture is slowly ruining the Hollywood mystery. The history of paparazzi begins in Italy in 1950 when photographers started to seek out candid shots of celebrities filming in or visiting Rome (like Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday - excellent film and also a really strong movie poster magnet on my fridge.)1 Oh you didn’t think you were going to learn something here today? Yeah, buckle up.

In 1960, the term paparazzi was coined from the film La Dolce Vita, in which a character named Paparazzo is in pursuit of the perfect (lucrative) photograph as he accompanies a journalist. 2When People Magazine launched in 1974 (and soon after Us Weekly in 1977) the demand for more candid imagery and behind-the-scenes of stars increased and Paparazzo became paparazzi. It was a big payday to get the Britney umbrella-shaved-head shot. Paparazzi became vultures, stalking the biggest names in search of the biggest payout. The more exclusive the photo the higher the check.

If you Google “Harrison Ford Paparazzi” today, the majority - if not all - of the images you will see are more recent paparazzi shots. From what I can find he wasn’t being hounded by the press back in the heyday of Star Wars or Indiana Jones the same way a Glen Powell or Connor Storrie is now hot off the success of a major project.

Secondly, I think to the point of accessibility, celebrities have less mysterious lore and swag. Harrison Ford working as a carpenter for Joan Didion is capital “H” Hot lore. Paul Newman being a racecar driver and having an entire section of his Wikipedia page dedicated to his time in the Navy? Hot! Imagine being his wife with this photo tucked away somewhere while he’s overseas.

(I’m a staunch anti-war gal but shoutout to the Navy for recognizing what every girl in the East Village seems to be these days: a good photobooth type photo in black and white hits.) And Denzel Washington wasn’t the focus of “who is he dating next!” articles at the height of his fame. He married once and then had his vow renewal officiated by Desmond Tutu. Flex.

Paul Newman even has bissexual allegations and claims that he had trysts with Marlon Brando and James Dean. Even if that’s not true, that’s lore, baby! Unconfirmed, whispered lore! (And at least the men he was rumored to be smooching were also hot.) Nowadays most people can name the list of women Academy Award-nominee Jacob Elordi has been seen kissing or holding hands with. It’s hard to be mysterious if I know you were at Coachella with Kendall Jenner and I wasn’t even seeking the information. R.I.P Frankenstein, you would have loved an 818 marg.

The most lore I could find about Glen Powell is that he played both lacrosse and football and that he dropped out of UT. (Sorry, Glen. You’re catching a lot of strays here.) But it’s hard to cultivate lore and be an interesting person when you’re trying to be first and foremost a curated one for the public eye. Media-trained, styled, and hitting your mark. Especially when you start so young in the industry and instead of finding yourself, you find maybe the idea of who you should be.

The modern marketing machine probably isn’t helping much either unless you know how to do it right. When Timothée Chalamet began his press run for Marty Supreme I worried that it was going to ruin the movie for me. It seemed that he was Everywhere, Everything, All At Once for the ping-pong picture and I was getting burned out fast. The Zoom call was funny! Standing on the sphere felt frat boy ridiculous. But the marketing got people to the theaters and that’s what matters for the money, right?

In terms of what it means for the art and the artist, I think it was less of a success. I enjoyed Marty Supreme. I saw an 11am showing and snuck a yogurt parfait into the AMC so I can only imagine I cultivated the exact experience Josh Safdie was hoping I would when seeing the movie. But the entire time I sat there I just saw Timothée. I never saw Marty. Not to say he was bad in the movie, I think he did a great job. I just think that Timothée tied himself too much to the campaigning of the film and I was unable to see him the way I was during Call Me By Your Name when I was shown a literal new-to-me face.

When Chalamet lost the Best Actor Oscar I wasn’t that shocked. I like Timothée Chalamet a lot and I am never disappointed to see what project he takes on. (Only a man of great courage could do Wonka.) But I felt like if he had maybe dialed back his involvement in the marketing of the film, I could have allowed him to disappear more into the pimply body of Marty Mauser. Instead I just saw ping-pong headed men flanking him and teenage boy bravado.

I think there is a misconception that Movie Stars need to make Important Movies. Many of them do, it’s kind of what keeps the Oscars alive and all. But Indiana Jones is not a serious movie. It just had a lot of people treating it with respect I think. Denzel Washington did Training Day and Glory, but he also did The Equalizer. Baby, Paul Newman did Cars!

I did just try to look up if Clint Eastwood had any kind of silly goofy films but I just got overwhelmed by the amount of cowboy hats and guns this man involved himself with. I did once watch The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for an ex-boyfriend though and the movie is good. Hot, hot man and we thank him for his son who does do the silly goofies for us.

So who are the Movie Stars now? To be honest, beyond maybe Leonardo DiCaprio, I don’t know! Many have suggested to me it’s Ryan Gosling and I am slowly coming around to agreeing. He isn’t on Instagram, he has a healthy relationship with a hot and successful woman (not too much of a wife guy IMHO which is also a red flag -- hello Try Guys and John Mulaney), and he appears to do press junkets for films before disappearing. Plus - hot. But is he “could sell salad dressing” hot? Can his aura hold its own against a ranch or pink lemonade?

Note: If you’re wondering why I haven’t talked about women at all it’s not because I don’t think there are female Movie Stars. I just think (as is often the case) women are held to a different standard, and often the great female Movie Stars of the past have an air of unfair sexualization, body-focus, and a myriad of other fun things that lead to their tragic deaths. It felt like a whole other can of worms to open and I misplaced my can opener.

I am selfishly hoping for Michael B. Jordan to have his moment post-Oscar. (Plus, an unspoken rule of the Movie Star is an interesting or hot face and who wouldn’t want to look at Michael B. Jordan all day?) I wonder if someone like Paul Mescal could have risen to the challenge if he didn’t date so many young sad pop girls (Phoebe, come back the kids miss you). Or if Dev Patel could have really made a true Movie Star name for himself if people saw my vision.

Housekeeping:

Watching: The Testaments (good, enjoying). Margo’s Got Money Troubles (loving, you can read my interview with Rufi Thorpe here.) Real Housewives of Rhode Island (Alicia’s friends, stand behind me.)

Reading: Famesick by . Can’t put it down but I am also the breed of white woman this was written for. If you like name dropping and good humor (“the soul of a stone” call me when you laugh aloud at this) I recommend. Swing Time by Zadie Smith. Do I have to be the one to convince you on Zadie Smith or are we all good here?

Apologizing: If my favorite follower Club Chalamet is here, just know that everything I said about Timmy today was with love and reverence.

We’re trying something new this month because my essay writing lives mainly over on LG now, and my desire for public introspection is 0. The thrill of it all.

Rocking with:

• on haunting your ex

• Joachim Trier’s music taste and skating videos on Trackstar

• Doechii as gutsgritglamour

• knows that look wasn’t her best

• finds a creative solution to book signings (chic)

Hmmm!

• Overthinking/curating your IG (is everyone taking influencer marketing photos of themselves for their personal accounts SOS)

• What’s the line between being an appreciator of a piece of media and over engaging with the material? Do you really need an all-new CBK wardrobe?

• Are we moving away from opinions and toward “takes”?

• Dolly on bachelorette/hen culture

Wuthering Heights

I saw Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” twice in theaters and I don’t have much to say about either experience because I think the discourse will survive without me and is verging on if not overdone. BUT I did watch other adaptations and my god the amount of wigs.

2011 Film — The only adaptation I’ve seen so far to really dig into Heathcliff’s race and what that meant at the time. Bleak and devoid of color which sometimes works and sometimes just feels too realistic to enjoy. The first half of the film dwells too long on the minor details of the novel and the romantic/obsessive build doesn’t feel worthy of the deathbed payoff. 6.5/10

Wigs: 1/10 — didn’t clock any obvious ones.

2009 Miniseries — Probably one of the better paced and more accurate adaptations. Still a big RIP to Lockwood, but the show starts with the transfer of Linton from Thrushcross to Wuthering Heights, so you know that you at least won’t be robbed of the second half of the novel. An unforgiving and cruel Cathy! We are up. The whole thing does have that BBC/PBS tone to it with royalty free transition music and potentially a little too well lit, but enjoyable. 7.5/10

Wigs: 8.5/10 — Tom Hardy in wigs. Tom Hardy in wigs!

2026 Lingerie Ad — might have killed Brontë faster than the TB.

Wigs: 0/10 — Likely no use of wigs.

1992 Film — Okay now we’re talking dark romance. LOCKWOOD LIVES. Congrats, sir! But also so does Sinéad O’Connor as Emily Brontë? A choice that doesn’t ruin everything but also doesn’t add much other than that’s a great sentence to get to type. Ralph Fiennes in his first film role and Juliette Binoche in two wigs. This one is really melodramatic but also has a twisted Cathy and follows the book relatively faithfully. This is probably the crowd pleaser IMHO. 8/10?

Wigs: 100/10 — “I got two brunettes and a blonde one.” - Pitbull

1939 Film — Campy and dramatic. Lockwood is alive. It only follows the first half of the book (common but annoying) so it can only be a 6/10 for me.

Wigs: 7/10 — There’s just something about an old timey wig.

2026 Film — Again, only follows the first half of the book for me. I honestly am a little burnt out from the discourse on this. 4.5/10.

Wigs: 6/10 — We were having fun.

Backlist

For whatever reason I just can’t be arsed to pick up anything modern so here is the classics roundup:

The Sun Also Rises: Realizing between this and my fervent disliking of The Great Gatsby, it’s probably less that these aren’t good books and more that I can’t get it up for men drinking nine bottles of wine at dinner as post-war therapy.

Northanger Abbey: Fuck it — maybe my favorite Austen? Genuinely quite funny and I too would go to a rich man’s house and accuse him of sinister vibes. (Related: must look up when navy bedsheets first came on the scene.)

Sense and Sensibility: One of the most stark examples of Austen clearly just wanting to wrap that sucker up. Obsessed with the incredibly slow building of the world and characters only to say “ok and then they married or whatever xx.”

Agnes Grey: Only a bit into this but enjoying and imagine being the Brontë parents and essentially giving birth to literary Haim. Sick.

The List This Week:

Watching: The Great (I’m late to this)

Reading: Repetition by Vigdis Hjorth, Kitten by Yu

Listening: 3D Country

I love sharing books but I feel like I do it quite regularly and often unprompted or unsolicited, so I don’t love doing it in long form. But I do love to put the right books in the right hands because it makes me feel incredibly smart/full-of-myself and a bit like that meme of the little boy with the mug who looks like a mom on Christmas revealing a gift she said you weren’t getting. Let’s get niche.

*Mind you, this isn’t a comprehensive list of what I loved this year nor is it my top reads. It’s only December 10th.

Looks Hot on Hinge

Earth Angel by Madeline Cash. — Provocative cover, thotful content. Plus, it’s short stories so it has the added benefit of you can both read 1-2 and then discuss on the date. (God bless if you’re making it off the app in 2026.)

Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy. — It was described in a comment section as Holden Caufield for Gen-Z. Agree but our protagonist is way less annoying IMHO.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. — Especially if you snag a Fitzcarraldo cover. Content makes you look smart but not pretentious and is genuinely such a sleeper thriller/mystery/comedy/drama with some astrology?

Trust by Hernan Diaz. — See if you can’t hook a Callum Turner.

You Need Him to Read Something Other than Shoe Dog (No Shade)

The Trees by Percival Everett. — It kind of reads like a Tarantino film. Gory, timely, and above all funny as hell (until it cuts you off real quick).

Atonement by Ian McEwan. — Idk. Men love to read about “the” war and this was a really good one.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. — A historical drama that walks somewhere between The Other Boleyn Girl and a non-fic bit. And bonus because it’s a trilogy.

Stainless by Todd Grimson. — Just got a sexy new reprint from . A rock n’ roll vampire story that is going to make the man in your life understand the Twilight of it all if he didn’t already.

Perfect Book Club Discussion (Sober or Drunk)

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. — My book club loved this one so much. Honestly felt a little smarter and a little dumber coming out of the conversation. Also caught a lot I missed in my initial read.

Something Rotten by Andrew Lipstein. — It’s a white-male-reflection novel that I think might tear some book clubs apart, but it feels like a disservice to the insides to make it live alone in a reader’s mind. I wanna talk about this one still tbh. Almost put it under the previous category too btw.

Audition by Katie Kitamura. — This is more a “lock-in” book club vibe and less of a pass the pinot. I think it would be so helpful to read this as a group because it’s short and it’s a mindfuck.

Ordinary Love by Marie Rutkoski. — I say this with love, it’s adjacent to a mom book club read without being one. No shade at all, I love those books. But I would give this to my cousin and not my aunt – does that make sense? There’s a lot to unpack as a squad here.

So You Can Stop Saying “I Read Somewhere” When You Mean You Saw a TikTok

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. — Mad. This is recent and overlooked history (honestly, history is a bad word for what’s ongoing). It’ll piss you off partially because of the content but also because a non-fiction book over 500 pages should be boring as hell and it’s just not.

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. — JG in the year of our lord 2025 LFG. I left with a lot of great fun facts from this one. It’s short and I did the audiobook on my morning commute.

This House of Grief by Helen Garner. — Swap the true crime podcast for this new approach to the digesting of horrific crimes. This book really reframed the way I view court cases. Mainly because idk how they work in Australia where this is set.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad — A reframing of what’s happening in Palestine today that was a rare instance for me of adding to rather than reemphasizing.

Please Dear God, They’ve Read Everything (No, They Haven’t)

Temporary by Hilary Leichter. — I should add it to my bio at this point, you’ve heard me say this. It’s so bizarre it quite literally haunts my friend and I all the time. I am due a reread. I want you to go in blind if you haven’t heard anything about it so bye.

The Wax Child by Olga Ravn. — Danish witch trials. Hot. I’m confident you won’t need a gift receipt.

Ruth by Kate Riley. — This book I think is the start of the tradwife/religious sect boom we’re about to experience. Added benefit of I think most people will like it just in case you gift and they’ve read. (I feel like they won’t have.)

Women, Seated by Zhang Yueran. — I didn’t see nearly enough talk about this except for in my small circle of translation freaks so let’s get it popping. It’s spooky and will reveal a new side of the globe for most people I think.

Prize Winners (Or Shortlisters) That Won’t Make You Fall Asleep

Flesh by David Szalay. — Yeah, yeah. Join the queue. It grips you right away with kind of a wild start and while many have been annoyed or hated it and others have quite literally championed it to the top of the Booker (it won, spoiler), no one has told me they were bored.

On the Calculation of Volume I – III by Solvej Balle. — This series has been shortlisted for a lot but only won some Finnish prizes. I think we’re gearing up for the next volumes for some English speaking recognition, but these books rock. They are short but there’s a great momentum to them.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. — Some of you might come for my neck here because this is a slow book, but it’s not BORING. Also you can treat yourself to Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal after. It’s so fucking beautiful. And it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

All Fours by Miranda July. — Speaking of the Women’s Prize, not a day goes by I don’t talk about this book. So.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith. — It’s Zadie fucking Smith. It’s also my favorite of hers and the Orange Prize for Fiction agreed.

Bridget Jones is Lowkey Becoming a Documentary

Grape Juice by Eliza Dumais. — Or, honestly, any . They’re just enjoyable little jumps into romances that earn every page. My favorite length for romance is 400+ because I am sick in the head and I love a lot of character and plot development, but, oddly enough the close runner-up is anything under 250.

Bitter Sweet by Hattie Williams. — It’s on par with The Rachel Incident for me. I think it’s such a good coming-of-age without feeling like one. Good warning against workplace romance, -@ Daniel Cleaver.

Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane. — 400 pages!!!! Slow burn!!! Drama outside of the relationship!!!!

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. — h/t for this one. Irish lit-fic. The troubles. Illicit affairs. Cigarette inhale here.

I very rarely do longer reviews anymore, not for lack of interest but more lack of time and the patience to sit down and process. I have an Instagram account for quick yay or nay’s and the odd long review, but today we’re going to run through the highs of summer.

*This is not everything I read this summer, just the stuff I heartedly recommend.

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black — Cookie Mueller

I had never heard of Cookie Mueller before picking up this book and in many ways that worked for me. Her life is so wild that it takes no prior knowledge of the author to find yourself drowning in said painted black pool. What delighted me most about this curated selection of writings, agony aunt columns, musings, and journalism is Mueller’s matter-of-fact voice shining through as she tells you about anything from childbirth, almost doing porn, smoking with the Manson girls on a bus in San Francisco, or falling in love. She’s incredibly observant — it’s like throwing an anthropologist in the party scene and letting them do a line “for research.” It’s a hefty book but it’s one I highly recommend if you liked Julia Fox’s Down the Drain or John Waters films (Mueller was one of his muses.)

The Story of a New Name — Elena Ferrante

There is a person who responds to me every time I share that I am reading Ferrante to tell me how much they hate Ferrante’s work and that they have donated the Neapolitan Quartet to a local Goodwill. If this is you — you can skip this one. But I get where they are coming from. I too, was slightly disenchanted both times I read My Brilliant Friend. It was so boring! The atmosphere was interesting, learning about the region of Italy was interesting, but the characters and the plot left me wanting much more. Enter: The Story of a New Name. It’s 500 pages long and I found myself splitting the literary G — when I looked up I was 200 pages deep wondering why I couldn’t put it down. Like the remainder of a Guinness, it went down smooth and quickly. Someone else let me know that the quarter was originally one giant novel that was then split into what we see on shelves today. Oh so THAT makes sense! Novel one is the shot, novel two is the chaser. And if the books keep getting better I am going to find myself with a very hard hangover. (They’re getting worse as I creep up upon thirty.) Elena and Lila are more grown up now and while their dynamic often retains its familiar mercurial shape, it starts to diverge as they follow their different paths in life. I felt this was the novel where Elena’s voice really took shape for me.

The Sisters — Jonas Hassen Khemiri

I am rather annoyed to be recommending to you a large tome written by a man but I would be stupid and remiss not to include The Sisters on all my lists. (Note — I promise I’ll include a book shorter than 400 pages in a second.) This book scratched the itch that Blue Sisters and Little Women bit. I see them as my new unofficial and unsanctioned sisters trilogy. Khemiri weaves together Tunisian (you may want to annunciate this at the bookstore lest you find yourself reading about “Nice comma France”) and Swedish cultures and atmospheres to present a quilt of sisterhood and family trauma that is so satisfying. The best way I can describe the writing is addictive. The Mikkola sisters are so likable and complicated, but with a sisterly way of acting and speaking to each other that makes me wonder if Khemiri has sisters himself. (I might Google this, I might not.) We follow them over the course of three decades (2000 - 2035), following meet-cutes, job loss, discovery of self and passions, divorces, and a curse. Yeah, you read that right. A freakin’ curse. Woven throughout the body of the text is a second, almost B-roll story of a boy who recounts his own familial struggles and the way the Mikkolas have affected him and his world. It has a real Virgin Suicides thing about it. I highly recommend. And so does the National Book Foundation now.

Women, Seated — Zhang Yueran

I won’t spend too much time here again because I unpacked a bit of this slim (finally! Less than 400!) novel in my Women in Translation Month post. But I’d like to reemphasize the oddness of this beautiful little novel that flips the domestic drama on its head. Three women, one scandal, all of them affected by it but not its perpetrators. A little boy. A home in China. More buzzwords here. It starts with an attempted kidnapping and somehow along the way becomes way more than just the scandal that sparks the entire novel. It never followed the path I thought it might, and there is one scene with the “swan” that will haunt me. It’s a strong, strong image — sorry to Peta. This is quite lazy of me in terms of review but it’s not for lack of interest. More so that I really urge you to pick this one up and then come talk to me afterword. I think it’s best to go in blind with little expectation and let this novel quietly move you across the room.

Grape Juice — Eliza Dumais

I am an 831 Stories fan, that is no secret. I have read every one of their delicious and gorgeously marketed novels and enjoyed them all. But there is something about Grape Juice that has left its taste on my tongue long, long after I finished the book. Dumais has managed to write a contemporary/lit-fic romance that I think both the most devout worshippers of the genre and those with more atheistic tendencies will love in equal measure. Alice and Henri have chemistry through the roof, the cast of characters is straight out of a Richard Curtis film (the 90s ones, obviously), and the setting couldn’t be more romantic. A vineyard in France? Come on. This is a really beautiful lesson in storytelling within limited space and how you can really develop an entire world if you trust your vision, are razor-sharp with your words. and allow your characters to lead and take centerstage. For a romance it is quite character over plot, but in the same way that Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are. I buried the lede slightly here in not telling you that this isn’t out until November, but I really wanted to sell you on it so you’d pre-order it and we can talk about it 2-3 hours after you get it.

But before that! Exit Lane (which I read in Spring, sue me) comes out next week and as a tall woman of Danish heritage with a near-photographic-memory for the film When Harry Met Sally, it was a perfect read.

Beach Read —

This is a re-read before anyone yells at me. It also is probably feeling a bit off-brand for anyone who thinks they know my reading taste. To be fair, I present a bit pretentious in terms of what I gravitate toward. But in all honesty, it’s just because I rarely find a romance that is hitting exactly what I want. Which is a massive bummer for me because if I had it my way? I’d read about 60-70% more romance. Beach Read is a masterclass in the genre. (If you are a diehard for the romance books please don’t yell at me if you think I am wrong — I am sensitive and your efforts could be used to yell at someone better like your local representative if you’re in the US.) Henry allows her characters to be deep and flawed and a little silly, but at the end of the day they feel incredibly real. The romance isn’t forced — it’s a slow but inevitable burn. And *spoilers* when they do get together, there is a good period of time where we see them truly together and navigating this new dynamic. There isn’t a big blow up or miscommunication trope. Thank. God. I also love the fact that a lot of the story speaks to their mutual interest: writing. It has a brilliant premise and is near trope-less outside the enemies-to-lovers of it all. BUT that said? They weren’t even real enemies at first. That’s always a pet peeve of mine — how am I supposed to fall in love with someone who I hate/hates me? Weird vibes.

The Trees — Percival Everett

I watched an interview with Dua Lipa and Percival Everett for Service95 where Everett reminds the reader that you have to lead with humor when approaching a dark topic so that you can get the audience on your side. This book is genius for that. It’s a hard topic — lynching in the United States. And it’s even harder when you realize this is a contemporary novel that doesn’t shy away from the fact that we are still lynching men and women today. But it is a supremely funny novel as well. Something you’d be familiar with if you read James (also by Everett) in the last year or so. The Trees is in part social criticism and part classic detective novel. I don’t want to give too much away, but the mystery at the center of the story was one I couldn’t have predicted the ending to, and have often can we say that? Everett’s ability to determine the pace and the speed at which you read the book is masterful. You will flip pages like the wind until suddenly you reach a chapter where you need to come up for air. When you get to the one with Damon and the writing of names? Text me. It’s a really stunning and approachable read. I am really excited to keep reading more of Everett’s work.

The Compound — Aisling Rawle

You’ve seen the 100 reviews calling this a Love Island x Hunger Games collab. And it’s true. That’s pretty much exactly what it is. It has stuck with me mainly because I read it upon finishing this season of Love Island and had to reckon with how much I invested in strangers I watched every day for, essentially, sport. There’s probably a profound message buried under the piles of things the winners earn throughout the challenges, but I honestly just recommend it because it’s “fun” and I think a lighter-ish read that could break up some of the other ones I listed. Because you’re obviously going to read all of these, right?

Female Fantasy —

Hariri-Kia loves and respects romance and it shows. (And you can read the roundtable with her on if you don’t believe me). The book is really two-in-one. Odd chapters are an epic mermaid romantasy series while even chapters follow Joonie, a young woman living in Connecticut who dreams of a romance like the one of her beloved — you guessed it — mermaid series. It’s quite meta in a way that completely works. But what charmed me about this novel so much is it’s understanding of genre and the deeper meanings behind why many love it. In many ways it feels like what Percival Everett was saying. Hariri-Kia is able to show readers the power and agency that romance novels can give women and marginalized groups. Underneath sweet cartoon covers are actually acts of political protest. Okay, maybe that’s a tad dramatic. But I do think the idea of pleasure is so charged in today’s climate (especially when it is in regard to women/LGBTQIA+ community). If you’re worried this is a really intense and polarizing book now because of that kind of crazy review, rest assured it is not. It is a sexy and fun read that almost had me seeking out pirate romances. I definitely didn’t do any cursory Googling…

This House of Grief — Helen Garner

Another Dua pick — let this be an endorsement for her taste. Garner makes an interesting case for needing to look at criminals or people who do awful things that feel outside the realm of humanity as, well, humans. In 2005, Robert Farquharson’s car was found at the bottom of a body of water off the highway in Australia — his three young sons drowned with the vehicle. He claims to have blacked out from a coughing fit, lost control of the vehicle, and managed to get himself out upon impact and go find someone to get the boys. Whether or not he killed his children intentionally is the crux of the book and of the trial. Garner attended the trial and This House of Grief is her account of both the trial, the people involved, and the aftermath. It’s a hard read because ultimately, I do think Farquharson did act with intention, but it also is really necessary to unpack and reflect upon as readers. We live in a really sensationalized world and we follow trials like reality TV, we should have an understanding of our relationship to why. I think this is a great entry point into that conversation.

Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel

I am kind of giggling that I am recommending an older and critically acclaimed fictional recounting of the life of Thomas Cromwell but here I am. As a proclaimed non-historical fiction girl, I was changed. This book is kind of like Hamnet in the sense that you don’t need a ton of historical context and you get thrown in and swept away by a tide of really just gorgeous writing and modern observation/humor. It’s a trilogy and I look forward to reading more. It’s so random I picked this for summer?

Sad Tiger — Neige Sinno

I have sent over 15 minutes worth of voice memos to who put this beautiful (I am loath to use this word and you’ll see why) and compelling memoir on my radar. Sinno unabashedly recounts — and often to quite disturbing detail so TW — her experience with childhood sexual assault at the hands of her stepfather. Sinno was six, he was around twenty-four years old. The abuse went on for years and left an emotional mark on Sinno that she may very well spend the rest of her life examining. And that’s really the big takeaway from the book for me. So often in media or what I have consumed there is a really hopeful ending for many survivors. I think of Chanel Miller and Know My Name and how while there is a great deal of trauma I am sure she still unpacks, there is also a lot of joy in the life she has gone on to build. And I don’t mean to insinuate that Sinno hasn’t been able to experience joy in the years following the assault and the eventual trial (Sinno’s abuser would received nine years in prison of which he served five — he was one of the rare cases of admitting guilt). But it is clear that she will never be unmoored from the grief and confusion that the assault caused.

It’s an unbearably hard read that took me a while to get through because of the sadness I felt for Sinno. It is also — as Martha wisely pointed out — a great novel of craft. Sinno weaves throughout poets and writers and studies conducted across many fields that all tie back to her processing emotion and writing. The title of the memoir comes from a William Blake poem, The Tyger. She also brings up Virginia Woolf and the abuse she suffered at the hands of her older step-brothers, and Nabokov’s Lolita. Lolita is a novel often misinterpreted, and I admit to not knowing the protagonist was only twelve as she is always depicted in pop-culture or on book covers as much older. These pieces of media and the way they have shaped Sinno’s understanding are so beautiful woven throughout this non-linear piece of writing in a way that is so effective.

Sinno mentions all the reasons she should or shouldn’t write the book and they are complicated. But it makes me wonder how we decide whose story is worth telling? Who gets to be the voice of the movement or the understanding? Miller was so prominent and got a deal with a Big Five publisher because of the media coverage of her assault and trial (and also because she is a beyond phenomenal writer as well — the book is really quite incredible.) But would those larger publishers take a chance on a smaller memoir like Sad Tiger? Not sure I know the answer, but I am so glad this book exists.

That is my long winded wrap up. Some honorable mentions: Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, The Other Wife, Trip, Strega, and The Möbius Book.

Let’s not bother with the preamble. I have six more episodes of the 2008 John Adams miniseries to binge. (No spoilers, please.) 

Women in Translation Month is one of those months that starts to feel more and more important amongst a sea of articles about the death of the white male novelist (where?) and the rise of self-help books (let them? Did I do that right?). When the narrative of push notifications is to go small and internal, I ask of you, my 200 Substack readers, to expand. 

Tove Jansson - Finland (translated from Swedish)

Tove Jansson is probably best known for creating the Moomin trolls. If you are not a weird and quirky European-raised child (or I guess, Brexit now — blech) like me, maybe this is the first you’re hearing of these marshmallow creatures. Lock in. But - Jansson also wrote a couple novels for adults. I am particularly partial to The Summer Book but recommend both The True Deceiver and Fair Play. 

Zhang Yueran - China

I had never read translated Chinese fiction before Women, Seated but now I am excited to see more of what Riverhead has in store with their new initiative to bring more Chinese language books to the U.S. Women, Seated is dramatic and weird and short -- all of my favorite things in a book. It sucks you right in and holds you tightly. It’s out this week and I highly recommend this be one of your summer books. Think rich family, big problems, told through the eyes of the nanny. What more could you ask for?

Beatriz Serrano - Spain

Bitches who made My Year of Rest and Relaxation their personality - get off your asses! Serrano has written the response and it lives in the form of Discontent. It’s a novel that asks, “what if the vibes of Moshfegh’s novel got a job?” It’s so weird, it’s a little sweaty, and ultimately I think if we all still had Tumblrs we’d probably reblog a couple quotes. Right after we reposted that Matty Healy thing.

Tove Ditlevsen - Denmark

You’re so sick of me pronouncing Ditlevsen’s name in casual conversation the way a former French study-abroad student pronounces Le Pain Quotidien if you’ve spent twenty minutes in my company. I love Ditlevsen. Which is so odd because she is sort of Denmark’s answer to Sylvia Plath who I famously just don’t get. (Relax, I said don’t get not disrepect.) The Copenhagen Trilogy is one of my favorite books of the last five years but you can log it as three on your book logging app of choice if you’re behind on your goal. The Faces is slimmer but closer to The Bell Jar if that’s your drink of choice, and There Lives a Young Girl Inside Me Who Will Not Die is a short collection of poems that’s title may rival its internal word count. 

Claudia Piñeiro - Argentina 

I read Elena Knows because a cool girl from my writing retreat a few years back liked it and I am thrilled to report she is still cool in my eyes because this book rocked. It has a Hitchcock tone to it but maybe that’s just because every bell tower evokes the scene from Vertigo for me. It flips the murder mystery on its head while also exploring themes of disability, aging, and agency. 

Saou Ichikawa - Japan

I almost don’t want to explain Hunchback to you. I’m going to let via () do it. But before I do - I have to say, I listened to this as an audiobook and the first chapter is batshit for 7:00am on the packed train to Brooklyn. 

Olga Tokarczuk - Poland

What can I say about my favorite weird writer du jour? Or I guess, “w tej chwili.” Somehow in her novels Tokarczuk blends humor, horror, astrology, philosophy, and religion in a way that feels manageable despite that sounding like it should weigh so much that if movers had to carry it up a fifth-floor walkup they’d charge extra (I know this to be true). I just finished the forthcoming republication of House of Day, House of Night and while I liked it a lot, I am still partial to the genre-bending murder mystery that is Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. 

Andrea Abreu - Canary Islands

I think a lot about hot cheetos and Elena Ferrante’s protagonists when I think of Abreu’s Dogs of Summer. It’s one of those novels that reminds you that modern femininity is often drilled into the feral creatures that young women are. Fuck that. But the book is great.

Solvej Balle - Denmark

Small country, great vibes, excellent literature. Denmark has churned out another hit maker in the form of Balle. You’ve for sure seen the slightly psychedelic covers of her series On the Calculation of Volume. The first and second in the Groundhog-Day-type series are out now, but if you speak Danish come whisper in my ear because I am dying to know what happens in the third after that cliffhanger. (The second is my favorite but no, you can’t skip around.) 

Maud Ventura - France

I wish I could still read French at a fluent level to really get the nuance of Ventura’s work. Yes! That’s a reminder that I speak a bit of French but I will refuse to pronounce Le Pain for you because I am not annoying! (In that sense at least.) I will however shove My Husband into your hands. And if you have a husband for me - dm me. But in the meantime enjoy a psychological trip into obsession with a good ending. If you want something even more steeped in pop-culture and our obsession with fame then you’re going to want Make Me Famous. 

Françoise Sagan - France

It’s going to make you angry to look up how old she was when she wrote Bonjour Tristesse so don’t. Just enjoy how good it is. 

Elena Ferrante - Italy

It’s lazy if I don’t include the mother of translation. I say that mainly because if you’ve read a translated novel it’s probably a Ferrante. I am partial to her Ozempic novel The Lost Daughter but I cannot stop thinking about The Story of a New Name. Pro-tip! If you, like me, didn’t enjoy My Brilliant Friend as much as other people seemed to - keep going. The series only improves upon itself. And a little birdie told me that it was once one mega-novel then chopped up so I think the debut suffers from being an exposition novel. 

Jhumpa Lahiri - Italy

Okay, so Lahiri is actually not Italian. But in her memoir of sorts In Other Words, she explains her love of the culture and language and deep desire to write in Italian. Roman Stories is also a lovely read. But I think knowing more about her passion and seeing it in action (hate that rhyme — does it sound better in Italian?) helps endear you more to her excellent work. 

Jacqueline Harpman - Belgium

You’ve seen this one everywhere so I put it last. It’s disturbing and dystopian. It doesn’t answer a lot of questions so I will tell you that upfront. But! If you’re okay with just hanging around the inner workings of your mind and exploring the darker corners without much explanation — get in there.

This list is nowhere near expansive. It also skews incredibly white and that is my fault. So! If you have suggestions I implore you to drop them below! Help expand everyone’s palettes. 

I started receiving Teen Vogue before I could claim the first part of the magazine’s name. I was twelve years old. Over the next five or so years, I stacked the glossy pages of the slightly-smaller-than-most magazines on my shelf. The dates along the white spines became a time capsule of my coming of age.

I could tell you a lot about the way to shave properly, and the beauty-editor-approved lipsticks you could buy at the drugstore if your babysitting money didn’t exactly cut it close to the MAC counter. I learned about “Orgasm,” the shade of blush you needed from NARS, and that a spritz of Daisy by Marc Jacobs would make me look and feel like I was a cast member of The Virgin Suicides traipsing through a field. Occasionally, there was a story of substance, usually tied to someone like Jennifer Lawrence promoting the first Hunger Games adaptation, or an exceptional teen being highlighted.

Now, Teen Vogue is digital-only (a sad fact for many publications and for my old collaging habit), and reflects a different audience's evolving wants and needs. That isn’t to say that I wasn’t going to be interested in politics, world events, or social justice at the age of twelve. I just was taught to care about other things because that’s what my media deemed important for me to know about. That’s what was marketed to me.

Scrolling down the website, I am almost giddy at twenty-eight by all the digestible pieces of media that won’t talk down to me or try to sell me a product. Sure, there is still some of that, after all, it is Vogue. But I am encouraged to see the changes. Teen Vogue caters to a demographic most undervalued, mocked, and under-appreciated: the teen girl. To quote Harry Styles in a 2017 interview with Teen Vogue, “How can you say young girls don't get it? They're our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans — they don't lie. If they like you, they're there. They don't act 'too cool.' They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick.”

Teenage girls and the LGBTQIA+ community are the beating heart of culture. Look at the meteoric rise of Chappell Roan or Sabrina Carpenter in the last ten months or so. Google the Dancing with the Stars ratings after teenage and mid-20s girls started investing in the show on TikTok. The Season 33 finale had the highest viewership in the past three years (not a coincidence that the higher-scoring seasons of late have been post-pandemic and post-TikTok). Now, I am somewhat positing that young women specifically are responsible for the boost in the 18-49 demographic, but if you scroll TikTok for a few minutes it becomes clear who was really watching this season.

So why weren’t we always feeding the young women of today more substance? Why do we push back when creating media for women and label so many things as “women’s interests” only to open the pages of a book or magazine and find that it revolves around motherhood, fashion/shopping, or cooking?

In June of 1945, Lee Miller demanded more of the American Vogue audiences when she published her piece “Believe It,” a harrowing photo-documented account of the Second World War, and more specifically, the camps. Miller, alongside her longtime collaborator and friend LIFE photojournalist David E. Scherman, ventured deep into the still warm remains of a war to take photographs for British Vogue. Miller even went so far as to step into Hitler’s personal apartment and bathe in his tub (unbeknownst to Miller and Scherman, this was the night Hitler would take his life in Berlin) creating one of her most controversial and striking images of the war.

Miller believed the public had a right to see the atrocities committed against the people of Europe. In a slightly dramatic scene in the 2024 biopic of Miller’s life, Lee, Kate Winslet as Miller begs the then editor of British Vogue, Audrey Withers, to publish the images and refuse to allow the public to move on. She asks how the people who spent time in the camps would move on?

In the end, British Vogue determined that the public would be too disturbed by the haunting images and that it wasn’t in line with what their audience came for when they purchased a copy of the magazine. Miller then turned (as she had done many times when the British stood in her way) to her home country: The United States of America. American Vogue published the spread the way Miller intended, not shying away from the harsh realities of the war that had occurred so far away from the American public but nevertheless affected them still.

The photographs of the atrocities of the war are harsh as all war imagery is, but does that mean we cannot digest them? The war demanded something from men but it also called to action the women they left at home. The women who might dismiss what was happening or happened because it wasn’t happening in their own picket-fenced backyards. Not only does it allow some women to avoid declaring the massive human rights violations and destruction as 'women’s interest,' but it also does a disservice to the incredible women who served their countries as nurses, factory workers, and even service women.

When I was in middle school, all my friends and I had a deep fascination with the sinking of the RMS Titanic. This wasn’t exclusive to the girls though our investigations generally had less to do with the physical ship itself and the mechanics (as the boys often dove into) but the people on board. We read one seminal text: Ellen Emerson White’s Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, 1912.

Voyage on the Great Titanic was one in a series of fiction historical diaries called “My Story.” It documented the journey of Margaret Ann Brady, a young orphan traveling to find her brother in Boston. I am loath to say I actually can’t remember if it ends tragically for the young lady, but I do remember that each one of the “My Story” books had a grim tone to them and didn’t shy away from the realities of living through traumatic world events or time periods.

I read that book when I was a child, and I craved more of the world told to me through words I understood. The boys in my class also loved the “My Story” books, so many of which were told through the lens of a young woman. Perhaps this is a reflection of the fact that many young boys will engage with more “feminine” media until they are told that it is “for girls” or offered something else more “manly,” but it could also be the fact that there was a historical current running through the diaries.

In a thoughtful response to the viral New York Times article circulating among avid readers, Sara Hildreth writes,

“...the problem of men feeling excluded from the literary world, the problem of 80% of men most likely unconsciously avoiding books written by women—is rooted in the fact that one group of people is granted universal status while everyone else is not. It’s both simple and infinitely too complex to be diagnosed, let alone solved, in a single op ed or newsletter. To fix the crisis of a dearth of literary men, we need to convince men that their experience is not universal and to see the connected humanity of stories outside their singular lens. I wish us luck.”

Hildreth is addressing a comment on the Times article that says, “Could be that female authors write specifically for women, make [sic] authors write more universal subjects.” I am inclined to agree with Hildreth that this commenter said “the quiet part out loud.” It does seem that men will avoid stories of women’s lives because they can’t find them relatable or approachable. They are not mothers, they will not experience the effects of menopause and aging like Miranda July so brilliantly captured in her novel All Fours. They won’t understand the deep bonds of sisterhood that Coco Mellors captures in Blue Sisters.

Okay? I won’t ever fully understand what it’s like to be a Black man escaping the bonds of slavery in the early 1830s, but I loved and adored Percival Everett’s James. I can’t begin to understand the pain that Rob Delaney experienced as a father to a young child to pass far too early, but A Heart That Works had me near tears the entire time. I can appreciate these stories because these are human stories. They help me to unearth layers of understanding of grief or struggle. They contextualize more of my life in the world around me by encouraging me to look into what happens outside of my bubble. I specifically chose a fiction and non-fiction book for this example because while I do believe men could benefit immensely from reading fiction (empathy is as crucial a tool as straight knowledge), I also believe they are often quick to shy away from women’s non-fiction as well.

One of my favorite books of this year was Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing. It is a book that has been lauded and championed by men and women alike (my favorite being the unexpected endorsement by Dua Lipa - a woman of surprising taste) and yet it is a story of women. It is the tale of two sisters - Dolours and Marian Price - who did what they thought was right until maybe it wasn’t. It is also the story of Jeanne McConville, a woman abducted from her ten children and vanished.

This is women’s interest. This is human interest. To the men who read and loved this book, who let it live on their shelves like a trophy of knowledge, I implore you to ask who’s story this was. The IRA and The Troubles are the backdrop and the catalyst, but it’s not the entire picture. Congratulations! You have consumed a piece of women’s interest. My hesitation in listing it as such is its male authorship and the constraints of which I have been taught to categorize in.

So let’s allow Andie Anderson to write about Tajikistan for Composure. Let’s continue to educate the young readers of Teen Vogue on the happenings of a government they soon will be asked to hold accountable in a voting booth (though I do want to remind anyone under eighteen reading this - there are so many ways you can get involved). By providing information in a format and language that your audience is familiar and comfortable with, you can assume they will catch on quickly and eventually branch out to research and investigate more about their own beliefs and the cultural landscape around them. Lee Miller’s war photography and subsequent Vogue article created a lasting legacy in photojournalism, and thank God the Americans did something right in publishing it.

Let’s also stop labeling the things we don’t think men want to - or frankly can - handle as women’s interest. If there is one man reading this, I ask you to pick up a book about a woman and approach it the same way you would Sapiens or The Wager. Allow her to take up space in your brain as a human being, allow her struggles and triumphs to find their way into your understanding of the space you take up as a human being, and try to see her life as universal, not niche.

As a kid, your taste was dictated by your parents for the most part. It was whatever game your mom or dad or whatever adult you lived with turned on or took you to. I grew up going to Yankees games with my dad and had the 2007 lineup memorized because I got pretty into baseball cards. In hindsight it may have been less an attempt to be into baseball and more trying to find what I liked and maybe figure out the enigma that was my father, but I took my fandom seriously. I always had a cap on.

I lived south of I-84, so I tended to see a lot of Yankees caps that matched my own, always blue and white. My own hat barely passes for the official navy blue these days, though. It’s completely sun-bleached and a little changed by sweat from going on runs. But the truth is I rarely wear it anymore because time and financial responsibility (where I have it) have converted me to a Mets fan. I have a different cap for that, of course. 

But I wore my Yankees hat out this week and noticed something. I was far from the only person with one on my head. In fact, I felt for the first time in my life like I was a part of a trend right on time. There were many different colors, but the majority I saw were muted tones of red and green, along with the classic navy blue. These were also some of the most fashionable girls I had seen. Their jeans looked tailored, their Sambas fresh but not too fresh, their crisp white shirts my white whale as a girl who sweats through every item of clothing she owns. They made the hat look cool. I made the hat look like a hat. 

I will always give people the benefit of the doubt. I think being in New York, there is a very solid chance that these women are Yankee fans or that they at least live here and have gone to a game. But I can’t say that with the same confidence I used to be able to. I couldn’t even say it about myself at the moment - my Mets hat was just lost in the abyss of my apartment. 

This isn’t particularly new, with celebrities wearing Yankees caps for a while now and the Yankees being a source of fascination abroad, as Sam Borden wrote about for ESPN in 2019. But the women of New York dressing them up seems to happen more frequently on the streets these days. The Yankees caps on the street outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art that day felt less like a marker of support and fandom than a fashion statement. Neither is wrong to me and I won’t deny someone any cap they’d like to buy, but it did get me thinking about how we wear our many hats.

I have always been a baseball cap girl. Since I was a kid my hair has been a source of confusion and exists in a state of general disarray. Back when I was younger the hat would hide my flyaways and made me feel like Hilary Duff in A Cinderella Story. Now, it hides the two-toned hair I haven’t had a chance to get touched up and the bangs I don’t always feel like styling. But while I don’t really care enough about what my hair looks like, I do, for the most part, think about what my hat says.

Hats can be a great indicator of who someone is. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a certain red and white hat that quickly flags for everyone around what the wearer might believe. But there are more innocuous caps that can do the same to a degree without being so charged. 

There are a great number of quick assumptions you can make about me from my more straightforward hats. For example, I have a hat from my alma mater. It’s not a hard guessing game here for a stranger on the street - I either went to my school or know and care about someone who did. Or my “New York or Nowhere” hat, from the brand of the same name. I’m from New York or I visited and liked the hat. (That particular hat does, however, walk the line between the fashionable Yankees cap and genuine pride in the city I am from). Then the hats get a little more specific and tie me to smaller clubs of people who, if they know, they know. 

“I’ll Kick Her Sir” - A line from the 1997 Don Bluth film Anastasia

“Lucy Loves Me, Dads Fear Me” - Lucy Dacus merch

“I Only Read Good Material” - promotional swag for the launch of Dolly Alderton’s Good Material

“Elena Ferrante” - author of the Neopolitan Quartet 

I buy hats in muted tones that match outfits or feel like they could be incorporated into my existing wardrobe, something I don’t always think of when I buy concert T-shirts or similar merchandise. These are often worn to bed anyway, purchased in XL sizing for lounging at home. I don’t seem to be alone in this. Brandon (28, male) said he “prefer[s] the look and durability of the designs being stitched [on hats], rather than shirt designs which are usually printed or pressed on,” while Tara (27, female) liked “that hats are more subtle than merch shirts and [she] feel[s] like you can always throw on a hat.” 

It’s a quick and easy addition to an outfit that doesn’t compromise the overall vibe you might be trying to put on. In fact, oftentimes a hat will convey to me a more relaxed energy even if the outfit below the neck is a bit more polished. Tara also mentioned that she “never feels more [herself] or more hot than in a baseball hat and [her] favorite earrings.” 

I’m not the only person who has noticed that people seem to gravitate toward hats more so than any other merchandising product at the moment. At every concert I have attended in the last year, there has been a hat at the merch table. Most bookstores or independent brick-and-mortar establishments I have been to will have hats on the counter or on the shelf. Recently, my mom bought herself a distressed hat at our favorite farm-to-table shop and restaurant because the option existed, and she liked the look.

Recently, I was sent two hats from the publishing group Knopf Doubleday. One is a dark blue hat with a tiny white borzoi embroidered on the front, above the size adjuster and ponytail slot reads, “#ABorzoiBook.” The other also comes from Knopf specifically, reading in hot pink font across “I Only Read Good Material,” a nod to Dolly Alderton’s Good Material, which I received the finished copy of in the same package. At an event celebrating Valentine’s Day and their romance authors, Penguin Random House raffled off hats that read “I [heart] Sports (Romance).” Where there was a clamoring for tote bags is now a hunger for hats. 

Book PR is nothing new. Madeline Diamond wrote about the “merch-ification” in publishing for Esquire in 2023. But I, like I think many others may have, fell prey to the excitement of receiving a coveted hat. I have surrounded myself with like-minded Dolly Alderton fans who squealed alongside me when I pulled the hat out of the mystery packaging that found itself at my doorstep. I’ll admit that I feel like part of a special club when I wear that hat outside, though, to most people, it may mean absolutely nothing. 

Hats have an unexpected intentionality that I don’t think shirts possess anymore. Urban Outfitters is consistently stocked with band shirts and shirts for shows and artists that trigger the classic, “Oh, you’re a fan? Name five songs.” But when you buy a hat, it feels less passive. In line for a Maggie Rogers concert last weekend I noticed a man wearing the same Lucy Dacus hat I have, a large fish in the middle and the rusted red brim on khaki base signaling his fandom before I even read the words atop his head. I suddenly liked this person a lot more without even knowing anything else about him. It confirmed that he liked two of the artists I liked. I didn’t even wonder if it was genuine support or just a trendy shop purchase.

Lucy Dacus is also part of a queer group called Boygenius. She is outspoken politically in a lot of ways that I align with and reads a lot of books that I think look like a smart person might pick up at a store. Based on one hat alone, I made the assumption that the man in line might also agree with a lot of the things Lucy Dacus does and, therefore, might have similar voting habits, beliefs, and social habits to my own. Some of these biases also come from his standing in line for another artist who I like personally as well as musically, but the majority stemmed from his hat. 

Were these fair assumptions to make? No, not at all. There are several artists that I don’t totally vibe with on a personal level that I like on a talent one. But would I buy a hat for them then? Was I overthinking it all?

I asked my Instagram followers and my friends to send me three to six hats of their choosing for this Substack.

To me, the photos I received were self-portraits. It felt similar to all the times our college counselor in high school would remind us to write a Common App statement so personal that should she find it in the hall with no name, she could return it to the correct person. Looking at the hats of my friends, I could probably get about 70% of them returned to the correct person. 

It didn’t surprise me that people had enough hats to share. Several people told me they had to narrow their choices to meet my criteria. This was on purpose. I asked for six at the most, not because I wasn’t interested in their entire collection but because I wanted to see how they intentionally chose to represent themselves to me (especially knowing that the selection would also be shared wider in this Substack). How do you want to portray yourself to the world? I’m sure a few of you have looked through these images and aligned yourself with someone. Maybe there is a person with a hat that makes you want to shout, “Me too!” or that you laughed at, and maybe it endeared you to the wearer. 

In many ways, the Yankees hats worn for fashion are still identifiers. The person may not be a big baseball fan, and they may feel neutral about the place they are from (or don’t have a team there), so they don’t care about wearing another city’s colors. But they want you to see them the same way Gigi Hadid, Kim Kardashian, or Kaia Gerber might (all Angelenos). They want to be perceived as in the know or trendy, effortlessly casual and put together all at once. It doesn’t mean anything good or bad about them, but it doesn’t mean nothing. 

A friend of mine was once looking for a hat that would look cool and smart all at once. And I knew what she meant. It wasn’t disingenuous to her character (she is very cool and very smart). But I understood the urge to find something that can signal to the world the things that you most like about yourself. I think a lot of other people do, too, because hats for this purpose do exist.

A hat is worn so close to your face that the two are linked. When you walk around with words or imagery on your head (identifiable or not), you communicate to the world that you believe in what you’re wearing. It’s why it is often so jarring to see the MAGA hat if you don’t align yourself with those values. It’s a bold statement to make (and an even bolder color in a sea of generally softer-toned hats). But I wonder how much we think about what we wear on our heads when it is not so obviously charged (or charged at all). How much do we say to ourselves, “Well, I’m just a fan of this,” versus how much we mean, “I want to be seen as a fan of this.” What teams do we belong to? Who are we without our hats?

Surely, you’ve seen them tucked away on crowded shelves or displayed prominently in little pyramids on scattered tables. They live in the homes of almost every woman who can recite the “cool girl” monologue from Gone Girl or felt a knot in their belly when the priest said “kneel” in Fleabag. 

Stories of unhinged women are as prevalent as ever, with thousands of readers putting themselves in the shoes of missing-woman-in-the-window-of-the-house-on-the-street-with-the-train. Writers like Ottessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, and Eliza Clark consistently top lists titled “women on the verge” or “unhinged women.” But a woman is coming for the crown of these mysterious and unreliable ladies: the hungry woman. 

Women with food is not imagery that is new to us. In fact, it is familiar, comforting even. It’s the Pizza Rolls commercial on TV if you got your homework done in time after school. Or the Norman Rockwell of it all. In Rockwell’s 1943 painting, “Freedom From Want,” he depicts the perfect picture of domesticity and predictability. A woman preparing likely all day to serve what frankly, is the largest bird I have ever seen. But behind her looms a truth and a man with ears that rival the size of the turkey. The wife or mother is responsible for the nurturing act of cooking and her husband the brutality of carving it. In films, we rarely see her eat lest she have her mouth full. This would render her unable to ask how school was or confront a husband’s actions at the dinner table, of course. Doomed to have a piece of lettuce speared on a fork perpetually in mid-air. If it reaches her mouth, it will do so delicately, masticated with precision and a tight-lipped smile. In books, it is often forgotten altogether that she may have any indication of hunger. Descriptors focus on her legs, her eyes, how her hair falls, or the cut of her sweater. 

But the women of modern novels are hungry, with some verging on uncontrollably ravenous. They long not only to carve the Rockwell turkey, but to plunge their hands deep into the warm meat and feel the efforts of their labor sustain them in a primal way.

In her forthcoming novel, Piglet, author Lottie Hazell introduces us to Piglet, a woman preparing for her wedding. When her husband-to-be drops a bombshell that threatens her desire to adorn herself in white and give herself away, she finds herself adrift in the perfect life she has created. Piglet spends the first half of the novel - pre-revelation - cooking for others. She provides her guests with dinner tables even Martha Stewart would be silenced by. There is a care to her cooking and eating. Love is mezze spreads meticulously planned. Puddings served at the exact moment with the exact wine. 

She divided a large bowl of couscous, studded with shards of pistachio and pomegranate seeds, between two roughly shaped earthenware platters. She transferred the lamb stew from the Le Creuset to an oven-warmed tagine pot and scattered over toasted, flaked almonds. The hummus, baba ghanoush, and labneh had been spooned into terra-cotta ramekins, and she finished each dish with a flourish of grassy, yellow-green extra virgin olive oil and a flurry of fresh herbs. A green salad, trailing tendrils of coriander, parsley, and mind stood set for service. The scorched flatbreads were stuffed into hammered copper serving bowls. (Hazell)

When her fiancé’s confession burrows deep inside her, throwing her idea of an idyllic life out the window, Piglet eats. She orders everything off the menu of a burger spot. She eats bowls of pasta and consumes until her stomach starts to feel as heavy as a bowling ball. Social norms go out the window in pursuit of gorging herself, at one point throwing away forks and knives, “grease on her fingertips, goat meat beneath her nails.” In eating, she establishes her personhood and adds weight to her life both physically and spiritually. Gone is the desire to nurture others, to establish who she is based on what she can provide. In its place stands a starving woman clad in a wedding dress that no longer can contain her. 

His carbonara was barely touched. The cream of eggs and starched water had pooled beneath the whole wheat spaghetti: nutty brown, virtuous. Little puddles of fat were exuding from the bacon. The grated parmesan lay flat. She heard the shower turn on overhead, and she reached for his bowl. She stood at the sink, her running clothes stiff with dried sweat, picked up his fork, and ate until the bowl was clean. She was proud, in a way, that she could still smile as the delicious life she had been savouring turned maggoty in her mouth. (Hazell)

Piglet may have been friendly with Roberta, the protagonist of Lara Williams’s 2019 novel, Supper Club. Roberta, a young woman with an increasingly uncomfortable sense of self, endears herself to a young artist named Stevie. The two women create a monthly supper club for women with an uncontrollable urge to take up space, often a result of the way someone has taken something from them. For Roberta, this is a response to a feeling of being constantly untethered and an assault occurring during her college years. Roberta’s feelings are channeled into elaborate cooking in dorm kitchens and stolen spaces. 

Roberta’s relationship with food is fascinating. She is often repulsed and delighted by the creations she makes.

“I had always believed that the very best food contains something elementally repugnant. That its innate grotesquerie is what makes it so perversely alluring. My own favorite foods tended toward a certain sludgy, muddy texture. And from the most expensive and genteel through to the indulgently crass, the appeal of slop abides: caviar, escargots, foie gras or hamburgers, kebabs, macaroni and cheese. Even vegetable soup forms a membrane. Apples begin rotting from the very first bite. No matter which end of the spectrum, there lies fundamentally and yet delectably disgusting, some squirmy, sinewy, oozing, greasy, sticky, glutinous, mushy, fatty, chewy, viscous thing that compels. The line between pleasure and revulsion can seem so very thin, if it even exists at all.” (p. 88, Williams)

Unlike Piglet, Roberta nourishes herself before others, often feeling so isolated that there would be no one to feed. One Christmas holiday, she cooks an entire feast for her flatmates (she is not particularly trusting of anyone despite what seem like genuine efforts on their end to befriend the strange, quiet chef) and is unable to take a bite, consumed with how the others are enjoying the food or if they hate her just as much as they may hate her brussels sprouts. 

Like Piglet, she begins to gain weight with abandon. However, where Piglet panics at the pounds, Roberta relishes in them. 

It is easy to imagine Piglet wedged in between diners at the supper club, eating with her hands, indulging in wine sloshed from the bottle and passed around in communion, lifting handful of food after handful of food to her mouth to sink her further into her chair and take root in the space. She may have even delighted in the messiness of the women around her after years of perfection and striving for the Pinterest image of domesticity. These are not the women leaving the turkey on the table for the photo. 

So many of Roberta’s dishes are simple. Often, food is elevated to the point of no longer recognizing it for what it is: a life necessity. But the care and desire to consume are no less. 

“Delia Smith calls it ‘tart’s pasta’. Italian American restaurants call it ‘whore’s pasta’. But Nigella Lawson calls it ‘slut’s spaghetti’, and that’s the one I prefer. Because there’s nothing more terrifying than a woman who eats and fucks with abandon.” (p. 157, Williams)

These are not your traditional unreliable narrators. So used to the pill-popping, public-drinking, calculated characters of The Girl on the Train or Gone Girl are we that we sometimes forget that the women who don’t know themselves are often just as unreliable. There is a thrill to not knowing what they will do next because oftentimes they themselves don’t know. Watching Roberta and Piglet eat to fill the pockets of discomfort inside their bodies is far more interesting to me than boozing and clouding the brains of complex women like Rachel Watson in The Girl on the Train. 

While I am loath to admit I have yet to read Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger, her protagonist takes this hunger a few steps further: cannibalism. 

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.

But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels shows us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.1

Women are told we are supposed to want certain things. There is supposed to be a desire for a partner, for children, for the perfect job and the perfect home. But what happens when the things we are told to ache for aren’t coming? Or when there is something missing that we can’t quite put a finger on? For our fictional protagonists, it is power in food (or, in the case of Dorothy, food and murder). Real life, however, doesn’t appear to be too different.

In her 2018 memoir, Killing It: An Education, Camas Davis falls in love with the brutal act of butchering. Her seven-week journey into the trade came as a result of loss of employment and a newfound sense of displacement. Loss into hunger once more. 

The story she tells here is of discovering meaning and purpose by learning butchering skills and then, thanks to the classes she develops back home, teaching others to do the same. As she concludes before returning from France, “learning to kill an animal and turn it into dinner had changed everything.”2

There is a messiness to butchering that seems unladylike - perhaps not surprisingly, Camas Davis was recognized as something a novelty being a female butcher. But maybe that’s the point. Sometimes, in order to fight our way out of a mess, we need to make a bigger one, to blow it all up and see what remains. Davis derives a meaning from meat. So many will turn their eyes away from the literal “how the sausage gets made” story of self-discovery but have no problem with the golden bird of the Rockwell or a Molly Baz chicken gracing the cover of Bon Appetit, legs spread wide but covered in photogenic dill. 

So, not every woman will lean into the side of eating that involves spatchcocking and feeling her weight break the bones of an animal on a cutting board. But when do we stifle the hunger that exists deep within a woman's bones? 

Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abeau (translated into English by Julia Sanches) is a short bildungsroman following a hot summer spent by two ten-year-old girls living in Tenerife, Spain. The two girls are presented as primal, overtly sexualized, sapphic by curiosity (or nature, too early to tell what is sexuality and what is childhood exploration and infatuation), and immensely hungry. But they are at a pivotal time we have not experienced with our protagonists, Roberta, Piglet, and Camas. 

Our unnamed narrator and her best friend Isora have reached the age where older women have started to see their moldable forms as setting into something more permanent. This is the time when primal hunger can be quelled and a healthy sense of body image torn down just as quickly as it can be celebrated. 

Chela always gave Isora a smaller bowl than me because, according to her, Isora ate like a horse and if Chela didn’t stay on top of her the girl’s appetite got out of control. (p. 98, Abeau)

When alone, Isora makes cakes to watch her friend eat, delighting in someone else’s appetite. The unnamed friend relishes in moments when the girls can sit, caking their fingers in neon-orange Cheeto dust, hiding from watchful eyes. Theirs is a friendship of watching and being watched. Slowly, as the novella progresses, the food descriptions become less, and we feel our narrators slowly bend to the will of their elders. Food is not the main point of the book, nor is it a real driving factor, but it is an interesting way to look at the way a woman’s hunger can be dulled. Surely growing up can’t mean we desire less?

Food is an easy way into female desire. It is comforting, and the lengthy descriptions of food and preparation can lull you into a soothing rhythm before watching the messy consumption or processing the larger implications of the meals. Some of the descriptors of eating can be sexual in nature, but more often than not they are simplistic and almost divine. It’s a sloppy indulgence, freedom from what is expected for a plateful of time. 

This tends to be a trend in the literary fiction genre over others. For example, in two romance novels I read recently, Happy Place by Emily Henry and The Hundred Lives of Juliet by Evelyn Skye, Harriet and Helene (respectively) eat. However, what struck me as interesting was what they were described as eating: sugar. 

Both women have insatiable sweet tooths. In The Hundred Lives of Juliet, Helene is greeted every morning that she stays at her love interest Sebastian’s home with pastries and chocolates that she consumes delightfully. In Happy Place, Harriet’s coffee is overly syrupy, a character trait that all of her best friends and her ex-fiancé are aware of. 

It almost seems as though we need to know there is sugar coursing through their veins to know that we like them. They are kind and sweet, and we, as the readers, should be rooting for them. But why can’t we get that from their actions and their thoughts? The narrative is first person, and surely the audience is smart enough to decide for themselves. But by plying them with sugar, we can reduce their womanhood to something closer to Isora and her friend, a little lighter and more childlike yet not as feral. 

I lean toward the literary fiction approach of hunger. I want to feed Harriet the goat meat that is lodged under Piglet’s nails. I want Helene to be the guest of honor at Roberta’s supper club and to throw risotto with no thought to how long it may have simmered or stirred. I want to give Isora the bigger bowl of stew and then serve her a second. I am imposing a temporary sugar ban on literature. I want my women to eat the foods that will satisfy their stomachs, not sweeten them for others. 

Maybe there is a silent revolution happening. Maybe writers are simply inspired by other writers or, in a grimmer sense, just inspired by market trends. But what is clear is that the hungry woman is here, and she wants to know if you’re going to eat that. 

Note: Piglet publishes 2/27. Thank you to Henry Holt for the advanced copy for review.

The title of this piece is a play off Carrie Brownstein’s fantastic book, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir (2015).