I picked up Natalie Lemle’s debut Artifacts because I have been interested in the dilemma museums face when it’s revealed that items in their collections have been stolen ever since I lived in Cyprus in the early 2000s. For decades, the Cypriot government and the country’s Orthodox Church have been seeking the repatriation of looted relics and antiquities, some of them thousands of years old. It’s a familiar story; today many museums and galleries around the world contain art and artifacts that were stolen or looted from their countries of origin.

Much has been written about whether museums have an obligation to return these items, and it’s a complicated issue. For one thing, the Archeological Institute of America estimates that between 85-90% of artifacts do not have a documented provenance, making it incredibly difficult to determine if repatriation is in order. This issue of rightful ownership is at the heart of Lemle’s 2026 novel. Artifacts opens with its narrator, Lena Connolly, being asked by a colleague at her law firm to assist with a tricky case. The Italian government is accusing Fordham University’s museum of housing looted art. Among other fifth century pieces, it’s demanding the return of a dichroic glass cup that portrays the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

Lena is a trusts and estates attorney, but her colleague references her Italian skills as his reason for seeking out her involvement. Unbeknownst to him, Lena actually has strong ties to the region where the cup was once linked to a Swiss warehouse hiding artifacts, which was raided by authorities. It just so happens that Lena spent the summer of 2004— after her sophomore year at Columbia University— in Orbagne, working on the excavation of an ancient Roman villa in the Italian Alps. At the urging of her classics professor, Cyrille Du Puy, Lena accepted a position working on the dig he was leading, even though she had never left the U.S., her Italian was rudimentary and her experience in archaeology was limited. Cyrille was excited about the project— several objects found at the site were already on display at the regional museum in Aosta, Italy, and there was talk of obtaining UNESCO protected status for the site.

Eager to escape her troubled family, Lena jumped at the opportunity to work in Italy, but she realized not long after arriving that the project was marred by the palpable tension between Cyrille and his colleague, Pietro, whose family owned the land the ruins were on. The two men disagreed on the excavation methods that should used and the level of the Italian government’s oversight of the project. Their relationship was further strained because the dig was in urgent need of more funding. Lena was swept up not only in the politics of the Orbagne excavation but also in a summer romance with a handsome local named Giamma. Their time together ended badly, and Lena is still haunted by the fact that Cyrille went missing in 2004. When in 2022, she sees Giamma at a reception at Fordham for the Cupid and Psyche cup, Lena understands she must discover why her past and present are intersecting.

Despite the timely subject matter, Artifacts was a disappointment for me. Lemle has too many ideas going on at once, and as a result, the story doesn’t flow. She stuffs history, mythology and current academic discourse into her narrative in a way that feels confusing and unnatural. In one passage, Lena goes for a ride with Cyrille to a mountain vista near the French border, where they come upon a Neolithic stone circle. This prompts Lena to ask her mentor how he originally found the dig site. Cyrille replies that he linked a reference to mistletoe, which grows in Aosta, to another academic’s research on ancient papyrus. This leads him to explain the plant’s importance in Gallic religious rituals. His response reminds Lena of a scene from The Aeneid and that leads her to meditate on the etymology of the word fanum, which brings them both back to Gallic religious history and then to the interpersonal drama within their group on the archeological dig. I had to read this section four times. It is A LOT to keep up with, and being that at its heart Artifacts is a mystery, these sorts of clunky details really take the fun out of piecing the puzzle together.

That being said, I appreciated that Lemle, who previously worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and serves on the board of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, wades deeply into the debate around repatriation. While looting is clearly bad, she seems to be saying that repatriation lives in a grey area. For one thing: how far should one go back when delineating origin if one ancient civilization stole a valued treasure from another ancient society? Then there is the question of accessibility. As Lena’s friend Si notes:

“I’m torn. On the one hand I think these objects are for everyone and that’s the purpose of museums, right? To provide access…. People complain that it costs $25 to go to the Met now, but that’s much cheaper than a plane ticket and the wherewithal to actually get to the Italian Alps. Also a lot of these regional museums don’t even have the resources to keep objects on display.”

Si laments that “museums are broken,” the model is archaic. She opines that being privately funded makes it difficult for museums to do the right thing and argues that museums are ultimately in league with the commercial art market.

It’s all very interesting food for thought, and perhaps wrapped in a different novel, the answers to those questions might feel more accessible. But in the crowded narrative landscape of Artifacts, the discussion gets lost in the rubble.

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Three weeks ago my husband and I dropped our 17-year-old daughter off at Auburn University in Auburn, AL, for her freshman year in college. But before classes could get underway, she went through Panhellenic Recruitment, more commonly known as sorority rush.

For the uninitiated (forgive the pun), rush is a multi-day, structured process where college students visit different fraternity or sorority chapters, get to know members and mutually rank their choices— the organization finds new members to accept and the perspective new members find a group to join. Greek life, as sorority and fraternity membership is known, is popular in the U.S. especially at large, public universities in the South. According to My Fraternity, across 800 college campuses, approximately 750,000 students are involved in Greek life, and College Cove estimates that between 30-50% of students at Southeastern Conference (SEC) schools join a Greek organization.

Over the summer, my daughter was asked to submit a rush resumé, an introductory video and answer several essay questions in order to register for rush. Auburn has one of the longest sorority rush periods in the SEC; its 18 sororities vie for new recruits over nine days. According to Auburn University Panhellenic, on Bid Day 2026, which was held last Sunday, its sororities welcomed a record 2,153 new members, with 92% of registered participants being matched to a Greek organization.

As my daughter debriefed me each day, I started thinking about my own rush experience at Wofford College. As you might guess, a lot has changed since the 90s— not so much in terms of format— the basic structure of sororities hosting a series of parties to get to know their perspective members has remained over time. What is different is the public’s fascination with rush and how that has generated elaborate productions designed for social media consumption. One of the most obvious examples of this phenomenon is #RushTok, where potential new members document their recruitment experiences on TikTok— showcasing their rush outfits and offering a look behind the scenes. According to Bloomberg, in 2022, the University of South Carolina found that the average #Rushtok video received 66,000 views. Then there was Bama Rush, a viral 2023 HBO documentary about the University of Alabama’s selection process, which some have credited as an impactful recruitment tool for the university itself. Thank goodness when I went through recruitment as a sister, I didn’t have to dance. These days, sororities at several Southern schools post extremely popular videos on Instagram and TikTok of precisely choreographed recruitment dances, where members show off their cheerleader-style routines.

I was familiar with the rush social media phenomenon, but what I didn’t realize until recently was that corporate sponsorship has entered the conversation. As my algorithm caught up with my interest in my daughter’s rush activities, I noticed brands like Nike, Poppi and Prime Hydration partnering with chapters for recruitment events. Chapters at large universities frequently receive free snacks, merchandise and PR packages to promote a company’s products— not to mention winning bragging rights for landing a major corporate sponsor. The brands, in turn, gain visibility among young consumers. Some companies even recruit sorority members as long-term brand ambassadors to distribute samples and create organic marketing opportunities. In addition, some brands set up activations on college campuses during rush. My daughter sent me photos of a Sephora booth at Auburn that gave out free beauty products. Days earlier, the lifestyle and clothing brand Draper James presented a “Rush-Ready” pop-up shop in a hotel lobby across the street from campus, featuring a capsule collection tailored for recruitment parties. (According to TapSponsor on Instagram, fraternities also attract sponsorships, but instead of targeting lifestyle brands, they attract local businesses, energy drinks, apparel and event-supply brands.)

I roll my eyes at this commoditizing of rush. It shifts the focus towards curated Instagram profiles, video portfolios and designer labels and distracts chapters and perspective new members from evaluating each other based on values and compatibility. But I suppose it’s relatively harmless (and inevitable) given that the world we live in is already dominated by social media marketing and underwritten by corporate America. Where I really have a problem is the rise of rush consultants. That’s right, some parents pay private coaches between $2,000 to $12,000 to advise their daughters on selecting the right organization, securing recommendation letters, navigating the unwritten rules of rush etiquette and sharpening their conversation skills.

According to Bloomberg, rush coaches are most popular with families who aren’t from the South and who are unfamiliar with sorority culture. While I am sympathetic, it frustrates me that Americans have a tendency to think that hiring an expert is the best way to fix a problem when we don’t want to do the work ourselves. Moreover, these consultants may give an edge to wealthy applicants and unnecessarily raise the stakes and amplify the stress of the rush process. In a phone conversation this week with my daughter and her roommates (incidentally, all four of them joined a different sorority on Bid Day), they described rush consultants as “a trap” that prey on parents and their daughters. Interestingly, they told me the only woman they knew of at Auburn who acknowledged using a rush coach unfortunately didn’t receive a bid from any group. The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) seems to agree with our assessment. It published a statement two years ago stating, “NPC does not believe paid recruitment consultants or coaches are a necessary component of recruitment, nor are they advised,” adding that there are “no secrets about the Panhellenic joining process.”

Let’s decide as a society that we don’t want to hire fancy consultants, and while we’re at it, can we also refuse to spend a fortune on rush? Before she left for college, I encouraged my daughter to wear what she already owned to the rush events— after all, none of these young women had ever seen her wardrobe before. She mostly embraced my advice. When my daughter posted her Bid Day photos on Instagram, one of her friends humorously commented, “Went in with 1 dress, 1 skirt and a dream.”

This brings me to the question of whether rush and Greek life in general have become an outdated and antiquated institution. Should we still be encouraging our children to join organizations that many say prioritize the superficial and create additional expense to an already pricey American education? Personally, I found that my four years as an active member of a sorority had valuable, real world applications. Joining gave me an instant community and built-in support system in college, and my sorority’s emphasis on leadership development and philanthropy served me well. But to be honest, it was the networking skills that I started honing during rush that proved the most valuable. Because it just so happens that the assignments process in the Foreign Service remarkably resembles rush.

A U.S. diplomat’s first two tours are directed assignments, but once a Foreign Service Officer is tenured, he/she creates a "bid list" (yes, it’s actually called that!) of available jobs and then interviews with the office or embassy he’d/she’d like to work in. The process also takes into account the needs of the Service, training requirements and individual career development. But at the end of the day, it’s a system that runs on networking. For example, if a diplomat bids on a position at Embassy Cairo, he/she lobbies for that job. Meanwhile, the folks at the embassy look at where that officer has previously served and reach out to their friends who served at those same posts and would be familiar with the officer’s “corridor reputation” to determine if they want to select the applicant. In other words, if word gets out that someone is a bit of an ass, he’s/she’s not getting a bid. And yes, it’s possible to find yourself in a situation where no one wants to hire you.

I hope my daughter makes the lifelong friendships and cultivates the same useful skills I did while being a member of a sorority. Knowing her, she will wisely look outside those Greek letters for meaningful relationships and experiences as well. In truth, when I returned from spending my junior year in France, I found that I wasn’t as interested in sorority meetings, fraternity mixers and rush parties as I had once been. My senior year at Wofford, I began shifting my focus to my post-college life: travel, applying for graduate school and my future career. Eventually, we outgrow fraternities and sororities, which is exactly how it should be.

Xoxo, Emily

From the moment Madeline Cash refers to wiping out a Catholic church’s pesky gnat problem as extermignating, you know you’re in for an unconventional ride. Her 2026 debut novel, Lost Lambs, is a silly, outrageous, satirical romp that takes sharp but playful shots at neglectful parents, the Catholic Church, tech billionaires, internet conspiracy theorists, online radicalization, self-help groups, the obsession with eternal youth and good ol’ American cultural dysfunction.

Bud and Catherine Flynn’s marriage is falling apart. Catherine is bored, untethered and obsessed with her lost youth— her fading beauty and missed potential. She aspired to be an artistic photographer but finds herself reluctantly presiding over a crumbling house in a dull, suburban town. When she married Bud, a guitar player in a local band, she thought she was signing up for a life of spontaneity and unbridled passion, but they barely speak anymore. In Catherine’s mind, all of this justifies her neglecting to grocery shop, make dinner and parent her three daughters. Bud, who is now an accountant, is equally lost and depressed. Ever since Catherine announced they should open their marriage to other lovers, he’s been even more checked out at work than usual. Convinced Catherine is sleeping with the neighbor, Bud is contemplating suicide (presented lightheartedly) and has taken to sleeping in the family mini van (it’s a shame he can’t remember how to activate its Bluetooth capability).

Neither Bud nor Catherine has the slightest clue what their trio of rebellious girls is up to. The beautiful and somewhat vapid 17-year-old Abigail is dating a mysterious 20-something known as War Crimes Wes. Fifteen-year-old Louise strikes up an online relationship with an Islamic fundamentalist. And precocious Harper is a 12-year-old “troublemaker with no origin myth… too clever for her own good.” Exhibit A: her confession to Father Andrew at Our Lady of Suffering:

Harper pulled a pink electronic cigarette from her jumper and took a long pull. It gave a gratifying crackle. “I’ve been stealing Mr. Freidman’s Trizoletin from the pharmacy and selling it at school. Sometimes I light small fires behind the laundromat. I started Father Hayworth’s nickname— Father Gayworth— and it’s really caught on. I sent a video of Nordic pornography to everyone in my dad’s work email— it’s really a specific genre, lots of pelts involved. I stabbed a pocket knife into the tire of the church van in the parking lot on the way here. I have been teaching myself Latin to mess with my school’s Pentecostal group, burning my hands with a magnifying glass and claiming stigmata. I’ve racked up significant debt shopping Korean wholesale websites on my mother’s credit card. I stole mousetraps from the Squeaky Mart. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them yet. Last week I freed a lobster from the tank at the Golden Dragon and left it in my sisters’ bathtub. And I cut off Missy’s braid in the locker room after tennis and put it in her mother’s mailbox.”

As midlife burnout meets youthful folly (if that’s what you can call Louise’s terrorist plot to blow up Our Lady of Suffering’s Inner Beauty Pageant!), each of the Flynns fumbles about yearning for connection and meaning in their lives. Somehow all of the subplots manage to come together in a farfetched scheme to take down an evil tech billionaire who has a sinister plan to capture eternal youth.

If you are a fan of Fredrik Backman’s novels, you will likely enjoy Lost Lambs. Cash writes funny characters in ridiculous situations to poke fun at the absurdity of modern life. That she does this with Wednesday Addams snark and Wes Anderson-coded dialogue helps explain why the book has become an international bestseller, a Dua Lipa Service95 Book Club pick and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection. Rumor has it Netflix is developing a limited series of Lost Lambs with Lena Dunham writing the pilot. The 30-year-old Cash recently told Lipa that her next novel is already in the editing stage and is slated for publication in 2028.

Cash succeeds in writing a clever satire. Mind you, she doesn’t offer any solutions—but the idea is to take a look at ourselves and see where our beliefs about parenting, aging, identity and spirituality come up short. (Speaking of aging, I love how she makes the pithy distinction between men wanting to live forever and women not wanting to look old.) Moreover, for me, there’s always something satisfying in novels where the kids are more observant than the adults, and much of the book’s wisdom comes from children seeing truths that their jaded parents miss. I also appreciated that in Cash’s world, sins are forgiven and mistakes are reversible.

That being said, Lost Lambs comes up short with its Scooby Doo-style mystery. The kids are in charge and racing around to unravel the plot and unmask the bad guys. Sure it’s fun, but in my opinion, the climax leans too far into cartoon logic and undercuts the sharper satire built around it.

As for those gnats that feature on the novel’s cover and infect the author’s spelling, Cash says her editor pushed back, telling her the style choice could be misconstrued as typos. I’m so glad she didn’t. Gnaturally, even copyedits have a punchline.

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In Elizabeth Strout’s 2026 novel The Things We Never Say, a middle-aged history teacher suffers from an existential crisis and that’s before he learns his wife has been hiding a secret that will change the way he views his life. Long listed for the Booker Prize, The Things We Never Say is a brilliantly written story about how an ordinary man deals with isolation. It’s also a story full of secrets— those things we never say— and Strout explores why we self-censor and the impact of that censorship. Along the way, Strout reveals her secret to great writing: that which remains unwritten.

Everyone wants a teacher like Artie Dam— principled, understanding, clever, current, patient. The kind of teacher who corrects a cruel comment and asks you to stay after class to find out what’s actually going on in your life. He’s the one you remember years after graduating. Artie appreciates the impact he’s making on his students. He keeps a secret box in the attic of his coastal Massachusetts home containing their letters— hidden testaments to the mark he has made on their lives.

But beneath the surface, the 57-year-old history teacher is unmoored. Perhaps it all started when his son Rob was in a terrible car accident years earlier. Rob survived, but that event irrecoverably changed the family. Since then, Artie has become increasingly distant from his wife Evie; Rob’s marriage is falling apart; Artie’s closest friend has moved away; he’s come to find socializing meaningless and he’s worried about the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. Then there’s the question of free will. Artie has become obsessed with unpacking whether humans have it, but whenever he broaches the topic, no one is ever interested in discussing it.

As a result of this heaviness, Artie seems to be sinking under the weight of his isolation. He decides to kill himself, but there’s a catch: Artie insists that his death look like an accident. Then, just when things seem to be turning around, Strout pulls the rug from under Artie and the reader. Artie learns of a secret and must decide what to do with this terrible knowledge.

The Things We Never Say is the first of Strout’s novels that I’ve read. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author has a huge following, having written her way into her readers’ hearts with her interconnected books and memorable characters, like Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton. She’s known for her stories about ordinary people and the complexities of human relationships. Her sparse prose is really a marvel. Her storytelling doesn’t require flowery language or elaborate descriptions. She is writing about ordinary people with relatable thoughts and presents them in the most tender, straightforward way. Equally impressive: in this 224-page novel, Strout doesn’t include details that aren’t critical to the story. It doesn’t matter where Artie went to college, so Strout doesn’t mention it. Rather, she tells us just enough about his often difficult childhood so that we understand how it shaped him.

I appreciated Strout’s exploration of the nature of secrecy. Why are there things we don’t say? Are we trying to spare someone’s feelings? Afraid of the fallout? Is it cowardice, or do we actually find power in withholding information? With so many characters harboring secrets in this book, there’s ample space to try all of these theories on for size.

Who won’t like The Things We Never Say? Well, those who detest politics and read to escape the real world. There is a lot of discussion of the current Trump administration and its policies. Artie and Rob are fearful that due process is in jeopardy and worry the government spies on its citizens. There is mention of Alligator Alcatraz and Trump’s military birthday parade. And yet, Artie finds genuine companionship with a man who doesn’t share his ideological views. In any case, I didn’t find any of these references incongruous with the story, but some readers may be put off.

If you do read The Things We Never Say, which for me is one of the best books I’ve read this year, take this piece of advice: once you’ve finished the book, immediately go back and reread the first chapter. You will be impressed— maybe even astounded— by how seemingly insignificant details come back into play. Strout’s weaving is so masterfully done that the reread makes for a very satisfying conclusion— proof that the things we never say are usually the things worth going back for.

I support independent booksellers. If you would like to purchase a copy of The Things We Never Say, you can do so here. If you prefer Amazon, you can purchase the hardback edition here and the Audible version here.

(Trigger warning for suicidal ideation.)

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When my sister and I were 7 and 10 respectively, my Granny Plumb and my Aunt Patsy, who just happened to be a nun, took us on a five-and-a-half-week, cross- country trip in a Honda Accord. It was an epic summer that my sister and I still reference frequently. The adventure marked the first time we had visited the West Coast and the longest we’d ever been away from our parents.

This being a classic road trip, we stopped at every national park and 1950s-era roadside attraction as we made our way from central Florida to Washington State and then back home to South Carolina. We stayed at Ramada Inns, Quality Inns, Days Inns and Holiday Inns, pulling into whichever hotel had the best looking pool out front. We reunited with Granny’s nursing school buddy in Texas and family in Oregon. Predictably, the Honda broke down on a 100 degree day in Death Valley. Things got tight when we made the shortsighted decision to purchase giant sombreros in Ciudad Juárez. I vividly remember looking out the car window and envying all the kids who were riding in spacious family vans.

One core memory of the trip was our stop in Las Vegas. Granny and Pasty had taught us how to play poker a year or so earlier. This was long before Texas Hold’em became popular, so I’m talking about good ol’ Five-card Draw and Seven-card Stud— classic poker games. Amanda and I played all the time and had gotten quite good, so we were thrilled when Granny and Patsy promised us there’d be a chance to show off our card skills when we got to Sin City.

By my recollection, we first stopped in a modest joint off the Vegas Strip and were immediately stopped by security as we tried to walk onto the casino floor. “No kids allowed. We’re going to ask you to leave now.” We complied, and Granny drove to our hotel, which naturally had a casino. This time Amanda and I snuck beneath the velvet ropes when we thought no one was looking. We were caught, of course, and again asked to leave. (If you think nuns don’t try to get away with gently breaking the law, you didn’t know my Aunt Patsy.)

Realizing the age restrictions would be strictly enforced no matter where we went, Granny and Patsy took us to Circus Circus, which in the early 1980s was a dazzling palace of games and circus performances aimed at children of all ages. (It’s fallen on hard times in recent years.) Amanda and I were so excited to finally sit down at a poker table, but instead we found ourselves in a labyrinth of arcade games: skee ball, Wack-a-Mole, pinball. It was an insult. We’d been practicing hands of Pass the Trash, Chicago, Baseball and for what? It was a crushing disappointment at the time, but we got over it, of course, and continued to play Five-card Draw in the evenings at motels from Wyoming to Kentucky.

I thought about these memories recently after I read an article in the New York Times about a worrying trend: children and teens becoming problem gamblers. Online casinos, sports betting apps and prediction markets have made gambling more available to young people than ever before. (Consider the data: in 2025, Americans wagered roughly $166 billion on sports betting alone— more than the movie, music, book, and museum industries make combined! The Washington Post recently analyzed 50 hours of televised professional sports and found a gambling reference, promotion or commercial occurred every four minutes on average.) Statistics on youth gambling addictions are still thin, but researchers believe there is a strong link to suicide. Lia Nower, the director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers School of Social Work, argues American society mistakenly views casual exposure to gambling as harmless, when in reality it encourages young people to engage in risky behavior.

I don’t doubt this is a real problem and that pediatricians and therapists are seeing more young patients with gambling trouble. But my exposure to poker as a kid wasn’t that. Sure, money was sometimes on the table— quarters, pennies, a small mountain of plastic chips— but Granny and Patsy weren’t teaching us to chase a payout. They were teaching us math, patience and how to lose a hand gracefully. Every game happened at a kitchen table or on a Days Inn bedspread, in full view of two grown women who would have shut it down in a heartbeat if it stopped looking like family time and started looking like something else. The problem isn’t the cards— it’s that someone has to sneak off to play them.

Here’s what else I’m Currently Obsessed with

I have never binged a podcast faster than I devoured We Call Her Emma, an extraordinary six-part investigative series by Tortoise Investigates and The Observer (UK). It explores the life of Asma al-Assad, the wife of the dictator Bashar al-Assad, the former president of Syria. I still recall reading that infamous Vogue profile of Asma written by Joan Juliet Buck in March 2011. It was flattering and hopeful (“the freshest and most magnetic of First Ladies”), but it soon became painfully clear as the Arab Spring came to Syria that Bashar al-Assad was continuing the brutal regime of his father. Much has been written about how Buck got the story so very wrong, but until now, Asma remained a mystery. How did a smart, middle class girl from West London end up married to an indicted war criminal? Was she complicit in the regime’s atrocities or did she find herself powerless to stop what was unfolding around her, a trapped figure unable to escape?

Host and reporter Chloe Hadjimatheou takes on these questions in We Call Her Emma. Through dozens of revealing first-person interviews with people once close to Asma and the al-Assad family (some of whom remain anonymous for fear of reprisals) she traces how the young woman known as “Emma” to her childhood friends, modeled herself after Princess Diana and met her future husband. Along the way Hadjimatheou uncovers a number of shocking secrets, including that: the Russians considered Asma as a possible replacement for her husband to lead Syria; Asma exercised significant control over aspects of the economy, including international aid; she was stopped by Syrian security from fleeing the country with her children; she headed an economic council that harassed and threatened Syrian businesses; she presided over the kidnapping of children as a means of punishing dissidents; she shopped for luxury clothing and jewelry as the war raged on. The series is incredibly well-researched, detailed and illuminating.

You can find We Call Her Emma on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The first four episodes are free; the last two are available now with a subscription— the paywall will be unlocked on August 4 and 11.

I have been a Marc Jacobs fan since high school when I became obsessed with a set of the dark fuschia and olive green houndstooth luggage he designed while he was vice president of women’s design at Perry Ellis. It took months and many Christmases and birthdays, but I finished acquiring it just in time for a graduation trip to the UK.

I don’t own any of Jacobs’s pieces today, but I continue to admire the way he translates youthful street style into sophisticated fashion, and Sofia Coppola perfectly captures Jacobs’s talent in her 2025 documentary Marc by Sofia. It is finally streaming (HBO, Apple TV, Amazon Prime), and I was eager to see it.

Like most fashion documentaries, this one follows the making of a runway show (his 2024 spring collection), but unlike so many others (hello Victoria Beckham on Netflix) there’s no manufactured panic, no race against the clock. Jacobs has clearly done this enough times that the outcome is never really in doubt. What makes this documentary feel fresh is Coppola’s familiarity with Jacobs. She leads him easily through a tour of his influences, and he explains how each of those became a reality on the runway— walking through his design process along the way, which was the most interesting part of the film for me. He admits some of these references— Cindy Sherman photographs, Elizabeth Taylor films, Bob Fosse choreography, Saint Laurent’s Scandal collection— border on cliché, but I like the self-awareness. They're also cultural touchstones anyone serious about fashion should know, which makes the film a solid primer for design students.

Don’t expect a powerful narrative arc. Marc by Sofia is really more of a visual mood board and a pleasant, well-dressed escape.

I recently discovered Maison Ë, an online magazine that aims to find quiet luxury in the form of travel, art, architecture, fashion and cuisine. Typical fare: a profile on the former director of the Tate Modern who has returned to his roots as a citrus farmer or an article on the versatility of umami. But what really sucked me in was a two-part video interview with mother-daughter Caroline and Sophia Neuendorf set at their jaw-dropping minimalist home Casa Neuendorf on Mallorca.

Commissioned in 1987 and designed by architects John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin— neither of whom had built a house before and yet were given total creative freedom— Casa Neuendorf has become an architectural landmark. Its coral-pink walls, tinted with pigment from the surrounding soil, rise up against green grass and blue sky. A stunning 30-meter pool seems to pour straight out of the foundation. (Silvestrin has described designing "a pool that goes towards the infinite.") Inside, the house is minimalism taken to an almost monastic extreme: a narrow slit cut through the facade that brings the outdoors in, small square windows, no art on the walls. Pawson, Caroline says, still visits and still chides her for cluttering the kitchen counters with dishes and appliances. He insists they remain completely bare. There's a sunken clay tennis court, too. It was added even though Hans Neuendorf, Caroline's husband and the founder of the art marketplace Artnet, didn't play. Silvestrin didn’t budge: "Let's make a beautiful tennis court, and then there is an incentive to learn."

About a decade ago, after serving as the backdrop for a fashion shoot, Casa Neuendorf crossed over from architectural pilgrimage site to cultural icon. It's actually available to book (price on request), and, wouldn’t you know, staying there has suddenly become a bucket list item for me.

Quick Hits

The Charleston Literary Festival will be held November 6-15, 2026, at the historic Dock Street Theatre. Barbara Kingsolver, Virginia Evans, Lily King, Belle Burden, Francis Fukuyama and Curtis Sittenfeld are among the headliners. Packages are currently available, and individual tickets go on sale September 10.

I remember visiting the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, as a child and feeling disappointed that the bedrooms in the upper floors weren’t open to the public. (I needed to see all of the house!) I felt similarly cheated when I toured the Breakers, the Vanderbilt’s cottage in Newport, RI, many years later. So I’m thrilled that the Breakers just opened its third floor private residences to the public for the first time in 129 years.

We’ve all heard of museums and galleries rotating their art collections, but what about in our homes? According to a recent article in Porter, art consultants and interior designers are encouraging their clients to view their art collections as temporary installations that should be regularly rearranged, switched out and stored as needed.

I really like the current Vineyard Vines x Grateful Dead collab. The polos, shorts, tees and quarter zips feature the band’s small signature Stealie, and they would make great gifts for the Dead Heads in your life. (I know my daughter would be overjoyed.)

These Pooky cordless lamps with their block print lampshades recently caught my eye. They come in either green, clear or amber and would look so elegant on a dinner table.

The Booker Prize Longlist was announced last week. I’ve read The Palm House and just finished The Things We Never Say and look forward to checking out more of these titles soon.

Xoxo, Emily

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I am a big fan of the short story. Such a satisfying reward for so little effort! Most of us don’t have the luxury of beginning a novel and finishing it one day, but a collection of short stories offers something wonderfully close to that. And yet, other than reading a short story here or there in a journal or on Substack, the last time I treated myself to a full collection was Amor Towles’s Table for Two (review here). I tried to remedy that when I picked up Lauren Groff’s 2026 Brawler: Stories. Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist, a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, a regular New York Times bestseller and— perhaps best of all— a book store owner. I am a big fan, having gotten pleasantly lost in her novels The Vaster Wilds and Matrix. However, I’m aware that many folks (my book club included) argue her books are thin on plot and slow-paced. You won’t find that criticism here; once you begin one of the tales in Brawler, you’ll feel compelled to keep reading until the end. In fact, there are several that you’ll wish would go on a lot longer.

Brawler is Groff’s third collection of short stories, and several included here have been published previously in The New Yorker. There are nine stories total, and they are tied together by themes of guilt, shame, love, fear and violence. Groff recently told The Harvard Gazette that in this book she wanted to take on the “overall macrocosm of violence in North American cultures, particularly the United States culture, and the way that it can be reflected often in the family unit.” She jumps straight in with “The Wind,” a harrowing tale of a family’s escape from an abusive husband and father. In this chapter, she begins a pattern that will run through the collection: Groff shows us the fracture but moves on before we can see what it really costs her characters.

“What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf,” the collection’s longest story, follows the life of Chip, a well-intentioned young man wrestling with his family’s inherited taste for alcohol. Chip could be a distant cousin to Amor Towles’s unforgettable Woolly Martin from The Lincoln Highway, another well-meaning boy built for disappointment. Chip struggles to conform to his wealthy family’s expectations, but success has a way of slipping from his grasp. He knows he should avoid the bottle, but there’s something about disappointing family— even a flawed one— that cuts much deeper than a hangover ever could.

My favorite story in the group is “Birdie,” in which three friends gather to say good-bye to their high school bestie, Birdie, who is dying of cancer. The women reminisce over hospital cups filled with peach schnapps, sharing the worst thing they’ve ever done. When Nic, Birdie’s closest friend, starts to reveal that she had a summer-long threesome with a couple she babysat for when she was 17, the girls cut her off, “Oh my god. We were right. We totally knew it. We totally knew you were having an affair with the boy’s father.” Nic doesn’t bother to correct them, but she later tells Birdie the real story of that summer of sexual awakening. Birdie admits that as a teenager she was jealous of Nic’s secret and makes a shocking confession of her own. As in other Brawler stories, guilt provides a powerful undercurrent here, and Groff asks: what obligation do the living have to forgive the dying?

I need Groff to turn “Under the Wave” into a novella. I need to know what happens to the little girl who survives a tsunami and goes home with a grieving woman who is not her mother. That mother quickly accepts the girl as her own, but she gives the child the identity of her dead son. The girl seems happy to accept this new fate, but for how long and at what cost?

Groff’s writing is unadorned yet lyrical. She is casual and controlled and sometimes withholding. It’s a technique that sucks in the reader, so that you are caught by surprise when the bottom suddenly drops out. A cryptic author’s note provides a bit of background on each story, but it’s not nearly enough. What is clear is that all of the stories feel profoundly personal. Groff told Publishers Weekly, “There are stories in this book that, on the surface, have no relation whatsoever to my actual life, but I still find them deeply autobiographical.”

One quibble: I really wish Groff would use quotation marks so that I would know when one of her characters is speaking. I realize many authors do this, but it’s a big pet peeve of mine.

If you are comfortable with a little unfinished business, then I think you’ll enjoy Brawler. These stories are compelling and heartbreaking, which proves brevity doesn't have to come at the expense of feeling.

I support independent booksellers. You can purchase Brawler here. If you prefer Amazon, you can purchase the hardback edition here and the Audible edition here.

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

My parents hosted a lot of dinners and parties when I was growing up. One particular dinner party at our home on Hilton Head Island stands out in our family lore. While the guests were enjoying themselves, my sister Amanda and I secretly decided to turn her bedroom into a museum. We announced the opening to my parents and their guests and invited them to enjoy a guided tour, where we explained the significance of the objects. A hobby horse was presented as George Washington’s taxidermied horse. A sewing kit was transformed into the one Betsy Ross used to create the first American flag. We reimagined our toys and possessions as historically significant artifacts worthy of preservation.

I think Amanda and I were probably age six and nine (I’m older). I can only assume we had been inspired by a recent family trip to Washington, DC, and the Smithsonian museums, in particular. It was so long ago that no one in my family is certain of the details. What I do recall is that my parents and their friends were so delighted by our makeshift museum that one of the guests, author Katie Callahan, later gifted us with a beautiful piece of pottery that seems to depict an angel’s face and was said to date back to the arrival of Christians in the New World. My family has never had it appraised or dated, but the intention was clear— this piece belonged in our charming collection.

I thought of this childhood museum when last month a college friend sent me a hilarious story that he said reminded him of me. You may have seen the article in which a man in Boston was allegedly arrested for posing as a museum guide and making up wild stories about the museum’s paintings. The man was supposedly 34-year-old Ethan Caldwell, and the museum was not named. Several weeks later, articles came out revealing that the story was fake— the product of an online satire account called the Dude Humor Report. According to Art Net, the account posts dozens of spoof memes a day and has gone viral on Instagram in the wake of the docent-gone-wild parody. It racked up 150,000 likes with 9,500 comments on Instagram, while most of the account’s posts average less than a hundred likes and a few dozen comments.

I was disappointed to learn that there is no Ethan Caldwell running around East Coast museums fooling patrons with outlandish stories about the origins of the art. As the purveyor of a museum with imaginary artifacts, I have great appreciation for creativity, humor and irreverence when it comes to the art world. I like to think that’s the tradition Amanda and I were working in. Museums have the power to convince you that for a few minutes you're standing next to something that matters — and it turns out that's true whether the placard is real or not. Amanda and I didn't know anything about provenance or curation when we were six and nine; we just knew that a hobby horse looked more interesting as George Washington's. Thank goodness a room full of adults was willing to go along with it, because Katie Callahan’s generous gift convinced my sister and me that playing make believe and storytelling are worthy endeavors and that they also make for a more interesting life.

Here’s what else I’m Currently Obsessed with

Filmmaker Christian Petzold’s Miroirs No. 3 is a quiet, strange little film that I can’t stop thinking about. The 2025 German drama is now available to stream on a variety of platforms, including Apple TV. After her boyfriend dies in a car accident she survives without a scratch, Laura, a piano student in Berlin, wanders into the orbit of a middle-aged woman named Betty. Betty senses an unspoken connection and takes Laura in without asking many questions. Betty’s ex-husband and son from whom she’s been estranged drift back into the house, each of them drawn to and unsettled by Laura. The film spends its brief runtime sitting inside that discomfort rather than resolving it.

None of the characters behave in ways that always make sense— then again, neither does grief, which, in large part, is what Petzold’s drama is examining. If you're the kind of person who needs a plot to click cleanly into place, this might frustrate you. But if you have any patience for slow films that are more interested in raising questions about how we metabolize loss rather than answering them, I think you'll be rewarded. And if you're a Hitchcock devotée like I am, you'll clock the Vertigo DNA almost immediately— the idea of a woman remade into someone else and how tempting that remaking is. Petzold, who frequently adapts the cinematic grammar and suspense tropes of Hitchcock, is playing with this homage.

One unexpected gift of this film: it introduced me to Ravel’s Miroirs, the piano suite the title borrows from, and specifically its third movement, “Une barque sur l’océan.” I’ve now listened to it quite a few times. It’s gorgeous— unsettled and searching in exactly the way the film is— and worth seeking out on its own.

See Miroirs No. 3 if you can. It’s not a film that hands you much, but what it withholds is sort of the whole point.

The other day I searched for the recipe to one of my favorite summer dishes, and I couldn’t find it online. It’s a good thing I have an old-fashioned recipe box, thanks to my mother-in-law. Years ago, she gave each of her children a box filled with her signature recipes on handwritten index cards. I have added my own cards over the years with recipes that I hope will stand the test of time. Sure enough, this grilled potato salad recipe was tucked inside the box. It’s been a hit with family and guests since we added it to our repertoire around 2008, and it’s easy to double/triple the portions for a crowd. Bonus points: there’s no dairy and gluten in this hearty side dish.

Grilled Potato Salad (serves 4)

For the Salad: oil for coating the grill grate or grill basket/pan, 1 lb new potatoes, 2 ears of corn husked, 1 T olive oil, 1 red or orange bell pepper, 3 T chopped flat leaf parsley, 1/2 cup chopped red onion

For the dressing: 3 T extra virgin olive oil, 2 T grape seed oil, 3 T fresh lemon juice, 3 T red wine vinegar, 1 clove minced garlic, 1/2 t kosher salt, 1/4 t ground black pepper

• Heat grill and brush with oil

• Coat potatoes and corn with olive oil. Put potatoes in the grill basket and put the corn and bell pepper directly on the grill. Cover and cook until the vegetables are browned and tender, approximately 20 minutes for the potatoes and 15 for the corn at 375 degrees. Be sure to turn the vegetables occasionally.

• Peel the skin off the pepper and discard the stem, core and seeds. Dice the pepper.

• Cut the potatoes into bite-sized pieces, cut the corn from the cob.

• Toss the vegetables in a bowl with the parsley and red onion.

• Mix the dressing ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and toss with the salad and serve.

Quick Hits

If you are traveling to Paris this summer, check out Fragile Beauty, photographs from Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s collection (considered one of the largest in the world) at the Jeu de Paume. The exhibition, which runs until September 27, brings together some of the most important names in photography from the last 80 years and includes many pieces considered pivotal in the history of photography.

It’s peak season for summer pop-ups at fabulous vacation destinations. I rounded up a list of some of the best. Unless otherwise noted, these chic boutiques are open until the end of the season. La Double J in Forte dei Marni (open through September), Frēda Salvador on Nantucket (until July 21), Tuckernuck on Nantucket, Dior in Capri, Staud x Da Adolfo has a series of activations along the Amalfi Coast, PatBo in Portofino (until September 9). Aquazzura has taken over the bar at the Hotel de Russie in Rome, and MyTheresa Out East is an Airstream boutique popping up around the Hamptons (until August 6). And La Prairie at Gurney’s Montauk Resort & Seawater Spa (until September 9).

My husband and I loved our visit to the stunning Louisiana Museum outside of Copenhagen last summer. Currently, the modern art museum is presenting Lucian Freud, which explores the master figurative painter’s fascination with faces and bodies. The show, which was produced in collaboration with London’s National Portrait Gallery, runs through September 27.

Fans of legendary American photographer Bill Cunningham can look forward to We All Dress for Bill, an archive show that will feature the late photo journalist’s works, camera, scrapbooks and his ubiquitous, bright blue coat. It is set to open in New York City in the winter of 2027.

The Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall in Washington, DC, is rarely accessible to the public. However, as part of America’s 250th birthday celebrations, the signature building of the Smithsonian Institution is open through Labor Day for Our Shared Future: 250, an exhibition exploring how the founding ideals of 1776 have been interpreted by subsequent generations.

One more Smithsonian-themed item: the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is hitting the road for America’s 250th. Normally, spread out along the National Mall in July, the festival— with its free performances, workshops and educational demonstrations that bring together artists, makers and speakers— is the Smithsonian’s oldest and largest public event. The road trip began in March and will continue until November and will include approximately 40 festivals around the country. (I am gifting this article on the history of the institution and its standoff with the administration.)

Need a hostess gift before this season of houseguests wraps up? A copy of This Must be the Place: Homes with Atmosphere, a gorgeous new coffee table book featuring interiors designed by Chloe Redmond Warner, would be well appreciated.

Xoxo, Emily

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

Playwright Lila Raicek’s debut novel The Plunge is outrageous. The 2026 romp falls neatly into the rich people behaving badly category. Set in New York City, the Hamptons and Lake Como, it practically begs to be tossed in a broken-in Louis Vuitton duffle and taken on your next vacation. Is it great literature? Not even close. The prose is as ridiculous as the characters— all of whom delight in deceiving and torturing each other. It’s sexy but also very silly. If you need permission to escape reality, The Plunge is it.

Liv, a 31-year-old playwright, can’t figure out how to get her life back on track following the death of her fiancé Graham. Reeling from the fallout of a corporate scandal, in a reckless fit of passion Graham flipped his car over a Los Angeles cliff, dying instantly and leaving Liv badly injured. A foggy eye and a dramatic scar across her forehead are the painful reminders of that horrible night. Six months after the accident, Liv is staying with her former college mentor in his New York City apartment. She spends most of her time crying herself to sleep in the tiny, mildewed maid’s room that she’s using as a bedroom. But then one night she answers a call from an unknown number. On the other end of the line is her former neighbor Damon, who resurfaces after two years with an invitation to a glamorous party.

Damon is a rakish jewelry designer, known as much for his flirting as his sultry pieces made from smuggled Italian coral, peach sapphires and Paraíba tourmaline. With Damon as her entrée, Liv is swept into a glittering circle of friends led by the mysterious Isabel. Liv is captivated by the 50-something Isabel, but soon realizes they both have their sights on Damon— who may or may not be available. Then there’s Isabel’s friend Rex, an investigative journalist who claims to know a damaging secret from Liv’s past. In between the witty banter (“What else is Switzerland good for except sinister neutrality?”), and the pedantry (“Oh god, we’re only on our first bottle. Isn’t it too early for Pushkin?”), everyone is scheming and threatening each other. Who could ask for better friends? But Liv lacks the good sense to turn down an invitation to the North Fork or Lake Como, so she gets mixed up in their dangerous game.

According to the Wall Street Journal, The Plunge is loosely drawn from Raicek’s own life. The author admits the story was somewhat inspired by her 2017 split from Roy Price, the former head of Amazon Studios, who resigned after a sexual harassment claim came to light. The allegations captured headlines weeks before their wedding was set to take place, and Raicek left Los Angeles for New York to start fresh, living in a mentor’s maid’s room. She’s written for the TV series Younger and the Gossip Girl remake, but is best known for her West End play My Master Builder, a psychosexual thriller, which was based on Ibsen’s classic story and a married couple Raicek once befriended in the Hamptons (!). In April, Raicek told Avenue that she’s “drawn to worlds of beauty that hide cracks of darkness.”

Avenue describes The Plunge as a “jet-set thriller.” I have to say, for me, it’s more of a jet-set satire. For one thing, it’s tough to take much of the prose seriously. “Here I was surrounded by all these gems, all these unearthed stones, yet the only one that mattered to me was thousands of miles away, decaying at the bottom of the ocean or entombed in a ravine, like the bones of a missing girl.” Or “I walked up the stoop and through an open red door into a vestige of fabled bohemia.” Raicek uses a lot of similes and adds an extra heaping of drama to every description. This would be fine if it were meant as camp, but I don’t think that’s the author’s intention.

Then there’s Liv, who lives in a constant state of torment. Her visceral reactions to every uncomfortable situation become exhausting. I lost count of lines like these: “I felt my ribs constricting, squeezing the air out of my lungs; the flood of night, submerging me until I drowned; a bloodsport until eventually I was gored; an old gear twisted in my chest.” By the fifth or sixth, the effect isn’t devastation— it’s fatigue.

This is too bad, because although much of the plot is unbelievable— Liv hates Rex, but never takes steps to avoid him; Liv has no money, but manages to keep up with her posh set— it’s still entertaining. In fact, The Plunge could be a lot of fun if Raicek became less conscious of her own voice. Damon and Liv’s reckless cat-and-mouse game is sexy. Isabel’s sycophantic friends are ridiculous and funny. Even the loathsome Rex has his moments. It feels like Raicek desperately wants to impress her readers, when she should concentrate more on having fun.

I support independent booksellers. You can purchase The Plunge here. If you prefer Amazon, the hardback edition is available here.

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In Mary H.K. Choi’s 2026 novel Pool House, Delilah Moon (“Moon” to everyone who loves her) and her 20-year-old daughter Stevie are squatting on their own property. Moon’s a former sitcom star whose work dried up, so she rents out her sleek Los Angeles home (the “Big House”) and lives with Stevie in a tiny, algae-covered, glass pool house in the backyard. Their complicated relationship is strained when Mac, Moon’s former TV husband, the love of her life and one-time surrogate father to Stevie, commits suicide. When Adam, the young man who played Moon’s TV son, shows up for the funeral, the lines between real family and performed family, already blurred by years of playing house on camera, collapse completely.

Pool House is less a book about plot— although there certainly is one (as well as a dramatic, unexpected ending)— it’s more of a character study about three lost individuals who are orbiting around each other, unable to articulate what they need and unsure of where to land.

Delilah Moon became a household name when she starred in Wabi-Sabi, a cheesy mid-aughts family sitcom that was considered “unserious pablum, TV Muzak, best binged in the background of other activities.” Arthur Maclean (better known as Mac) played her husband and Adam Dano her stepson. The show revolved around the antics of a blended military family stationed in Hawaii, and the long-running joke was that Adam’s character had the hots for his stepmom.

In fact, everyone in Pool House has mother issues. First there’s Moon: she grew up with a Korean mother who disapproved of everything she did, and a white stepfather who never accepted her as his own. She's spent her adult life building an inverse blueprint of that childhood. (She's even got a spoof Pinterest board titled "What Not To Do," full of the cheap kitchen tile and wall-to-wall carpet her mother loved.) But Moon can’t outrun her inheritance. She’s famous for playing a mother on television, but in private she may have failed at the real thing. She prioritized her career— the key to financial security for Stevie and herself— at the cost of neglecting her daughter. Along the way, she became an alcoholic. She’s in AA now, but she can’t live down her track record of good intentions and bad follow-through.

Stevie can hardly remember a time when she wasn’t angry with her mother. She resents all the times they had to move out of the Big House, the times Moon left her with strangers to audition for a role, the occasions in which she is used as a prop at Moon’s AA meetings. This resentment is at the heart of why Stevie turned down an acceptance at New York University to work in a dead-end fast food job. It’s not only because her mother can’t afford to send her to college, but also because she feels the need to reject all that her mother stands for. “Stevie’s sick of mollifying, placating, bending,” and yet, she yearns for closeness with Moon. “She longs to hoard however much of her mother as she can… She wants to swallow her whole and carry her around in her mouth.”

And then there’s Adam. He’s Stevie’s childhood crush but also her former TV brother, who sometimes still feels like her real brother. In Stevie’s mind, Adam is Moon’s favorite child. But Adam’s success in the film industry belies his personal issues. He has a string of trysts with married women. He attends meetings for sex and love addiction, while struggling with impotency. Then there’s his obsession with his own mother—her unavailability, her withholding nature. He wants to be accepted by her and yet spends most of the novel actively avoiding her. Out of this confusion or perhaps as penance for all of his mistakes— Adam finds himself stepping into Mac’s role as part time provider and protector of Moon and Stevie. After the funeral, he’s in no rush to leave Los Angeles. At Moon’s urging, he makes himself at home in the Big House, earning the appreciation of his hosts by shopping for groceries, cooking meals and cleaning the festering pool house. Adam thinks he could permanently stand in for Mac, but realistically, he’s as unmoored as Moon and Stevie are.

A fellow Substacker recently called Pool House the book of the summer, and I’m inclined to agree. Choi is best known as a journalist and Young Adult writer. She’s taken a chance here— giving us the perspectives of three protagonists, who are real, messy, layered and complex. She could have easily written Moon as a stereotypical bad mother. After all Moon can be incredibly myopic and selfish. Instead she gives us a mom who insists on shielding her child from the indignities she herself experienced, while still pushing her daughter to grow up and claim her own ground. Moon is willing to sacrifice everything for her daughter, but not in the way readers expect. Choi herself has called the book “weird,” admitting that writing it stretched her to the “outer limits” of her capabilities.

Readers will likely enjoy Choi's take on Hollywood, sharpened by her years as a ghostwriter and celebrity journalist. She's got a satirist's eye and clocks the ridiculousness that makes L.A. tick. “The early-thirties white woman is decently attractive in an L.A. way. Feathered bangs, expensive teeth, possibly secret-wealthy enough to be an anti-vaxxer and a fiscal Republican but enough of an ally to make land acknowledgments before an event.”

I never knew exactly where Pool House was going— and the ending threw me for a loop, but this is what makes the novel fun and wacky and stand out from a crowded field of summer reading. By the end, it's hard to say where the performed family stops and the real one begins— which might be Choi's whole point: the messiest, truest kind of family is the one you build, not the one you're given.

Trigger warning: Some readers may be turned off by the language and graphic descriptions of sex and masturbation.

I support independent booksellers, you can purchase Pool House here, or if you prefer Amazon, you can find the hardback version here and the audiobook here.

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

There was a time when I could identify every Caribbean island on an unlabeled map. (Talk about a party trick!) At Georgetown University’s Master of Science of Foreign Service (MSFS) program, one of the graduation requirements was passing the Map of the Modern World Exam, in which students were given a blank world map and were expected to be able to label every sovereign country. But you can’t memorize the independent nations located in the string of islands between Cuba and Trinidad & Tobago without knowing the neighboring territories that belong to the U.S., France, Great Britain and the Netherlands as well. I can no longer recall the ridiculous mnemonic device I made up, but I can clearly remember wishing I was on one of those picturesque, tropical islands rather than studying for that outrageous test.

This summer, my husband and I decided we’d explore St. Barthélemy (a French territory) and Saint Martin/Sint Maarten (the northern half is a French territory and the southern half an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands). For reasons I’ll explain shortly, I will spend most of this post sharing my best recommendations for a vacation on St. Barths.

When to go

Believe me when I say, there is no reason to fight over yacht moorings with Leonardo DiCaprio. Go to St. Barths in the shoulder season! The glamorous set descends upon St. Barths from December to March, and most of the island shuts down from August to October because of the heat and hurricane season. So consider going between April and June, when traffic and crowds are not an issue, hurricanes are less likely and prices are 35% to 60% lower. If that weren’t enough, it is also much easier to get reservations. We booked our lunches and dinners only a day ahead, making for an easygoing, spontaneous trip.

Getting there

No major airlines fly directly into St. Barths. Typically one transits through St. Martin (SXM) or San Juan, Puerto Rico— where numerous daily flights on small puddle jumpers take off for Gustavia, the capital. We took a 15-minute flight on Winair from SXM to Gustavia. If the jaw-dropping nose dive over the mountains and onto the tiny runway that stops just short of the beach is not your thing, there are several ferries departing daily from St. Martin that take 45 minutes to an hour.

If you have a tight layover in SXM, consider traveling with just a carry-on and a capacious personal item. The maze to pick up your luggage, clear immigration and customs and go through security can be quite time consuming. Another tip: the only business lounge in SXM is the Priority Pass Lounge. With a hot buffet, two bars, outlets and shower facilities, it’s a good place to spend a layover. Priority Pass has come in clutch several times for me, so take a look at your credit card perks and see if you qualify for a free membership.

Lodging

We stayed at the fantastic Le Barthélemy Hotel and Spa in the Grand Cul-de-Sac part of the island. With only 40 rooms and villas, the resort is designed to always feel intimate— even when the island is at its busiest. Le Barthélemy sits on a calm crescent bay that is ideal for snorkeling. During our visit, we saw dozens of sea turtles. Full disclosure: I won a complimentary night at the hotel, and we paid for the rest of our stay there. Regardless, my husband and I agreed that Le Barthélemy provided some of the best service we’ve ever experienced. From concierges to housekeepers, the staff are friendly, helpful and quick to remember guests’ preferences. Every guest is given a signature beach tote and baseball caps, but thoughtful surprises such as reef-safe sunscreen, a chilled bottle of rosé or a canvas pouch monogrammed with your name may appear in your room as well. Extra touches like yoga mats and Dyson hair dryers in every room and a dedicated gluten-free section of the breakfast buffet are the kinds of comforts guests remember. A beautiful beach with complimentary snorkel gear, kayaks and stand-up paddle boards, gourmet dining and a La Mer Spa round out the list of outstanding amenities.

Other luxury properties that consistently receive high marks include: Le Toiny, Hotel Christopher, Cheval Blanc, Eden Rock, Gyp Sea and Hotel Manapany. For a more moderately priced option, consider the charming and well-run Le Village. Due to our late arrival on the island, we spent our first night there and really enjoyed it. Its neighbor Le Tropical is another great choice.

Dining

I have to give my friend Jenny credit for sharing her excellent St. Barths dining recommendations. Among our favorite meals were a lobster tartine at the Jean-Georges Vongerichten-led Sand Bar at Eden Rock, a fresh lobster salad at the Beach Club at Le Toiny (where a Land Rover takes you down to your table on the beach) and a whole sea bass with beurre blanc sauce in a lush garden setting at Tamarin St. Barths. L’Abyss, Nikki Beach and Bar de l’ Oubli were also very good. Several friends recommended Shellona and Kiki-é Mo, but both were closed during our stay. We didn’t have enough time to dine at Bonito, La Case, Le Select and La Petite Plage, but they are also well regarded.

Things to do

We rented a car to get around St. Barths, as taxis can be expensive and hard to come by. Having wheels means you can check out Shell Beach, Gouverneur Beach and Saline Beach. Gustavia is best known for shopping, but you can also visit the Wall House Museum to learn about the island’s Swedish and French colonial past or check out the Gustavia Light House, built on the ruins of Fort Gustav. There are several popular hikes on St. Barths, but we opted for lazy beach days and lively beach clubs. If you are traveling to the West Indies, be sure to reserve a sun lounger or a table at one of the trademark daytime beach clubs. On St. Barths, you can expect hardworking DJs, fantastic views, rosé all day, a relaxing meal and possibly some silly antics when someone orders bottle service. We enjoyed the vibes at Nikki Beach and La Guérite. Next time, we’ll have to check out Naō and Gyp Sea.

Shopping

For such a small island, St. Barths is #blessed when it comes to shopping. In addition to high-end luxury brands like Hermès, Prada, Dior and Valentino, there are great locally-owned boutiques in both St. Jean and Gustavia. Among my favorites: Carla St. Barths for Italian-made shoes and handbags, Lolita Jaca for locally-designed, elegant silk sets, Clic St. Barths for the coolest curation of clothing, home goods and photography. And no one does fun, colorful resort wear better than Poupette St. Barths. (I packed several pieces from my collection, including this strapless number.)

Saint Martin/Sint Maarten

In 2017, St. Martin was badly hit by Hurricane Irma. The Dutch Red Cross estimated that nearly a third of the buildings on the island were destroyed and over 90% were damaged. I wish I had better understood the impact this storm is still having on St. Martin when I was planning our trip. Yes, there is electricity, paved roads and running water, and yes, 80% of residents are employed in the tourism sector, but do not come expecting a thoughtfully developed, environmentally sustainable or a high-end, luxurious vacation destination. I certainly don’t regret our decision to include a few days in St. Martin in our itinerary, but I also don’t want to mislead anyone. St. Martin is missing the rustic charm you find on other Caribbean islands, and it attracts its fair share of tacky tourists, who don’t seem interested in the local culture.

My husband and I rented a car and managed to see most of the island during our brief visit. While I don’t have a lot of recommendations, there are a few places I really want to highlight.

I am not exaggerating when I say we ate the best steak of our lives at L‘Atelier Orient Bay. The French steak house takes such pride in its ingredients, sourcing its seafood locally and its beef from the finest butchers and ranches in France (Lesage), Australia, Japan and the U.S. (Creekstone Farms). From the salads to the digestif, it was an unforgettable meal. Also impressive: their extensive housemade Ti’Punch (a French Caribbean specialty) offerings.

We really enjoyed two beach clubs on the island: Anse Marcel in the north and Le Karibuni on the uninhabited nature reserve of Pinel Island. The former is popular with French tourists, the latter with Americans. Both feature restaurants that serve great food. Be sure to book your tables and sun loungers in advance.

There is a shortage of attractive boutique hotels on St. Martin, which is how we ended up at the very disappointing J.W. Marriott (usually a reliable option). We should have stayed at the beautiful Belmond La Samanna, which we really enjoyed for sunset drinks and a delicious dinner. I also wish I had known about Le Karibuni’s guest house (separate from the restaurant) and Le Martin, a locally-owned boutique hotel, both of which are located in Cul-de-Sac.

St. Barths and St. Martin sit just a few miles apart, but the gap between them feels much wider than that. St. Barths is the island I'll be dreaming about for years—polished, peaceful, and effortlessly chic in a way that justifies its reputation. St. Martin is a more complicated love letter, one still written in the shadow of Irma, where the contrast between the two halves of the island only sharpens what St. Barths does so well. But there's something to be said for seeing both: it's the kind of trip that teaches you what you actually value in a destination, and that's a useful souvenir in its own right.

Xoxo, Emily

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

I tend to read a lot of fiction where women are the protagonists. It’s not intentional. I imagine, like everything else in life, it has at least something to do with my algorithm. So I wanted to make time to review Wally Lamb’s The River Is Waiting, which was published to much fanfare (instant bestseller and an Oprah’s Book Club pick), in June 2025. His main character and narrator is Corbin Ledbetter, a troubled husband and father. Lamb, best known for his gut wrenching novels She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, specializes in running his characters through the gauntlet. True to form, he makes Corbin suffer like a modern-day Job.

It’s difficult to summarize The River is Waiting without giving anything away. The pivotal event that sets the novel in motion, takes place early on, so permit me to be intentionally vague. Corbin, or “Corby” as he prefers, has recently lost his job as a commercial artist. He’s reluctantly stepped into the role of stay-at-home dad to his twin toddlers, Maisie and Niko. His wife Emily is a teacher. Corby had a difficult childhood— a critical father who abused his mother— and it quickly becomes clear that he lacks the proper skills for coping with adversity. He has taken to abusing prescription medicine and alcohol to dull his anxiety and avoid applying for new jobs. It doesn’t help that he’s in the direct firing line of his opinionated mother-in-law. She’s never thought Corby was good enough for Emily, and he in turn is resentful they moved to Connecticut from California to be closer to her. Keeping his new habit from Emily requires some creativity, like hiding a bottle of rum in an old lobster pot, but Corby isn’t concerned. This isn’t an addiction; he just needs a temporary fix.

Things don’t go according to plan. Corby makes one terrible choice after another, and he must pay a price. The River Is Waiting is essentially a prison novel. After the inciting incident, Corby is ripped from the comforts of his middle class life and thrust into the complicated and often violent American incarceration system. The familiar prison tropes all make an appearance here: corrupt guards, a hierarchy of intimidating inmates, homophobia, racism, inhumanity in the face of suffering. Corby must navigate his way through this unfamiliar world while wrestling with his anxiety, his addiction and an incomprehensible guilt.

That should be plenty of fodder for the rest of the novel, but Lamb pushes the boundaries of his characters’ misery and his readers’ capacity for absorbing their pain. For me, The River Is Waiting falls into the trauma porn category. Think Job in the Old Testament or Jude in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. There are moments of tenderness and levity. For instance, Corby bonds with his kindhearted cellmate, he takes advantage of a wonderful opportunity offered by the compassionate prison librarian and he protects a troubled 18-year-old inmate. I appreciated these powerful moments, but ultimately they were overshadowed by the Corby’s and Emily’s suffering.

That's not to say The River Is Waiting isn't worth reading. The writing is straightforward and sharp, and Lamb gives readers real questions to sit with— how suffering reshapes us, whether forgiveness is something we earn or simply decide to allow ourselves. And the redemption he offers Corby isn't tidy; it's hard-won and incomplete, which is what makes it feel true rather than just therapeutic. That alone sets this apart from most prison novels— and honestly, from most redemption stories.

*Trigger warnings for death, grief, suicide, sexual assault and substance abuse.

I support independent booksellers. You can purchase The River Is Waiting here. If you prefer Amazon, you can purchase the hardback edition here.

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

I am currently obsessed with sports. It happens sometimes. During the Olympics, for instance, or when one of my college teams makes it far in the NCAA Basketball Tournaments (very rare). Between broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup, the Carolina Hurricanes (Raleigh’s National Hockey League Team) in the Stanley Cup playoffs and at a distant third, the National Basketball Association finals, there’s scarcely reason to leave the house.

The Hurricanes fever that’s infecting the Research Triangle is truly special. The Canes, as they are affectionately known, are our only major league sports franchise, (the Carolina Panthers and Charlotte Hornets really belong to the Charlotte area), and when you drive through Raleigh and see Canes flags flying at all the bars, neighborhoods with mailboxes decorated with mylar Canes balloons and massive, outdoor watch parties, you remember that sports have the power to unite communities that are otherwise divided by socio-economic and political differences.

This got me thinking about sports diplomacy, a concept I first learned about in grad school. It’s the idea that athletic events can bridge cultural divides, build mutual trust, ease tensions and open channels for communication, thereby advancing foreign policy goals. One could go as far back as the ancient Olympic Games to see sports diplomacy in action, but one of the more famous examples took place in 1971, when nine players from the U.S. table tennis team received a surprise invitation to visit the People’s Republic of China. An unexpected sporting encounter broke a twenty-year diplomatic freeze and paved the way for President Richard Nixon’s historic Beijing summit. Ping-Pong Diplomacy, as it was known, showed that athletic competition can open political doors when traditional statesmanship fails.

The State Department maintains an Office of Sports Diplomacy, originally created after 9/11 to reach out to young people in the Middle East through soccer. In subsequent years, the State Department has organized a host of sports engagements, sending American surfers to Papua New Guinea and superstars like Shaquille O’Neal to Cuba. As then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the LA Times in 2023, “We use sports as a way of connecting people, connecting people to our country. Whenever I go around the world— whatever, again, our differences may be— sports brings us together, unites us, connects us.” So it stands to reason that cohosting the FIFA World Cup and hosting the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics represents something diplomats dream about: a sustained, multi-year window in which the world shows up at your door, predisposed to like you.

I fear we are squandering this opportunity. This week, when I visited the Office of Sports Diplomacy’s website, I noticed something had shifted. The old language I remembered about “exchange” and “mutual understanding”— that ping-pong diplomacy spirit— is gone. In its place, the office now exists to "promote U.S. leadership, excellence, and culture," to "attract foreign investment and tourism to boost U.S. businesses," and to showcase "American innovation, sports, and culture." The word mutual does not appear. The idea that the world might have something to teach us is nowhere to be found. In other words, soccer fans are welcome at the World Cup, but as spectators and customers.

And who is actually welcome? According to the New York Times and NPR, the Iranian national soccer team was told at the eleventh hour to relocate its base camp from the U.S. to Mexico, and the team isn’t allowed to stay in the United States, even though all three of its group games are being held here. Iran also lost its allotment of tickets for fans. Three other countries on the administration’s travel ban list— Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal— are competing in the World Cup, but their citizens are blocked from entering the US. (In fact, the State Department has suspended issuing visas to citizens of 19 of the 39 countries on the travel ban list.) Furthermore, at least one Somali referee and one Iraqi team staff member have been denied entry at U.S. airports, dozens of fans from countries such as Morocco have been turned away despite holding tickets and journalists are facing widespread visa denials or single-entry limits. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed that federal agents will be stationed at World Cup stadiums, directly contradicting assurances Secretary of State Marco Rubio had given to Miami's host committee just the week before.

When I was in the Foreign Service, my colleagues and I worked painstakingly to build the kind of trust and goodwill that a moment like this can generate. The U.S. government has the ability and expertise to discern who is a security risk and who is not. The whole point of hosting the World Cup is to welcome everyone, not just your best friends.

Ironically, as I am writing this, the State Department announced a partnership with Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) under the banner of, “sports diplomacy.” Secretary Rubio and UFC President and CEO Dana White signed a memorandum of understanding at the State Department, designating UFC fighters as official Sports Envoys of "discipline, perseverance, sportsmanship, and excellence." This is in addition to the UFC Freedom 250 event that is scheduled for the South Lawn of the White House on June 14, which will be the first mixed martial arts event ever held there.

I want to be careful not to dismiss mixed martial arts as unworthy of diplomatic attention. Sports diplomacy has always worked in unexpected places, and the UFC does have a genuinely global following. But White is also one of the President's most prominent donors and political allies, which makes this particular partnership feel less like statecraft and more like a reward. Why should Omar Abdulkadir Artan, a decorated FIFA referee from Somalia, be denied entry at Miami International Airport when UFC gets the South Lawn?

Sports diplomacy only works when the welcome is genuine. I recognize that our relationship with Iran is as fraught as it has ever been, but that is precisely the argument for letting a shared love of soccer do what diplomats currently cannot. The ancient Greeks declared a sacred truce, the ekecheiria, so that athletes and spectators could travel safely to Olympia, regardless of whatever conflicts burned beyond the stadium walls. The World Cup was our chance to remind the world that Americans are gracious and hospitable, that we believe in teamwork, fairness, and the dignity of honest competition. We have another shot in Los Angeles in 2028. Let's not blow it.

Here’s what else I’m Currently Obsessed with

On the subject of the World Cup, I have to tell you about this FIFA trading card sticker book that has captured my twelve-year-old’s imagination. This is a big deal, because aside from the occasional LEGO project, my son doesn’t play with toys anymore. I’m all for anything that isn’t on a screen, so you can bet I jumped on this album when he showed it to me. It’s produced by Panini, well known makers of official trading cards, and the books feature 112 pages dedicated to all 48 teams competing in the World Cup. Collectors can complete a massive 980-sticker collection that also highlights the tournment’s history, symbols, host venues and famous moments. My son uses his own money to pick up additional stickers packets at Target and Walgreens. He’s is trying to convince his friends to get it on the action, so that he can start trading cards. If your son or daughter is caught up in the World Cup spirit, this makes a really fun summer project.

There are plenty of Michelin-rated restaurants in Atlanta, but I am going to let you in on the city’s best kept culinary secret. The next time you travel to the Peach State, check to see if your visit coincides with a dinner at Chow Club Atlanta, a monthly underground supper club that just celebrated its 9th birthday. Each dinner is cooked by a chef from a different country and features dishes that represent the best in authentic home cooking. The chefs are rising stars: home cooks and professional chefs who don’t yet have their own restaurants, but who are regarded by their peers as ones to watch.

Full disclosure: Chow Club began in 2017 in my sister’s home in East Atalanta. Amanda Plumb and her then-business partner, Yohana Solomon, conceived of the concept after volunteering together at a pop-up food court called the Atlanta Underground Market. Since then, Chow Club has graduated to a larger venue, Uptown Kitchen, a dining space in the Lindbergh section of town. There are two themed dinners a month, both prepared by the same chef. Plumb says Chow Club has served 78 dinners and nearly 9,000 guests. Among the many culinary traditions represented so far: Syrian, Senegalese, Hungarian, Puerto Rican and Burmese. The chefs supply their own ingredients, while Plumb provides a fully stocked kitchen, arranges details with the attendees and offers a staffed, plated dinner service.

“Aside from money, these are people who don’t have a venue to cook their own food for the public,” Plumb says. “Our first [chef] was from Venezuela, and he works in someone else’s kitchen. Here, he can share the food he loves, and then, since a lot of them do catering work, help spread his name. Plus, they get feedback on their cooking to help them grow as chefs.”

My daughter and I were lucky enough to attend May’s Swiss Chow, hosted by Chef Fadi Alkaasamani, who is Lebanese and Russian, but was professionally trained in Swiss kitchens. His menu began with an “Alpine Welcome” of fermented sourdough and aged Gruyère; then on to a hearty Bünder Gerstensuppe, a vegetable barley soup; before a serving of Schweinsbraten, roast pork with purple cabbage. It was followed by an Alpine Comfort course, which consisted of pan roasted chicken breast in an herby butter sauce and a side of frites, and the meal ended with a dish of Swiss yogurt mousse topped with tangy lingonberries.

This month’s dinner has a Juneteenth theme (join the waitlist here) and sounds equally enticing. It will be hosted by Chef Rohan Boston, who is known for his barbecue and his DMV-influenced cuisine (recipes from the Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia area). He’s cooked several times for the Obamas and the menu, which is teeming with seafood dishes like Chesapeake lobster salad and she crab chowder, is inspired by his grandmother’s recipes. July’s meal will be helmed by Oleksii Fil, a sous chef at Atalanta’s much-celebrated Lazy Betty, who will prepare a Ukrainian dinner.

Want to attend Chow Club? Dinners are popular and sell out quickly, so be sure to book your tickets in advance. Anyone who attends one meal is considered a member. Ambassadors are fans who have attended five or more dinners, and they get first dibs when tickets are released. The ambiance is informal and laidback, and diners may be seated at communal tables. Chow Club doesn’t have a liquor license, but guests are welcome to BYOB, and chefs can accommodate dietary restrictions with advance notice. For dishes you won’t find on any restaurant menu, include Chow Club on your next Atlanta itinerary.

Quick Hits

The Sagrada Família is everywhere. Pope Leo XIV just inaugurated and blessed the newly completed Tower of Jesus on the 100th anniversary of architect Antoni Gaudi’s death. CBS Sunday Morning recently featured an interview with the current head architect. (The mesmerizing cathedral is complete or won’t be complete for another 10 years, depending on whom you ask.) If you’d like to build your own smaller (but nonetheless time consuming) version, get on the wait list for the 12,060-piece LEGO set here. Amazon has some cheaper dupes here.

One of my favorite hotels is coming to London this summer. El Fenn, the colorful, rambling riad in Marrakech is taking over the rooftop of the Broadwick Soho June 25 to August 31. Moroccan artisans have produced lanterns, textiles, pottery and candles to give the Broadwick Soho rooftop an El Fenn spin. Expect limited edition cocktails and food, DJs spinning North African beats and a full program of cultural events.

While you’re in London, be sure to get tickets to Buckingham Palace (it’s really an excellent guided tour) before April 2027 to see pieces from the late Queen Elizabeth’s wardrobe, including her coronation gown. The collection is the largest ever displayed and includes over 300 items, many on view for the first time.

Looking for a book club gift? Loungewear brand Printfresh has a cute collaboration with author Emily Henry. Known for her romcoms Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation, Henry fans will love getting cozy in these fun sets.

Xoxo, Emily

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

Gwendoline Riley’s new novel The Palm House is set in London in 2017. Our narrator Laura writes full time for a historical magazine, but she freelances for Sequence, a prestigious weekly arts magazine that recently came under new leadership. Laura and her good friend Putnam, Sequence’s long-serving deputy editor, have met up at a rundown pub to grouse about the publication’s new editor, Simon Halfpenny. They find “Shove,” as Simon insists on being called, pompous and dangerously clueless and are dismayed with his quest to turn Sequence into the next New Yorker. Their misgivings prove correct, but that’s not really what The Palm House is about. For the next 200 pages, Laura shares with us a series of emotionally-detached vignettes about her self-absorbed parents and her bad relationships. These brief anecdotes certainly paint a picture, but this is not a traditional story building to a climax. To be honest, I can't really articulate what this novel is about. Let me put it this way: you’re not here for the plot; you’re here for the writing.

I was so excited to read The Palm House that I pre-ordered it, something I rarely do. (If you saw the towering “to-read” stack on my bedside table, you’d understand why.) I had not read any of Riley’s previous seven novels, but my expectations were high based on glowing endorsements from fellow novelists Sarah Perry and Claire-Louise Bennett and voracious reader Sarah Jessica Parker (The Palm House was not published by her imprint). The London-based author is best known for My Phantoms about the suffocating relationship between a mother and daughter. The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) has named her one of the 20 best British and Irish novelists working today, and in April she was awarded Yale University’s prestigious Windham-Campbell Literary Prize.

I should note that Riley is often compared to the author Rachel Cusk. I went back and looked at my 2021 Instagram review for Cusk’s Second Place, and I described it as a “strange story with rambling, self-indulgent prose.” Let the record show: Riley’s prose stands in stark contrast. It’s crisp, minimalist, precise and matter-of-fact. Riley is not rambling, but she’s also not in a hurry. The Palm House is the kind of story you savor just for its lyrical quality:

These were the murky effects: a dark yellow sky - like iodine -and brownish clouds, mounted in flat, extravagant, painterly puffs. On Southwark Bridge, the lights in their trident-shaped lampposts blinked on early.

“It’s sand,” said Putnam, looking up from his phone.

“Saharan sand. It’s deflecting the shortwave light, apparently,” he said.

The author recently told Yale University Library, “I also think writing is mainly about music. So I listen to the sounds and the cadences of the sentences, and I recast them and do that again and again, for three or four years to make a novel.”

Riley is also darkly funny. She gives Laura a deadpan sense of humor, even when relaying a terrible story about her innocent teenage crush on a comedian who turns out to be a sexual predator. (Strangely, Laura has a keen, investigative eye for the people around her but shows little interest in examining her own interior life.) Laura displays this same unflinching tone and detached humor when describing her ridiculous mother. “She and I did much better on the phone. I could get on with other things then, which seemed to take the pressure off. She often called when I was cooking. I used to listen to her while pushing my tofu around the frying pan. If there was a flatmate about, I might raise my eyebrows at them, disloyally, to indicate I was attending to another monologue.”

Honestly, I do wish there had been more of a plot rather than a series of fragmented stories that shift around in time, but I wasn't disappointed, I just needed to recalibrate.

However, I do have a couple of genuine quibbles. Speaking of TLS, that’s an acronym used in The Palm House that I had to look up. There’s quite a bit of inside baseball: British slang, unfamiliar UK locations, shorthand and unexplained references (“Vik tracked that down on the Granada Facebook,” was not an important detail, but I would have liked to know what the Granada Facebook was all about.) I didn’t find any of it pretentious, but it was confusing at times.

What did drive me crazy was Riley's practice of interrupting her characters by separating their dialogue into different paragraphs. I thought a speaker was finished speaking only to find that the next line was theirs as well. This was so confusing— I could not, and don't want to, get used to this quirky style choice.

The Palm House is beautifully written but defiantly thin on plot. That's not a bad thing, but it won't be to every reader's taste— especially readers accustomed to warmth, momentum and a tidy resolution.

I support independent booksellers. You can purchase The Palm House here. If you prefer Amazon, you can purchase the paperback here or the Kindle version here.

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

In the span of a week, I watched my 17-year-old daughter walk across the stage at her high school graduation and attend college orientation with several hundred of the 6,450 kids (!!) who will make up her freshman class. In those seven days, I sat through a dozen talks and speeches. It got me thinking about what I wanted to say to my daughter before she spreads her wings this fall.

When I graduated from high school, my dad, , who wrote a popular column called The Plumbline for the Rock Hill Herald for nearly 36 years, wrote one of those columns for me. He told me to work hard during the next four years, not to let jerks bug me and to remember that "life is what happens to you while you are planning your life." I was a theater geek back then, so he added: "Don't let anybody write your script for you.”

It turns out the urge to write down this kind of thing is hereditary. So whether you (or your child) are graduating from high school or college this spring, here is what I have learned since my dad penned that inspiring column.

Take the gap year.

I’m proud to say I took my dad’s advice. I worked really hard in school and blazed my own unique trail. After graduating from Wofford College, I moved to Taiwan for a year to teach English, beef up my resume and save money for graduate school. That year taught me more about navigating uncertainty than anything I’d studied in a classroom. I learned about Taiwan’s politics and culture, backpacked for six months through Southeast Asia and arrived at Georgetown University two years later knowing exactly why I was there.

After finishing my Masters degree, I was awarded a Boren Fellowship to study grassroots peacebuilding initiatives in East Africa. That experience put me on the path to joining the Foreign Service. I credit much of who I am today to those experiences overseas. This is not a pitch for aimless wandering. A gap year should give you a story to tell: harvesting grapes on a vineyard in Australia, volunteering on a political campaign, teaching English in Taiwan. Do something that surprises you. I have met many people who wish they had taken a year off before grad school or their first real job. I have never met one who regrets having done so. A gap year before you have a mortgage, student loans and a kid is a gift to your future self. Take it while you can, because that particular window does not reopen.

Write the thank-you note. Send the Christmas card.

This is the single most underrated piece of career advice I know, and I gave it in a speech at Wofford recently, so I’m giving it again here because it bears repeating: stay in touch with the people who help you. Write them a thank-you note. Send them a holiday card. Email them when you get the job. Offer to help them someday. Don’t let them forget you.

None of this is transactional if you actually mean it (and you should actually mean it). People who opened doors for you did so because they believed in you. Honor that. And then, when you’re further along, pay it forward without keeping score.

Get a library card.

You will learn quickly in college or grad school that good professors expect you to read beyond the syllabus. You may also wish to read Vogue or Outside when The Economist starts to feel a little dry. Please do not pay for a dozen print subscriptions. You need a library card. Most public libraries now offer free access to digital newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, academic journals, e-books, streaming films, podcasts and databases that you’d otherwise pay hundreds of dollars for. The Wake County library system, for instance, is embarrassing in its abundance— in the best way.

This reminds me of something else my dad taught me: carry a book everywhere you go. Paper, digital, audio— it’s all good. A book in your bag is permission to be unavailable, unbored and in your own head for twenty minutes on the Metro or in a doctor’s office on a Tuesday. This is a radical act in 2026, and I’m totally in favor of it.

Move towards the slow.

Put down your phone. I know my daughter is sick of me saying this. I also realize that social media and AI are here for better or worse— probably forever. Resist their siren call, customized and insistent, doing their very best to keep your attention. I’m not going to tell you to quit them— that’s a personal choice, and furthermore, I’m not a hypocrite. But you should also make space for things that move slowly: walks, books, nature, art. In-person conversation with a friend who can see your face.

And create things. Cook a meal from scratch. Grow something. Sew something. Fix something around the dorm/apartment/house. There is real satisfaction in making something tangible. No amount of scrolling can replicate this experience, because one is generative and one is consumptive and somehow our nervous system knows the difference even when we don’t.

Choose community.

Self-care gets so much airtime, and, of course, sleep, massages and vegetables matter. But somewhere along the way, we confused all of this self-optimization with a life well-lived. My dad used to always talk about political scientist Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. This book (based on an essay Putnam wrote in 1995) explores the decline of American civic participation (the way we stopped joining face-to-face organizations, such as bowling leagues, PTAs, neighborhood associations, civic clubs) and how that has impacted American society.

Thirty years later, that isolation has only deepened, and I'd argue it's at the root of a lot of what's tearing us apart politically. A society of people who answer to no one, who view compromise as weakness and who ridicule shared rules and common institutions is broken. Democracy needs civic engagement and humans need social interaction with people who aren’t part of our family and who don’t necessarily share our political, religious and social views. So my advice to you is to get outside your proverbial comfort zone and volunteer— serve on a board, a committee, a neighborhood association. Join a choir or a running club or a book group. It may sound like hyperbole, (and I’m not sure if this advice applies universally), but I honestly feel like the fate of the United States depends on this.

Root for the underdog.

This one doesn’t need a lot of explanation. Just do it. It’s better for your character and, frankly, for the world.

You are on the cusp of great adventures. My dad ended his column with advice I’d pass along unchanged: don’t be afraid to take a side road now and again. And, of course, don’t let anybody write your script for you.

Congratulations, graduates. Now go get a library card.

Xoxo, Emily

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

Let me say something that needs to be said: “bless your heart” does not mean what you think it means. Or rather, it doesn’t only mean what you think it means, and I fear the confusion is starting to cause problems.

For those who didn’t grow up in the American South and may not have encountered the handy phrase, let me offer a little background. The secret, passed gleefully from person to person, was this: when a Southerner says “bless your heart,” they are not blessing anything. They are calling you an idiot. Politely, warmly, with a sweet smile, but make no mistake. For example, “John thinks everyone is impressed by his gaudy new car. Bless his heart.” Translation: John is a fool, and we all know it, and we are too well-mannered to say so directly. For generations, this nuance served the South beautifully. You could say the unsayable, as long as you said it nicely.

But the cat is out of the bag. The phrase has gone national— and, I fear, it has lost something essential: its range.

Here is what non-Southerners, and increasingly even Southerners who should know better, seem to have forgotten. “Bless your heart” is not a one-trick pony. It contains multitudes. Said softly, with a hand on someone’s arm, it conveys genuine sympathy. “She lost her mother when she was only ten years old, bless her heart.” No irony there. And when said with a sort of rueful fondness, it signifies affectionate exasperation. “My poor mother, bless her heart, is completely in over her head planning my wedding.” The love is real, and so is the gentle eye-roll. Now, said flatly, with pursed lips… then you’re in trouble.

Context, tone and inflection are everything. A phrase that can convey sympathy, indulgence, and withering contempt depending on delivery is a remarkable linguistic tool. But I’m concerned that we are forcing it into a single meaning.

Recently, after a parents association meeting at school, I was chatting with some of the moms whom I don’t know well. When one mom complained that her daughter was struggling with a pile of make-up work due to a brief absence, I tried to express my sympathy. “Oh, bless her heart,” I said. But the mom and another woman stared uncomfortably at me, thinking, I assume, that I was making fun of the poor girl.

The incident made me think of an interview that Jennifer Garner gave Vanity Fair in 2016. When asked about ex-husband Ben Affleck's large phoenix back tattoo, Garner, a George, Texas native replied, "You know what we would say in my hometown about that?" she said. "Bless his heart." No elaboration needed; we understood perfectly. But notice what she did not say: she did not say he was ridiculous, or vain or going through something. She didn't have to. The phrase did all the work and left just enough room for kindness to coexist with the joke.

That is the genius of bless your heart, and that is precisely what I’m concerned that we are throwing away. So consider this my public service announcement. The next time someone you love does something endearingly misguided, or tells you about a genuine heartbreak, or muddles through something they were never quite equipped for — reach for the full phrase. Let it do what it was always meant to do. It's too good a phrase to be hijacked by one meaning.

Here’s what else I’m Currently Obsessed with

My family is completely obsessed with Netflix’s new limited series Lord of the Flies. William Golding’s 1954 novel has never felt more timely. If you need a reminder of what happens when boys are left to their own devices without the structures of civilization to contain them, this stunning four-episode adaptation, co-produced by the BBC and Australia’s Stan, will provide it. This is a faithful and appropriately dark retelling of the classic story.

The show follows a group of British schoolboys whose plane crashes into a remote, deserted island during World War II. With no adults and no rules, they attempt to govern themselves and fail catastrophically. The descent from order into savagery is just as wrenching here as it is on the page. Writer Jack Thorne, who gave us the Emmy Award-winning Adolescence, is true to the source material (with one small, merciful departure— a character who meets his fate earlier in the novel lingers a little longer here).

The series opens like a distant cousin of that 2000’s classic T.V. series Lost— a crash survivor, filmed from above, wakes up alone, and makes his way through dense jungle. This is our introduction to Piggy, rosy-cheeked with a maturity beyond his years, played brilliantly by David McKenna. He wanders until he finds the charismatic Ralph, and the dynamics of Golding's story snap into place.

Thorne and director Marc Munden have made a show that feels less like prestige television and more like a fever dream. The cinematography is breathtaking and deliberately disorienting. Fisheye lenses, extreme close-ups, blurred edges, and hallucinogenic shifts in perspective give the series a heightened, unstable quality that mirrors the boys’ unraveling grip on reality. The production used infrared cameras to shoot day-for-night scenes— a technique that renders the jungle’s foliage in eerie shades of pink and red, making the island both beautiful and menacing. The series was shot on location in the Langkawi archipelago in northwestern Malaysia. Munden described the shoot’s challenging conditions recently to Condé Nast Traveler: impenetrable rainforest, extreme humidity, everyone soaking wet every day from seawater, rain, or sweat. Covered in mud while swatting away insects and fighting back tears, these boys look genuinely lost.

The score draws on the talents of Hans Zimmer and Cristóbal Tapia de Veer— the latter best known for his work on The White Lotus— and weaves original compositions with choral works by Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich. Like the cinematography and editing, the music is stylized and unsettling. (Think Tár, not Percy Jackson.)

The performances are remarkable across the board, but I am already predicting Emmy nominations for Lox Pratt as the power-hungry Jack and McKenna as the lovable, asthmatic Piggy. Both actors have a dramatic range that surpasses their experience. In fact, most of the cast— some of whom are as young as six-years-old— are newcomers to film and television.

A note for parents: this is not a series for young children, but for tweens who are mature enough to sit with difficult material, it is an invaluable watch and a remarkable conversation starter about power, mob mentality and what civilization requires of us. Given the current moment, those conversations feel more necessary than ever.

I love nothing more than introducing my readers to artists whose work they may not have come across, and Jennifer Pino is one of my favorites. The Raleigh-based abstract painter is a friend, and I am a genuine admirer of her work.

Based in Raleigh since 2007, Pino has been painting since high school, but never saw her hobby as a path to a living. After graduating from Elon University, she worked in television production, communication and later graphic design. When her job at a PR/tech firm was eliminated while she was on maternity leave, Pino picked up her paintbrushes and figured she could at least make art for her home. Friends admired the abstract canvases she hung on her walls and were soon asking for her to make pieces for them. Sales came via word of mouth until her business took off in 2013, just as Instagram was hitting its stride. Back then, Pino told me, the app wasn’t cluttered with ads and the algorithm favored small businesses and artists who posted regularly. By 2016, she was able to pivot to painting full time.

Pino is drawn to color, shape and movement. Painting in acrylics, she says her pieces begin with a single, deliberate mark, which may even be leftover paint from another project. She then layers paint, lots of layers, onto the canvas. She often steps away for a few days to ruminate on color and proportion before returning. “You may see a sliver of that original mark (in the finished piece),” she told me.

Pino may change direction entirely midway through a project. “I cover stuff up all the time. I have some pieces with eight paintings underneath them. It’s a lot of trial and error.” She works on wood, paper and canvas. The paper pieces often serve as workshops for larger, more time-consuming works on canvas. Each piece takes several weeks to complete, and Pino typically works on several paintings at once.

She prefers to release small, affordable collections, such as her recent Love Notes, inspired by the TV series Love Story, about the romance between Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr. These pieces on paper— which start at $55— are Pino’s love notes to a more ambitious series she’s producing on canvas.

“I like making art that’s accessible. It makes me sad when I can’t afford an artist that I admire.” Pino has never made prints and says she never will. “I want to do something that no one else has. No art should be exactly the same.”

Pino works frequently with interior designers, who come to her with a specific client’s needs in mind, and she’s happy to work within those parameters of size and color. She is represented by several galleries along the East Coast and was recently featured in a collection by the luxury design brand Serena and Lily. If you are interested in a commission of your own, Pino explains her process here, and be sure to follow her on Instagram at jenniferpinopaints.

Quick Hits

If you haven’t already seen the popular BBC documentary David Attenborough's 100 Years on Planet Earth, it’s definitely worth a watch— if for nothing else than to see a young Sir David frolicking with gorillas on the Rwandan-Congolese border. In the U.S., you can find the 90-minute special here on PBS; it’s also available here on the BBC. I trekked to see these same gorillas in 2000, and I can assure you we did not play on the ground together. Attenborough’s experience with a family of primates is unbelievable.

My fascination with Bunny Mellon runs deep, and if I were going to be in Northern Virginia this summer, I would visit her breathtaking Oak Spring Garden, which is not typically not open to the public, on June 26 and 26 for a self-guided tour the garden and gallery.

Hathaway Hutton has done it again. Designer Jen Risk debuted her irresistible Jerry Clutch last week, and it immediately sold out, but if you’re quick, you can pre-order one of the chic, upcycled boat totes here. Her Birdie Fair totes, which went viral after a feature in the New York Times, have spawned a lot of imitators, but trust me, you want the real deal.

Nengi Omuku: The Gathering opens at the de Young in San Francisco on June 27. In her first U.S. solo museum exhibition, the celebrated Nigerian painter creates dreamlike scenes that depict better lives for Nigerians on traditional sanyan cloth, a historic Yoruba textile once worn for important ceremonies. Her subjects live in lush, tranquil environments far from the chaotic, fast-paced life of Lagos.

Marcel DuChamp at MOMA runs through August 22. It’s the first major show of the French avant-garde artist in the United States since 1973 and showcases 300 works. It is co-organized with the Philadelphia Art Museum, where it will be on view from October 10, 2026, through January 31, 2027. You can also catch a version of the exhibit in Paris next spring at the Grand Palais.

My post-workout recovery these days consists of this great heating pad, a solid foam roller and the Epsom-It Soothing Muscle Lotion. I also toss the fragrance-free cream in my son’s fencing bag to use after his foil lessons. If you’re a fan of Epsom salt baths for aches and pains, I think you’ll like this quick and easy remedy.

Xoxo, Emily

(I may receive a portion of proceeds made through links in this newsletter.)

I was immediately intrigued by Caro Claire Burke’s 2026 satirical thriller Yesteryear. A viral tradwife influencer with her perfect family and idyllic farm gets her comeuppance? Count me in. But Burke takes the schadenfreude to a dark, creepy level that you don’t see coming in this bizarre, fever dream of a novel that follows a self-righteous Harvard dropout who hungrily builds a media empire until she suddenly wakes up in 1855.

To her eight million followers, Natalie Heller Mills’s life on Yesteryear Ranch looks perfect. Each day she posts videos of herself baking sourdough bread, feeding chickens, making soap with one of her six children. The children are beautifully behaved, home-schooled and dressed in ochre tones (no store-bought, trendy or branded merchandise, please). And then there is her handsome husband Caleb. Styled as a cowboy-gentleman farmer, he may pop into one of her Instagram reels to dip her low and plant a demure kiss on her lips, much to the delight of Natalie’s devoted online community.

If this sounds a little too familiar, that’s because Burke was, at least in part, inspired by influencers such as Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm and Nara Smith of , both of whom have millions of followers who pop by to see them making homemade chicken soup with toddlers hanging on their legs. By definition, tradwives are women who embrace a traditional division of labor at home. The connotation, however, implies a white, heterosexual, politically conservative, Christian woman who defers to her husband. Writing in The Guardian this past March, Burke argued that the tradwife is not a trend or even a real person— she is an advertisement, a curated performance of womanhood designed to remind women of their assigned purpose: to "serve, smile, procreate and purchase."

The novel opens with Natalie, our narrator, introducing us to her family and her farm, occasionally fielding the questions of an unnamed interviewer. She’s a self-described perfectionist, a disciplined over-achiever, who was raised by a single mother in a conservative, religious community. Never good at making friends, Natalie went to Harvard, where she was repulsed by her left-leaning, feminist classmates. She happily dropped out to marry Caleb, the son of a wealthy politician with presidential aspirations. Neither marriage nor motherhood proved as blissful as Natalie expected, but life took a turn for the better when— with her father-in-law’s financial backing— the couple purchased a ranch in Idaho.

While Yesteryear’s online community may be mesmerized by her “vicarious, imagined and unattainable” lifestyle, Natalie lets the reader in on what’s really happening behind the scenes. Caleb is useless on the farm. He only tends to the tasks he finds interesting, preferring to spend most of his time in online conspiracy theory chatrooms. Two nannies (one of whom doubles as the school teacher), a live-in producer and a rotating cast of day workers actually keep this chaotic show afloat. And while most of her followers are fooled, the reader quickly sees the real Natalie: smug, performative, self-righteous and relentlessly judgmental. She’s fixated on the “angry women,” Caleb’s term for the Instagram accounts that viciously troll her, who seem out to get her. The irony is that Natalie herself is one of these angry women. Her inner thoughts are a litany of contempt for anyone who has ever offended or wronged her. “Forgive me Lord,” she mutters every time she mentally eviscerates a follower, a former classmate or her own husband.

And so, when Natalie wakes up one morning in the 19th-century American frontier, here is the comeuppance the reader ordered! Her cozy farmhouse with its cleverly hidden modern appliances has been replaced with a cold, rustic cabin— an old fireplace its only amenity. A facsimile of her charming family insists on calling her mama, but these dirty, shabbily dressed kids are definitely not her children, and a man who looks like a ragged, aged version of Caleb, is certainly is not her husband. Natalie can’t make sense of her predicament, and she soon discovers she can’t escape the rigid domestic constraints of pioneer life, which she once extolled as a more ideal way to live.

This is precisely why Burke says she wrote the novel. Frustrated that cultural conversations about tradwives keep getting steered toward the safe and the superficial (think: milkmaid fashion, apron-heavy runway collections, the proliferation of handkerchief headbands at Target), rather than the more uncomfortable truths underneath, Burke decided to take a different approach. "I figured if I couldn't subvert the image of a tradwife," she wrote in The Guardian, "then I could subvert her world instead— and see how long it takes before she starts to scream."

Burke also asks something uncomfortable of her readers: she wants us to examine our own appetite for Natalie's suffering. It's easy, at first, to relish the spectacle of a smug influencer getting her just dessert— that's what drew me in, too. But Burke is not interested in letting us off the hook. The "angry women" trolling Natalie's Instagram are not so different from the reader cackling at her misfortune, and by the novel's end, that parallel lands with real force.

Not unlike my take on Culpability, I think there was enough here with the initial concept: let’s poke beneath the veneer of a viral influencer and see what’s really going on in her seemingly ideal life. I wish Burke had stuck with that storyline and let it play out. The 1855 sections are genuinely unsettling and sometimes darkly funny, but they pulled me away from what felt like the novel's strength. I think Burke is at her most incisive when she's inside Natalie's head in the present, cataloguing her resentments and her bottomless capacity for self-justification.

What I can say, without giving anything away, is that Yesteryear is not ultimately the novel it appears to be in its first act. The premise resolves in a way that is darker and more grounded than you might expect, and it reframes much of what you've read in a truly clever way. The bestseller, which is set to become a film starring Anne Hathaway, asked me to recalibrate my investment in Natalie more than once. Yesteryear is at its best a fearless piece of cultural criticism disguised as a thriller— and a reminder that its author has something urgent to say, whether she's given permission to say it or not.

(Trigger warning for violence and discussion of abuse/violence.)

I support independent booksellers. If you would like to purchase Yesteryear, you can do so here. If you prefer Amazon, you can purchase the audio book (narrated by the excellent Rebecca Lowman) here and the hardback edition here.

(I may receive a portion of sales through links in this newsletter.)

You may have already read Heart the Lover, Lily King’s much celebrated 2025 novel about a collegiate love triangle. It was named a Best Book of the year by The New York Times, TIME, NPR and The Washington Post, and it has been shortlisted for the prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction for 2026. But do you know the real story of lifelong friendship that inspired the novel? Without giving away any spoilers, here is the triangle behind the triangle, and wouldn’t you know, it turns out this true coming of age story took place in, appropriately, the Research Triangle.

At an unnamed university in an unspecified small town in the 1980s, our narrator, Casey Peabody, is an English lit major in her senior year. (This is not the first time King has written about Casey; Heart the Lover is both a prequel AND a sequel to her 2020 novel Writers and Lovers. Rest assured, Writers and Lovers is not a prerequisite for appreciating and understanding this story.)

Casey catches the attention of two seniors in her 17th-century lit class, Yash and Sam. They have made an impression on her as well. The professor seems so enamored with their opinions, Casey assumed they were his teaching assistants. Sam asks Casey on a date to see The Deer Hunter at the student union, and afterwards they go back to his house. It turns out Sam and Yash are roommates, housesitting for an English professor on sabbatical. Soon Casey, whom they rechristen “Jordan” (a reference to The Great Gatsby, as in “She’s not Daisy Buchanan, she’s Jordan Baker.”) becomes a fixture at the house, which they nickname the Breach (after D.H. Lawrence’s home— there are a lot of literary references here). Jordan spends the rest of the semester hanging out with the duo and their pal Ivan, another English major. They quote James Joyce, trade witty banter and make up a raucous card game called Sir Hincomb Funnibuster, in which the king of hearts is dubbed Heart the Lover.

It soon becomes clear that Sam, a guilt-ridden Southern Baptist, can’t come to terms with his sexual relationship with Jordan. He breaks up with her briefly then apologizes, but their romance seems to have run its course, and Jordan realizes she has feelings for Yash. After learning that Yash has to spend an extra semester on campus, Jordan decides to postpone her own graduation, take on more student loans and pursue an honors thesis in creative writing. When Sam and Jordan break up again, the stage is set for Jordan and Yash to fall in love.

Sam is furious when he learns that his best friend and his ex are an item. He fumes that it’s “reprehensible and unforgivable,” and Jordan is forced to disappear whenever Sam comes to town. Like many 20-somethings, Yash and Jordan’s lives naturally start to pull them in different directions— he’s pressured to work at the family business, she gets an opportunity to work in France, but the overwhelming tension in their relationship comes from Sam’s disapproval and his sense of betrayal. Without giving anything away, Heart the Lover jumps ahead decades in the future, and the reader learns how this love triangle plays out.

When asked in February how much of Heart the Lover is autobiographical, King told a virtual book talk that her fiction is drawn more from emotions she’s experienced than from actual events. “The scenes, the dialogue, much of the detail is made up, but the characters often feel feelings I have had. You can look at my life and you can look at Casey’s and you will find similarities…. But the plot points that move the story along are often invented.”

I suspect King is being coy about just how autobiographical this book really is. After all, in 2020 she wrote an essay for Vogue entitled (warning: there are spoilers in this link): “My Boyfriend, his Best Friend and Me: A Love Story.” In it, King describes her senior year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, during which a guy from her 17th century lit class asked her out to see a movie about the Vietnam War. She changes his name and the names of his two closest friends, but the details are familiar. “The rest of the fall and winter we played Hearts and argued about Reagan’s reelection; we talked in Irish accents and quoted James Joyce.” King goes on to explain how she fell in love with her boyfriend’s best friend, whom she calls Henry in the essay, and how she decided to write an honor’s thesis to remain at UNC and have Henry all to herself.

In late March, The Assembly, a North Carolina news outlet, published (warning: more spoilers in this link) “The Epic Real-Life Friendship Behind an Acclaimed Novel,” which peeled back the layers even further. The author, John Drescher, was friends with Kevin Wolf (Ivan), Jeff Darsie (Yash) and J.B. Howard (Sam) at UNC. Drescher remembers them as fun, brilliant and well read. “Individually none would have been considered charismatic, but together they were witty, free flowing and magnetic.”

Wolf, the most extroverted of the three, was zany and self-deprecating. He called himself the Wolf Man and made a running joke of his dating exploits. He later taught himself Mandarin Chinese and moved to Hong Kong. Darsie was a horse-racing enthusiast from Kentucky, a devoted reader with a gift for finding humor in his own predicaments. Howard, the quietist, was studious and dry-witted. Friends called the three “The Triumvirate.”

According to Drescher and his sources, the love triangle that drives the novel played out very similarly in real life. Drescher contends that Howard told him he was angry when he learned King and Darsie were dating, not because he was hoping to rekindle the romance with King, but because “he thought Darsie had broken an Ernest Hemingway-esque code of masculine friendship.” For years, Darsie maintained the two relationships in isolation from each other— never mentioning King when Howard called, never brining her along when Howard visited.

And yet Howard’s and Darsie’s friendship held. That is the part King says she most wanted to capture. “I don’t know that I see that quality of male friendship very often,” she told The Assembly. “I don’t know how much in everyday life men really lean on each other and care for each other.” After college, Wolf, Darsie and Howard went to law school and continued to get together several times a year— beach trips, New York City meet-ups, cycling adventures. According to Drescher, in difficult times, they stood by each other.

King ends her Vogue essay with a line that doubles as the novel’s thesis: “Long ago the three of us had been in a love triangle. But the real love story, the best love story, was theirs.”

I think this insight is was what makes Heart the Lover more than a coming-of-age story, more than a campus romance. Readers who come to it without this backstory will still find a beautifully written novel, but knowing that Howard, Darsie and Wolf were real and that their friendship was tested and proven over decades, gives the book a weight that sets it apart.

At the beginning of the book, Jordan pens a dedication, “You knew I’d write a book about you someday. You said once that I’d dredged up the whole hit parade minus you. I’ll never know how you’d tell it. For me it begins here. Like this.” Knowing what I now know, I’m convinced this dedication isn’t a literary device. It’s a confession: King didn’t write a book inspired by real people. She wrote a book for them.

I support independent booksellers, if you would like to purchase Heart the Lover, you can do so here. If you prefer Amazon, you can purchase the hard copy here and the audiobook (narrated by Rebecca Lowman) here.

(I may receive a portion of sales made through links in this newsletter.)

I heard from many of you after my recent newsletter about rising pollen levels and city planning. (Allergy sufferers, do we need a support group?) Before we get into the good stuff this week, I’m pleased to say I heard back from City of Raleigh Horticulturist Lauren Freudenberger, herself a seasonal allergy sufferer. While she can’t speak for all urban planners, she debunked the theory that pollen levels are rising because cities are only planting male trees. She conceded that Raleigh, like many other urban areas, avoids planting female trees since fallen fruit and pods are a nuisance to residents, but according to Freudenberger, among the tree species thriving in Raleigh, oaks and hickories are the biggest pollen aggravators (not pine trees, which typically get a bad rap). As the City of Oaks, it’s not surprising that Raleigh plants a lot of these large hardwoods, but Freudenberger says it’s not planting hickories. More importantly, oaks are monoecious, meaning they produce both male and female flowers, making it impossible to select them on the basis of sex. (It sounds a bit like a Supreme Court case.) She added that in this area, ragweed is another key pollen culprit but assured me the City of Raleigh is not planting the irritating grass. Freudenberger agrees that pollen levels are rising globally, but blamed this on droughts and global warming, both of which we discussed two weeks ago. So I’m ripping up my petition to the City and reaching for more Claritin.

Here’s what else I’m Currently Obsessed with

Alex Robinson has never studied art. As a student at the University of North Carolina and later the Fashion Institute of Technology, she envisioned herself working in the fashion or entertainment industries, and she actually did. Robinson and a partner ran a custom women's clothing business for four years before she pivoted to working in experiential marketing in New York City. Robinson moved back to North Carolina in 2016 to be closer to family. She settled in Winston-Salem, and two years ago left her marketing job to make paper strip art full time. "Crafting has always been my way to decompress," she told me. I came to know Alex’s work through my friends at Trail Shoppe in Raleigh, who hosted a show for her earlier this month, and I am so glad they did.

That creative passion runs in the family. Robinson’s mother and grandmother were both artists. When Robinson was making handmade children's books for her nieces and nephews, she started experimenting with collage-style illustrations and discovered something: the outline alone was enough to convey the image. She loved that. It became the foundation of her entire practice.

The technique, which she developed herself and has generously agreed to let me share, is painstaking and irreversible. Robinson buys colored linen scrapbook paper, cuts and folds it into very thin strips— never rolled, though she might roll paper into small balls to suggest something like a flower's stamen— and glues them to cold-pressed watercolor paper. Once it's down, it's down. "I have to love it," she says. "It works or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, you scrap it." A small piece might take two hours; a large one— up to 22" x 30" — can take 24. She finishes each piece with a handmade watercolor mat board that adds another layer of color to the composition.

The results are astonishing. Her work is whimsical and dainty, yet surprisingly rich. Robinson has an instinct for knowing when to add detail and when to leave space, and that restraint is what gives the images their particular power. A few strips of paper become an elephant, a bouquet, a face. You find yourself leaning in.

Her inspiration comes from what her mother lovingly calls her "popcorn brain." Old New York City MetroCards. A photograph of women carrying baskets on their heads. Cigarette packs. A beloved Raleigh drive-through. Matchbooks from restaurants that no longer exist. There's humor in her work, and levity and a deep vein of nostalgia.

Robinson also takes commissions, which she described as something close to a puzzle. "Figuring out what goes first. How to make the image, how to show shadow and dimension." She does portraits, houses, pets, wedding bouquets, university crests (a popular graduation gift, she notes). She also works regularly with interior designers— a recent project was a charming carousel of animals inspired by a client's wallpaper. I picked up a Father’s Day gift for my husband from her show at Trail Shoppe, a piece which cleverly captures one of his favorite hobbies. If you have an idea, send Robinson a reference photo or just describe it; she can be reached through her website or on Instagram at Art by Alex Robinson.

My friend Rebecca and I like to drag each other to marginally unconventional films. She is a longtime supporter of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which is held annually in Durham, NC. This year, she suggested I join her for the North American premiere of A Child of My Own (Un Hijo Propio). I knew only that it was described as a "hybrid documentary," a label I had never encountered before and, I'll admit, found slightly baffling.

The film opens with Chilean director Maite Alberdi casting actors to play Alejandra — a young Mexican hospital worker whose story she is about to tell— and from there launches into an hour of richly stylized reenactment: a fictionalized account of Alejandra's marriage at seventeen, her three miscarriages, the mounting pressure from her husband and in-laws to produce a child and the desperate scheme she devised when she finally ran out of options. Halfway through, the actors fall away and the documentary proper begins, introducing new perspectives that slowly and significantly complicate everything you thought you understood.

The format is disorienting at first, which I suspect is the point. Alberdi is asking you to inhabit Alejandra's version of events before she hands you the tools to question it. It's a clever structural choice, and ultimately an effective one. It also solves a problem that plagues documentary filmmakers working with stories set decades in the past: how do you convey the texture of a young woman's life when that woman is now middle-aged, when the world she lived in no longer exists in quite the same way? Alberdi's answer is to simply recreate it and to be transparent about the act of recreation. It's worth noting that this is not Alberdi's first time bending genre conventions to her purposes. She was the first Chilean woman nominated for an Academy Award, for The Mole Agent in 2021, and earned a second nomination for The Eternal Memory in 2024.

What A Child of My Own declines to discuss— and what I couldn't stop thinking about— is consent in a broader sense. Alejandra was 17 when she married Arturo and became pregnant for the first time. The pressure she describes from her husband and extended family to bear a child reads, from my perspective, as something closer to coercion than expectation. The film is understandably compassionate about her desperation: her longing for a child is entirely human, and there are millions of women who will recognize the particular grief of recurrent pregnancy loss. But her youth, her isolation, and the degree to which her identity had been defined entirely around becoming a mother before she was really an adult— these things haunt the film's edges in ways I wished it had addressed more directly.

The ending left me stunned (I won't say why, because you deserve to arrive at it on your own), but I will say that Alejandra's response to a betrayal, which I assumed would break her completely, stopped me cold. It forced me to reckon with how differently two people can experience the same events, and whether the version of a story we find most plausible is always the one closest to the truth. Alberdi's instinct to resist the true crime format. She makes room for complexity rather than delivering a verdict. A Child of My Own is messier and more humane than the satisfying hit of a solved case. It is a Netflix production currently making the rounds on the festival circuit, with no streaming release date yet announced, but I suspect A Child of My Own will soon be available for streaming globally, and it’s certainly worth adding to your watchlist now.

I drink very little these days, so I am always up for a really enjoyable nonalcoholic beverage. Still, I hesitate before ordering a mocktail, because so many of them are full of sugar. Last weekend, at the Durham Hotel, my friend Mary Beth and I both ordered a pear shrub, and we were astounded by how light, refreshing and satisfying it was. I immediately began researching shrub recipes in hopes of recreating it at home. I then called the Coffee Bar, (it doubles as a lobby bar) and asked if I was on the right track. It turns out the midcentury modern-inspired hotel has its own unique interpretation of the classic drinking vinegar. Every internet recipe I found called for making a pear vinegar syrup on the stovetop— sometimes requiring a 7-day maturation process, but the Durham insists none of that is necessary. A bartender walked me through their recipe, but he wasn’t at liberty to give precise measurements. So after much experimentation, here is my interpretation of this summery beverage.

A Durham-Inspired Pear Shrub

Ingredients

• 1 ripe Bartlett pear, peeled, cored, and roughly chopped

• 1/4 cup warm water

• 1.5 tablespoons honey (or to taste)

• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

• 1 cups club soda, chilled

• 2 cups ice

Steps

Make the pear purée: Combine 1 ripe Bartlett pear, peeled, cored, and roughly chopped with 0.3cups warm water and 1.5 tablespoons honey (or to taste) in a blender. Blend until very smooth, about 30–45 seconds. The warm water helps the honey dissolve and the pear break down fully.

Add the vinegar: Add 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar to the blender and pulse briefly to combine. Taste and adjust: add a little more honey if you'd like it less sharp, or a splash more vinegar if you want more tang. The mixture should taste boldly flavored— it will mellow once diluted with soda.

Strain (optional but recommended): For a cleaner, more elegant drink, pour the purée through a fine-mesh sieve into a pitcher, pressing gently with a spoon.

Build the drinks: Fill two glasses with 2 cups ice. Divide the pear mixture between the glasses (roughly half the mixture per drink), then top each with 1 cups club soda, chilled. Stir gently once so you don't flatten the bubbles. Garnish with a fresh sage leaf. Serve immediately.

Quick Hits

If you are planning to visit any U.S. National Parks this summer, you should know that the new park entrance fees for non-U.S. residents are causing long lines, frustration and confusion at the most popular destinations. According to the travel.com, international tourists who are unfamiliar with the policy are choosing not to enter upon arrival at park gates after learning they owe hundreds of dollars in unexpected entry fees. (Can you blame them?)

Speaking of summer travel, I love the idea of earrings that you can comfortably travel in— ones that don’t fall out, hurt your ears or leave a mark on your face when you’re dozing on an airplane. This is the idea behind Miru’s Nap Earrings. Their waterproof, tarnish-proof, flat-back earrings are designed for round-the-clock, daily wear. They feature a push pin-style flat back and are made of medical-grade titanium, which is hypoallergenic, nickel-free, and safe for new and healing piercings. My daughter just got her “triples,” so I’m sure she would like this smart set. I am fond of this coupling as well.

Stagecoach is this weekend, and apparently I wasn’t the only one who was confused by why 90s alternative rock bands, such as Counting Crows, Third Eye Blind and Bush are part of the lineup of the California country music festival. Country star and former frontman for Hootie and the Blowfish Darius Rucker told the New York Times this week that “country music today and a lot of the ’90s alt-rock definitely have a kinship,”“There’s no rock ’n’ roll in pop music anymore,” Rucker said. “It’s not driven by guitar, it’s not driven by angst. People that were big into that in the ’90s are now bigger into country music.” An interesting theory!

Lots of notable fashion collabs happening at the moment. Victoria Beckham x The Gap is getting a lot of attention. The 38-piece collection launched April 24 has already sold out of much of its denim, trench coats, casual dresses and crisp white button-downs. The popular French brand Sezane teams up with the French scarf and textile label Inoui Editions on April 26. Twenty years after Stella McCartney famously partnered with H&M, the English fashion legend is finally back for round two on May 7. Beach Riot x Beek have joined forces on a fun leather flip flop collaboration. And Uniqlo and Danish designer Cecilie Bahnsen will unveil their very wearable collection of women’s and girls’ dresses, tees and skirts on May 22.

It’s graduation season, and I think this new book by NYT journalist Jodi Kantor makes the perfect gift. How to Start: Discovering Your Life’s Work is a guide to young people who are navigating uncertain career paths, emphasizing the importance of “craft” (developing a unique, valuable skill) and “need” (determining what society requires).

Xoxo, Emily

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Kate Bright desperately loves her husband. She’s also having an affair. As the saying goes: two things can be true. In Ellie Levenson’s intriguing 2026 novel Room 706, Kate has been seeing her married lover, James, for the last six years. She thinks of their rendezvous-vous as “me time,” a bit of self-care for a busy mother. And perhaps their liaison would have remained hidden, but when the hotel they are staying in is taken over by terrorists, Kate is forced to examine her past, confront her choices and contemplate a very different future.

When Kate met Vic Bright in Italy 16 years ago, they both needed saving. Kate, a linguistics major on a study abroad, was processing her grief after losing her mother. Vic was in Rome staying with his Italian grandmother, while recovering from a mental health crisis brought on by a toxic work situation. From that delicate beginning sprouted a relationship and eventually a fulfilling life in London— successful careers, a loving marriage, two wonderful children.

When Kate first met James to interview him for an article she was writing, she most certainly was not in search of a dalliance. In fact, when their lunch meeting turned oddly personal, she brushed off James. For one thing, he was also married, and she didn’t have the time or the need for any sort of entanglements. But their chemistry was unmistakable, and now every few months, James and Kate surreptitiously meet in a London hotel room for an afternoon of great sex.

Kate doesn’t consider these assignations “an affair.” For one thing, she doesn’t know James that well— he’s never told her about his childhood, hobbies, friendships, favorite color. And Kate’s never asked. The two of them aren’t interested in falling in love with each other; they love their spouses. In Kate’s mind her affair with James has nothing to do with Vic. She compares the deception to one pretending that he/she didn’t have a cosmetic procedure.

Perhaps this secret escape that allows Kate to briefly forget about her obligations as a wife and mother would have continued for another six years. But in a hotel in central London, in room 706, Kate turns on the television and learns to her horror that the hotel in which she and James have been staying has been overrun by terrorists. She calls the police, who confirm that gunmen have taken over the hotel’s first two floors and are holding a number of hostages. The police give her strict instructions: do not leave the room for any reason; stay quiet and hidden; turn off all lights, including the TV; keep your phone charged and silent; do not make phone calls; do not flush the toilet or run water; and stay away from the door in case of bullets.

In other words, Kate is trapped, and she can only sit and wait. This gives her plenty of time to reflect upon her life: how she got here and how— regardless of the outcome— everything is about to change.

Levenson is a freelance journalist in London, who has published four nonfiction books. Room 706, which was published by Sarah Jessica Parker’s imprint, , is her first novel. I was immediately taken with the premise. Like so many wives and mothers, Kate is incredibly responsible and organized. We see her managing child care, the grocery list, the vacation balance payment, passwords. And she’s approached this affair with the same methodical care: deleting James’s messages quickly, never mentioning him to Vic, resisting the urge to bring home the posh hotel toiletries. What she couldn’t foresee was a terrorist attack. And the hostage situation is really such a clever plot device, because it keeps Kate and James in a confined space, forcing them to confront themselves, each other and their choices.

Levenson has wisely written Kate as a complicated character. She’s self aware rather than narcissistic. Kate holds herself accountable in a way that most readers will appreciate. She’s forced to reckon with hard questions: why did she continue this affair for so long when the risks were always so high? What explanation will she give Vic for being in the hotel? And is the terrorist attack the punishment she and James have long deserved? Levenson lets the moral ambiguity breathe, giving us plenty to think about.

I found myself wondering what I would do if I feared my hours might be numbered. Like Kate, would I email all the passwords to my husband and order the Christmas gifts? Would I leave my children detailed advice or simply remind them how much I loved them? Levenson seems to offer us a feminist message here— even in a crisis, a mother’s work is never done.

I think most readers will appreciate the complex and layered portrait of a woman who is neither villain nor victim. Levenson resists the urge to punish or redeem Kate too neatly, and that restraint is what makes Room 706 linger. This is a novel less about infidelity than about the private selves we construct when no one is watching, and what it means when the walls— quite literally— close in.

I support independent booksellers. If you would like to purchase Room 706, you can do so here. If you prefer Amazon, you can find the hardback here or the audio book, narrated by Hattie Morahan here.

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It is prime pollen season in North Carolina, and my car is yellow. Every year I am convinced it's getting worse, and every year my husband tells me I'm imagining it. So I was gratified recently, while waiting for my car to be inspected, to overhear a woman saying the exact same thing to the mechanic. He didn't hesitate. "Believe me," he said, "I see cars covered in pollen all day, and I can tell you it's 100 percent getting worse." I felt vindicated in the way you only can when a complete stranger confirms what your spouse has been dismissing for years.

This sent me down a research rabbit hole, where I discovered the theory of botanical sexism— a term coined by horticulturist and allergy researcher Tom Ogren, who has spent decades arguing that our cities are making us sneeze on purpose. Sort of. The theory goes like this: for nearly a century, urban planners and landscapers have deliberately favored male trees over female ones, because male trees are "litter-free"— no fruit, no pods, no seeds, no mess. The logic is tidy, and the motivation is understandable. Nobody wants to slip on a ginkgo berry outside a government building or sit on a bench covered in guano because birds are attracted to nearby berry trees. The trouble is that male trees produce pollen in abundance, while female trees not only produce none but actually trap and remove pollen from the air. A landscape dominated by male trees is, in effect, a pollen factory with no one to clean up after it.

The origin of this practice traces back to a 1949 USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, which advised that "when used for street plantings, only male trees should be selected, to avoid the nuisance from the seed." Decades later, when Dutch elm disease swept through American cities in the 1960s and 70s, wiping out millions of the grand, old elms that had lined streets across the country, city planners replaced them en masse with new clonal male trees. Those trees are now mature, large, and shedding more pollen every year. The bigger they grow, the worse it gets.

Is botanical sexism horticulture's #MeToo moment? Ogren might say yes, but it's worth noting that not everyone in the scientific community is convinced. Critics point out that the theory applies mainly to dioecious trees— those with distinctly male and female specimens— which represent only a fraction of all tree species. The majority of trees are monoecious, meaning they carry both male and female flowers on the same plant, and don't fit neatly into the binary at all. ("Trees do not respect the human gender binary," one exasperated botanist wrote online, which may be the most 21st-century sentence ever written about forestry.) Researchers in New York found that the vast majority of that city's airborne pollen came from tree species to which the botanical sexism theory doesn't even apply.

And then there's climate change, which is doing its own damage: rising CO2 levels cause plants to bloom earlier and more prolifically, and air pollution causes pollen grains to shatter into finer, more deeply inhaled particles that are significantly more allergenic.

When I called Logan’s Garden Shop in Raleigh to ask whether landscapers are actively choosing male-only plants to please homeowners, the answer was nuanced: residential landscapers have different priorities than those managing public spaces, and the calculus isn't always as straightforward as city planners versus suburban yards. I've also reached out to the Raleigh Parks and Recreation’s horticulture department for their perspective, but they did not return my call before my deadline (when they do, I'll report back). I will note that North Carolina is one of only a handful of states that collects and monitors pollen data and shares that information with the public. As of this writing, the severity of tree pollen is considered “high” while grass and weeds are considered “low” (spoiler alert: their time is coming). And perhaps this is where the botanical sexism theory falls apart. According to McGill University’s Office for Science and Society, even if we were to just plant female trees, those of us sensitive to grass and weeds would still suffer. In the meantime, my husband remains skeptical— but the mechanic, the McGill researchers, and I all know the truth: one way or another, spring is coming for us.

Here’s what else I’m Currently Obsessed with

There was a longstanding joke when I graduated from Georgetown University in the early aughts. Upon receiving your diploma, you were free to cancel your subscriptions to the Financial Times, Foreign Policy and The Economist and redirect the savings into a subscription to People Magazine. In other words, you were no longer responsible for being up to date on the political-economic situation in every country in the world, and your mind was free to macerate in the world of celebrity gossip.

When I prepared for my first tour in the Foreign Service, I envisioned myself having loads of free time and subscribed to four of my favorite periodicals: Vanity Fair, Vogue, W Magazine and Condé Nast Traveler. That turned out to be an overly ambitious syllabus. In the aftermath of September 11th, Embassy Islamabad had temporarily stopped processing visa applications, and the backlog that greeted me when I arrived in the fall of 2002 filled a small room from floor to ceiling. In the consular section, we typically worked six days a week to chip away at the files. Safe to say many issues of those magazines remained unread; although, the Vogues became extremely useful in a rather unexpected way.

After I had been at post for several months, a 22-year-old American actor and stuntman was arrested for smuggling 3.6 kg of opium through Islamabad International Airport. Since consular officers are responsible for ensuring that Americans in foreign prisons are treated humanely, we would take turns visiting the young man and checking on his wellbeing. I’d bring him my magazines as reading material. Although the prison censors typically wielded a heavy black pen and were quick to blot out any words or images they found explicit or offensive, they tended to trust that U.S. Embassy staff were not dropping off copies of Playboy and did not linger over our deliveries. I was surprised when our young American requested more copies of Vogue, but it turned out he wasn’t reading them. He had found that the racy fashion pictorials were very popular with his Pakistani inmates and thus made excellent currency when bartering for better food.

At some point in my diplomatic career, I picked up a digital subscription to The Atlantic, which in my opinion has some of the best in-depth reporting as well as think pieces of any news publication. It’s also where I discovered writers like and Lauren Groff, whose novels I devour. Somewhere along the way, I let my account expire, so I was thrilled when two years ago my father gave me a subscription to The Atlantic for Christmas. I find it’s a great complement to my other news sources, The New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal and NPR. So when The Atlantic announced it was coming to Durham, NC, as part of its tour The Atlantic Across America, I quickly secured my spot.

In January, The Atlantic began an ambitious three-year tour of all 50 states. Called The Atlantic Across America, the series brings the magazine's journalists into conversation with local reporters, community leaders, and change-makers in cities across the country— and the events are free to readers and subscribers. The timing is deliberate: editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg has framed the tour as a celebration of America's 250th anniversary, a moment to take the magazine's founding mission— to be, as Goldberg puts it, "the magazine of the American idea" — out of the office and onto the road. Many stops are organized in partnership with local and nonprofit newsrooms, which gives each event a distinct regional flavor while still grappling with questions that resonate far beyond state lines.

Durham, North Carolina was the sixth stop on the tour, and the evening unfolded in two parts. The first panel brought together journalists from NPR, The NYT and The Assembly, a North Carolina-focused nonprofit newsroom, to discuss the particular contradictions of life in the Old North State: a state with world-class hospitals and a persistent rural healthcare crisis; a state proud of its universities but wrestling with how to fund them; a state where demographic change is happening faster than most people realize. (Half of the adults living in North Carolina today were not born here.) Some of the details were deeply local— the kind you'd only know if you lived here— but the tensions they illustrated were universal.

The second panel, made up of the chancellors of NC State, NC Central, and UNC Chapel Hill, took up what I found to be the most compelling question of the evening, and one that is being asked well beyond North Carolina. The moderator put it plainly: Why are people now asking “Why should I get a college degree?” Nobody asked that in the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s a fair question. At a moment when most of the world’s knowledge is available instantaneously and for virtually no cost, the old assumption— that those who could go to college would naturally want to— no longer holds. The chancellors pushed back thoughtfully: the point of a college education, they argued, was never primarily the transfer of knowledge. It was the making of engaged citizens, critical thinkers, people equipped to play a constructive role in society. That argument feels more urgent, not less, in an age of information abundance.

What struck me most about the evening was the format itself. The Atlantic Across America is cleverly designed so that the themes are universal but the details are specific to wherever the tour happens to be. In Nebraska, they'll talk about local journalism and civic life in the heartland. In your state, they'll talk about whatever keeps your community up at night. It makes for a rare kind of public conversation— genuinely local, genuinely national and open to anyone who shows up. If the tour is coming to your state, I'd encourage you to go. You can find upcoming dates and sign up for event updates at The Atlantic's events page.

My mother recently mentioned that my grandmother was devoted to the original BBC adaptation of The Forsyte Saga when it aired on TV in the late 1960s. That small piece of family lore was all I needed to tune in when the newest version, simply titled The Forsytes, arrived on PBS Masterpiece this spring.

The source material has a complicated kind of pedigree. John Galsworthy's sprawling novels about a wealthy Victorian family earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932— specifically for what the Swedish Academy called his "distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga." And yet even at the time, not everyone on the committee was convinced. Literary critics have since noted that Galsworthy won the same prize that eluded Joyce, Proust, and Nabokov, which tells you something about the Nobel's complicated relationship with greatness. Readable and humane, yes. A literary giant? The jury, so to speak, is still out.

The books have attracted television adaptations ever since— most memorably that 1967 BBC production that captivated my grandmother, and again in 2002 with a version starring Damian Lewis. Each has taken its liberties with the original material, and this one, written by Debbie Horsfield of Poldark fame, takes perhaps the boldest liberty of all. Rather than retelling Galsworthy's novels, it functions as a prequel, depicting the Forsyte family a full generation before A Man of Property — the first novel — even begins. Fans who tuned in expecting the story they know, with Soames and Irene at its center, found themselves watching an entirely invented chapter of the family's history. It helps explain the exasperation you'll find in some of the reviews.

The series is set in late Victorian London and follows four generations of the Forsytes, a nouveau riche stockbroking family whose prosperity is just beginning to show its cracks. At the center of the drama are cousins Jo and Soames— rival heirs to the family firm— along with a stellar ensemble that includes Francesca Annis as the formidable matriarch Ann, Stephen Moyer and Jack Davenport as feuding Forsyte brothers, and Eleanor Tomlinson and Tuppence Middleton (which is my new favorite name) rounding out the women's side of the story. In a nice bit of casting continuity, Susan Hampshire, who appeared in the original 1967 adaptation, turns up here as well. The production is lush, the costumes are gorgeous, and the family dynamics are deliciously soapy. If you loved Downton Abbey or The Gilded Age, you will find plenty here to enjoy on a Sunday evening.

That said, The Forsytes is not without its frustrations. The series modernizes its characters in ways that can strain credibility— particularly in the case of Irene, a young woman whose ambitions and sensibilities feel transplanted from the 21st century rather than rooted in the 1880s. It’s a trade-off Horsfield also made with Poldark, for better or worse, and one that will likely divide viewers along familiar lines: those who find it refreshing and those who find it anachronistic.

Still, there is something genuinely pleasurable about a drama with this much confidence in its own storytelling. The series aired last fall in the UK on Channel 5, has already filmed its second season, and was renewed for a third before most American audiences had seen a single episode. The drama of the Forsytes, in other words, is only just beginning to unfold— and if your grandmother, like mine, had good taste in this sort of thing, that feels like reason enough to settle in.

Quick Hits

I’ve rounded up my summer reading list. These are upcoming releases that I’ve pre-ordered or pre-requested from the library and am looking forward to taking to the beach. The Palm House, The Plunge, Pool House, and Villa Coco are all giving summer vibes.

Jewelry line Jane Winn has a lovely partnership with Palm Beach’s Ann Norton Sculpture Garden. Ten percent of proceeds from the limited edition capsule collection benefits ANSG, supporting the historic property and its famous botanical gardens. This charm caught my eye, and this one would make a pretty Mother’s Day gift.

Frieze New York returns to The Shed at Hudson Yard, May 13-17. Showcasing innovative contemporary art from leading galleries worldwide, this highly anticipated art fair offers collectors, enthusiasts and visitors the chance to engage with groundbreaking works in a stunning, modern venue.

The NYT’s Ross Douthat had the most fascinating conversation (the podcast is also available here) with retired UNC religion professor Bart Ehrman about whether or not Jesus Christ rose from the dead and how the Bible shaped the morality of the Western World. Ehrman, who considers himself an “agnostic atheist” is one of the world’s most accomplished religious scholars. It’s really a must-listen.

If you are a fan of London’s beloved River Cafe, you’ll enjoy this recent profile on CBS Sunday Morning, as well as Chef and owner Ruthie Rogers’s new book Table 4 at the River Cafe, highlighting her conversations with the restaurant’s most famous guests.

Xoxo, Emily

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