I come to you from my desk Tuesday afternoon, drowsy as hell after I stayed up way too late reading Kelly Link’s “The Book of Love,” which is simultaneously the weirdest thing I’ve read in years and the most captivating book I’ve gotten sucked into in 2024.
raved about “The Book of Love,” which sounded slightly more fantastical than most books I gravitate toward — but I love Emma’s books, and I figured why not add my name to the library hold list. When I got the book, I was daunted by its size and told myself that it felt like a slog, I’d quit. (I almost never quit.) Well, within about 40 pages, I was hooked. And that’s all I’ll say for now; I’m a couple chapters from finishing and woke up at 2:30 a.m. with the heavy hardback open on my chest and the lamp still switched on.But March! This newsletter is about March! And I spent a lot of March reading. I enjoyed everything I read, albeit for really different reasons so I’m going to skip clumping them into categories this time and jump right in.
“Mystic River,” by Dennis Lehane: Dennis Lehane’s newest novel, “Small Mercies,” was on track to be my first book finished in 2024 — but then I read 200 pages of it on a flight to New Orleans on Dec. 30. At that point, I didn’t know anything about Lehane. I was aware “Mystic River” was a movie starring Sean Penn. That’s it.
Coming from that place of ignorance, I was totally floored by this book. My one criticism of Lehane’s work is that it seems a bit too enamored with vigilante justice — but his writing, especially in “Mystic River” drowns out some of my moral qualms. I loved that he set this story in a made-up neighborhood, an amalgamation of several parts of Boston, which allowed him to paint a picture on a blank canvas and build a world so real I could picture it from the first paragraph.
“Make It Scream, Make It Burn,” by Leslie Jamison: While I waited for my library hold on “Splinters” to come up, I figured I’d sample some of Jamison’s other nonfiction, and I’m so glad I did. Bury me under a mountain of reported essays, and I will gleefully read my way out.
That’s what “Make It Scream, Make It Burn” is: a collection of reported essays — about love and loneliness, mostly, but also about whales and civil war and getting married in Vegas. My favorite moments of the collection came when Jamison slipped fully into memoir, telling the story of a long-distance relationship and the feelings she superimposed upon it, and exploring her relationship with her stepdaughter. The “Splinters” countdown continues; I’m now No. 29 in line.
“Piglet,” by Lottie Hazell: I’m going to write more about “Piglet” and “Dead Weight” — both of which are centrally focused on eating (and not eating) — so I’ll keep this blurb briefer than I otherwise would have. Piglet was my favorite March book. It’s the story of a cookbook editor and enthusiastic home cook in the weeks and months before she marries her longtime boyfriend, who grew up more affluent than she did — and who confesses a transgression to her just days before the blessed event. My favorite thing about “Piglet” is the way Hazell deployed descriptive language: barely at all in service of fleshing out people and places and very much in service of making you feel as if you are dining across the table from the main character, jostling for a bite.
“Dead Weight,” by Emmeline Clein: Clein’s essay collection about eating disorders is somewhat autobiographical, but it’s also a mashup of criticism and science and pop culture. It’ll make your head spin, and it’ll also make you think — especially if you are a woman who’s ever had a complicated relationship with your body and the food you put in it. I presume that’s all of us. There were times when I wished Clein would let us in to her own story in a more linear, narrative way, but I still enjoyed the way she flitted between writing styles, time periods, research and lightly sketched characters.
“Career of Evil” and “Lethal White,” by Robert Galbraith: My guilty-pleasure dive into J.K. Rowling’s mysteries continues. The Cormoran Strike novels are serialized and formulaic — and they’re great storytelling. Is it somewhat hokey how, in each book, the main character (or characters) has an epiphany about 90 percent of the way through, and Rowling shares the fact of this epiphany without cluing readers in to what the detectives have actually figured out? Absolutely! Does it bug me? Kind of! Does it also keep me reading, determined to solve the case myself? You bet!