Showing and Telling

Q1 Books, theater, and links

I was originally going to start this off with “the evil is defeated”, but with news of the tariffs and the economy imploding over the last few days, I don’t think Q2 will be any better than Q1. Either way, here’s everything I read in Q1:

January

How to Sleep at Night, Elizabeth Harris

Read my interview with the author here.

A novel about marriage, queerness, and family, I really enjoyed the in-depth examination of a marriage roiled by politics. A gay man decides to run for Congress as a Republican, throwing the lives of his Democrat husband and journalist sister into disarray. This is a book about finding yourself in a life you didn’t expect to live: one of the main characters is a SAHM wondering what happened to her ambition, another is trapped in a job she hates.

I really enjoyed the dichotomy between love and duty: the characters are locked into their lives in ways you don’t often see in this type of book. There is no magical “leave him!” button when you have a mortgage and a five year old. The focus on growing apart vs. growing together and becoming a different person than you expected to be in your twenties felt poignant as someone in my thirties.

The Wilderness, Angela Flournoy

I am on the record as loving books about friendship and books about long-term friendship are my kryptonite.

This book was brilliant, ambitious, and fascinating. Four women become friends and embark on various journeys throughout the changing world from 2007-2027. I wish there were slightly more of two of the friends, and one of them haunted the narrative rather than becoming a full participant, but I enjoyed her chapters nonetheless.

Flournoy loves Los Angeles and the pitch perfect depiction of the city was heartwarming. I loved the chapter on motherhood as well— it felt real, lived in, and raw. I'm excited for more people to tap into this gorgeous depiction of Black womanhood, Black friendship, and the creation of chosen family. (Advanced Reader’s Copy, out in September.)

Good Dirt, Charmaine Wilkerson

A triumphant exploration of grief, healing, and moving on after trauma. I loved the deep dive into African American history— the piecing together of the narrative was breathless and devastating, but ultimately came together beautifully.

There were some parts that absolutely didn't work for me, and a focus on some extraneous characters, but I understand that Wilkerson was weaving a quilt of breathing, moving people with individual desires. The end made it all worth it.

Nothing Serious, Emily J Smith

A fascinating exploration of tech, gender, power, and the dating apps.

A disillusioned tech employee in the Bay begins to investigate when her best friend is implicated in a murder, but the book isn't a thriller, it's weighty and philosophical without being didactic.

I loved the drilling into what it means to be a single, childless woman in your thirties, surrounded by self important and selfish people (it doesn't help that I hate SF, and this book excoriates the city brilliantly).

At its core, this book is about lost ambition, the ways men and women hurt each other— sometimes on purpose, sometimes without meaning to— and how societal structures affect individual choices unconsciously.

February

Universality, Natasha Brown

I’ve read this twice— once in February on my own, and once in March for Daybreak, the reading series where people get together to read a book in one day.

The beginning of the novel is a magazine article about a hipster attacked during a rave on a farm/commune in England during lockdown. As the book goes on, it shifts and transforms into a character study that examines race, class, money, and power.

It’s prickly and dark. I think this book is a masterpiece, but I know mileage may vary. Brown plays with identity brilliantly, evoking conversations and arguments being had by the intelligentsia both in the UK and the US. Every time you find yourself agreeing with a character, Brown makes sure to subtly remind us how vile so many of these people are: the characterization is top notch. I'm obsessed with the last chapter.

Natasha Brown is a genius.

Sky Full of Elephants, Cebo Campbell

It's clear that Campbell is a poet when you read his writing: the language was evocative, silky, and haunting, with passages lingering long after you've read them.

A speculative take on the road trip novel in a world where white people have walked into the sea, this book explores how to define Blackness outside of whiteness. There are passages that go deep into ancestral and spiritual trauma that are both beautifully written and haunting. The Black identity is plunged for emotional and logistical truth: what does it mean to be mixed? What role does the police serve? Who is doing the policing? Who makes the rules?

The middle of the novel is the strongest, and there are some twists I won't spoil that both moved me and raised my eyebrows. Campbell has created a stunning vision of a world where people are free and thriving outside of their pasts, and I wish I could have spent more time there. Gorgeously written.

Show Don't Tell, Curtis Sittenfeld

Sittenfeld continues to be the premier chronicler of the human condition. Stunning, prickly, and expertly observed, these stories capture so many slivers of what it means to be a person who questions, who wants, who desires, who strays.

We're often told that middle age is when curiosity dies and our lives are settled, but Sittenfeld's characters search for meaning and happiness long after most authors would have moved on to younger, less realistic folks. Incredible. There’s a short story here about cancer and a queer kid I haven’t stopped thinking about.

Ellipses, Vanessa Lawrence

A queer novel about a magazine writer in the aughts who becomes involved in a toxic dynamic with a girlboss, I really enjoyed parts of this, while others left me a bit cold. I think Lawrence is a brilliant writer who evokes the magazine industry perfectly: I felt myself transported to those frigid offices filled with microaggressions, and I loved reading about the MC’s bisexuality and struggle with opening up emotionally. Wanting to be loved while wanting to be safe is real.

March

Deep Cuts, Holly Brickley

A hot book of the year, this is getting an adaptation starring Saoirse Ronan and Austin Butler. Big book, big names, big money.

Reading this was electric. Fun, emotional writing with a beating heart and an innate understanding of rhythm. I felt like a kid again: reading about going to shows in sticky Brooklyn bars while screaming along to songs by The Strokes or Passion Pit… make it 2012 again via science or magic!

The first half of the book is so strong, and while I loved the second, the conceit of a decade long situationship didn't work for me, and I absolutely did not vibe with the ending— felt tonally off from the rest of the book and everything we knew about the characters. Either way, I really liked this but will be fuming about the ending for the next few months.

Stag Dance, Torrey Peters

Perfect and chilling. Shorts stories and a novella that explore desire— for transformation, for the self, for others— both clinically and intimately, painting portraits of characters warped by their longing. I'll be thinking about "The Chaser" for a long time.

Universality, Natasha Brown (again)

Killer Potential, Hannah Deitch

A madcap road trip novel about a SAT tutor accused of murdering her employers, Deitch is a very good writer who tells a story about failed potential and stifled ambition with the cool eye of someone who's seen and done it all.

What exactly are we meant to believe about the myth of the gifted kid? What purpose does it serve? An interesting thread to pull, but the middle of this was a little meandering as the protagonist embarked on her journey across the country (twice).

Reiterating that Deitch is a great writer! This could have been 75 pages shorter and would have been better for it.

Euphoria, Lily King

My book club pick from Q4 2024. This didn’t work for me, but people both online and IRL had strong defenses of this reimagining of anthropologist Margaret Mead’s life.

An examination of gender, colonialism, imperialism, and the plundering of Native and Indigenous resources in service of the Western agenda, many good ideas get hidden under the weight of the love triangle this book is marketed under.

Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins

I had to. I don’t think people know that I’m deep in The Hunger Games hive, but I went to the midnight release of the first movie. I was fighting for Gale on Tumblr in 2012. It was rare, I was there.

This book is heartbreaking and intense, but I feel like a bit of an outlier when I say this was fascinating but not needed. The details of the propaganda the Capitol enacts and how they control everything the districts see are interesting, but the relentless, punishing violence enacted on every single character in this feels unnecessary. The kids are very young and the deaths are very gory, but when it comes to actual new information we get in this book, we get some fun color about District 12... and that's it.

An opportunity to flesh out characters gets lost in the shuffle of cameos and shuffling around of pawns to ensure every single familiar character is in place for where they'll be 25 years in the future.

I was engrossed in this and couldn't put it down, but the more that I think about it, the less I like it. My kingdom for Maysilee Donner and Louella, but I think I'm officially too old for these.

The Three Lives of Cate Kay, Kate Fagan

Initially fascinating and fast paced, this eventually veered into intense Mary-Sue fiction where every character the protagonist comes into contact with finds her irresistible and alluring and promptly falls in love with her.

An interesting thought experiment occurs at the end (where a love interest becomes more interesting than the protagonist by far) but she's again waylaid by plot and we're stuck with something both simpler and weaker.

Our Beautiful Boys, Sameer Pandya

I liked this! Moved briskly and was a fascinating look at a particular type of casual racism in a small California community. I think one of the plotlines was incredibly fascinating and deserved so much more time— I think Pandya wanted to wrestle with something much thornier, and I wish the book had been about adults and kept the kids as unknowable ciphers.

Theater

I somehow saw 8 shows in Q1?

January

Hell’s Kitchen

I liked this! A jukebox musical using the music of Alicia Keys about a girl growing up in Hell’s Kitchen. Jessica Vosk (an iconic Elphaba) played the protagonist’s mother brilliantly, and Kecia Lewis more than deserved her Tony for her show-stopping number.

Growing up with Alicia Keys made all of the songs intimately familiar, and I was excited by some of the choices they made (although justice for “Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart” and “In Common”, one of her newer songs that slays but no one ever talks about).

Sunset Boulevard

My friends think I have a contrarian streak (I’m just a Sagitarrius, I bristle against authority and being told what to do) but the more I think about this show, the more I’m inclined to agree. I don’t think the book is good, I think the production is cool but ultimately too sparse.

Nicole Scherzinger, however, is transcendent. She’s my dark horse pick for the Tony. She’s sly, she’s furious, she’s powerful, she’s deranged. Her songs blew the roof off the theater and she received multiple standing ovations after her numbers. Everything you’ve heard is true: she is that good.

Tom Francis is also incredible, but I didn’t care for the other male lead.

Drag: The Musical

Fun! I saw Jimbo and not Alaska but the show worked for me. I thought it would be raunchier, but the story of two opposing drag clubs having to learn about the power of chosen family and queer friendship was ultimately heartwarming. Everyone in this (minus Jimbo, sorry) was singing the house down.

English

This play deserved its Pulitzer win in 2023. Magical, devastating, scintillating, challenging, thought provoking. I could go on and on. Instantly one of my favorite plays I’ve ever seen. I’m sad I didn’t see it again before it closed in March, but it had basically an eight week run.

Every member of the cast is firing on all cylinders, and the conceit (the actors speak fluent English when they’re meant to be speaking Farsi to one another and accented English to show their progress in English class) works to immerse you in the world of early aughts Iran. I loved this.

Hamilton

I got bullied for posting about this! My mom wanted to see it for basically a decade and we finally got tickets.

February

Gypsy

Here’s the contrarian streak again: Audra McDonald is absolutely brilliant, but a few of the numbers just don’t work for her voice. The theater community on TikTok has discoursed and discoursed to death about how not everyone is a belter and you can adjust songs to fit the voice of the performer, but that doesn’t mean the songs will work. Her acting? Top notch. She’s believable and furious as Rose, and you’re bowled over by her pain and rage. Some of her numbers, however… I’m not giving away the Tony, famously, but I’d give it to Nicole if I had to choose.

March

Deep Blue Sound

I was invited to see this by a mutual and I loved it. Moving, human, poignant, and quietly devastating. I posted to try and rally more people to see it, but it closed yesterday. I’ll be keeping an eye on Clubbed Thumb— famous for their investment in quirky, deeply resonant plays— moving forward.

Liberation

Hailed by Vulture as the best play out right now, I liked this but didn’t love it the way I expected to. Transporting us back to 1970s and the heyday of the second-wave feminist movement, the characters struggle with class, race, sexuality, and gender as they try to challenge patriarchy. We know something goes awry due to the framing device of the show, which I won’t spoil, but it’s a timely look at the dueling pressures between wanting to be a revolutionary and wanting a more conventional life.

Links

Does The Knot Have a Fake Brides Problem? (The New Yorker): Private equity claims another victim. A bizarre but fascinating exploration of the wedding industrial complex.

Inside the Murdoch’s Succession Drama (The New York Times): I cannot believe this is still going on???

What it’s Like To Have Facial Dysmorphia (The Cut): People are losing their minds from staring at themselves on Zoom and on their phones all day. Really interesting but weirdly sad.

The Perils of the Situationship (The FP): A bunch of Zoomers tried to cancel a Democratic golden boy for… receiving nudes from multiple girls, despite there being clear communication that he didn’t want to be exclusive/never wanted to date them. Zoomers operating under a witch hunt mentality and turning every romantic offense into a War Crime? I think I’ve seen this film before. People didn’t care as much about this one vs. West Elm Caleb but the precedent has been set.

Speaking of poorly adjusted, Gen Z is the Most Ghosted Generation (Business Insider). From college to dating, no one has experienced the amount of rejection this generation has. Yikes.

We are entering a recession (remember when I said this and everyone pretended I was insane) but Fortune is reporting Target’s foot traffic is down eight weeks in a row following the rollback of its DEI program and a subsequent boycott by BIPOC customers.

Coming up: Millennial Madness (The Valley), Moral Purity in fiction, and No Man is an Island (turning the pen on myself).