Goodbye April
Or what I read this month
April’s reading was measured in eight books, one new favorite of the year, the Florida heat, and the search for the next best novella classic. Something about April, reading-wise, felt different than the past few months. While mentally things felt stagnant and goals remained in the air, there was an intense desire to just read. Simple as that. Without further ado, here are the books that got me through April…
The books I read in April:
A debut memoir compared to Crying in H Mart, and you thought I wouldn’t be dying to pick it up? Out May 19th is a story surrounding grief and relationships with recipes at the center. It is said many times throughout the book that “food is fuel”. It is fuel to relationships, to love, to hatred, to the insurmountable grief when losing a loved one. Food connects family and friends, as I love languages, and lets us digest our feelings without shame. Such a beautiful page turned, I implore you to keep it on your radar.
mTold through three distinct perspectives, this offers a discomfiting yet thought-provoking conversation about the Michelin-starred restaurant’s unsettling working culture. Each chapter focuses on someone new: Daniel, a star chef accused of toxic work environments and rape, Julie, his wife, and Hannah, who is a previous employee of Daniel. While feeling extremely uneasy, the reader can sense the power imbalance and silencing perpetuated by the men in this industry. There are subtleties of a hand on the shoulder, or being told “the customer is always right,” that give a peek into the disgusting underbellies of this restaurant and the fight for justice.
When the movie is better than the book, where do we go from here? This book’s cult-like following and high ratings didn’t draw me to read it; no, it was the masterpiece (in my humble opinion) that is the recent movie adaptation with glasses Ryan Gosling. Now, for the book, the humor just did not land for me. I enjoyed having more context for things shown in the film, but the annoyance that is book Grace for me was just too much.
One of the most bizarre on April’s list, but so grotesquely interesting I couldn’t look away. Olive has always struggled with herself and finding relationships, so when she meets her boyfriend Theo, she quite literally wants to live inside him. I don’t want to give too much away, but this is such a nauseating look at limerence and loneliness that plagues the human condition. After loving Gross’ debut novel Hysteria, I knew I was all in for the body horror weirdness that would ensue.
Deborah Levy entrances you into a world of a narrator and writer wandering around Paris amid social unrest while becoming infatuated with Gertrude Stein, an American novelist and poet whose non-linear writing style inspired so many women writers after her. A creative way to not only give biographical moments of a beloved author via her own thoughts and poetry, but also give a fictional account searching for meaning in this terrifying world we live in every day. My favorite read of the year so far, Deborah Levy you amaze me.
Dorothy Parker is to the 1920s as Eve Babitz was to the 1970s. This is a collection of short stories following women with messy lives, wandering aimlessly through life, set against the backdrop of patriarchal structures pressing down on us. The title short story ‘Big Blonde’, being the last in the collection and the strongest by far, showcases a woman in the throes of depression and alcoholism after the societal pressures, like women aging discourse, derails her entire life. This is a perfect morning book to pick up in one sitting, or just a read-one-short-story-when-you-feel-like-it type book.
A young woman named Julia is being watched by an unknown entity vying for her affection, creating an obsessive, one-sided bond between them. The voice and Julia are one and the same, but also completely devoid of each other at the same time. This novella, at first, seemed to me to have the same staying power as A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector, but I was left disappointed. The premise pulled me in, and the writing style was masterful. I just wanted more, personally, from the story than what my own mind received. Maybe this one is just on me.
I demand more books about Florida, set in Florida, that reveal the underbellies of hot Floridian summers. I demand it all, and nothing less, of the state I live in. These short stories show the cruelty behind the southern heat and the loneliness it yields. All following different lives around Florida like a snake-obsessed father, mothers trying to get by, and women surviving under the confined class structures, Lauren Groff blends social commentary and the nature of Florida beautifully.
Here’s to a happy May in books 💌