Showing you everything: July book reviews

These are the books I read in the month of July, 2022—

College Novel by Blake Middleton

I thought An Actual Person in a Concrete Historical Situation was great so I figured I’d work my way back. I bet people compare this to other books, but I won’t. I enjoyed the disorientation of what opens feeling like a collective voice with lots of undifferentiated characters, though it eventually settles and centers around “Jordan,” which made me question the decision to narrate in 3rd person, since (as it’s free to do) the voice gets closer and closer to him. It wound up making sense, though. It was funny and bleak but not depressing. The banter is hilarious and heightened, almost like if Hal Hartley wrote a script about kids with rich social lives in the year before they become cooped up shitposters.

Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux

This was a Danielle Chelosky recommendation, though Sebastian Castillo also posted about Ernaux last month so my curiosity was primed. The ebook copy I had was full of weird encoding glitches, where what I believe were em dashes came out looking like this“smashed up between words“but it was surprisingly undistracting. This one is full of heat and ache, and I am eager to read more. I also enjoyed triangulating some throughlines shared by some writing by Chelosky, Ellen, Ernaux, Kraus, and Nicou, and could easily spend more time in that universe.

Modern Massacres by Timothy Willis Sanders

TWS has great stories on XRAY and elsewhere, and I had been meaning to track down a copy of one of his older books, but this one was announced and released at just the right time for me to jump on it. The shape of these stories is unexpected and sometimes unsettling—their endings aren’t concerned with closure or tidiness or epiphany or any of that junk, which isn’t to say they’re uninterested in convention or tradition. The voice and style were consistently measured, and the pacing felt “literary.” I’m not really sure what I mean by that. It’s a quick read, and several trains of thought and scenes from it have stuck with me.

You’ll Like It Here by Ashton Politanoff

I liked Ashton’s related work in NOON and (maybe more tangentially) Blue Arragements’ Lazy Susan 2, and was excited to check this out. The PR about it being “in conversation with Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Amina Cain’s Indelicacy, and Kathryn Scanlan’s Aug 9—Fog” suggested it’d be very much up my alley (those are all books that I love), though in some ways I wish I’d gone in with fewer connective references so I could’ve reckoned with it on its own terms a bit more. That said, I enjoyed the way the archival newspaper voice and mostly-page-length rhythm had the effect of a sensational carnival barker reporting on thefts, deaths, and curiosities. Reading this felt a bit like walking through one of those historical reenactment villages.

Agitation by Alexandrine Ogundimu

I’ve been trying to read this for a minute! I ordered one months ago, and Philip Best over at Amphetamine Sulphate tried to send it twice, I think, but was thwarted both times by the USPS, and I felt bad about him racking up costs so I let it go. But when the new Isabelle Nicou (translated by Kaycie Hall) became available, I added it to my cart again. Alexandrine is so good. I feel lucky to’ve read the excellent “unauthorized Tiger Woods biography” portion of her collection coming out with FERAL DOVE. I’m somewhat shocked (and I mean this as a compliment) that Alexandrine’s style survived an MFA program. There’s a rhetorical excellence on display that knows exactly how strong a hold it has on your attention and so can get away with what might otherwise come across as verbose or repetitive or rambling, but in fact flows beautifully. I’d expect to lose patience with so much summary action, but it’s still somehow completely rife with drama. The narrator’s preemptive dismissal of his own sexual interest as autogynephilia, the self-consciousness of feeling like his deviances were nearly stolen valor, was especially compelling.

Cheat by Danielle Chelosky

Danielle Chelosky keeps bringing the heat. Each of her chaps is so good, and even her newsletter is full of top-tier writing. I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about teen romance in a way that isn’t super cringe, and Chelosky nails that here. It allows no room to second guess the size of the feelings. The honesty and immediacy keep it from feeling melodramatic. I’m such a big fan.

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

I have this nasty conversational habit of prefacing everything I have to say, giving context that’s meaningless to the recipient until I’ve reached my point, after which the preamble is inaccessible to memory. I think it’s bred by a certain kind of academics, or a predisposition of a personality type, but I think it probably irritates most people. I imagine they feel the way this book makes me feel: anxious. So much imposition, supposition, and uncertainty! A majority of the Dream Boys group chat recommended this, and I did the audiobook version. The reader sounded a little bit like the actor who plays McNulty on The Wire, who did narrate the audiobook version of The Remains of the Day. My heart broke as Boris kept desperately praising the repair manual half-thinkingly gifted to him by the narrator, Ryder: “I really love this book. It shows you everything.”