Hello dear ones,
I read most of Worry in one bout of insomnia. It was the first of ten days in Vermont and I laid wide awake on a creaky twin bed and convinced myself that the fire hydrant outside was in fact “someone” or “something”. In my defense, that part of Vermont is both very dark and very haunted. I’d downloaded Worry a few days prior on Netgalley and picked up my phone to distract myself from the, ahem, fire hydrant and read until I couldn’t - which is very different than not wanting to. I finished it the next morning, laughing out loud and wanting everyone I knew to read it so we could discuss.
Worry is the extremely funny, smart and unfortunately very relatable debut from Alexandra Tanner. It’s about two Jewish sisters, Jules and Poppy, who move in together in Brooklyn and try to be adult people. It’s a vibes not plot kind of book (my favorite) and will have you seeing yourself in the bickering of the sisters, the online obsessions, the media jobs, the neuroses, the rescue dog (although mine, unlike the dog in Worry, are not named Amy Klobuchar). There were certain parts that felt so familiar I wondered if we have all lived the same lives…life? This book was hilarious and unsettling and made me yearn for a sister. I absolutely loved it and I have full confidence that if you read this newsletter (thank you!) you will too.
Alexandra was kind enough to share some of her favorite books with us about sisters, which I will be reading asap.
Alexandra Tanner by Sasha Fletcher
CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING, DOROTHY BAKER (1962)
I’ll admit I haven’t re-read this book in probably seven or eight years, but it was foundational for me when I did read it for the first time: twin sisters, one straight and one queer, get ready for the straight one’s wedding, and Cassandra loses her mind over the changes Judith’s impending marriage is sure to bring to their relationship. It’s mostly told from Cassandra’s point of view but there’s a gorgeous shift in perspective for part of the novel, a glimmering u-turn most can only dream of being good enough to pull off. My novel Worry is about a girl named Jules and her sister Poppy, who’s queer, and how Jules kind of envies Poppy’s attentions being occupied in the opposite way Cassandra does Judith’s; or really how she envies Poppy’s abilities to own who she is and to articulate what she wants out of life.
TWENTY GRAND AND OTHER TALES OF LOVE AND MONEY, REBECCA CURTIS (2007)
+ “THE TOAST” (2014), “FISH ROT” (2013), “THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE” (2013)
A book of mean, hysterical short stories, kind of in the tradition of a volume by Joy Williams or Garielle Lutz, but singular and very unadorned. Curtis is an insanely funny writer, in a completely unique and specific way. There are more laughs in here than in a Lutz or Williams collection—there’s like a dark kind of sound distortion in those women’s work that feels like it’s been turned to the other extreme in here; the humor is really amped and kind of desperate in the sense that you feel Curtis’s narrators really grabbing for it, really leaning on it to get through their lives. There are many sisters stories in here. “The Toast” and “Fish Rot” and “The Christmas Miracle,” three more of Curtis’s perfect sisters stories, aren’t in here, but you need to read them in Harper’s, n+1, and The New Yorker, respectively.
HÔTEL SPLENDID, MARIE REDONNET/TRANS. JORDAN STUMP (1986/1994)
A very slim novel in which three old French sisters live in and try to keep running a decaying hotel in a fetid swamp. Gross, short, bizarre. Because it’s so short it’s got the feel of a Beckett play or something—you would think it begs to be read as a kind of metaphor or existentialist, impressionistic kind of thing. But if you read it as just a straight story of three aging, ailing women trapped together inside a rotting property that’s been in their family for generations, it takes on these really and dark and animal dimensions. I haven’t read it in a few years, I’m due for a revisit.
HOUSEKEEPING, MARILYNNE ROBINSON (1980)
My favorite novel. A book about the power of nature that kind of uses a pair of sisters, Ruth and Lucille, as a metaphor for that power. It’s told from Ruth’s point of view, and she feels a great chasm opening between her and Lucille; it’s the feeling of realizing that the relationship you had with your sister in childhood will not be preserved into adulthood, that a rupturing is coming; that the story of your life is not going to be one in which you are close with your sister. It feels Biblical, like an ancient tale: after their mother’s suicide, their mother’s vagabond sister Sylvie comes to town to raise these young girls, forever unable to match her sister’s place in their hearts or erase the pain of what she’s done to all of them. Sylvie’s very bad at living in the world, in a dark and frightening way. Her love for her nieces is cosmic; she’s trying and trying to beam the love their mother couldn’t give them through herself at every moment, and it’s like it’s sucking her life force. It becomes about Ruth and Sylvie feeling like they’ve each lost limbs, and they have to decide what they’re going to do with the fact that they share more than they ever did with their own sisters.
ALL MY PUNY SORROWS, MARIAM TOEWS (2014)
This book is fucked up!!!!! It’s about loving someone who deeply wants to die, and the unique pain of the emotional journey from wanting that person to stay alive to understanding why they need to leave the world. And also hating them for it, then hating yourself for being selfish and for being slightly less mentally ill than they are. It’s about the transference of an impossible, horrible feeling to the soul entwined with yours. It’s about the terror of seeing your sister as an entity distinct from you. I have never wept while reading, never ever ever, but this book got my ass.
Thank you so much Alexandra!! All My Puny Sorrows also got my ass. It’s so beautiful and devastating - I sobbed and I think about it often.
Other things going on… I’ve spent most of my free time bedazzling these Free Palestine tank tops as a fundraiser for people evacuating Gaza. I’ve made so many that the other day I wondered if I needed a headlamp to work more efficiently at night. I’m so grateful for the orders coming in and if you’re interested, please reach out! I would recommend reading this op-ed by Sally Rooney, this interview “The Social Media Project Humanizing Palestinians Killed By Israel, One Person at a Time” on LitHub and “The Children Who Lost Limbs in Gaza” in The New Yorker.
I just read Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg which I loved and have been listening to How Should a Person Be? By Sheila Heti and reading June Jordan’s poetry.
I hope that it feels like spring soon, that your day has a glimmer to it, that you catch the train at exactly the right time or find a dollar on the street or run into your crush when you know you look good -
Til next time!
Big kiss,
Ariél
So many things added to my goodreads…