You're going to love Dykette
Jenny Fran Davis shares her favorite books
Of course Dykette is a Taurus. Jenny Fran Davis’ debut novel Dykette is fun, gossipy, hilarious and gay. Like, so fucking gay. It’s about three couples (three mascs and three femmes) who go upstate to Hudson for ten days for a chaotic, pressure cooker of a trip. There’s pink-hued erotic performance art, a Rachel Maddow inspired butch, competition amongst femmes, gay sex and drama. It’s a propulsive read that will make you laugh out loud and an incisive look at a particular queer subculture. Needless to say, I adore it.
When I read the line “The story of the Grinch is ultimately the story of a cunt with a growth mindset.” I was both immediately in love with and extremely jealous of Jenny - very dykette of me! I’m still furious I didn’t write that line but I’m more glad that this book exists in the world for you to enjoy.
I interviewed Jenny for Electric Lit about how being femme influenced the writing of Dykette, her charismatic pug Lois and desire as a driving force of the novel. She is an absolute delight. A few weeks later I made an emergency post on Instagram for someone to watch my beloved chihuahuas, Frida and George, for the day and she responded. I met her IRL for the first time by dropping my dogs in her care. Which, if you know me, is saying a lot as my life revolves around my dogs. She opened the door wearing pink with winged eyeliner and sent me text updates throughout the day that made me laugh out loud like “George just stuck his entire arm in Lois’ mouth” and “George is essentially riding Lois like a horse”. Then I bought her a mezcal soda to thank her and a few weekends ago participated in a very horny, Marie Antoinette, femme fever dream photo shoot for the book that was billed to be as “a picnic”. Like…?!?!
Anyway, this is all to say that Jenny is a real treat who is now a friend and I’m so excited for her book to be out for you to read. If you like this newsletter, you’ll love Dykette. I know it. I asked Jenny to share some of her favorite books with us and lucky for all of us, she provided a smart, eclectic, collection. I wouldn’t expect anything else!
Please enjoy… All The Things Jenny (and Lois) Said
At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard
Joyce Maynard’s memoir about the two years that she spent under J.D. Salinger’s thumb in the 1970s—beginning with dropping out of Yale at 18 to live with him (then in his 50s) in rural New Hampshire, following his strict raw-meat diet and submitting herself to his treatments for her alleged frigidity, and going on to detail the aftermath of this affair on her adult life—is both a feminist reckoning and the story of a writer’s coming of age. Who are we outside of the people who have shaped us? How can one write the story of oneself without implicating other people? When the memoir was published in 1998, Maynard was widely accused of cashing in on her association with the more famous writer, but in the wake of the #MeToo movement, readers have returned to Maynard’s book with fresh eyes. I love this book because of its settings—free-love Yale, frigid New Hampshire in 1972, a townhouse on the Upper West Side—and its irreverent, deeply honest voice.
Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford
I’ve read this book so many times that I can recite several passages from memory. The campy classic never disappoints, and seems to hit the spot regardless of my mood. The legendary Joan Crawford, 1930s Hollywood star, adopted the infant Christina in 1939 as a single woman (very rare in the day!), and promptly plopped her in a bassinette in her Brentwood mansion. Christina’s long-ranging memoir spans the politics of Hollywood in the 1940s (including a run-in with Shirley Temple!), Joan Crawford’s many romantic entanglements, and the infamous abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother. (“No wire hangers!”) The book is engrossing, addictive, and filled with picture-perfect (and perfectly creepy) details.
This novel is one of the first that details the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Wang’s narrator, Joan, is filled with pathos, delicious awkwardness, and hilariously deadpan asides; you’ll fall in love with her immediately and genuinely miss her when the book ends. The plot is simple, following a successful yet lonely (or is she?) doctor who loves her job and struggles to make friends and put up with her status- and wealth-driven brother and his socialite wife, whose Greenwich compound Wang details in hilarious detail. The book truly has it all, and the picture it draws of humanity moved me to tears at one point (which almost never happens).
Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
The poet Natasha Trethewey’s memoir about the lingering impact of her mother’s murder at the hands of a boyfriend is a meditation on race, femininity, and domestic violence. The book feels like driving down a long, winding road that returns again and again to images, instances, and words that help the narrator assemble meaning in such a devastating event. Read it slowly. Tretheway’s poetic, mesmerizing prose drew me in and I had a really hard time putting this book down when it was time to do anything else. This one is devastatingly sad, heartbreakingly beautiful, and really mind-expanding. It stayed with me long after I finished it.
Jackie Under My Skin by Wayne Koestenbaum
Koestenbaum is a gay experimental writer whose work I’ve always enjoyed, but Jackie Under My Skin is really something else. Taking as its subject Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the book makes as much meaning as it possibly can in every inch of Jackie, from her physical body to her clothing to the images and myths surrounding her. It’s a fantastic exercise in detail, and the book creates an exhilarating space where there’s no limit to the amount of analysis one can do about even the smallest thread. It’s fun, shocking, and irritatingly smart.
Thank you so much Jenny for these incredible recommendations! My friend Marissa Higgins also did a great interview with Jenny at The Millions that I’d recommend. It’s such a joy to get a glimpse of others’ bookshelves, especially someone whom I first met through their writing. As for me, I just read The Guest by Emma Cline which is a perfect dark beach read and just started The Seas by Samantha Hunt as an audiobook.
Go buy Dykette - and maybe some flowers, too!
Talk soon-
xo,
Ariél
Caro beat me buying now
oooh buying now