It's hot and I wanna read books

Thoughts on FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE, SUCH A FUN AGE, and THE FUTURE

I’m gonna wager that no matter where you are, it’s hot as hell. Or has been recently or will be in a few days. Hot as hell = just the right weather for curling up with a good book—or throwing one in your suitcase as you set off for adventure and hopefully cooler climes.

Summer reads are largely an invention of the publishing marketing machine, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking about books that’ll suck you in and entertain you while you sweat at home (or better yet on a beach). Today I want to mention a few delightfully devourable books to add to your TBR (To Be Read) list.

According to the publicity folks, we want our summer reads to be light and fun. I have no objection to this, except perhaps to remind you that actually you can read whatever kind of book you want to read at any time of year. You wanna go light? Go light! And keep going light after Labor Day if you want. There’s no law that says come September you gotta pick up War and Peace (#stillhaven’treadit).

If you want something fun and frothy this summer, I recommend FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. This is a very readable, funny exploration of the a few folks in midlife struggle: Toby, the recently divorced doctor and dad; Elizabeth, a suburban, stay-at-home mom who is also our narrator; and their rich friend Seth, unmarried though always in possession of a much younger, very beautiful girlfriend.

Here’s Elizabeth introducing herself and her life to us:

I signed up for soccer leagues in time for the season cutoff, which was months before you’d even think of enrolling a child in soccer, and then organized their attendant carpools. I planned playdates and barbecues and pediatric dental checkups and adult dental checkups and plain old internists and plain old pediatricians and hair salon treatments and educational testing and cleats-buying and art class attendance and pediatric ophthalmologist and adult ophthalmologist and now, suddenly, mammograms. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner. I made breakfast. I made lunch. I made dinner.

I just love these sentence structure choices: the very long one followed by short, punchy, repetitive ones. The cherry on top is the pattern interruption: lunch, dinner, breakfast; lunch, dinner, breakfast; lunch, dinner. That lack of completion creates some discomfort in the reader, a bodily signal that this wheel of duty goes on and on and on.

In addition to being funny, Brodesser-Akner does some clever things with point of view. Elizabeth is largely our cameraman, spending the first half of the book mostly on Toby’s life (marriage, divorce, adventures on the dating scene—delightfully raunchy!). In the second half of the book, although the point of view never changes, the camera lands more squarely on Elizabeth and Toby’s ex in surprising ways. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the book does get a bit more serious toward the end, but the characters and story are so rich I think it’s worth it.

If you already read and loved FLEISHMAN, good news: Brodesser-Akner’s new book is out now. It’s called LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE and Kirkus Reviews describes it as “a great American Jewish novel whose brew of hilarity, heartbreak, and smarts recalls the best of Philip Roth.” SIGN ME UP.

Another quick read is Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. I’m slow even to get to books as wildly successful and well-liked as this one, and as always, reading them later provides some interesting contrast. This book explicitly explores race and racism: the main characters are Emira, a 25 year old Black babysitter from a lower socioeconomic class than the Chamberlains, the rich white family she works for. The book was published in 2019 (which means she finished it in 2018) and I wouldn’t call it dated but it’s strange how a book that was written less than 10 years ago can seem like an artifact.

Although the subject matter is not light, the book is a quick and easy read, in part because the narrative is very scene driven and each scene is laden with propulsive tension. I’m guessing you’ve already read this book, but it is worth going back to it to look more closely all the exquisite scene work. Reid effortlessly renders characters and amps up the tension, orchestrating small shifts through gesture, expression, and detail.

Here’s Emira on the train, running into Kelley, the white guy who videotaped the inciting incident of the book:

“I’ve gotta know if you quit or not,” [he said].

Emira was still startled by his very tall and friendly presence. She crossed her standing legs and said, “Sorry, what?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I was curious if you quit your nanny job.”

Kelley Copeland was so tall that he could press his hands flat against the top of the subway car, which is was what he did in front of Emira. Emira thought this was both a painfully obvious show of masculinity and also insanely attractive.

As with all good scenes, two separate things are happening here—each character has a very different agenda. He is probing about her job. She is realizing she’s attracted to him. Reid uses the physical description to get to emotion and interiority.

“I’m hoping you got a raise at the very least.”

Emira swiped a strand of hair out of her lashes and the zipper at her sleeve jingled delightfully. She smiled and said, “They took care of me.”

Kelley leaned both of his hands on the bar above Emira’s head. “Where are you going now?” he asked.

Emira raised an eyebrow. She looked up at him and couldn’t help by think, really? It was Kelley’s casual determination…that gave her the spirit to think, You know what? Fuck it.

This, by the way, is not the end of the scene—it goes on for several more pages. They meet up with her friends and there are more characters introduced and quick turns of emotion and attraction. Reid is a master of patience and adjustment.

She also shifts POV very dexterously. In the book’s climactic scene, we get the same moments from multiple people’s POVs without it feeling slow or clumsy. The book itself is unsettling, unsatisfying, which I think is a function of the topic—have you ever read a book about systemic racism and implicit bias that made you feel OK? Yeah, that’s not the point at all. The point is Reid took on a tough topic and with vivid characters and riveting scenes made it almost enjoyable to read about. It’s not one to miss.

Like Brodesser-Akner, Reid also has a book out this year, COME AND GET IT (pubbed in January), which also is about “money, indiscretion, and bad behavior.” I bet some of you have already read it—would love to hear your thoughts!

Lastly I would like to recommend to you the opposite of a fun, frothy summer read: Naomi Alderman’s THE FUTURE. This book is dark as hell—it’s about tech billionaires and the apocalypse—but it has an amazing structure and plot, with plenty of surprises and reversals, my favorite kind of read. And although the subject matter is grim, there is so much gorgeous, insightful writing, which I will let speak for itself. Here are just a few random passages that spoke to me.

The internet of Medlar and Fantail and Anvil was designed to cut away the middle. There were no clicks or eyeballs in the sensible, reasoned middle group, and all the money in the world in encouraging users to rush to treat the extremes as if they were the center.

This is always the secret; this was how these technology fortunes had been made: make it all so easy and enjoyable and frictionless that you never start to ask yourself the big questions about whether this is really how you want to be spending your life.

Late in the book, we meet Marius, a Romanian professor who gives a hilarious screed on how humans have misunderstood technology (made funnier by Alderman’s representation of his article-less English). Here’s just a hint:

Whole human race has fucking death wish, wants to replace itself…Now: dream is robot brain, perfect person. This is not what people are. People imperfect! Imperfections beautiful! Perfect is machine dream. We feel shit and small all day long…if we try to think like machine. Like trying to run next to car…Car is just tool, goes fast brum-brum, very exciting. Person is person. Why don’t we start by knowing that people is valuable already?”

And although the book is mostly catastrophe, there are some breathtaking moments of beauty:

That night she stood on the promontory and watched the sunset across the jungle. Red-and-gold mackerel clouds over the tree canopy, then dim embers in the sky and then utter dark. The wordless world was always there now. She had only to dip into it and quench her thirst.

There was no future now; time did not point as an arrow, it was a spiral around the seasons again and again until one day her bones would sink into the earth and her flesh would get us to start some other life again. Well. Good.

If you missed either this book or Alderman’s earlier novel THE POWER, do not delay.

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Recently my imaginary best friend Gabrielle Zevin—if you haven’t read TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW, you MUST—said something I wholeheartedly agree with:

I frequently don’t finish books. I like to dip in and out of things. It isn’t necessarily the book’s fault. That said, I will never criticize publicly a book that I didn’t finish. It’s part of my moral code.

Preach, Gabi (can I call you Gabi??). I don’t believe in ragging on any book that a human being worked really hard to write. Perhaps the only exception is Lessons in Chemistry, but my conclusion there was mostly not for me, which is how I think of most books I put down and/or don’t like.

Every book isn’t supposed to be for everyone. But the book you’re writing is for someone—I promise.