This week: Unconscious coupling
Careful who you choose
It’s EELS again! If you’re just joining us, you can expect a few book recommendations that you can add to your queue or toss into your brain’s wastebasket! Your call!
🌦️ Really Good, Actually
Monica Heisey, 2023
As a Once Divorced person, I often find very little to relate to in popular divorce narratives. Lots of them follow the same general trajectory of heartbreak -> rock bottom -> running up that hill -> Julie Andrews spinning on an Alp. And because mine wasn’t like that (why would it be? People are different!), I spent the first 50 pages or so of Maggie’s newly single existence with nostrils haughtily flared. But by the end I was reading this while attempting to cook with my other hand, which is a sign that it got me good.
I think the point, really, is that identity crises—whether they come from divorce or bereavement or job loss or any big change—are difficult, relatable, and, if given the Monica Heisey treatment, extremely funny.
Recommended to: Those who want to laugh at themselves and others.
The protagonist should have chosen: Maybe just her friends—they seemed cool.
🚂 Less is Lost
Andrew Sean Greer, 2022
I’ll be honest. I only liked the first in this series, Less, though I was excited this warm little tale —about a hapless, gay, not-very-famous author trying to figure out if he deserves to be loved— nabbed the Pulitzer in 2017. But I loved the sequel, which can certainly be read as a standalone book if you don’t feel like doing your due diligence. Less is back, haplessly searching again, but it hangs together differently this time.
Recommended to: Those who need inspiration to go ahead and let the most basic things in life charm your socks off—or just those who want a smile-inducing read.
The protagonist should have chosen: Oh no, his choices turned out to be good ones.
🐁 The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins, 1859-1860
Did you know that Wilkie Collins was NOT an adorably-named lady and was in fact a very bearded pal of Charles Dickens? This book is rather a soap opera, but the good kind, with mistaken identity and pretend invalid uncles and extremely clever manipulative villains.
Since this was serially published, with all the gripping cliffhangers that entails, we can pardon its obscene length (600 million hours long, in audiobook terms). Or I can, anyway, but I’ve got a very, very high tolerance for people being accosted near a hedge or leaving an opera early because of a pressing sense of unease.
Recommended to: Those who alternate between quiet Victorian miniseries and action-packed dramas. There’s almost, but not quite, a harrowing carriage chase scene!
Recommended format: Audiobook, the way the narrator does Invalid Uncle makes me laugh every time I think about it.
The protagonist should have chosen: Marian. Wilkie Collins, despite his darling name, didn’t seem to like women much, and the hero chooses the beautiful, fainting, useless sister when the awesome, useful sister is RIGHT THERE. She’s got a knockout body, says Walter Hartright, but her face!
Favorite cookbook these days
🍳 Vietnamese Food Any Day: Simple Recipes for True, Fresh Flavors — Andrea Nguyen, 2019
This is like the food of a very nice restaurant, but in my house, and cheaper.
And now, a bonus recommendation
👾 Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin, 2022
Recommended to: “Those who like to alternate between clutching their chest, cackling out loud, sighing pensively, and feeling like the ground they’re standing on is exactly where they’re supposed to be, all throughout one book.”
Recommended by: Morgan, who runs a vintage shop, likes to pretend to review restaurants, works with me 🐸 , and has recently loved Red at the Bone, Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, and Cheese Sex Death: A Bible for the Cheese Obsessed.
Thanks for reading the very second EELS! Send any and all questions, feedback, and shouted book recommendations to me by hitting reply!
– Susan