Everything Is Not Okay
10 Bad Romance Books for Valentine's Day
I’m offline this week at my first ever writing residency! As an extrovert who gets a bit sad punchy with too much time alone, I’ve been looking forward to having structured time offline balanced by social interactions with other residents in the program.
More on this to come, but I wanted to sign back on in honor of Valentine’s Day to talk about one of my favorite things: love stories! Specifically, those in which all is not at all well.
Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff—I think this is my touchstone when I think of books in which, as you peel back the layers of a relationship, the whole thing begins to fall apart. It’s also deeply polarizing and a lot of people hate it. The novel tells the story of Lotto and Mathilde, both their individual upbringings and the genesis and ending of their relationship. It’s written with a very dark energy that I find hypnotic—when you read it, you enter a portal into some other, disturbing dimension.
Perfume and Pain, Anna Dorn—I love Anna Dorn’s writing—she’s so smart, compulsively readable, and wickedly funny—and I think P&P is her best. It’s a story of obsession and bad behavior, which picks up where lesbian pulps leave off.
Abandon Me, Melissa Febos—Continuing down the path of obsession, Abandon Me excavates different, intense forms of longing in the narrator’s life—for connection, family, and romantic love. The writing is lush and brings in so many great references—to The Wizard of Oz, David Bowie, Jung—I feel like my whole mind is activated reading this. The writing on love, obsession, and addiction is deeply nuanced.
Ways and Means, Daniel Lefferts—I’ve made it clear that I ride for this book and had to include it in a list of love stories where all is not okay. A throuple narrative interested in money and politics and is, perhaps, even more potent since the last election.
Blob, Maggie Su—I just spoke with Maggie Su for Interview and wanted to shout the book out here as well. When Vi finds a blob “the size of a dinner plate” in an alley outside of a bar, she brings it home. When she realizes it listens to her every command, she shapes it into the perfect boyfriend; this works until it doesn’t, of course, and the book asks how shaping someone in her own image brings out all her worst anxieties.
I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness, Claire Vaye Watkins—I don’t think I’ve ever written “whoa” in the margins of a book as much as I did reading this. The structure is inventive, and the play with truth in fiction is engaging. The heart of the story is her parents—her father’s history with the Manson Family and her mother’s ultimate death from the opioid crisis. The writing is rhythmic and lyrical, and every time I picked this book up I felt I was sinking into her world, I had to descend.
My Education, Susan Choi—Here’s another book written under the influence of biting obsession. Grad student Regina knows all about Professor Nicholas Brodeur’s charms, but it’s his wife who causes her to descend completely inside of a relationship that possesses her. The language can feel a bit dense and heady, and once I settled in, I found it propelled me through to the ending.
Your Driver is Waiting, Priya Guns—When Damani, a driver for an app, gives a ride to Jolene, the chemistry is undeniable. What unfolds between them is explosive. The novel has a fine-tuned sensibility about life in the gig economy and how well-meaning activism can often miss the mark. An exciting retelling of Taxi Driver. Both Damani and Jolene feel so well-rendered.
Dykette, Jenny Fran Davis—Dykette is a book that the more I think about, the more I get out of it—the thrift shop mirror and performance art scenes are incredibly original writing. I spoke with Jenny Fran Davis about the novel’s varying kinds of intimacy and relationships, and she said:
…maybe we can clear away certain things and maybe people come out in their full, naked desires, but…even the expression of those things can feel really superficial. I guess a big dynamic is exploring how can people be at once absolutely performative and absolutely sincere at the same time?
Kind of perfect in exploring all the complicated things people bring into their relationships.
The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro—I read this in my MFA and thought it was one of the most subtle, intricately crafted books I’ve read. I love the way it cycles through memory and time. Unspoken love is devastating. When I read, I thought it felt, in part, like a more subtle answer to Atonement. I’m also thinking about watching the movie for the first time.
Reference Section
Currently reading: I just read this slim book, Earthly Cities, that I picked up at the Danish Architecture Center. It’s written in a way that’s lyrical and is an involving read on the ways that cities have developed and how they need to transform to accommodate our new climate reality.
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