Monday Miscellany: This is all there has ever been

Notes from November 18 - 24

Nov 25, 2024

Happy Monday, everyone! My household was up earlier than usual today to drop off our wee Phoebe at the vet for a dental appointment. I didn’t love setting a pre-7am alarm on a day when I wasn’t opening the coffee shop, but it was nice to see the sun rise, and on our way home we picked up bagels to reward ourselves for our fortitude.

I’m always a bit on edge when one of our pets has to go under anesthesia, but we’ve already received word that she did wonderfully and is in recovery, so whew, I can breathe again. Time to tell you about what I read this week!

Currently reading

Going into Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, I was a little nervous. I’ve read all of her previous books and enjoyed them to varying degrees, but the reviews I’d seen for this new one were mixed; some folks called it her best yet, while others complained about the writing style. Granted, it is definitely a departure—a lot of the focus in her earlier novels is on the dating lives of twenty-somethings, and this one, while it does have a couple of romantic plot lines, largely centers on the relationship between two brothers in the wake of their father’s death. Chapters alternate between their perspectives, Ivan’s and Peter’s, and the voice is noticeably different in each: Peter’s sections are the ones I’d been cautioned about, written in a choppy, fragmented style, with little warmth or interiority, while Ivan’s feel much more thoughtful and fleshed out. I preferred Ivan’s point of view but didn’t think Peter’s was as frustrating or annoying as some reviewers warned, and I actually found that he grew on me as the story went along. I also loved Margaret, the woman that Ivan meets at a chess exhibition early in the book.

Margaret feels that she can perceive the miraculous beauty of life itself, lived only once and then gone forever, the bloom of a perfect and impermanent flower, never to be retrieved. This is life, the experience, this is all there has ever been. (183)

I’m solidly in the “best Rooney yet” camp. I appreciated the maturity of this novel, the examination of grief and how it affects us and those we love. Intermezzo has a pleasant weight to it, both relatable and beautiful in its bittersweet complexity. If you, like me, are an emotional girlie who likes reading about and pondering the messiness of being a human in relationship to other humans, I highly recommend it.

The Spite House by Johnny Compton was one of my Bookmarks festival purchases after I heard Compton speak on a couple of horror panels and found him super engaging and entertaining. It’s about a father and his two daughters, who are on the run from something mysterious in their past when they stumble upon a lucrative job that involves living in an allegedly haunted house for a while and reporting back to the owner about any supernatural activity they experience. The story took a while to get going, but once it did, it was pretty fast-paced and spooky! I’m not sure the ending completely worked for me—some of the reveal and explanation felt a little clunky and overcomplicated. But overall, it’s a fun time that’s especially well-suited to the autumn months. A few of my friends are also reading it and I’m looking forward to our discussion.

Finally, this week I revisited The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead because (1) it was the October pick for The Stacks book club, and (2) the film adaptation hits theaters next month! It’s a story about a lightly fictionalized Florida reform school called Nickel Academy, and it’s written in dual timelines that jump between the 1960s and the 2010s, largely focusing on a couple of students named Elwood and Turner. After this reading, I stand by my original review from 2019, when I called it “captivating and well-written… with a twist toward the end that I absolutely wasn’t expecting.” Five years later, I was still “horrified, but not surprised, every time I remembered that what I was reading was based on true events that occurred at a real reform school.” It’s a really tough hang (content warnings for racism, child abuse, and child death, among others), but also an incredibly important piece of writing.

A legally-required heads-up: if you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. ♥︎

Currently listening

Most of my headphone time this week was spent on podcasts, but one day I did cycle through Francis of Delirium’s new EP, The Soft Versions (2024) a few times. It consists of five tracks from Lighthouse, which I wrote about back in September (one of my top albums of the year for sure), all stripped down and gentle. I’m most partial to “Real Love” and “Something’s Changed,” probably because those are two of my favorites from the original album, but all of them are understated and dreamy—perfect for a rainy day, a cold-weather walk, or a coffee shop hang with a sketchpad or journal.

And another thing

Louise, temporarily an only child and drunk on the feeling, would like to inform you that she is now in charge of this newsletter, and that from here on out we’re pivoting to an exclusive lineup of cat-related think-pieces. She has started drafting something called “What to Do When It’s Already 5am and Your Human Shows No Sign of Getting Up to Feed You.” So far the body of the post just says “yell.”