Reviews

This is my second Murakami book, and there’s a better than not chance it’ll be my last. Norwegian Wood seems well regarded by most people, reviews on Goodreads mention frequently that it is the book “everyone in Japan has read.” It has been recommended to me somewhat highly, though not always as a ‘good’ representation of Murakami’s broader ouevre. Unfortunately, the things I bumped against in my first Murakami read (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) are all here, and in huge force. There are maybe six major characters, and four of those are women. Our protagonist is good at most things, in that he has no trouble with school, no real problem finding work, seems to infatuate women, and apparently fucks so well that at least one of the female characters swears off sex afterwards. Do you think this sounds true to life? I’ll get back to the sex in a minute. ...

“Sex was the reply to any question.” There’s a lot of sex in this book, and a lot of it is quite hot to read. But it is not exactly smut. There is something in it of the loss of sense, the obliteration of the person by way of pleasure into nothingness. All that aside, a lot of it is also simply hot to read. I bought this without knowing anything about it in the NYRB sale. I saw the penis-graced cover (in what I will call an art style I do not like, apologies to the artist Louis Fratino), saw that it was apparently pretty gay, and figured why not. The back jacket has a quote from William S. Burroughs: ...

Ernaux’s short book exploring the knowledge of her sister, unknown to her and deceased before she was ever contemplated, let alone born. A chance overhearing shadows her life. I appreciated, as always, Ernaux’s cutting and raw writing. There is a little less in this one for me to grab onto, but I think we’re lucky to have the opportunity to go along with her as she processes these ideeas. ...

My journey with Ernaux continues. In this little memoir, Ernaux tracks her mother’s life from birth to death, and the impact it has on her. A sort of accompaniment to the previously published I Remain in Darkness, Ernaux further mines her experience of her mother’s death and broader impact on her life. Several years ago, my mother had some sort of medical scare. The words “congestive heart failure” were mentioned. It is one of the few times I’ve burst into tears at work, having to move myself into an empty examination room to let it pass. It was probably the first time I contemplated that my mother could die. I have suppressed these thoughts now for years. Ernaux describes here that she keeps expecting her mother to turn a corner, to appear as though still alive, and feels her absence acutely in what she no longer has to do. I was forced to imagine my Sundays without calling my mom at 11am, which has been a constant habit now for a long time. Sometimes these calls are a mere hour if one of us is depressed (usually, me). Sometimes the calls are snippy, fighty. Sometimes they are sad. Sometimes I am drunk on wine and horribly depressed, unable to hear any reassurance or hope. Sometimes my mom is reliving childhood trauma in a way that I wish I could not hear, but in which I know she has no outlet for otherwise. We complain about work, we talk about what we’ve watched or read that week. We talk about the difficult years of my childhood, when all of us were so stressed as to be barely functional. Sometimes I feel as though I don’t have the energy to have these calls on particular Sundays. But I can’t imagine them ending. ...

As soon as I finished Small Rain, or at least once I snapped out of the adoring daze in which it left me, I ordered copies of Greenwell’s other books, this along with Cleanness. The three share a loose continuity, with (apparently) the same unnamed narrator. This book following him through a few years spent in Bulgaria, as he entwines with and parts from Mitko. Greenwell’s prose is as lovely here as in Small Rain, and I sometimes re-read sentences just to soak in them. Elements feel so tangible and real that they risk implanting ‘false’ memories, or drawing out those that share kinship in your own life, reflecting and refracting off these written words. Such was the flash to our protagonist’s history with his father on page 72: ...

I picked this up sight-unseen from the NYRB sale earlier this month. I went in thinking it was going to be more of the ‘blue’ as in sadness, and maybe as a nice modern accompaniment to one of the other books I bought, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Not so! This little book ends up being quite a bit about fucking and fondling and writing about fucking and fondling. Fun! But actually that is oversimplifying it. Glass is interested in how we write about sex and how we write ‘dirty words’ in general, among other things. ...

This review contains a lot of discussion of sex, cruising, and other “NSFW” stuff. I would encourage you to NOT read it if that makes you uncomfortable. I suppose it’s my fault. I picked this book up hoping for something a little closer to smut than the navel-gazing that we so often receive from Betancourt in these pages. If nothing else, it has served as a splendid source for reading recommendations, there are dozens and dozens of references to books, essays, films. Several of the essays are more or less about (or use to great length as framing) films or works of art as a device by which the author can reflect on relationship and sex dynamics. Some are interesting. Some are quite boring and annoying. ...

Gabor Maté is someone I’ve heard about occasionally over the years, probably for the first time when I read Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score,” which I’m pretty sure mentions him. I’ve never looked closely into his writing or speaking. His name was mentioned to me in therapy recently and like any good student I bought a book and went to reading. The book was published in 2003, so parts of it do feel a bit dated. GM introduces the term biopsychosocial in this text as though it is a new thing, and possibly it would be for the lay reader. As a social worker, it’s a term I’ve heard and practiced around for years. Much of GM’s theory on stress—disease connection would feel comfortable in the social work practice, I think. Many of the stories within feel familiar to experiences from my life, and the logic of it generally tracks for me. ...

I first read about Clancy Martin’s memoir sitting at the breakfast bar of a local restaurant. At the time I went every Sunday and read the New York Times Book Review. Whatever Sunday that happened to be, I read Alexandra Jacobs’ review and added it to my to-be-read list. I haven’t thought about the book much even as I’ve read several other texts on suicide and suicidal ideation over the few years since. Having now read it, I can scratch my head at Jacobs’ review and wonder: is this, in fact, a review? ...

I’ve been eyeballing Greenwell’s bluecovered Small Rain since the hardback hit my local bookstore’s shelves in 2024. I felt it reaching out for me, I could tell it would be sad and I didn’t know what flavour that sadness would be. I finally bought a copy a few months ago and have let it set on the living room table, to stare at for a few weeks, then I put it on my TBR shelf, away from the other up-next books that usually stack on that table. A few weeks ago I finished a book and without thinking at all I went to the shelf and pulled it down. Something about me knew it was time. Reading the first page, I started to worry—the writing is near-stream-of-consciousness, a style that exhausted me recently reading Mrs. Dalloway. Then, on the last line of the first page, that equally exhausting word: pandemic. ...