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Now this is a story! I’d reserved a copy of Melissa Broder’s book The Pisces at the library, but since it wasn’t immediately available, I opted to start with her most recent release, Death Valley. I wasn’t impressed, but The Pisces came so highly recommended that I was still looking forward to reading it. I was not disappointed.

First, many people did not like this book. After I finished I perused the reviews and found that people hated the MC, who by her own admission is a completely fucked up asshole, and therefore decided to give the book one star. This boggles my mind. The purpose of fiction is to pull you into a story and allow you to think, feel, and experience the world through a different lens. If you hated the main character of the book, it’s because the author was SUCCESSFUL at making you feel things about them. Like, what? Some of the best books I’ve ever read were about terrible people.

Anyway, yes, Lucy – the main character – is a dick. She’s neurotic, selfish, and terrible at relationships. She’s also an academic (natch) and has been working on her thesis about Sappho for over a decade. The book starts with her pretending to break up with her longtime boyfriend, just to ‘shake things up’ a little, and is dismayed when he agrees it’s a good idea. She freaks out, breaks his nose, and then goes to California to stay at her sister’s glamorous Venice Beach house to get away. Whilst in L.A., she joins a therapy group for women who don’t know how to love (or be loved) and who all manifest this in various self-destructive ways (which I found highly entertaining).

Lucy forms a bond with her sister’s dog, a creature in whom she begins to see unconditional love. She finds joy in nurturing and being nurtured, but this relationship is quickly sabotaged by the discovery of a hot guy out for a swim one night when she walks down to the beach. The two of them have an instant chemistry, and Lucy is sucked into a powerful, erotic relationship with what turns out to be… a merman. Yes. That’s right. A merman. Half sexy human, half sexy…fish.

Now, look. This could have gone badly. Erotic fiction featuring mythical sea creatures isn’t exactly the kind of thing I seek out, but I love magical realism, and I’m down for almost anything as long as it’s done well. And it is! It’s a testament to Broder as a writer that such an absurd conceit doesn’t detract from the novel’s underlying messages and themes. The relationship that forms between Lucy and her handsome fish-man is at once an epiphany and an escape from the harsh reality of Lucy’s deficiencies, leading her to increasingly ignore her sister’s dog and withdraw further from any healthy connections she has with other people.

Broder’s prose is quintessentially Millennial, her characters are self-aware even as they flail and drown in their own dysfunction. Her descriptions of sex (and other bodily functions) are unapologetically frank, riddled with self-depreciation, and ridiculously graphic – none of which is a negative, in my personal opinion.

Ultimately, after a heart-wrenching climax, Lucy is presented with a choice about how to proceed with her life…and love. She has to choose whether to pursue the idea of love that leads to her destruction, or to embrace the un-fun, unsexy, day-to-day relationships that, while void of ecstatic orgasms and the promise of being possessed, are where her true humanity lies.

The Q Review: www.amandaquraishi.com/the-q-review/

“Constipation was one of the things she hated most in the world, on par with despicable men who commit domestic violence and narrow-minded religious fundamentalists.”

People seem divided on Murakami. His stories don’t always feel “right” to western audiences because we’re used to certain fictional tropes and have expectations for how stories are told based on our own cultural framing. I’ve read a couple other books by him and honestly, they were ok. But this book? This book blew me away. My personal reaction is based on how much of this story feels like it was taken from my own life, so I’m not sure there’s any way for me to be objective about it. There were times when I was reading it felt like it had been written specifically for me. 1Q84 is magical realism at it’s finest. Disorienting, often poetic, and unpredictable; I couldn’t stop. It stayed with me for weeks after I was finished. I’ll probably read it again next year. And maybe every year after that.

When buying used books at a thrift store there’s very little chance of finding the exact titles on my ‘to read’ list; but for as little as $1.99 I can pick up five random volumes for around ten dollars, and even if only one of them turns out to be a winner, it’s worth the trip.

Crocodile Soup by Julia Darling leapt out at me from the shelf surrounded by other tattered, abandoned paperbacks not quite good enough to resell on Amazon. I’d never heard of Darling, but the cover has a quirky, retro style and an artist’s rendering of a bowl of red-orange tomato soup with a small green crocodile swimming in the center. I flipped through its pages and noticed several short chapters, some less than a page long. I figured, if nothing else I’d be able to quickly determine whether or not to keep reading. (I have very little compunction over abandoning novels that don’t turn me on.) In fact, this book turned out to be such a delight, it has inspired me to start a new category of blog posts called “Q Reviews” so I could document the cool shit I’ve been reading without having to depend on Goodreads (a website that I consider toxic and weird) to keep track of my reviews.

Crocodile Soup is about a thirty-something queer woman named Gert who works in a museum and is estranged from her mother. With a narrative alternating between the ‘present’ and the past, we learn about Gert’s life, her adventures growing up, and her internal struggle to resolve whatever has happened between her and her mom. We also see her struggle with mental health, relationships and her career. In short, Gert is a weird but lovable hot mess.

Darling was also a poet, so despite the contemporary subject-matter and quirkiness of the characters, the prose in this novel has a lovely, musical quality about it:

“In the evening the two women laughed so loudly that the china dinner sets rattled in the cupboards. Mabel was unmooring Jean. She was quite oblivious to the fact that she was a mother.Frank looked at the two women as if they were shooting stars.Sometimes Jean stopped laughing and her eyes rested on Frank as if she had just found a shell on a beach.She looked at me as if I was a letter she had forgotten to post.”

The entire story has an unabashed absurdity that tips over into the surreal, tinged with melancholy and expressed with precise language that will have you going back and re-reading sections just because they are so fresh and well-composed.

After finishing, I went to look up Julia Darling with the intention of following her on social media. I found out she was from the UK and grew up in the house where Jane Austen lived at the time of her death. Darling herself died in the 90s from breast cancer. She’d written both poetry and fiction and won some prestigious awards and was well-regarded by her peers. Initially I was disappointed that she was no longer living so I could thank her for her book, but I quickly began to marvel at how alive this writing made me feel – and how incredible it is that someone can still impact the lives of others even after they’re gone from this world.

This, I decided, is why we write.

I'm not sure why I chose to pick up One Hundred Years of Solitude this year. I've got a running list of classic literature that I incorporate into my regular reading. Primarily to compensate for my lack of education, but also because I enjoy understanding cultural references in art that have had an impact on society and culture. Marquez's novel, widely considered one of the most important works of the 20th century and a preeminent example of the Latin American Boom, definitely qualifies as impactful, and it's been on my 'classics to read' list for years.

Often, when I read "great" books, I'll end up finishing out of obligation. I appreciate the form and recognize that literature isn't necessarily made for "the masses" to enjoy. So, even though I'm comfortable not finishing contemporary or genre fiction that doesn't spark my interest, I'll push through on the classics because it's more about self-educating than entertainment for me. That said, when I actually do come across a piece of classic literary fiction that grabs hold of me, capturing my imagination and my heart, it's nothing short of an epiphany. Such is my experience reading One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I'll start by saying that I did no preparatory reading and went into it completely ignorant of the plot, style, and meaning. Just picked it up like any ordinary, everyday rube and started reading. Almost immediately, the words cast a spell.

I quickly discovered that it is filled with so much sensual detail you get sucked into it without any effort. It's exactly like a dream - surreal, and even though you know it's not actually happening, you're experiencing it as if you're there. So caught up do you become in the details that you don't realize until the very end that this is not a dream, but a vision. It's a whole knowing that you arrive at without any idea that this is where you were headed the whole time. You feel like you've been wandering, exploring, only to discover that the conductor of the train has been taking you to a particular place.

The story follows the Buendía family through several generations in their hometown of Macondo. During this time, we see the march of 'progress' and the impact of colonialism, technology, and modernity in a South American context. The novel is written in the style of magical realism, treating time as a circular and malleable entity, giving the reader a profound sense of déjà vu throughout. Additionally, the names of the characters are reused in each generation, which adds a delicious layer of disorientation to the narrative. As the years pass, we see repeated symbolism and imagery that fire the imagination and tell another story beyond words, between the lines.

While all the characters were fascinating, the one who captured my heart was the matriarch, Ursula, who is the common thread through each generation of Buendías. This is her story, because this is her family. She sets the terms of belonging, enforces or expands boundaries, and keeps everything running for a century while those around her rise and fall. Marquez has managed to produce the most powerful portrait of womanhood I've read in years: a mother willing to compromise almost anything to survive and support her family.

Honestly, I'm overwhelmed. It's beyond any hype I've ever heard. It ensnares you before you realize how deep you are into it. Every word, every detail feels important, because it is. Because it's about what it means to exist, and also, to not. This book is an actual masterpiece. I not only love it, I've fallen in love with it, and consider it one of the best books I've ever read. It has changed my perception of writing and storytelling in general. What a gift.

There is so much to this novel that I found it helpful to watch the following online commentary after finishing: "How to Read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez" by Benjamin McEvoy.

This is my first encounter with Melissa Broder. I really want to read The Pisces, but it wasn't available yet, so I put it on hold and opted for this one instead. I love surrealism, magical realism, unlikable characters, and the desert, so I figured I'd love this. It was a decent read, but it fell short of my expectations.

There are a few things to like about Death Valley: the MC/protagonist is snarky and self-aware and kind of an asshole - a winning combination in my opinion. Her first-person narration didn't try to make excuses for her dysfunction. Or her weird habit of talking to herself and inanimate objects. All good stuff. The setting is my favorite part of this book. Broder captures the arid, lackadaisical-until-it-tries-to-kill-you vibe of the desert, and the quirkiness of the people who usually inhabit it.

The plot revolves around a woman writer who goes to the desert to decompress and 'get out of L.A.' as her father recovers in the ICU. She's also dealing with a chronically ill husband and a neurotic mother, which she reflects upon at length with candor. While she's in Death Valley, she stays at a Best Western - a hotel chain that I can only assume paid to have itself promoted in this novel because it serves no real purpose (aside from being a mid hotel where she's staying), considering how often it's named in throughout the book. Before she leaves Death Valley, the woman takes one more hike to try to find a giant cactus she'd seen previously, and ends up getting lost in the desert. She survives, finds the cactus, and then has a strange, surreal encounter with it or, rather, in it.

There is so much potential in this plot, but I'm sorry to say it didn't quite get there. The characters felt two-dimensional, and the psychedelic aspect of her encounter with the cactus felt more like a weird dream than the life-altering experience it's meant to be.

There are some touching reflections on the process of death and dying, as well as poignant narration around familial and romantic relationships. I just didn't care that much about any of the characters and found the main character emotionally flat and self-absorbed - and not in the good, existential crisis kind of way. I wanted to like her, but she was kind of a drag.

Anyway, it was a decent read and I'm not sorry I read it. The good news is that The Pisces came up right after I finished this, so I'm giving Broder's writing another chance. I've heard good things about her novels, and I really want to love them.

On the surface, this is the kind of book I would see online, post some snarky, cynical comment about, and then ignore. I'd never even heard of Sandra Brown, but the book was suggested as part of a 'Texas writers' book list, and the synopsis looked ok, and I urgently needed a new read, so I checked it out. Only after I finished did I discover that Sandra Brown is a prolific writer whose novels are mostly of the cloyingly romantic or suspenseful, in a Dateline re-enactment kind of way. She's basically a Texas-based combination of Danielle Steel and Ruth Rendell.

Anyway, I'm glad I didn't know all this when I picked it, because I'd never have even considered reading Rainwater if I had.

This book is sweet. Like, genuinely, authentically sweet. Set in Depression-era Texas, its the story of a young, single mother named Ella with a young autistic-coded boy named Solly. Ella runs a boarding house and carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. When a kindly man named Mr. Rainwater moves in, he begins to win over Solly with his gentle friendliness and patience. Before long, Ella starts to rely on Mr. Rainwater, who is written as the perfect 'strong, silent' archetype. I won't spoil the plot because it unfolds so nicely, but suffice it to say that romance develops between them amidst a larger, politically charged context, and underlining it all are Ella's fears around the fate of little Solly and what will happen to him when she's gone.

Honestly, Rainwater is such a well-written novel. I kept waiting for something to offend me socially or politically, but it never came. Instead, I was treated to a very human story driven by characters I could get invested in. The romance was actually romantic. The bittersweet ending was perfect. I loved it, and I'm glad my discriminating mind didn't let this one slip past me.

Sometimes it's ok to take a risk on a book or author you've never heard of. It doesn't always work out well, of course, but when it does - what a treat!