The Overstory by Richard Powers
The overall story of The Overstory: women are difficult. Men are enchanted by them. Trees are mystical and majestic beings and they shouldn’t be cut down because they’re mystical and majestic. This happens for 200 years, give or take, and will keep happening. End of (Over)story.
I’m glad that Richard Powers wanted to make mainstream the fact that trees are far from nonmoving and nonspeaking objects. Still, the book’s mysticizing drivel of trees’ “supernatural voices” and “ancient wisdom” muddies his good intentions. Cloying romance limits what could otherwise be beautiful and true.
Between the pages, you can read a weird sort of lust, whether for The Overstory’s manic pixie dreamgirl character or the image of trees as sacred sages. To Powers, is trees’ imagined “magic” the only thing that makes them worth saving? Much of the book is inundated with lust for a certain kind of woman’s body, a certain kind of tree, a certain way of writing. You can practically feel the sex drive in some paragraphs. Freaky.
I was frustrated by Powers’ dedication to making certain characters and trees beautiful and thus valuable. It’s tired. What happened to Pulitzer Prize winners being complicated, nuanced? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The Fiction committee loves a saga.
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
For Lydia, it begins like this: her father, James Lee, born in the US to parents of Chinese, falls in love with one of his students, Marilyn Walker. How could he not? All he wants is to fit in, and Marilyn embodies the ideal of the perfect American wife. But Marilyn sees herself differently. She dreams of becoming a doctor, of standing out, just as James does.
It ends like this: Marilyn falls pregnant, and her ambitions are swept aside. Meanwhile, James’ heritage costs him greatly, faces countless rejections before reluctantly taking a teaching position in small-town Ohio.
This may seem like an overwritten trope, except Christine Ng writes with an unforgiving clarity that makes you squirm. She reshapes the narrative into something painfully raw, unravelling the layers surrounding Lydia’s mysterious death until readers can’t help but until readers can’t help but point fingers at every character. Suddenly, her death doesn’t seem all that accidental.
Every character is revealed to be messy, selfish, and all too real. James wants Lydia to be popular. Marilyn wants Lydia to live out the life she couldn’t. Nobody asks Lydia what she wants. Her siblings are sidelined, and the result? Everyone’s miserable, and Lydia’s at the bottom of a lake.
Everything I Never Told You: beautiful, devastating, and a little too close to home. Read it—then call your parents.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a masterclass in self-absorption, a relentless cycle of affairs, unfulfilled desires, and fleeting passions. Everything becomes tired after the initial spark, including lovers- all too quickly, Emma is on to the next thing. She looks for something outside of herself to turn her life upside down and really surprise her. She’s like Don Quixote with a shopping list—too much reading, too little reality. Her madness? More Sylvia Plath than Cervantes: dreams forever out of reach, desires always unfulfilled, and, in the end, Emma rediscovers “in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.” In the end, passion fades quicker than the will to keep reading.
I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
I Love Dick is: a collection of letters to the author’s husband’s friend who she wants to fuck; a personal diary; a memoir; critical theory; reflections on the art world; feminist theory; horny thoughts; an object to draw attention to yourself on the subway.
And a book, sure, but with the hushy notoriety surrounding it, its reputation takes on a life of its own that feels bigger than a book. But the content wasn’t totally overshadowed by its hype–I Love Dick lived up to its acclaim in its outrageousness and depth.
I love a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I Love Dick swings wildly between being free and being pretentious in a critical theory, Semiotext(e)-y way. Kraus’ observations about sex, art, and herself are wicked smart, but there’s something masturbatory about it all that occasionally turned me off. It reminded me of Anaïs Nin’s Henry & June: sexy, and fascinating, but ultimately self-indulgent. Why should I care about Chris Kraus’ innermost erotic desires?
Would I have enjoyed this more if I knew more about Deleuze and Baudrillard? Probably. But for now, I’m happy to be inducted into the cult of cool girls—the kind of girls who would use the word “psychosexual” in everyday conversation—girls who have read and enjoyed I Love Dick. My copy had a review on the back that said “Read this on the subway, I dare you.” If you’re not up for exhibitionism, don’t bother.
