Volume 1, No. 34: Can't Look Away + Apple Onion Turnovers

Greetings, book and treat people! I’m delighted to report that the birds have finally discovered my feeder. So far I’ve seen tufted titmice, chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches, white-breasted nuthatches, dark-eyed juncos, and downy woodpeckers. It’s a small list, but watching birds again on a daily basis is a joy.

It’s also November, one of my three favorite months, and daylight savings time—starts? ends?—soon. Whichever one it is, I love it. I can’t get enough of those 4:30 sunsets. Literally, I can’t get enough. I’m never quite ready when the light starts coming back in January.

Things are exciting in the book world as well. This week’s newsletter features one of my favorite reads of the year. It’s not out until February, but I promise you it’s worth preordering. I’m going to be recommending several 2022 books in the coming weeks so…prepare yourself. It feels a little weird, even to me, but think of it this way: putting in a preorder or library hold now is like giving your future self a treat. By the time the book arrives, you’ll have forgotten you ordered it!

I could have used “engaging” or “compelling” to describe this week’s books. They are all novels I couldn’t stop reading—not because of the plot, but because of the characters. I could not stop watching them. Often, I watched them make terrible decisions. Sometimes I badly wanted to look away, because everything that was happening in the lives of the characters was just too much, too intense, too hard. But I did not look away, because I was so deeply invested in these characters, in their desires and obsessions and histories and relationships.

These three novels share an intensity, partially because they all use such a close POV, so close that it’s often painful. I’m not always up for books like this. They’re exhausting, and they take a lot out of me. But when I am in the mood, and when they’re done well, they’re my favorite kind of book to read. These characters, in all of their unruly humanness, will stay with me forever.

The Books

Backlist: Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier (Fiction, 2020)

If there’s one thing I dislike even more than reviewers complaining about “unlikeable characters”, it’s when reviewers get judgmental about characters. I can’t stand it when someone criticizes a book because a character makes bad choices or acts selfishly or does something deemed unhealthy or unethical. Teenagers seem to get judged particularly harshly. I don’t understand this instinct to put fictional characters on a pedestal. Humans are not perfect. We hurt each other (and ourselves) constantly.

Jane, the eighteen-year-old Korean American protagonist of this novel, makes a series of terrible choices. She’s just graduated from high school and she’s pregnant. She lives with her mom and her white boyfriend, both of whom love her very much, and both of whom are excited about the baby. This isn’t a story about a teenager who is alone in the world, who doesn’t have people in her corner. Jane’s boyfriend adores her — in fact, he wants a kind of intimacy with her she doesn’t know how to give. Instead, it’s a story about someone who is loved and supported, but who still feels lost, unsettled, alone. This is such a common experience. Love does not solve problems.

Jane is not excited about the pregnancy at all, and yet she struggles to articulate that to the people in her life. She works as a pizza delivery person, and soon becomes obsessed with one of her regular customers, an older woman named Jenny, the mother of a young child. Her relationship with Jenny soon takes over her life. She pours everything into Jenny, spending more and more time with her, letting her obsession slowly consume her. It’s an obviously unhealthy relationship, though there is some tenderness in it, but it is so clear why Jane feels so drawn to it.

This is a short book. We follow Jane over the course of the summer, as she makes questionable choice after questionable choice. She cheats on her boyfriend. She starts drinking heavily. She keeps most of what’s going on with her bottled up. She doesn’t talk to her boyfriend or her mom about what she's feeling. She pines over Jenny, inserting herself into Jenny’s life in ways that feel increasingly frantic. She’s self-destructive and she’s in denial about a lot, but she’s also wry and self-aware. Her narrative voice is sharp and observant.

I fell for Jane immediately; I couldn’t stop reading because I so badly wanted her to be okay. My investment in her character has nothing to do with her being a good person. It’s because her motivations are so clear. Jane is a whole person, and we get to sink so deeply into her POV. We get to hear her inner thought processes. We get to watch her fight with herself. We get to watch her pull back when things get to hard, and fall back into self-destructive patterns. We get to see the loneliness she doesn’t show anyone else.

It’s not a comfortable read. Jane doesn’t feel or express remorse about her actions (which is so refreshing). Frazier’s writing is beautiful, too, not a sentence wasted. It’s not flowery at all. Jane is not a flowery person. It’s direct, to the point, functional but emotional. Even when the plot takes center stage (despite being a character study at heart, there’s quite a bit of plot in this one), Jane’s quirky, sometimes deadpan voice never wavers.

I love books about intense periods of change. This one is about a particular moment in Jane’s life, a moment that changes her, even though she doesn’t necessarily recognize it at the time. It’s a brash story, one that gets right up in your face. It’s about the things we hide from ourselves and each other, and what happens when those things spill out.

Frontlist: Milk Fed by Melissa Broder (Fiction)

This book was excruciating to read. It was also hard to look away. I read it in a day and felt resentful whenever I had to put it aside, although I did have to put aside periodically for a minute or two, just to sit with it, because the intensity was too much. Nothing about this novel is comforting. I’ll give the content warnings up front, as this book is centered around disordered eating and eating disorders. There is also a lot of internalized fatphobia. It is extremely graphic.

Rachel is a Jewish twenty-something living in LA. Her life revolves around calorie restriction, and Broder goes into painful and exacting details about Rachel’s eating disorder and destructive relationship with her body. It’s not easy to read, but I want to be clear that it never feels gratuitous (at least it didn’t to me). Rachel is deeply unhappy, and holds a lot of trauma from her relationship with her mother and her childhood. She hates her job at a talent agency, she doesn’t have a lot of friends or a strong community, and she isn’t really sure what she wants. She’s a mostly lapsed Jew, and she has a lot of feelings about that. She knows that she has an eating disorder, though she doesn’t want to confront it. The eating disorder is at the the center of her life and it affects everything she does. The level of detail we get is the level of detail Rachel lives with. That is what makes this book so good, though good feels like the wrong word, because it is so upsetting to read.

At the beginning of the novel, Rachel’s therapist suggests she not to talk to her mother for ninety days. So Rachel cuts off contact with her mom, and then she quits therapy, too, not wanting to discuss her dysmorphia and disordered eating. Soon after, she meets Miriam, an Orthodox Jewish woman who work at Rachels’ frozen yogurt shop. Miriam is everything that Rachel is not. She is fat. She loves food. She’s culturally and religiously Jewish in a way that Rachel isn’t — or isn’t anymore. She lives with her big family, who lovingly tease each other and talk over each other during meals. She expresses herself in ways that Rachel can’t.

They fall in love, or lust, or something. It’s a complicated, unruly relationship. Rachel becomes obsessed with Miriam in a way that often feels uncomfortable. Their relationship is a catalyst. It doesn’t feel like she’s using Miriam, exactly, or at least not in a malicious way. But it’s not just a passionate affair. Rachel holds back pieces of herself. She’s able to let go of her rigid need for control when she’s with Miriam, but she doesn't let Miriam see how truly un-okay she is. She makes so many upsetting choices, and she doesn’t think about how they may affect Miriam. Rachel presents a version of herself to a woman she’s becoming increasingly obsessed with, in a way that allows her to work through something. But she doesn’t ever ask Miriam if she wants to be a part of that working-through.

I absolutely love the way Broder writes about sex and bodies. I was scrolling through reviews of this book (I do not recommend scrolling through Goodreads reviews, and I saw a one-star review that described the way Border writes about sex as “disgusting”. Yes. I would not have used that word, but yes. It is not pretty. Sometimes it is not sexy (though sometimes it is). There is a lot of sex, and it is messy, sometimes it is weird. It is not Hallmark movie sex. Rachel has all sorts of fantasies that are deeply uncomfortable to read about. She is not okay in her body. Broder does not sanitize the experiences that Rachel has while eating or fucking. She writes about bodies with a glorious openness. Rachel is constantly analyzing herself and she’s rarely present in her body, though this is a book that is rooted in the physical world. That creates a lot of tension and contradctions. Of course it’s a little gross at times. It’s also beautifully erotic and wildly joyful at times.

Rachel is certainly in a different place at the end of the book than at the beginning. This is another novel about a period of intense, shattering, tumultuous change. But Broder doesn’t put a bow on Rachel’s life and present it to us as fixed. It’s a novel about healing, but it’s ultimately about how we never truly arrive.

Upcoming: Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour (Fiction, Flatiron, 2/8)

A few years ago I wrote a piece about the one thing all my five star reads have in common: they make me cry. I rate a lot of books I absolutely and complexity adore with four stars. The thing that sets my five star reads apart is simply that they elicit some kind of physical reaction. Not all readers are criers, but I am. And it’s not usually because a book is devastating or tragic that it makes me cry. It’s a release at the end of an intense emotional journey. When I become so deeply invested in the characters that their lives feel like my own, and when I reach that perfect ending that feels like closure and an opening at the same time, that’s when the tears start. Friends, I wept at the end of this one.

Yerba Buena is such a quiet novel. It’s one of the quietest novels I can remember reading in a long time. This is something I’ve come to expect from LaCour. I’ve read most of her YA books (this is her adult debut), and they all share this quietness. She’s not a flashy writer. Her books are usually light on plot and heavy on character. She has a way of writing beautifully about the ordinariness of the world we live in. She does it over and and over and over again in this book. There are countless descriptions of food, people’s faces, flower arrangements, houses, the ocean, an LA street. And they’re all emotional descriptions, rooted in the way the characters perceive these things. The love and familiarity that infuses a family gumbo recipe. The deep satisfaction of a perfectly wallpapered house. The sadness in a cocktail. The way an empty kitchen evokes loneliness and longing. How the brightness of a green fern in a flower arrangement startles someone into lust.

The story is about two women, Emile and Sara. Emile is an LA native with Creole heritage. She isn’t close with her parents, who were always more focused on her sister Colette. She was close with Colette when they were kids, but they drifted apart as teenagers, in the wake of Colette’s drug addiction. Emile isn’t sure what she wants. She’s been in college for years, constantly switching majors. She flits from unsatisfying job to unsatisfying job. She yearns for something else, something more, but she doesn’t know how to get it. She floats along. She gets entangled in an affair with her married boss, at a restaurant where she arranges flowers. She moves in with her grandmother to take care of her while she’s dying. She moves from person to person, job to job, without being grounded in herself.

Sara flees to LA as a teenager, longing to escape her difficult childhood in a small town on the Russian River. Her mother died when she was a child, and afterward, her father, a drug dealer who never spoke openly about her mother’s addiction, mostly checks out. It falls to Sara to take care of her younger brother. When her girlfriend dies unexpectedly, sixteen-year old Sara leaves town without looking back. She builds a life for herself in LA. She eventually becomes a sought-after bartended and mixologist. She doesn’t revisit her past. She holds herself apart from the grief and trauma she’s carrying.

Sara and Emile meet at a restaurant where Sara tends bar and Emile arranges the flowers. They spend a night together, and then separate. They are immediately drawn to each other, but they’re not ready for each other. They haven’t figured out how to be themselves enough to offer something to another person. It’s not until they meet again a few years later that their relationship sticks.

I found myself holding my breath through much of this novel. It’s such a beautiful love story because of the way LaCour structures it. Sara and Emile each have their own messes to untangle. It’s a joy to watch them do that, to witness their missteps and mistakes, to experience their joys and heartbreaks and setbacks and little delights as they muddle through their twenties. It’s because LaCour devotes so much time to their individual lives that their relationship, when it happens, feels so alive. So many books that feature romance focus on the relationship itself. What LaCour does feels truer to life, in a way. It’s a book about coming home to yourself, about learning yourself and facing yourself and opening up to yourself. Sara and Emile keep circling each other. They come together and apart, and again, and each time ,you can feel them getting closer to something sustaining and whole. They open bit by bit, painfully, over time. The pacing is breathtaking.

At one point Emile says to Sara:

I try so hard to be good. To be easy. To not be a mess. But maybe it’ll be okay with you if I’m messy. If I fuck up and do the wrong things. If I care about myself even when you’re going through too much already.

The whole book is about getting to this moment of permission, this acknowledgement that intimacy comes from allowing others to see our edges and messes and scars.

The quietness of the novel is also apparent in how much LaCour writes about, and how well she does it. This book is about trauma, grief, addiction, cultural identity, family relationships, friendship, being alone and on your own as a young person, food, creativity, class. It’s full of moments of revelation. There are many supporting characters whose own lives are full and complicated. But all of these themes and intersecting plots are never overwhelming or overdone, because Emile and Sara are always at the center. Whatever is going on in their lives, and under the surface of their lives, happens on the page. Sometimes very simply. Sometimes just hinted at. Sometimes in bold, obvious strokes.

It’s out in February, and you can pre-order it here.

The Bake

It was pastry week on The Great British Bake Off last week, so, naturally, I made a batch of one of my favorite savory baked treats: very cheesy apple onion turnovers. Apples and caramelized onions is a combination I have trouble looking away from. I love it in these turnovers. I love it in savory bread pudding. I love it in scones. I love it in bread! I’ve never met an apple and onion baked good I didn’t like.

Apple Onion Turnovers

This filling is delicious in so many ways! Spread it on toast. Mix it into biscuit or scone dough. Fill savory brioche buns with it. You can also make a large pie or galette instead of mini turnovers.

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 240 grams (2 cups) all-purpose flour

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, very cold, cut into small cubes

• a few tablespoons ice water

• pinch of salt

For the filling:

• 3-4 medium apples

• 4 large onions

• 2 Tbs balsamic, apple cider, or cheery vinegar, or cider syrup

• 1-2 Tbs chopped fresh herbs (I usually use thyme or sage)

• ~1 1/2 cups grated cheddar

• salt and pepper to taste

• 1 egg (for egg wash)

Make the crust: Prepare a small bowl of ice water. In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, and cubes of butter with the tips of tour fingers. Dip your fingers into the water every so often to keep them cool. Mix until most of the butter resembles wet sand, with some larger pea-sized chunks. Add the water a tablespoon at a time, mixing after each addition, until the dough just comes together. Turn onto a floured surface, knead a few times, and flatten into a disc. Let chill in the fridge while you make the filling.

Make the filling: Heat a few tablespoons of butter (or olive oil) in a skillet. Thinly slice the onions and cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, until just starting to brown. Turn the heat down and continue cooking until mostly caramelized, about 30 minutes. Coarsely chop the apples and add them to the pan. Cook for another 5-10 minutes, until the apples begin to soften. Add the vinegar of your choice and continue cooking until the liquid evaporates. Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl and season with fresh herbs, salt, and pepper. Let cool a few minutes before mixing in the cheese.

Assemble and bake: Preheat the oven to 375. Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface. Using the bottom of a cereal bowl for guidance, cut out circles, 6-8 inches in diameter. Plop a few heaping tablespoons of filling onto one half of each circle. I like to overstuff them, but sometimes they explode in the oven.

Wet the edges of the dough circle with your fingers, and fold the top half of the dough over the filling. Firmly press the edges together with your fingers to seal. Use a fork to crimp the seam, and cut a few shallow slashes on the top. Continue with the remaining dough and filling.

Beat an egg and brush it over the tops of the turnovers. Bake for about 40 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool slightly before eating.

The Bowl & The Beat

The Bowl: Easiest Lamb Curry

I haven’t done much cooking this past week. I considered not including a recipe—because life happens and it’s okay to eat whatever your version of fried egg on toast is sometimes. But then a friend and subscriber reached out to me to say how much home cooking inspiration they’ve found in the recipes I share here. It was such a sweet thing to hear, and it reminded me how much I love the reciprocity of sharing recipes. I want to be able to include something tasty in the newsletter each week, and that usually inspires me to cook.

Sometimes we all just need a little extra inspiration. This morning I threw a bunch of stuff in a pot and let it simmer while I worked. The result: a simple and comforting lamb curry for lunch. It’s about as basic as a curry can get. But it nourished me, and that’s what matters.

Chop one or two or four onions. Mince two or three garlic cloves. Dump it into a big pot along with a jar of canned tomatoes, a can of coconut milk, a hefty sprinkling of grated (or chopped) fresh ginger, some minced fresh or dried chilies, a few teaspoons of curry powder, salt, half a cup of stock (I used lamb stock), and a pound of stew lamb, cut into small pieces. I had two leftover whole roasted sweet potatoes so I threw those in as well. Bring the curry to a boil, and then reduce the heat and simmer until everything is soft and tender, 30-40 minutes. Mix with rice and eat warm.

The Beat: I Hope This Finds You Well, written and read by Kate Baer

I started and finished this poetry collection this morning; it’s only an hour long. I loved it. Baer creates erasure poems out of the many hateful comments, emails, and messages she has received online (as well as a few positive ones). She reads the original message, and then the poem she turned it into it. It’s quietly beautifully. Listening to her read each poem is like watching her unearth little treasures. The poems themselves are gorgeous. Knowing how violent the source material they come from is makes them even more miraculous. I’m hesitant to call what Baer does transformation. It feels more like reclaiming, or maybe just claiming.

The Bookshelf

The Library Shelf

I’m including this picture of my current library checkouts because I’m so proud of how many library books I’ve returned recently! I got through about half the poetry books I checked out in September and October, and now I’m taking a little break from uninhibited requesting so I can catch up. I’ve heard great things about both This Poison Heart and For The Love of April French, so I’m excited to dig into both.

Around the Internet

On Book Riot, I rounded up some fantastic queer nonfiction comics. On BookPage, I reviewed The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.

Now Out

Hooray! Blue-Skinned Gods by SJ Sindu, which I wrote about way back in my first newsletter, is finally out! I absolutely love this book, and I am so excited that it is out in the world. Go forth and find yourself a copy; you won’t regret it. Also out this week is Borealis by Aisha Sabatini Sloan, which I also loved. Yay, new books!

The Boost

Because it is November now, I just want to fill my house with beautiful fall delights, like winterberry and pine branches. If I could, I’d buy all the dried flower wreathes in the land, and all the garlands, too. (These are just two of the many queer-owned farms I love.)

As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: This is the road I live on. I’m quite enamored with it.

And that’s it until next week. Catch you then!