The Peter Wimsey Novels, Dorothy Sayers. Technically I read the first one last year. An incredibly fun mystery series about a foppish upper-class Englishman around the first half of the last century who is also a detective, and his detective butler. (If this sounds like the Wooster & Jeeves novels--I’m pretty sure Sayers was consciously like “I bet I could rake in the cash on a Wooster-and-Jeeves-are-detectives book, except where Wooster is secretly smart.” (And if “crimefighting pair pretends to be a brainless playboy and a butler to cover up their secret activities” ALSO sounds familiar, I’m pretty sure Batman and Alfred are consciously based on Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter.)) Sayers has enough psychological insight that these aren’t JUST cotton candy books, they’ve got some meat to them—even in the first ook you start to see how, in typical English fashion, Wimsey’s whimsy is a chosen response to a serious engagement with life. By the tenth novel, Gaudy Night, the books are starting to get more romantic, more self-consciously literary, more generally self-indulgent (the detective turns out to be improbably great at everything from cricket to acrobatics to academics, the love interest is a lady mystery writer with whom Wimsey falls in love at first sight at her murder trial….Miss Dorothy, please….) I found the romantic/literary self-indulgence a little squirmy, a little cringe-y, and incredibly fun….but if you don’t like high-drama romance then you might feel baited and switched.
The Creative Act, Rick Rubin. Why am I linking this? I didn’t like it. Supposed to be artistically inspirational. Honestly super lame. Felt less like a book and more like a series of tweets that added up to a book-length wordcount. I feel like a book should be book-shaped! Not completely valueless, well-written on a sentence level, some good advice, and maybe I’m wrong about this one--it’s so popular among creative types, am I more likely to be the voice crying out in the wilderness, or just wrong?
Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Three friends reflect on their lives during the enforced pause of the pandemic. They’re all upper-class Nigerian women who have shuttled back and forth between Nigeria and America. Deals with class, race, immigration, vocation, patriotism, and of course, love--the book is largely about their relationship histories with men (“the phrase “dream count” is a parallel to body count but for imagined romantic futures)and their friendships over time. Extremely well-observed, lots of story, but surprisingly....shapeless? Like the narrative was engrossing as it went along, but by the end I felt like the overall novel lacked narrative payoff…again, maybe I’m the one who’s wrong here.
The Juniper Tree, Barbara Comyns. Tragic, beautiful, ethereal modern retelling of the Juniper Tree fairytale from the POV of the evil stepmother--not evil in this one. You know I’m a sucker for that shit. Really one of my favorites of the year.
The Pisces, Melissa Broder. All Fours enjoyers would probably like this one, although the moral is very different. (Which is not saying I agree with the moral of this one!) Lots of fun, great story structure. A mermaid novel that takes mermaids seriously, not in a tumblr way but also not falling for the Hans Christian Andersen revisionism. You know very well I like that kind of thing. I felt a little disappointed with how clearly the sex scenes answered the question of mermaid genitalia—not because I’m a prude, though I am a prude—but because I like that mermaids, qua mermaids, are desirable but unsatisfying. But maybe the gender switch plays into this?
A Borrowed Man, Gene Wolfe. Super fun mystery about a future in which a clone of a popular detective novelist is checked out of the library to solve a crime.
Interlibrary Loan, Gene Wolfe. The sequel to the previous. Also Gene Wolfe’s last novel. Unfinished. I didn’t know that when I started it. Classic late Gene Wolfe obscurity. Which is to say: it makes no sense. I asked Gwern if he were going to explain this one like he explained Suzanne Delage. He said late Gene Wolfe isn’t worth it, especially with an unfinished book. Fuck!!!
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I also read "Gaudy Night" this year, it's probably my #1 book of the year so far (not counting rereads of classics I already knew I loved). It seems to be a favorite and frequently-recommended book among nerdy literary women, so I am alternating between feeling like "why didn't I listen to all those other women and read this years ago?" and "Oh god, I am such a cliche." A little cringey and incredibly fun, indeed!
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