Welcome to In Review, a love affair with recent books, films, tv shows, and cultural moments. Join me on the road to discovery, dissection, and infatuation with rhetoric in the public sphere.
FICTION“Cleopatra and Frankenstein"” by Coco Mellors
Cleo and Frank didn’t just meet each other casually at a party one night in Lower Manhattan, as many people do in this transversive city; rather, they slammed into each other’s lives like twin tornadoes merging at top speed above an unassuming town, irrevocably making their mark.
Coco Mellors’ debut novel takes the distinct ingredients of New York City and crafts a biting romantic, and often brutal, narrative of characters fighting in their own ways for their right to feel. To feel sexy. To feel intoxicated. To feel creative. To feel healed. To feel numb. We begin with Cleo and Frank on a late night walk home from an unimpressive New Years Eve party, where Mellors’ talent for quick banter is instantly evident. I was itching to undress these roamers, take in a full glass of their wit. Through flirtatious commentary, they find in each other a quality often innate to the people who seek out and seep into life in New York City: transparency.
However, another adage also rings true: where there is honesty, there is heaviness. As time goes on, we learn of the heaviness Cleo and Frank carry, whether it be borrowed or burdened, and the ways in which it manifests. Over time, new faces weave in with their own heaviness. The weight of this bunch propels us into a delicate dissection of the monsters that meet us in the tantalizing streets of this town. What such monsters? The brutality of relationships that fall together or apart or dissolve entirely. Potions, so vile and sweet. The unexpectedness of connection, and with whom or what or where you might find it. Not all monsters are ugly, this bunch teaches us, but they are undeniably powerful.
I am most drawn back chapter after chapter to the familiarity of these extremes. Even if I do not touch these extremes myself, stories of the like float by every now and then. Mellors paints New York City with a poetic palette I’ve come to recognize, one of immense honor, the subtlest of horror, and intangible hope. Mellors illustrations of the city plant the reader two feet on the ground with Cleo, as she questions her existential purpose, and with Frank, as he pours another drink, or with Eleanor and her mother in the garden, or with Quentin in the destructive shadows.
Final Review: Pick up “Cleopatra and Frankenstein” to brush lips with the intense promise of this timeless, tornado-filled place—a city where if you can be anyone, you can find anyone, too. Where you can destroy, and be destroyed. Where your restless heart can save, and be saved.
FICTION“The Idiot” by Elif Batuman
Elif Batuman sets her 2017 novel The Idiot on a mid-90s Harvard campus where students and faculty are discovering the power of something we often take for granted today: e-mail. Selin, our trusted narrator, receives her academic e-mail address upon arrival, the setup instructions sitting in her pocket like a foreign spell. We know e-mail today as a staple to our work lives, a spam folder, and the catalyst of “reply all” chaos. For Selin, however, this odd form of communication is the faceless agent of connection, operating within the bounds of angst and self-actualization so often born in the context of a crush.
Selin, a young, Turkish-American woman, daughter of divorce, keeper of vast linguistic capabilities and intrigue, takes us through her stream of consciousness as she dives into dorm life and rigorous, sometimes even ridiculous, academic courses on Constructed Worlds, Russian literature, and Kierkegaard. Soon she finds steady interest in those Russian literature classes, in particular around the disposition of a few of her classmates, Svetlana and Ivan. As these friendships blossom, Selin finds herself in the crosshairs of logic and banality and desire. She and Ivan exchange e-mails back and forth over time and she begins to unravel the complexity of omission, where the true meaning of someone’s words or feelings may or may not lie between indecipherable lines.
Without spoiling the fun of her journey, it’s important to note that Selin’s experiences and observations effortlessly mirror the foolishness of youth that lies dormant in the head and heart of myself and, I’d argue, in most of the readers of The Idiot. A foolishness where the risk of rejection is at large, a lit cigarette eases painful tears, and the uneven quality of time causes a benevolent sense of dread. Batuman delivers a persistent relatability in her work, which she often dismantles as autobiographical, but is rather inspired by her old musings as a Harvard graduate in the same era.
Batuman’s voice through Selin is never coarse or distasteful, but instead, she guides us through the tragic comedy of meeting eccentric people, discovering habits, and uncovering new sensations with a witful curiosity. Selin’s intelligence is undeniable, but it’s her inquisitive nature which grapples with the existentialism of it all, “it” being the profoundly privileged, yet challenging time at university. Eventually, her friendship with Svetlana and simmering crush on the tall, stimulating Ivan takes her from Harvard to Paris to Hungary. I’ll leave the fate of this trip in the well-crafted words of the author, while inserting one of the excerpts that latched itself to my consciousness, tugging again at that dormant foolishness:
“It can be really exasperating to look back at your past. What’s the matter with you? I want to ask her, my younger self, shaking her shoulder. If I did that, she would probably cry. Maybe I would cry, too. It would be like one of those Marguerite Duras books I tried to read in Svetlana’s aunt’s apartment. Elle pleure. (She’s crying). Il pleure. (He is crying). Ils pleurent, tous les deux. (They both cry),” (p. 262).
FICTION“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2018 sophomore novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, takes indulgence to a nearly-triggering level of self-destruction. The nameless protagonist is a young woman who grapples with her sense of apathy toward life itself in the confines of her Upper East Side apartment. In accordance with its titular virtues, often synonymous with indulgence, the protagonist narrates an abundant and abusive relationship to prescription drugs, bringing the audience on a daily dive into her nihilistic comatose state of being; not yet dead, not quite living.
The protagonist, a Columbia graduate in the clutches of pre-hipster, post-bohemian New York City at the turn of the twenty-first century, isn’t shy to divulge her utter disdain for the kind of world she’s a part of. Her unlikeability is arresting. Moshfegh paints her words with unapologetic honesty, jagged brushstrokes that resonate in an unsettling way, similar to the kind of person who says exactly what everyone else in the group is thinking. She’s harsh on the companions that remain, like her irritatingly persistent ex-roommate or her obnoxiously incompetent psychiatrist, and those who do not. It’s Moshfegh’s blunt style of internal and external dialogue for her characters that make the novel an unexpected page-turner, seasoning the slow-simmering plot with projections of the inner, and often lonely, struggle to cope with loss and rejection.
As a reader, one is asked not only to develop a sense of apathy alongside the protagonist but to distrust her as she exposes her own unreliability. In the same way it’s difficult to trust a loved one who actively chooses to use and abuse substances, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of betrayal every time the protagonist pops another round of sleep-inducing pills. She is surprisingly aware of herself as a product of her past and an agent of privilege, often divulging on the frivolity of her inheritance. Her self-awareness makes it evermore frustrating watching her waste her time and money; even though her sleepy cycles and rampant doses give time an unending sensation. The character’s lack of progression or personal development despite her psychological aptness begs the notion that self-awareness without action is the anchor to self-destruction. Moshfegh hitches the audience to the protagonist’s hibernation, placing pain in the driver’s seat and inviting the reader to develop a sympathy addiction to the unfolding deconstruction.
It’s a darkly funny piece of prose, at times redundant in its own relentlessness, yet Moshfegh proves that there’s color within the gray area of such lucid idealism. Its coarse texture is direct and intoxicating. The deeper the protagonist falls, the blurrier the line between life and death. Her audience feels both helpless and curious watching her indulge with astute abandon, simultaneously wanting to slap her awake and to sink deeper, darker, with her.