Books of June ’24
I finished around fifteen books in June, even though the weather got too hot, too fast, for hammock time. Rufi Thorpe swooped in hot with one of my favorite books for the month (and year), but she was far from the only highlight. Let’s give this digest idea a whirl.
Mammoths at the Gates — Nghi Vo (2023) ⚭
Our beloved cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey, only to find (spoiler alert) mammoths at the gates, an imperial delegation come to collect one of their own. A lovely mediation on grief, change, and love, through a plot revealed as always in the layers and sediment of myth. Almost Brilliant gets a daughter, and an uncle, and a vast network of kin, and at long last we see more of the inner workings of the neixin (talking hoopoes who serve as the generational memory of the monastery). Nghi Vo continues to crush every single novella in this series, creating an ongoing rich tapestry. I’m so glad there’s going to be at least eight in total. (I’d try to bargain for twenty.)
Home Remedies — Xuan Juliana Wang (2019) ⚭
A collection of short stories, of which my favorite (of course it is, since diving is my favorite sport of the summer Olympics) is the pair of Olympic-level synchronized divers, trained to be each other’s shadow, one in unrequited love with the other. Sharp writing, skillful stories of China and its diaspora.
A Green Equinox — Elizabeth Mavor (1973) ⚭
Sometimes you’re just in the mood for moody, queer af British novels with all the fraught gender politics and literary melodrama of the 1970’s. What can I say! So odd and compelling, like a fever dream. (Often literally, as there is an outbreak of typhoid that infects the course of the story.) No regrets for picking up this pretty little McNally Edition paperback either, which, apart from the banging cover, is a tactile pleasure to hold.
Conversion — Otava Heikkilä (2020) ⚭
A 12th century missionary finds shelter in a blizzard with a gruff, kindhearted hermit. The conversion is his own, shedding the self-loathing shame for genuine tender romantic connection. Like with Shattered Spear, Heikkilä does so much with so little, spare art and spare dialogue packing a punch of emotions.
Freak Pleasures: A BDSM Zine — Otava Heikkilä (2022) ⚭
Now this is protest art. Specifically, the protest of SESTA/FOSTA and the censorship it entails, not to mention the way it endangers those it purports to protect.
Experienced — Kate Young (2024) ⚭
Bette gets dumped-but-not-dumped in truly shitty fashion by her girlfriend, who suggests she just needs more experience since she’s newly out as a lesbian. Commence a sex odyssey through the wilds of Bristol, aided by her first failed date of the odyssey, the kind and thoughtful Ruth. Rarely does a romcom navigate the joys and pitfalls of queer relationships—and just relationships in general—with such aplomb. Every character feels fully realized and faceted. Friendships are central to the story, just the way I like it—especially Bette and Ash, but also the larger friend group, and the burgeoning friendship with Ruth that matters more than the crush for 80% of the book. There are tropes galore, all of them navigated skillfully, many of them skillfully subverted, without seeming twee, tiresome, or implausible.
Very tender, very steamy, very messy, very British, very queer, very thoughtful. I enjoyed myself immensely.
Ninetails: Nine Tales — Sally Wen Mao (2024) ⚭
I love mythology turned feminist, but something about this was so on the nose that it didn’t quite pull me in. I may revisit in a different mood to see if I feel differently, or whether I’m comparing it unfairly to Home Remedies, which was a better match to my taste in short stories.
Is This Autism? A Guide for Clinicians and Everyone Else — Donna Henderson, Sarah Wayland, and Jamell White (2023) ⚭
Once again I have read my way up from beginner to clinical level on a subject in the space of a year. I’m going to make a declarative statement that this is currently the best resource out there, full stop, on ASD and the myriad of ways it presents. The research is still in its infancy, but we’re starting to make strides in understanding it, especially how differently it can present in the non-male, non-white population. Therapists, psychiatrists, and clinicians, take note. (Pairs well with Steph Jones’ Autistic Survival Guide to Therapy, which illustrates why this knowledge is desperately needed.)
Earthlings — Sayaka Murata (2018) ⚭
You could put trigger warnings on this book for child abuse, incest, and cannibalism(!!), and still the anguish of being forced to conform to society—“The Factory”—at the expense of all well-being forms the core of the horror. Particularly how women are reduced to wombs like mechanical components. Speculative fiction? Magical realism? Straight-up psychological horror? Yes. It’s harrowing and weird as fuck, and I liked it immensely, but maybe I’m Not Like Other Girls too.
Blackouts — Justin Torres (2024) ⚭
All the different layers of meaning to the title—the blackouts our narrator experiences due to PTSD, the blackouts of Juan and his fading memory, the failure of institutional memory, the queer erasure from history, the literal blackouts of the pages of the book. It feels like a work of art, not just a novel. Indeed, if you’re looking for linear storytelling, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Lives up to the hype. Could not put it down. Experience the book in print form if at possible—the art is so integral to the story that it is the story.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles — Rufi Thorpe (2024) ⚭
20-year-old Margo sleeps with her professor, gets pregnant, keeps the baby, and discovers what a capitalist hellscape the U.S. is for mothers of all stripes, but particularly the unwed. Creating porn online becomes the only ethical way to survive, and this searing social commentary is wrapped up with so much humor and heart the book practically explodes with it. Her father Jinx (ex-pro wrestler, addict), her roommate Suzie (cosplayer extraordinaire), her lawyer Ward (lowkey one of the best characters in the book), and a host of fellow sex workers team up to become her ad-hoc support system, creating a found family in a way that rarely exists outside of LGBTQ books. (It need to be more common! In all kinds of books! Found family for everyone!)
What I love most is that not a single character can be reduced to their 1–2 word descriptor. Everyone is a meat suit of startling complexity (except maybe the uber-religious stepfather, who fulfills his role to perfection). Thorpe also does some highly clever metatextual breaking of the fourth wall, switching between first and third POV to make various points about performance and fiction and the roles we play for an audience. This kind of experiment in less capable hands would be a disaster. Here, it’s brilliant. This will be on my year-end list of best books, for sure.
Camp Damascus — Chuck Tingle (2023) ⚭
I had to wait until I was in a good headspace to handle this. Ruth, an autistic devout Christian on the cusp of adulthood, begins to realize everything in her life is not as it seems, not even herself. Cue the horror of religious trauma and conversion therapy camps, right at home with the traditional trappings of the horror genre. It gets genuinely creepy as hell as all hell is unleashed, quite literally in the case of demons run amok. (I could see where some readers would take issue that Chuck chose to make the demons real, and hell real, but that worked for me in the context of this book. Especially with the revelation of who the real monsters are, and that the demons are unwilling accomplices, ready to turn on their masters for what they’ve been forced to do.)
I wish I didn’t have such a long list of conversion therapy survival books, but this is a worthy addition. It’s the flavor of extreme and homophobic evangelicalism that I grew up in, with all the trauma that accompanies it. And of course it’s Chuck Tingle, so we get the happy ending. LOVE IS REAL.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times — Katherine May (2020) ⚭
DNF due to the health scare(s) both she and her husband experience at the beginning of the book. Even though I knew they were okay, it was too much to relive in the moment, my own recent family health scares too fresh. I skimmed ahead to see if I could just skip that part, but multiple other chapters failed to grab me. Love the concept; the execution feels NPR-ish and banal.
Kushiel’s Dart — Jacqueline Carey (2001) ⚭
My semi-decennial attempt to finish this book. I made it farther this time, with determination, but despite an attempt every three to five years, I still bounce off it like a rubber ball. Taboo, kink, AND court intrigue in the same book?! This should be exactly my thing! It’s overwrought in a way that makes me weary, though. And I wish the BDSM aspect was… more. More creative. More subversive. More than the pseudo-French medieval fanfic with a dash of mystical Jesus-y stuff and some weird moral judgments regarding kink. (All of Phèdre’s clients are bad people; anyone who’s good doesn’t desire the least bit of play in the bedroom. Say what now?) And! Another thing, if courtesans are revered on the level of divinity and a central part of the culture, then why is the language around it still demeaning? It’s hard to turn my brain off and other bits on, is what I’m saying. I think.
(Either that, or I read Tiffany Reisz’s Original Sinners at too impressionable an age. Her take on “kink, but make it sacred”—and specifically “pain, but make it sacred”—coupled with irreverent humor and a thorough theology imprinted on me in a way that can’t be undone.)