How Y’all Doing? By Leslie Jordan

Leslie Jordan is an actor from Chattanooga who has appeared in many well-known television series and films, such as Will and Grace, American Horror Story, and The Help. I first began to notice him last year during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when he went viral on Instagram for posting his hilarious short videos:

His audiobook, How Y’all Doing? is just as hilarious as I expected, but it’s also a sweet and personable memoir in which he discusses his time working on a horse farm, his early days in Hollywood as an actor looking to scratch out a place for himself, and some of his most memorable film roles.

I read quite a lot of memoirs, and I think the best ones are honest and don’t try to paint the author in the best light. Jordan is honest about his self-centered nature, how much he craves the spotlight, and even reveals that he once had a drinking problem (though he doesn’t depress the reader with all the details). This memoir isn’t for those looking for a layered or deeply meaningful story, but it was just right for me this past weekend when I needed some laughs, and so I found myself returning to it until I’d gobbled it all up.

July 5, 2021 0

What I’m Reading Now: The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner

The Nature of Fragile Things is available on my library app. Susan Meissner has written more than a dozen books, but this is the first of hers that I’ve read. I’m about a 1/3 of the way through the audiobook and I’m enjoying it so far. It starts a little slow, which is normally something that I dislike, but I keep reading because the author does a good job of making me curious about the family relationships in this story. It begins with Sophie, an Irish immigrant living in New York who answers an ad for a mail order bride. She moves to San Francisco to meet her match, a widowed man who has a five-year-old daughter. The setup reminded me a lot of The Magic of Ordinary Days because both novels focus on the marriage of two strangers. The setup is a good one, too, because as readers we wonder what sort of strife this arranged marriage will create. Will she be attracted to her husband? Will he treat her cruelly?

These basic questions are answered right away. Her husband is an attractive man who owns a comfortable home and lets her mother his daughter in basically whatever way she pleases. Still, you can’t help but sense that something is awry with Sophie’s husband. He shows no affection for her, which isn’t that unusual sense they’re strangers, but he also shows no affection for his daughter either, not even so much as a hug or a kiss. The husband goes out of town on business and gives vague answers to questions about where he’s going, what he does, and when exactly he’ll return.

One day, a mysterious woman shows up at Sophie’s house while her husband is out of town. The woman gives Sophie some shocking news that changes the entire family dynamic and what both women think of Sophie’s husband. I won’t spoil it for you here, but that chapter really shocked me and made me sit up and pay attention.

The other thing to know about this one is that the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is a key event in the story. I haven’t reached the earthquake part of the book yet, but I can clearly see that Meissner is dropping breadcrumbs to help the reader piece together a family mystery while we’re also anticipating the catastrophic earthquake. I love when an author complicates things with the emergence of several high stakes problems to solve at once.

This is exactly my type of book. I enjoy historicals and stories that focus on family strife. I’m also enjoying the lovely performance of the narrator who voices Sophie’s Irish accent. Looking forward to finishing this one!

July 2, 2021 0

What I’m Reading Now: Darling Rose Gold

I started Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel last night on my Audible app. So far so good. It’s told in first-person from two narrators. One narrator is a mother named Patty convicted of child abuse via Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy. The other narrator is the daughter, Rose Gold, who testifies to put her mother Patty behind bars. The book begins with Patty’s release from prison and–surprise, surprise–it’s Rose Gold who shows up to pick up Patty and take her home. They share the house where Patty grew up, which Rose Gold has recently bought, unbeknownst to Patty and also to Patty’s horror.

The story moves back in time to show how Rose Gold’s illnesses began and how Patty “took care” of Rose Gold. All the while, the reader wonders about Patty’s motives and whether we can trust the story Rose Gold tells. Slowly, we learn that while Rose Gold is a victim of her mother’s manipulation, she’s also capable of that same type of toxic manipulation now that she’s a grown woman. Rose Gold moves from believing she’s sick, to distrusting her mother, to attempting to trust her mother again to… I won’t spoil it for you.

From the very beginning, Patty, a master manipulator, comes across as an unreliable narrator who cannot be trusted. The media and the neighbors in their small town certainly see Patty as a monster who deliberately made her daughter sick.

I’m only a third of the way through this novel, so I cannot give a final verdict on it yet, but so far it slowly pulls the curtain back to reveal a complex mother-daughter relationship using two deeply flawed characters.

The two audible narrators are Megan Dodds and Jill Winternitz. I’ve never listened to these two readers before, but I really like their voices. For me, good narration in an audiobook is tantamount to good writing.

I look forward to finishing this book.

Darling Rose Gold

Photo credit: Amazon.com

August 6, 2020 0

What I’m Reading Now: My Dark Vanessa

I started the audiobook of My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell today. I got it free from the Hoopla app at the public library. If you’re a book lover who doesn’t have Hoopla, you should check with your local public library and ask if they have access to Hoopla. I’ve listened to a lot of good books on there so far, and you check them out the same as you would a regular library book. It’s free and easy.

As for My Dark Vanessa, I’m conflicted about this book, but I’m leaning more toward not liking it. It’s about a 15-year-old girl who has a sexual relationship with her 42-year-old English teacher. My major problem with the book is that so far it hasn’t surprised me. I’m more than five hours into it, which means I’m about 1/3 of the way through the book, and everything is turning out exactly the way I first envisioned it before I even started listening. Is there an unfair and unsettling power dynamic between the student and the teacher? Yes, there is. I also expected lurid details about their sex life, and it delivers on that as well. All these old binaries and clichés are on full display: powerful male vs. defenseless female, a younger and more naïve person juxtaposed with an older and sexually mature partner, and an older person who manipulates and controls the younger partner. The man is even so gross that he has big sweat stains under his arms. By comparison, the girl is much smaller and defenseless, barely coming up to his shoulder when they stand next to one another. He coaxes her into doing things she doesn’t want, which is exactly what I expected. So my big criticism so far is that the book plays into old hackneyed things we’ve seen before. It feels like the plot of a Lifetime movie. In fact, I’m almost certain Lifetime has more than one film about an older man pursuing an inappropriately young girl. He grooms her and manipulates her and then selfishly takes everything she will give. She’s so naïve that she thinks it’s up to her to give what he wants, even if it makes her uncomfortable and hurts her emotionally and physically.

My other big criticism is that the book feels much too long. The audiobook is over fifteen hours, and the physical copy of the book is close to four hundred pages. So far, I feel like I’m seeing some of the same things over and over again–him touching her, him asking permission after he’s already crossed a boundary, and her trying to hide the relationship from her parents and those at her school, etc. I feel like some of this stuff could just be told in summary instead of giving us all the details. Of course he has to tell her to keep quiet, so I don’t feel that we need to be reminded of this over and over again. The reader already knows that he’s risking his job, his reputation, and his freedom, and I don’t think all of this information has to be given to the reader so explicitly. It could be more nuanced. The novel, in my opinion, could be at least a hundred pages shorter.

On the positive side, I think the author is brave to take the risk of writing about this subject matter. Some readers will look at the synopsis and bypass the book altogether just because it sounds so sleazy and salacious. However, the author isn’t afraid to go there. She undoubtedly knows the material isn’t for every reader, yet she is brave enough to take the risk and go for it. I also like that it directly addresses the Me, Too movement. One of the teacher’s other young victims comes forward early in the book, which makes the narrator debate whether she should come forward in solidarity, and she even reflects on Me, Too and the cultural moment concerning victims coming forward to out their abusers. I guess that’s the only thing that’s making me want to keep reading this. I want to see if our narrator, Vanessa, will stay quiet or have the courage to confront the teacher about what he’s done and also help prevent him from hurting someone else.

My Dark Vanessa

July 16, 2020 0