#riverhead

The last two weeks have been totally amazing for readings of books that I’m obsessed with. New to me in this round is debut author Stephanie Danler, who I saw in conversation with Prune chef Gabrielle Hamilton (who called this the next great food book after Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, if that says anything to you). The other three I’ve been fans of for a few years, and seeing them again at their readings was as delightful as always.

Rufi Thorpe’s DEAR FANG, WITH LOVE is the story of Vera and her essentially estranged father, Lucas, who takes her to his family homeland of Vilnius, Lithuania, after she suffers a breakdown at her high school boarding school. A wise, skillful second novel that ponders the meaning of family and the stark reality of mental illness.

Stephanie Danler’s SWEETBITTER is a novel that feels like a memoir, in that it parallels Danler’s own experiences in many ways. Tess moves to New York and finds work in a Union Square restaurant, revealing the dirty, gritty life of the service industry in the city as well as the relationships that develop between those who live their lives in this lane.

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s JUNE, her fourth novel, splits the timeline between depressed twenty-something Cassie Danvers and the teenage years of her grandmother June. The stories become entwined after Cassie inherits a fortune from a golden age movie star, and his family comes to visit her in her recently-deceased grandmother’s house to find out exactly what she knows and how she got involved, which she would like to know, too.

Emma Straub’s MODERN LOVERS follows two families in Brooklyn neighborhood Ditmas. The parents have all known each other since college, and are now discovering what adulthood and growing up means as they parent their teenage children and remember their own passions.

Please check out all of these books, out in the world within the last month. Support these amazing women and their amazing books!

ENTER THE LIBRARIAN
A review by Josh Hanagarne

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

My first exposure to Lauren Groff was her masterful short story collection Delicate Edible Birds. I couldn’t wait to see what else she had written. I then raced through ArcadiaandThe Monsters of Templeton and couldn’t have been happier. 

(Seriously, it’s worth mentioning again. The title story in Delicate Edible Birds is one of the most unsettling, lyrical short stories I have ever read.) 

Then, having read them all, the long wait for the next book… 

During some of the initial hype over Fates and Furies, someone described it as “Gone Girl with slightly nicer people.” This has already become a tiresome characterization of several other novels I won’t name, although the characters are generally getting meaner, not nicer… But I had faith. Groff obviously slaves over her writing, and would be the last author I’d expect to try and cash in on the Gone Girl lite party. (For the record, I loved Gone Girl).  

She doesn’t disappoint.  

It’s hard to say much about Fates and Furies without getting into spoiler territory. Here’s the least you need to know: it’s about a marriage that looks ideal and isn’t as perfect as it seems. Yes, this is territory we’ve seen before, but I would happily read Groff’s revitalization of every tired old trope in existence.  

So then:  

Lotto (short for Lancelot, of all things) and Mathilde marry in their early twenties after an extremely brief courtship. His friends are skeptical. Lotto is a veteran seducer of insatiable sexual appetites, and no one believes he’ll tie himself into monogamy. But so he does, and his side of their marriage comprises the first half of the book.  

Enter Mathilde and her viewpoint. This is where many of the Gone Girl clones go off the rails. Of course each spouse in a marriage has a different perception, different memories, and experiences the relationship in different ways. But the twists are getting increasingly loopy, the partner who is “not quite what he/she seems” is getting increasingly crazier/manipulative/calculating/sociopathic, and it’s getting easier to see it coming.  

Mathilde’s experience, which I won’t spoil, is one of the things that makes the book so special. But Groff apparently didn’t feel any pressure to make her an absolute lunatic. So many “edgy” novels about relationships these days could be filed under “Nasty people doing nasty things to each other and there’s lots of sex as well.”  

Back to revisiting the well: Fatesis full of sex, but in a truly surprising way. The nature of desire is itself a major character in the book. Many of the questions the book raises about sex would be rewarded by a second reading.  

Highly literary, meticulously plotted, and beautifully written, Fates and Furies reminds me of Elena Ferrante, the best Ian McEwan, and hints of Roberto Bolano. But, as with most of my favorite writers, Groff’s voice is so distinct that her books can best be compared only to her other books.  

She has outdone herself. I know she’ll do it again. I just hope the wait won’t be long.  Enjoy!