Entry 08: Small Joys
Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan (2021)
Having read and enjoyed two quite long novels last month of over 700 pages each, I set out to experience short-form fiction. A few short stories hit the spot, but Keegan’s novella, tiny but mighty, delivers maximal impact. Set in Ireland during 1985, her tale follows Furlong, a man raised by a single mother, now grown, who delivers shipments of coal and logs to the people in his town. This grinding job, though dirty and hardly aspirational, has secured for his wife and five daughters a tenuous grip on the lower rung of the middle class during a time of economic uncertainty and Thatcherism. The day before Christmas Eve, with all this holiday signifies (which is not coincidental to the story), Furlong reflects upon an accidental encounter and must confront the truth about a laundry run by the local convent — the same convent responsible for the town’s best girl’s school, where he and his wife breathlessly hope their daughters will be admitted someday. Naturally, given this family’s status anxiety, education is the family’s lever to economic stability. Furlong’s discovery forces an internal crisis as he questions what kind of man he is and what kind of action he will take, knowing full well the consequences. Keegan’s depiction of how the women of the town are complicit in condemning “fallen girls” to a life of mistreatment and suffering is chilling. That the townspeople all consider themselves to be good Catholics; that the nuns consider themselves ‘brides of Christ’; that the priests, too, are aware and complicit, makes the situation all the more fraught. In Keegan’s “Everytown,” the citizens persuade themselves that the goings on are “no affair of mine.” And yet Furlong keeps encountering himself in various reflective surfaces throughout the novella. He can’t escape himself. Who is Furlong? What will he do? And what will the consequences of his choices be? This gorgeous gem of a book merits my highest recommendation. *****
2. Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends (2021)
You’re invited: to a pandemic pod in the country, and what could be better? Alexander Senderovsky, known as Sasha, his wife, Masha, and their daughter Natasha, who goes by Nat (a precocious eight-year-old who attends, in the city, an expensive school for “sensitive and complicated children’) are our hosts. After the pandemic hit, the family decamped to their estate in the country. Sasha, 48 years old, has invited friends to hunker down and wait out the pandemic with them. We meet Karen, a successful entrepreneur who has just launched Troo Love, an app; Ed, a dilettante from an independently wealthy family; Vinod, who ill , and who has also, it seems completed a draft novel which he once gave to Sasha for feedback, but which Sasha has never finished reading. Oh, and a Famous Actor has been invited, as Sasha maneuvers to get his pilot script produced. Then there’s Dee, an academic, Sasha’s former protege, back when he used to teach writing at university. These people agree to Sasha’s generous offer of hospitality, congregating in various bungalows on his expansive grounds, and meeting for communal meals. Hijinks ensue.
There are ominous signs in the country: the handymen sport odd tattoos; several neighbors display flags depicting an eagle resting on a globe with an anchor; trucks drive onto the property at night and flash their headlights. The questionable (far right?) politics of the country folk set up a “town and gown” clash in an America that is recognizable as our own polarized nation. Here, newcomers are suspect, but old friendships threaten to unravel as well. Friend? Foe? How do we tell? Fortunately, this novel mostly sticks to what it does best, offering a light-hearted romp, buoyed by Shteyngart’s self-deprecating quips and omnipresent humor. “People of his class were both too rich and too poor to divorce. Some had even given up on fighting just as a precaution.” The foibles of these moneyed-yet-striving creative-class characters are on display. Shteyngart, the perfect host, makes sure we have a good time. *** Recommend
3. Paul Beatty’s The Sellout: A Novel (2015)
“This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations. I’ve never burgled a house. Held up a liquor store…. But here I am, in the cavernous chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States of America… hands cuffed and crossed behind my back…” And so we begin.
Our protagonist, referred to as the Sellout, lives in Los Angeles and attends meetings of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals to argue and quibble over everything from problematic language to what bimonthly means. They want to bring back a historical section of their community, formerly known as Dickens — it’s not the White part of town, it’s not the Hood. They plan to spray paint twelve miles of boundary lines and see if anyone notices. They realize that segregation, building a school in the midst of their community, will be the key to bringing Dickens back.
Meanwhile, the Sellout tends to his urban farm. A “Stank” rolls in overnight (like the one afflicting the city of Carson). The Sellout’s satsuma tree acts like an air freshener, so the neighborhood kids congregate in his yard. He rides the bus, smokes doobies, enjoys “Little Rascal” films, and ponders the wisdom of yelling ‘Racism’ in a post-racial world. He riffs in his humorous way, winking at us readers: “Sometimes I wish Darth Vader had been my father. I’d have been better off. I wouldn’t have a right hand, but I definitely wouldn’t have the burden of being black and constantly having to decide when and if I gave a shit about it. Plus, I’m left handed.”
The book rolls along in this vein, lobbing insight-bombs wrapped in humor. A unique perspective, thoroughly enjoyable, and a perfect book for these fraught times. **** Highly Recommend.
4. Philip Pullman’s Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (2012)
You know these stories. You love these stories. Pullman resists anchoring them in a modern context. The stories remain much as they’ve always been told, but he scrapes away excess, connects loose ends, reveals their crystalline, essential structures, so that they read “as clear as water.” I’d never encountered the tale of “The Three Little Men in the Woods” until I watched the film, “Uncut Gems.” Adam Sandler takes a brief hiatus from his never-ending self-induced chaos to rest in a school auditorium for a moment to watch his daughter wear a paper dress and gather strawberries in a basket in the school play. These stories are everywhere, they’re our shared subconscious. Recommend ***
5. Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun (2021)
A brilliant satire of modern life. In Los Angeles, water is so precious that a young actor, Cassidy Carter, agrees to star in a film pending contractual agreement that she’s to be paid in the real stuff. This turns out to be a savvy move, shielding her from consuming WAT-R, a new product marketed to the less fortunate. Clearly it hasn’t been vetted by the FDA. Patrick, a novelist from the East Coast whose novel is being adapted into the film, flies to L.A., leaving his wife and daughter to their own devices. They retreat to a creepy kind of wellness commune.
Patrick discovers there’s something fishy about the film production, whose producers seem to have their pinkies in many different er, buckets. Patrick becomes Cassidy’s minder, and she hilariously demonstrates how to navigate Hollywood power dynamics, while they try to discover what the producers are really up to. The novel held my interest until it ran a little dry and sputtered a bit at the end. Fresh concept: ***Recommend
See also: Sarah Penner, The Lost Apothecary. Employing dual timelines, we follow a modern woman who escapes to London. When she tries her hand at mudlarking, she uncovers a mystery from the past. The reader sees this past unfold from that protagonist’s perspective. A delight! ***Recommend
And: The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave is an exceptionally well-plotted, fast-paced thriller. I love it when the author lands the ending in an unexpected way. This one surprised me; the author earns her ending. Bravo. ***Recommend