The Maris Review, vol 17

Stop it with Brat Summer reading lists!

Aug 13, 2024

∙ Paid

Hum by Helen Phillips

Helen Phillips has been writing prescient and compelling speculative fiction well before that Venn Diagram meme with 1984 and Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 was a gleam in its mother’s eye. She is uniquely attuned to how we live now, and she writes in quick beautiful bursts (there isn’t one extraneous word in her prose) about how what we regard as routine can turn on us in ways both subtle and extravagant.

Her latest novel is about government surveillance and the dangers of consumer culture, but it’s mostly about what being a member of the urban working class means in the (very) near future: gig work in a crowded, overheated city where green space is rare and fresh air is a commodity. In this world you are constantly being upsold, anytime you finish an interaction with a hum (Phillips’s term for a robot with a supercharged level of AI), they ask if you’d like to buy some skin cream or candy or whatever is semi-related to the conversation you just had. If you aren’t wealthy, you’re doomed to be advertised to all of the time.

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is such a lithe writer, constantly zipping between genres with elegance and confidence. I think my favorite is still her historical noir, but her gothic horror is also a lot of fun. This time around we get juicy historical fiction set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, at the tail-end of the code era when everyone looked so glamorous but few actors were actually having a good time. We follow a young actress making her debut in the title role of a new adaptation of the story of Salome (I’m always grateful to Jesus Christ Superstar for providing context anytime I interact with New Testament lore), and an array of the characters who surround her. Even when you know this whole thing ends with a guy’s head on a plate, the novel is still a fun, fast-paced delight for those final few weeks of August when it’s hard to find any motivation at all.

*** There are so many excellent modern novels set in Old Hollywood that are worth your while: Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch and my favorite, Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, among others. I’m also gonna take some credit for this: before BookTok existed, I was the editorial director of Book of the Month who chose a little book by an unknown author named Taylor Jenkins Reid as an official selection. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo continues to dominate fiction bestseller lists to this day.

Stop it with the Brat Summer booklists

This one is from W Magazine, but I don’t mean to single them out!

We love Charli XCX, and we love books about women who are bad-mannered, selfish, or generally don’t give a fuck. But the proliferation of book lists for people who want to have a Brat Summer (Google it; there’s so much) makes me feel sad. I hate how books on such lists are all lumped in together even when it’s their differences that most interest me.

Maybe I particularly hate the Brat Summer lists because they illustrates just how constant the struggle is for various publications to make books feel relevant to their audiences. We delight when there’s some sort of tie-in, especially when it even comes with its own recognizable color. I say “we” because I’m guilty of this too, as are most people who love books and write for general audiences. That’s why there are so many lists like Books To Read If You Liked X or Y TV Show or Movie, or even the basic Summer Reading List.

The solution to this problem goes back to where I always return: we need more robust book coverage and fewer lists. I don’t know how to square that need with media outlets desperate for clicks above all else, who want pretty packages to offer fickle readers. There are a lot of things I don’t like about Substack: I miss editors, I miss collaboration, I miss steady assignments. But at least here I have the freedom to tell you about books I like (and some I don’t) without having to peg them to some snappy theme. That’s not nothing. (Glad you’re here, is what I mean to say.)