Hello my salacious salamanders,
Typically it’s impossible to recommend a book universally. Some books that I find interesting you might find loathsome, and vice versa. However, there are some books that I read and then will recommend to everybody no matter what. I have encountered one of those books!!! It’s the first on the list, The Dead are Gods, by Eirinie Carson.
I first got to know Eirinie thanks to mutual friends, and to being cast on the same modeling jobs a few years ago; both jobs sucked of course, but at least shoots like that always bring people closer together (I’m a tad too disabled to model these days). Then finally, it was writing that connected us further. Last year, I had the pleasure of publishing a version of the memoir’s first chapter in an anthology I edited called, Mortal Connection (you can check it out here).
All this to say, I should’ve known The Dead are Gods would tear me apart and put me back together again!!! I should’ve known Eirinie’s prose would sear itself onto the inside of my eyelids!!! I blasted through these pages and I am fuller for it. If you have ever, or will ever, grieve for a loved one, I recommend this book, and that makes it pretty damn universal.
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1. The Dead are Gods by Eirinie Carson
Memoir, 228 pages, April 2023
Eirinie Carson recounts her time coming of age in London with her best friend Larissa. They are Black models in a mostly white industry who bond over rock and roll, martinis, poetry and prose: “Their formative years together were a storm of shows, after parties, and grungy decadence.” Eirinie dedicates her narration to Larissa: “You created space within me to be someone different, I didn't have to follow, I didn't have to colour within the lines. This was liberation.”
One day, Eirinie receives a phone call and is told that Larissa was found dead. This is a devastation beyond belief. Eirinie is heartbroken and bewildered. She sets out to understand the secrecy of her lifelong friend as well as the grief that overwhelms her.
In reading The Dead are Gods, I feel a familiar emotion, as though I’m baring witness to a singer in a crescendo of high notes. I have a quivering in the heart and belly. I feel the great loss of Larissa. And through Eirinie’s vulnerability, I feel myself open up in an attempt to understand my own griefs and losses, of which I cling to many.
This story is an invitation. Eirinie makes us feel safe and comfortable, guides our hand as together we open up the overstuffed boxes in our souls. Eirinie pulls out delicate glass shapes, her innermost desires, thoughts, and questions, and the heavy weighted things our “polite” society likes to hide. Even more so, those delicate things we like to hide from ourselves—lest they shatter us.
In her appraisal of grief, Eirinie reminds us it’s okay to feel the pain of love, and to immortalize that love within us is how we can find peace.
…I’m not crying, you’re crying!!! Somebody hand me a tissue, please.
Eirinie has preserved Larissa. She has sainted her and made her infinite: “This book is a hagiography. I have sainted you; I have anointed you and you have become more than my memories. You are made flesh.” The world will never forget Saint Larissa!
READ THIS especially if you like the Smiths, the Cure, Mobb Deep, Le Tigre, the Cramps, the Doors, David Bowie or the Deftones
Next up! Two more book reflections, mood boards, and reading photos.
2. Y/N by Esther Yi
Fiction, Absurdism, 208 pages, March 2023
After a bad breakup, a Korean American woman living in Germany spirals deeper into her obsession with a K-pop megastar named Moon. Moon is the youngest member of a world famous boy band; the narrator and other fans refer to them as the boys. She writes fan fiction about Moon and contemplates her loneliness, until one day Moon suddenly retires and disappears from the public eye. In her desperate attempt to find him in real life, she travels to Seoul, where she meets a series of unusual people who set her onto a bizarre path of discovery.
I’d rather keep it vague so you can enjoy the surprising and eccentric nature of this book. My favorite image in Y/N, of which there are many, is when in Seoul the narrator meets a woman named O. While in a movie theater, they press on aloe vera face masks from the boys’ skincare endorsement. They keep the masks on for ages, comparing each other to burn victims—surely as a metaphor for feeling so unloved, or maybe for the burning insatiable desire within them. Afterwards, they speed through the city on a moped while still wearing the masks. I cherish this eery sense of humor.
Y/N has a dash of Willy Wonka hijinks (yes there’s a whimsical elevator) and the surrealism is rooted in the narrator’s perception of the world, which is just so cool from a craft standpoint. At every turn, Yi subverts expectations almost immediately upon setting them. This is what I love. Surprise me! Torment me a little! There’s a small thrill when an author has you totally suspended. I don’t like predictability, unless I seek it out on purpose. Everything in Y/N is unexpected, and yet totally familiar. Bravo.
I felt stupefied after finishing Y/N, like I’d went on this journey but I wasn’t sure how to describe it in words. Almost as though the whole process of understanding had transcended language in some way. To describe my conclusion in one sentence: I felt collected from the hearts of every human our infinite yearning through time.
READ THIS if you like Kafka, unreliable narrators, or rooms that are bigger on the inside than on the outside.