Books I’ve Read and Loved Lately

This year I’ve been a bit slower in posting about the books I’ve been reading, mostly because I started a substack all about women’s writing (check it out and give me a follow over there), so this one is a big old catch up of some of the books I’ve read and loved recently.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin

Hands down my favourite book of the year Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is beautiful story and one I’ll definitely return to.

Two college students, Samson Mazer and Sadie Green, reunite by chance in a train station and rekindle a complex and deep friendship that teeters on romance but never quite becomes a relationship. They are two people who love each other deeply but not necessarily at the same time, or in the same way, and decide to reignite their passion for video games by creating a game together.

Sam is disabled, following a car crash when he was younger which killed his mother and left him with a long term foot injury, and for him games are a form of escapism. Sam and Sadie bonded over a shared love of Super Mario Bros when they met as children in the hospital. Sam was recovering, and hadn’t spoken since the accident, Sadie was visiting her sister who had leukemia and coaxed him out of his shell. Perhaps shaped by growing up on the sidelines, Sadie creates games to make a mark on the world. No easy feat for a woman in the industry at the turn of the century.

When they reconnect as students, Sam at Harvard, and Sadie at MIT, we meet Sam’s roomate Marx, a seemingly unflappable, easy going character who takes the role of manager in both their work and relationship. Each of the characters grows throughout their twenties and the projects they work on together. Sadie falls into a troubled relationship with much older lecturer and games designer, Dov, who is married with children. The power imbalance between them plays out in every aspect of their relationship and speaks loudly of the predatory behaviour that still exists within the creative industries. Marx jumps from relationship to relationship but takes on the mental and physical load of caring for Sam without letting Sam know he’s being cared for. Sam is difficult, he doesn’t ask for help and he doesn’t talk about the traumas of his past.

“The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.”

At heart this is a story about love and creativity. A love triangle forms between the three characters and I was drawn in by how real and human those characters feel as they try and battle with their own struggles while keeping each other afloat.

“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”

The writing is fun and genre-bending, entwining bits of poetry and games design. Even as someone who is not well versed in technical language, I found the descriptions of the creative process, and the way each character brings their own needs and wants into that, a joy to read. Zevin also blurs the boundaries between reality and games, with a whole section played out through an online mass-multiplayer game, Pioneers, that Sam created to reconnect with Sadie, “EmilyBMarxx: How did you find me?” “Daedalus84: Find you? I built this place for you.”

If I Had Your Face – Frances Cha

South Korea is said to have the highest plastic surgery rates in the world and it’s against this background of unsustainable beauty standards that Cha’s debut novel is set. If I Had Your Face follows four young women in Seoul, a city that is both dazzling in its opportunities and brutal in the lengths the characters will go to obtain them. This is the background which informs Cha’s novel. Kyuri is a room salon girl, a job only afforded to the ‘prettiest 10%’ but the lifestyle of perceived luxury comes at a heavy cost as her debts mount and nights of drinking take their toll. Her flatmate, Miho, is an artist who becomes immersed in the world of the hyper-wealthy following award of a US scholarship. Opposite, lives the mute hairdresser Ara, who’s obsession with a K-pop star provides an escape from the pressures of her family and mundanity of everyday life. Downstairs is Wonna who is pregnant and struggling with the anxiety of becoming a mother and holding down a job.

“But I grew up not knowing the difference between a bearable life and an unbearable life, and by the time I discovered there was such a thing, it was too late.”

The story is dark and relentless, it seems that the odds continue to stack against each of the characters as they are tested to breaking point but despite this, their friendship and solidarity in the face of their struggles, offers a welcome relief. This one was both gripping and grim and gave me a lot of food for thought!

Yinka, Where is Your Huzband? – Lizzie Damilola Blackburn

This is a funny, fresh read following Yinka, a British-Nigerian thirty-something, who is struggling to live up to her family’s expectations. Yinka wants to settle down and find love but she hasn’t found the one and her interfering aunties, and their unwanted prayers for her, aren’t helping either. When Yinka’s cousin announces she’s getting married, Yinka gives herself six months to find a date. I whizzed through this and found Yinka both hilarious and relatable in her struggles, the book perfectly speaks to the pressure to settle down and live up to expectations as well as the journey of finding yourself. Definitely one to read if you need something lighthearted to get you out of a reading slump!

Crying in H Mart – Michelle Zauner

This has been on my to read list for a while but I’ve avoided it as my own grief felt too raw and I thought it would hit too close to the bone. I was right but I was ready for it. This is a deeply personal non-fiction account of losing her mother and finding her identity. Michelle Zauner is Korean American and grew up in Oregon, she talks about her experiences and her sometimes difficult relationship with her mother and how they reconcile as her mother’s health declines. They connect through food and the love is so apparent but this book doesn’t shy away from the difficulties of loving someone, especially someone who is so unwell, which makes it all the more powerful. It’s impossible not to feel all the feelings reading this.