november reading roundup

blue sisters, car bombs, and beauty

Hi! I’m back from Bhutan. What an adventure. I can’t wait to tell you more about it.

Between the eighteen and sixteen hour plane rides to / from Asia, and the downtime between excursions, I had a lot of leisure time to read last month. It was heavenly. Here are the books I had the privilege and pleasure of reading in November. Without a doubt, this is the monthly stack I’ve most enjoyed reading this year:

Starting with…

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

This is a beautiful novel about sisterhood, grief, and the throes of addiction. The story follows three sisters, Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky, as they reconcile with the death of their beloved fourth sister, Nicky.

Yes, their last name is Blue. This was the singular aspect of the novel that I found corny. I get it - they’re sad girls. It makes for a nice title. But hearing the names Bonnie Blue and Lucky Blue repeatedly took me out of the story. It wasn’t as problematic as, say, Ryle Kincaid or Lily Blossom Bloom (lol, I watched It Ends With Us on the plane), but it was a wee bit distracting nonetheless. I digress…!

This book paints a sharp, moving portrait of sisterhood. We observe what the sisters share with one another, what they hide, and how they quarrel, cope with, and love each other in the wake of unfathomable loss. All of the Blue sisters suffer from addiction which manifests in different forms for each of them. How they manage it, and support one another through their respective struggles, is equal parts heart-warming and wrenching to behold.

This isn’t an easy breezy read due to the subject matter at hand. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this book. Mellors’ prose is beautiful. I also appreciated her vocabulary. The thoughtful word selection flows naturally with the storytelling, versus giving off I-was-holding-a-thesaurus-as-I-edited-this vibes.

Blue Sisters is Coco Mellors’ second book. I have yet to read her first novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein, but it’s on my 2025 reading list.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

This book was published in 2005, meaning the cultural references are very mid-aughts. The themes, however, are eerily topical. The book touches on culture wars, affirmative action, political correctness, and immigration, making it fascinating to read in 2024. It’s crazy how some American discourse has remained unchanged these past twenty years.

On Beauty follows the lives of the Belseys, a mixed-race family living in an elite university town outside of Boston. Howard, the patriarch, is a white London transplant who lectures at the university. His wife, Kiki, is a beautiful black Florida native who works in the local hospital. Howard and Kiki are going through their mid-life crises in tandem, something their three children, Jerome (21), Zora (19), and Levi (15), are forced to experience through proximity.

The Belseys’ rivals exist in the form of the Kippses, another educated black family who move to Wellington from London. As tensions arise between the two families, alliances and friendships sweetly unfold in secret.

Zadie Smith is one of the smartest and funniest writers alive. This story is intelligent, scandalous, and at times, scathing, but constantly grounded in the Belsey family’s humor and love.

I don’t think this book is for everyone. Some of the shit the characters pull is eyebrow-raising. That said, if you work in academia, or have a high tolerance for questionable morality, I think you can find it within yourself to put the characters’ messiness aside and enjoy the magnificence that is On Beauty.

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

My brother has been recommending this book to me for years - I finally mainlined it last month. Now I’m jealous of anyone who hasn’t read it yet. If the machine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind existed IRL, I’d wipe my mind of these chapters so I could experience it all over again with a blank slate.

Say Nothing is a nonfiction book about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Author Patrick Radden Keefe recounts the multi-decade conflict through the lens of its participants. The primary focus is on four members of the Irish Republican Army: Brendan Hughes, Gerry Adams, and the Price sisters, Dolours and Marian. The story is bookended with the missing person case of Jean McConville, a 37-year-old widow and mother of ten who disappeared during the peak of the Troubles, never to be seen alive again.

This book is amazing. It’s incredibly well-researched and it reads like a thriller, while also handling the subject matter with sensitivity and care. I’d recommend this book to those who love true crime, mystery, or history. Or anyone who’s particularly interested in guerilla warfare. Really, I think everyone should read this book. The U.S. public education curriculum completely omitted The Troubles; I only learned about the conflict when I was studying at a policsci university in France.

Say Nothing tells an important story about oppression, occupation, and resistance, some of which was still occurring within our lifetimes. The conflict only officially ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. While The Troubles may be classified as history, the story lives on in Northern Ireland’s not so distant collective memory.

I binge watched the entire 9-episode FX / Hulu adaptation in a jet lagged daze this past weekend. Like the book, it’s heavy, but it’s very good. One thing to note: the book is far more rich in terms of storylines and detail versus the show, which primarily follows the lives of the Price sisters. I’d recommend reading the book first and watching the show after. The crazy-ass (REAL LIFE) plot twist at the end was way more earth-shattering on page versus on-screen.

Have you read any of these books? Have you watched Say Nothing?

I also must ask… has anyone seen It Ends With Us? I’d tried reading the book earlier this year (it was a gift from a friend (who, upon reflection, must secretly hate me)) but I had to stop one chapter in because the prose (if you can call it that) was so painful to read. Honestly though, I was surprisingly touched by the movie! So much so that I almost considered reading It Starts With Us.

Keyword: almost. I realized that reading C*lleen H**ver after Patrick Radden Keefe would be like eating a chicken nugget right after a meal at Noma. I’ll spare myself the agony and wait til the sequel is adapted for the screen.

Lola Petticrew as Dolours Price in the Say Nothing series. (PS - photoshop is my passion lol)