Art about failure, about idiocy — which so much of our art today is — always seems to have this same sense of disingenuousness about it.
When Watched – Leopoldine Core
Core is skillful at conjuring modern life without ceding to signposts like smartphones or social networks.
Paulina & Fran – Rachel B. Glaser
In Paulina & Fran we see young women eager to shed conventions but ceaselessly drawn into their current when it comes to the ways humans traditionally relate to each other: with jealousy, longing, pity, hatred, love.
A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
There’s a largeness to these characters. They are so suffused with life, with pain, pleasure, intelligence and ambition, that they occasionally feel unreal.
The First Bad Man – Miranda July
Combat is intimate. Living is intimate. The space between my socks and the front of my boots is intimate.
The book provides you with the wincing secondhand anxiety of watching someone smart you know hurt themselves, repeatedly.