A big loss resets the clock, becomes the new way you measure months or years passed, even if the time elapsed will never feel as short or long as the calendar alleges. I go to work, go to happy hour, go to therapy, see my friends, see my family, watch my shows, read my books, all while living in the continuation of a big loss that happened two years ago.
DISCIPLINE begins like a Cuskian novel of conversationsâbetween the narrator and a series of strangers, ex-lovers, and estranged friends she encounters on her book tourâbut its steady creeping tension and gutsy mid-book plot shift make it something much more satisfying. Larissa has a crisp, cool voice and a breezy efficiency with details, and her interest in how we compare different versions of ourselves, both in art and in relationships, leads to many piercingly relatable passages. Iâm kinda obsessed with how good it is and so is everyone else Iâve given it to. Out today!
BIG on-sale day:
My dear colleague, Steph Sinclair, and her sister, Sara, enlisted twenty-five esteemed Indigenous poets, ecologists, painters, novelists, memoirists, and activists to write heartfelt lettersâto ancestors, to elders, to future generations, to allies, to forests, to cloudsâthe sum of which is this beautiful book, a patchwork of history and possibility.
Ziyad Saadiâs reimagining of Mrs. Dallowayâwhich turned a hundred this yearâbrings a modern lens to postwar trauma and repression and puts a hilarious spin on the classic coming out story, with a Palestinian refugee throwing himself an elaborate (and doomed) birthday dinner party to tell his family and friends heâs gay.
