Good evening!
This is late because I lost control of the day yesterday. I was making book sleeves for my Etsy shop, which will be reopening this week and then it was 11PM and I needed to go to bed.
If you’d like to buy me a coffee, on Ko-Fi, you can do here 🙂
What I’ve been reading this week and what I think about it
Very, very successful week for reading! First of all I finished Lost On Me by Veronica Raimo, translated from the Italian by Leah Janeczko, which is out in a couple of days from Virago. This reminded me a lot of My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley, as it is also a wry look at parents, and how an adult child of a parent looks back on their childhood with them. I think this one has a slightly more comical intention than Riley’s does (whose novel is, nevertheless, still very funny), but there were similar moments of reflection, sadness and anger.
At the core of Lost On Me is the protagonist’s addiction to lying, which she does some work on by looking at key moments from her childhood. She is a little bit addicted to drama, and getting herself in situations that she knows will lead to a drama, which is essentially attention-seeking. Early on, it is spelled out that her brother is her mother’s favourite child, and her grandmother’s favourite grandchild, while she is seen as too thin, relatively talentless and generally a handful. She doesn’t necessarily feel jealous towards her brother, but you can tell that there is a sort of loss in her life that she’s constantly trying to work through. Her lying comes randomly and she finds that she has had to sustain lies for very long periods, which she uses to her advantage if that lie will get her out of situations. Her summary of her life is an interesting study in how these kinds of behaviours develop -- in fact it does feel like a psychological evaluation, without being dry.
I’ve found myself referring to just ‘she’ and ‘her’ here, when talking about both the protagonist and the writer Raimo. Her protagonist has the same name as her, and she refers to her brother being a writer, which he is in real life. It’s interesting when these kinds of texts are novels, because it almost feels as if the writer is exorcising some demons, and you don’t know how far to pry into their life online to see how much is true. Does it matter? If we’re thinking about the status of the text, yes probably. Is it autofiction? Is it a novelisation of a memoir? Or should we just receive it as a novel, because the writer told us to? If they’re seemingly letting us into their life, is it therefore inevitable we ask the question on whether it’s true? I think there’s a moral issue at stake, because ultimately, the writer is a person and not just a machine who has made a product. I don’t really know what I think. I did a quick, tertiary google of her, and then when I saw her brother really was a writer, I instinctively closed the browser. I think that says enough. I also think Elena Ferrante has probably done the right thing in staying anonymous, for these reasons.
I also read Inside Daisy Clover by Gavin Lambert (1963). This was a birthday present from Sara, who said that she googled ‘books about Hollywood’ and this one came up, so she got it for me. I’m extremely thankful she did, because this is just simply one of the best novels I’ve ever read, certainly one of the best about Hollywood. I’m now going to try and locate all of Lambert’s fiction -- he also wrote a lot of non-fiction, as well as screenplays such as I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977) and Second Serve (1987). He did an incredible amount of work on representing queer lives in Hollywood -- Second Serve is about trans tennis player Renée Richards, and he wrote a lot of biographies on gay and lesbian people. I’m really excited to dig into his back catalogue, and feel very grateful that he’s been put on my radar.
Daisy Clover starts when the titular Daisy is 14, living with her card game-addicted mother in Venice Beach. She often goes down to the promenade to record her singing, as she has a dream to become a singer, or an actress. She enters a singing competition in a shopping mall and wins, putting her on the radar of Mr. Swan, the head of a large film studio, and she’s cast in her first film. Her outward life, that of a child star, is at odds with her inner life -- she’s defiant, thinks she’s streetwise, and eager to get her life started. She loves Cary Grant and Myrna Loy (don’t we all), and she thinks the films she is forced to act and sing in are ‘phoney.’ As a reader, you can see how people are taking advantage of her and how she doesn’t realise it, especially as she is so naive but doesn’t think she is. Although, saying that, there are moments in which she’s onto what’s happening to her and she acts exactly how you’d want her to. She’s difficult, but easy to root for.
I don’t normally get invested in characters like this, but on this occasion, I think this is exactly what Lambert wants. The title is, after all, Inside Daisy Clover -- it’s written in the form of diaries, because she doesn’t want to talk to herself, but she feels like she needs to get her thoughts down. It’s a really clever look at how people are manipulated in Hollywood and what kind of forces are at work to keep up its own facade through this one person’s point of view, which is, whatever she thinks about herself, quite innocent. I looooooooved it.
Books on my radar
I took a visit to my fave West Kirby Books this week and bought a copy of Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm (2022), which is a horror/Gothic novel set in a deserted hotel. Very me.