#36// love, data and other things

vampire sex, detectives, mean girls

Dear Reader,
How are you? Mid-March calls for a long-ish newsletter because my February draft was never sent out. I keep imagining that these letters should have themes, but at the end of the day it is a mix-and-match. Someday I could be more organized, sending themed letters. Some day. I hope you are well, wherever you are. I am cold, everywhere I go. I’ve picked up this new not-useful habit of sipping iced coffees in tall tumblers, then feeling even more cold that I would be, and getting cranky. But you know what? You could satisfy your cravings of iced coffee, and just take a hot bath right after, and you’ll be warm and good to go.
 

Read

I tore through Seven days in June by Tia Williams, a delicious love story between Eva Mercy, single mom and erotica author, and Shane Hall, an award-winning reclusive novelist. I knew nothing about the book except that this was going to be a love story between two Black people, evident from the cover, BUT this novel took me by total surprise.

In the first page Eva has a near-death experience with a dildo and wonders what her obituary would’ve read. She is after all the best-selling author of the Cursed series, a witch/vampire erotica featuring a bronze eyed vampire Sebastian cursed to find himself on the opposite side of the globe after he makes love to Gia. Ok, sounds good. The next scene is a book club literary party with forty fangirls in their fifties, in a private room to celebrate the 15th year anniversary of the Cursed series in a bondage themed lunch. The ‘rabid fandom’ flaunt their Cursed merch, talk about orgasms, discuss how to make the husband bite during sex (of course, the author of the best ‘supermarket checkout porn’ with film adaptation rights should know the answer right?) and have a fun luncheon (like Eva being handcuffed to a gothic throne and fed food (item named Cuffs + Cookies) “by a bored waitress in a pleather corset”). Minutes later, Eva is in the washroom downing marijuana gummy bears and jabbing painkillers. She battles with debilitating migraines that make her life very hard, but since she has an invisible disability, others don’t always understand what she goes through.

 
Later, at a literary panel, a lot is at stake. Because sparks fly between Shane and Eva (who haven’t seen each other for years) and it is now the talk of the FB groups of Cursed fans and the Black literary community. What no one knows is that Eva and Shane spent a week madly, deeply in love with one another as teenagers. Or that Sebastian the vampire was just Eva’s way as a horny, dysfunctional teenager to get over Shane but it ended up giving her a career and money and she just can’t kill the character off now, even though she really wants to. Or that Shane’s books are messages to Eva. *swoon*
 
I loved Eva's daughter ‘tween tornado’ Audre—funniest, wisest— who tries to make some cash on the side with therapy sessions to her rich private school mates, and Eva’s editor Cece who knows how to make anything happen in NYC. The humour; absolutely spot on. Eva’s book parties, how the spiciest romance writers are often your middle aged, church going types, fellow writer publishing a sonnet titled ‘Skyscrapers penetrating the Night Sky’ that ran in the Paris review as one of the most lyrical takes on penises, Eva and Shane’s spat over how their inspired characters aren’t good enough (you don’t make the vampire do cool shit! Shane complains).
 
I read this book in big gulps, as if my life depended on it. It was not just a love story, but also a celebration of Black spirit. I loved how the characters were deeply flawed. Tia Williams takes us to through addiction and jail time, chronic illness, medical help/mismanagement. The book touches upon several valid points about black people navigating the film and publishing industry. Also, generational curses passed on to the women in Eva’s Creole family—(This was something I had really hoped would be explored more as I was reading but it kinds of fizzles out even though we anticipate some major plot turn until the end).
 
Seven Days in June is torrid, intense and crashes over you (literally). There’s action (no pun intended; this comment is not about sex) that I felt was happening right in front of me. Loud, un-ignorable—pounding fists, bursting out in mirthless laughs, shouts, cheeks aflame; Everything was so real, perhaps like the first time we watched a 3D movie. I was ducking my head, slapping my forehead and also grinning ear to ear. There were times I wished Eva and Shane would stop crashing and retreating (reminded me of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, but more passionate, more vocal, more dramatic), over and over again, and we could see something more from them, but actually by the end, I didn’t mind that at all. I am glad I picked this up. It is delicious, I have no better words.
 
Next up is The Verifiers by Jane Pek. Claudia who is obsessed with a Chinese mystery series (Inspector Yuan series), works at a dating detective agency. She is a lesbian (in the closet) who has not brought home a nice Chinese boy, or chosen a conventional career. The detective agency is referrals-only and the employees spy on dates/potential dates for their wealthy clients. When a client is dead, and Claudia finds discrepancies about the people spied upon, she realizes she has a murder mystery to solve.

The book is blurbed “Introducing a sharp-witted heroine for the 21st century: a new amateur sleuth exploring the landscape—both physical and virtual—of New York in a debut novel about love, technology, and murder.” I was completely sold with that description. And The Verifiers was, as I hoped, an easy read that I sped through in two sittings. As exciting as the blurb sounds, the novel isn’t exactly that. The problem when a book tries to be a mystery and a portrayal of the Chinese American community, and a portrayal of a single parent family, and about sibling problems, and a look into the mind of queer people who aren’t out to their families, and peers into family trauma, capitalism, big bucks and data mining, is that there’s a lot to build on, so some of these themes could fall short. It isn’t impossible, but I did wish Pek didn’t try so hard but concentrated on fewer details, and trimmed things up a bit for a tighter and more effective novel, than serve us everything that needs to be told in a single novel.
 
Claudia has no personality whatsoever which bothered me, but not in a way to make me less invested in her mystery solving. I really enjoyed the relevance of the book (please, we need more fiction like this!) its exploration of data, and information. The addictive way in which data mining, social media, access to personal information, the line between convenience and infringement of privacy, the pressures of founding a company in a capitalist economy, online dating problems, and influence of algorithms on personal decisions kept me totally hooked. After the read, like most online essays on the same topic, I wanted nothing more than to go off the web and social media. Pek has succeeded in highlighting the many ways data can be harvested and the consequences that might befall us, even in matters of the heart. I kept thinking about the climax long after I finished the book. You have scope for nightmares.
 
I also really enjoyed indulging in the fabulous lives of three (four?) British Nigerian women that’s been called the new Sex and the City. Do I agree with the description? Yes, if every girl friendship story has to be compared to Carrie-Samantha-Charlotte-Miranda. The comparison did catch my eye too. Nikki May's debut novel Wahala is juicy with girl drama, manipulations, affairs, dodgy men, daddy issues, shopping sprees, beauty parlour talk—the perfect beach read. Catch the review here.

Watch

The new Badhaai Do was a lovely surprise. A body building obsessed cop Shardul Thakur and a PT teacher Suman Singh enter into a lavender marriage to survive the expectations of the heteronormative society. Not only have Rajukummar Rao and Bhumi Pednekar given wonderful performances but the film touches upon several problems, societal and legal, that a gay person faces in India. Shardul, who does not shy from asking the ‘title’ to every person he meets is muscular, works in the police force, is the doting son in a large, joint family—a typical man-next-door. Not your usual Bollywood caricature of a gay person. And Suman struggles with the marriage talk in her house. They decide to live with one another, but are not even friends, as Suman once describes their relationship. A sensitive and beautiful story about coming out, existing, finding love, and finding your people (and family).
 
I watched Al Rawabi school for girls because of Netflix algorithms. This one’s an Arabic high school drama set in an all-girl’s school in Jordan. It is messy with secret boyfriends, mean girls, rich kids with influential parents, school trips, soccer trial runs, gossiping and eavesdropping. The girls seem to tell a looot of secrets in the pink tiled washroom, but then, teen girl drama, let’s say they don’t make the cleverest of decisions.
 
I did not think I would be eager to witness a cat fight because pretty girl’s boyfriend followed someone from the other gang on Instagram. But there I was, steeped in teen angst and jealousy and shoulder bumping and glares. I was completely engrossed in the characters—the mean girls (two pretty girls with boyfriends, a loyal follower), bubbly eavesdropper queen Dina, gothic hacker with bitchface Nouf, gentle soul Mariam. The bullied girls hatch a plan for revenge, but things go awfully wrong in the patriarchal set up with abusive fathers, honour obsessed brothers, strict mothers, judgy people, ambitious school authorities, and flirty boyfriends.
 
While I don’t really care for a moral at the end of any show or book, this series left me confused—to the point of wondering ‘what are they trying to say’—with the blurry lines between the bully and the bullied. Am I supposed to sympathize with the bullies? Do consequences absolve bullies of their actions? I felt uncomfortable because I wanted the girls to just stop doing shit and go read a book or something. The character arcs get ridiculous, perhaps for the ‘unbelievable twists’. I don't know if I would /should recommend the show—The girls do a lot of things that are just not okay. I thought about the characters for days though. Watch, at your own peril, for the shock and drama, with no heroes but all villains, with no expectations of right and wrong. These girls are mean, very mean indeed. TW: mental illness, bullying, contemplating suicide, violence

 

Amazing Links

How many people are in space now
I can’t stop thinking about this (The New Yorker)
An erotic comics website and what to read here (Book Riot)
About crying (NYT)
An ode to voice notes and intimacy (Container magazine)

For the sparkling new (and old) books and movies,
Sign up for TWO months of FREE Scribd using my Invite Link. 

Until next time,
Resh x


(This newsletter may contain affiliate links which might earn me a very small commission at no extra cost to you)


If you liked this newsletter, the best way to show support would be to forward the subscribe link to a friend or share via your favourite  social media. Or you could buy a book.