This is arriving late, since it seems in a haze of jet lag whatever button I hit earlier to send this, did not in fact send this.
I’m going to save the Paris round-up for next week when my brain has readjusted to this time zone. In the meantime, something short about two books near and dear.
Firstly. The first review for ENJOY came in. Kirkus loved it. Kirkus has a reputation for being a bit snarky and hard to please, which I don’t think is as true now as it once was. Or necessarily true at all. But even in this nicer era the review they gave the book is very glowing. Even more enjoyable, for me, is that they managed to capture the complexity and the “depth.” The risk with this cover and title (both of which I love) is they can lead to the book getting distilled down to, goes to Paris, gets laid, eats cheese etc. Which…is not inaccurate, but is far from what I was hoping to capture in the book.
MacNicol poses many important questions about what it means to be a woman free of tethers. Finding beauty in the slow moments along the Seine, or passing by the Louvre, she absorbed all that Paris has to offer. She ate delicious food, met handsome men, and had exciting sex, finally allowing herself to feel satisfied. Her story is not without depth. “I look at this young woman, twenty-three years old, and how all her selves have been split up too,” she writes about an acquaintance. “Not by isolation, but by too much connection. Too much knowledge. The way that the internet has robbed her of discovery. Of being allowed to not know, to have to find out on your own.” Women today are expected to know and be everything, but at what cost? Are your 20s the only acceptable age to grow and evolve? These are only some of the questions MacNicol brings to the table, as she challenges modern expectations of the right to pleasure and enjoyment and being one’s true self in an ever-darkening world.
As I said on instagram, I love the phrase “ever darkening world.” But I also love that the reviewer picked up on the young women.
Secondly. Jo’s novel The Sicilian Inheritance publishes Tuesday. Kirkus gave it a starred review, which is a very big deal. I have read every version of this novel and it’s never not a good read. If you are thinking, Glynnis, you’re biased, you might be correct. Except it has been getting raves from everyone, not just people who officiated Jo’s wedding and drove across the country with her, more than once, and then started the year with her by jumping into a freezing cold river together. The other day the NYT put The Sicilian Inheritance on their most anticipated books for April list. Here’s what they said:
Twinned narratives guide the fizzy, food-y latest from Piazza: the modern-day saga of a flailing Philadelphia chef who honors the dying wish of a beloved great-aunt by journeying back to her ancestral Italian homeland, and flashbacks to the plucky great-grandmother whose battle against the constraints of early-20th-century Sicilian womanhood may have ended in her murder.
Jo is still running a deal, by the way, where if you buy a copy of The Sicilian Inheritance you get a lifetime free subscription to her newsletter.
Good decision: Happy Easter to all who celebrate.
If you only get one, THAT is the one to get! Congratulations! Can't wait to read & share.