We lost our young dog Frankie to lymphoma two weeks ago, and we said goodbye to our old dog Lila this weekend. It’s been a long spring and summer, with dog care and dog loss taking up a lot of my mental and emotional energy. It’s very hard to see a pet suffer and decline, and not be able to explain or help them much, other than to say goodbye when it’s time. But both our dogs were tired and struggling, Frankie at far too young an age, 18 months, and Lila at a more standard ten years.
Pet grief is its own weird thing and I’m kind of mired in it right now. But pets are not people, and some of the people in my life have been going through hard times, or have lost family members recently, and it sometimes feels strange to be so sad about these animals. And yet. As one of my friends said about Frankie, he flew into our lives like a comet—his puppyhood was A LOT, and he was full of enthusiasm and anxiety in a way that felt very un-Bernese Mountain Doggish—and then he flew out again, gone far too soon, at only 18 months. And Lila was our sturdy companion, and my best winter trail-walking buddy—how she loved the snow!—and she had a very good life for ten years.
Hope you’re having better pet days right now! 🐾
Summer book recs: Four short novels
I mentioned a few overly long novels last time, but I’ve been thinking about short novels, too—how they can be surprisingly meditative, and even consoling (like The Swimmers, below). I finally got around to listening to Anne Youngson’s charming Meet Me at the Museum, from 2018, which made me think about other short novels I’ve enjoyed in the past couple of years. And maybe you saw this piece from Esquire about short novels? Though I’m not sure it’s actually a trend.
Meet Me at the Museum, Anne Youngson. A bittersweet epistolary novel chronicling the unlikely friendship between English farmwife Tina and lonely Danish museum curator Anders. It has 84 Charing Cross Road vibes, and though it’s short, it feels well inhabited, with lots of details from both lives.
Love and Saffron, Kim Fay. Another short epistolary novel about a friendship, this one details the relationship between an older woman and a younger woman, both of them food writers in the Sixties.
The Swimmers, Julie Otsuka. A short two-part novel. (Or two novellas.) The first part is a collective first-person narrative about what happens to a group of swimmers after a crack appears at the bottom of their community pool. The second part details a woman’s regrets and worries about her mother, who’s suffering from dementia. My description makes it sound bland, but it’s funny, wry, strange, and moving.
Mrs. Bridge, Evan Connell. Half of Connell’s two-part story of Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge. The story of 1930s-1940s-era Kansas City wife and mother India Bridge, told in very short chapters. Connell wrote it in the 1950s, and it’s wry, sad, and ahead of its time, though India Bridge was very much of her time. Unlike any other novel I’ve read.
I’m also reviewing two short forthcoming novels: Isle McElroy’s People Collide, a body-swapping literary novel set in Bulgaria and Paris that clocks in at only 242 pages, and Lauren Groff’s revisionist historical novel The Vaster Wilds, only 272 pages. Both publishing in late September. So maybe the short-novel thing is a trend!
I corralled all these novels on Bookshop.org—I like the way Bookshop.org features booklists.
Let me know if you’re reading a short novel this summer!
Watching/listening
This issue’s watch/listen episodes feel resonant with my novel The Wrong Kind of Woman—my characters would definitely relate to the journeys here:
—Mary Tyler Moore documentary on Max
Did you know that Mary Tyler Moore had to fight to wear capri pants as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show? (The network wanted her in a dress and heels like June Cleaver…) Or that Mary Tyler Moore’s character Mary Richards was originally written as a divorcée starting a new life, but the network said she couldn’t be divorced? I loved this documentary, and all Moore’s groundbreaking acting and comedy work.
Somewhat relatedly, I recently learned that country/rockabilly musician Sonny Curtis wrote and performed the Mary Tyler Moore show’s iconic theme song “Love is All Around.” Sarah Curtis Graziano, a writer friend who happens to be Sonny Curtis’ daughter, wrote a beautiful, layered essay about her complicated feelings for that song, and its feminist and anti-feminist lyrics.
—Song Exploder Podcast, with Natalie Merchant
The Song Exploder podcast has musicians/songwriters telling how they wrote their songs, going through them bit by bit. This episode, with Natalie Merchant talking about how she came to write “Miss Tilly,” a eulogy for an activist from the 1960s/70s, is just about perfect. It may even make you cry.
One summery recipe
Here’s a cucumber-radish salad from Ottolenghi. Take a minute to watch Jake from Ottolenghi making this salad. I don’t know about smashing the cucumbers, but it sounds pretty delicious. And I think you could use lemon juice or zest in place of the sumac, if you don’t have it.
And last, a giveaway ✨⭐️✨
The paperback version of The Wrong Kind of Woman will have its first birthday later this month, and to celebrate, I’m giving away two signed copies (US only). To enter the giveaway, just reply and say that you’d like to be entered. ✨⭐️✨
So sorry about your pups; that is so hard!
Ooof -- losing TWO dogs in such close succession, that’s rough. Hope the pain eases soon.