“She Stoops to Conquer” (1773) — Oliver Goldsmith

Some lighter fare first. For those new to eighteenth-century literature, “She Stoops to Conquer,” a short but chirpy play, is a natural springboard. Set against the intimate, fire-lit rooms of an English country manor, this comedy of manners revolves around the quick-witted Kate Hardcastle, as she outmaneuvers her Janus-faced suitor Charles Marlow. With gentlewomen like Kate, Marlow is a bashful, deferential mess of a man. Meanwhile, in the company of working-class women, he is a bold (frankly, rather creepy) rogue, a reality Kate exposes in an elaborate ruse. “She Stoops to Conquer” explores the absurdity and humor in the everyday performance of class and gender norms — and the sometimes frustrating, sometimes endearing reality of human mutability. It’s the perfect panacea for a dull winter day.

“Northanger Abbey” (1817) — Jane Austen

For those unfamiliar with Austen’s beloved literary ribbing of the Gothic, the novel chronicles the development of Catherine Morland, whose preference for the genre colors her perception of the world from the modish streets of Bath to the halls of the eponymous estate. To the young protagonist, macabre intrigue is not just the stuff of books but of reality, too. Catherine discovers that her instincts and fears are not so much mistaken as misplaced — no matter what well-meaning but overly-secure beau Henry Tilney might say to the contrary. In a Radcliffean twist, Austen, in her archly astute way, shows us that everyday vices like avarice, tyranny and deceit are just as terrifying as any Gothic spook.

“Fathers and Sons” (1862) — Ivan Turgenev

Although “Fathers and Sons” examines a mid-nineteenth-century Russian ideological schism, one needn’t be a Russianist to appreciate the work. Turgenev’s nuanced, compassionate portrait of generational conflict stands the test of time. The novel opens with recent university graduate Arkady Kirsanov, as he returns to his father Nikolai’s provincial estate. His friend Yevgeny Bazarov, a medical student and self-styled nihilist whose worldview has already rubbed off on Arkady, comes along. Nikolai and his brother Pavel are troubled by the disparity between their (apparently antediluvian) liberal, reformist views and the young men’s skepticism toward progressivism and Slavophile traditionalism alike. When Bazarov and Arkady meet the captivating, financially independent Madame Anna Sergeyevna Odintsova and her quietly dignified sister, Katya, the young men must grapple with their supposed emotional indifference and their burgeoning affections. 

“The Rainbow” (1915) — D.H. Lawrence

Set primarily in the East Midlands of England between the 1840s and the early twentieth century, “The Rainbow” traces three generations of the Brangwen family, beginning with the union of a sensitive farmer Tom Brangwen and Lydia Lensky, a flinty Polish widow living in exile. The novel then focuses on the increasingly hostile marriage between Anna Lensky, Lydia’s headstrong daughter by her first husband, and Tom’s possessive, insecure nephew Will. Finally, “The Rainbow” follows Anna and Will Brangwen’s daughter Ursula in her pursuit of moral truth and vocational purpose in a mercenary society and in her search of emotional depth in her relationship with complacent soldier Anton Skrebensky. Part commentary on intergenerational relationships, part criticism of English industrialization and urbanization, part exploration of female hetero- and homosexual desire, part examination of the communication breakdown between men and women, it’s nearly impossible for me to condense “The Rainbow” into a neat summary. Lawrence’s language is fervid; his imagery, lush; his narrative, all-encompassing. The best I can say is, well, read it.

“Snow Country” (1956) — Yasunari Kawabata

Kawabata’s austere novel, expressed in crystalline and somber prose, reflects on the beautiful in the melancholy and on the isolation that arises from aestheticism devoid of human sentiment. For years, Shimamura, an idle married man from Tokyo, frequents a hot spring town nestled in the white-capped Japanese Alps, where he sees a young geisha named Komako. Though forced into her profession by financial necessity and gender constraints, Komako’s inner life is dynamic and rich. She cultivates her passion for music and dance insofar as she is able. She feels with vigor and delicacy in equal measure. While Komako comes to love him, Shimamura is unable to derive any finer feelings from what he sees as a transactional, carnal affair. At most, he pities her. But Shimamura, who lives off family money and merely pretends to have an interest in the performing arts, is much more to be pitied — or scorned. Only as a witness to Komako’s humanity can Shimamura realize the hollowness of his own life, though perhaps too late. 

“My Brilliant Friend” (2012) — Elena Ferrante

The first installment of Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Novels” is a colossus of twenty-first-century fiction. Ostensibly, “My Brilliant Friend” centers on Elena Greco, a young woman in a working-class neighborhood in post-war Naples, as she recounts her childhood friendship and rivalry with Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo. Elena sees herself as retiring and both intellectually and physically unremarkable. In contrast, she views Lila as admirably fierce, adroit and beautiful. All the while, Lila berates herself for her crudeness and hot-headed nature. She holds Elena in high esteem for her diligence, composure and subtlety of mind. As the pair age, rhythms of class and gender limitations set them on divergent life paths. Nonetheless, their relationship with one another continues to inform how they perceive the world and how they conceive of themselves. The visceral, unrelenting honesty of Ferrante’s style — particularly in the expression of women’s rage in the face of gender and economic oppression — gives “My Brilliant Friend” a singular potency. Ferrante’s characters are literary forces of nature, even if they don’t always recognize it for themselves. Elena is simultaneously highly conscious, prudent, awkward, penetrating and powerfully resolute. Lila is indomitable, coarse, elegant, enterprising, loyal and vulnerable. Their “friendship” (the word is woefully inadequate) is manifold, running the gamut from hatred to love and dissolving the boundaries of selfhood. The result is magnetic. Brilliant, even.  

“Sing, Unburied, Sing” (2017) — Jesmyn Ward

Ward’s lyrical and gripping novel begins in the fictional Mississippi town of Bois Sauvage and follows Jojo, a precocious thirteen-year-old, and his little sister Kayla, siblings born to a Black mother Leonie and a white father Michael. The pair — both of whom possess the ability to communicate with the (un)dead — are raised primarily by their maternal grandparents; Leonie, traumatized by the murder of her brother and addicted to drugs, is mentally absent, while Michael is physically and mentally absent, serving out a sentence for drug trafficking. Upon the end of Michael’s sentence, Leonie and her family embark on something of a modern Odyssey to Mississippi State Penitentiary, coming face to face with the ghosts — literal and figurative, past and present — of US slavery, convict leasing, the prison industrial complex and the experiences of interracial families in a racist society.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Norah Catlin, Anabelle Meyers

Parsing “Howards End” — insofar as it can be parsed — is like parsing any bit of Forster’s oeuvre. It’s a tall order, particularly for indecisive undergraduates. Forster synthesizes the commonly opposed; he problematizes conventions, yet never completely rejects tradition. His style is lucid and ambiguous, mirthful and melancholic, self-conscious and sincere. Even in their beloved film adaptations, Merchant Ivory Productions cannot capture the Forsterian spirit in full. The whole ordeal is rather like chasing a cloud. But I digress. 

On its face, “Howards End” is the story of three families in turn-of-the-century England: the cosmopolitan, liberal Anglo-German Schlegel siblings Margaret, Helen and Tibby; the Wilcoxes, hidebound capitalists made rich by the ill-gotten-gains of exploitation colonialism; and the Basts, comprised of Leonard, a clerk and Jacky, a former sex worker. This, however, is a grossly flattened view. As quickly as Forster has set these molds, he recasts them, collapsing any hegemonic conception of ethnonational, class, regional, imperial or political identity. The Schlegels are complicit in the imperialism that their high-minded musings condemn. The Wilcoxes, though a loathsome lot to the bitter end, are not without souls. As for Leonard Bast, he remains one of literature’s most beautifully drawn portraits of human dignity and decency attempting to contend with a classist society. I truly cannot do the novel justice.

Nor could I on that May morning, as I attempted to distill my visceral understanding of “Howards End” into a cogent, quasi-compelling essay. Alas, every theme, every figure — save one — seemed impenetrable. I eventually did scrape something together but continued to feel that most of the novel was beyond my scope of expression. Much to my chagrin, then as now, the only figure I could genuinely “get at” was Tibby.

Forster introduces Theobald “Tibby” Schlegel as “… an intelligent man of sixteen, but dyspeptic and difficile.” And though his adolescent “peevishness” mellows as he matures and comes up to the University of Oxford, his most grievous shortcoming, his “indifference to human beings,” metastasizes. To a novel concerned with personal connection — and to yours truly, a fellow student (nominally) — his emotional detachment is something of a moral and intellectual failing.

For all his schooling, Tibby, tucked away in “his comfortable lodgings in Long Wall,” conceives of thought and feeling as mutually exclusive. He fancies himself an impartial “juror” dealing in facts, above the trifles of “personal relations.” Forster lampoons Tibby’s facile outlook, writing in just one instance of many:

Tibby […] had no opinions. He stood above the conventions […]. It is not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages among them; men can always be more unconventional than women, and a bachelor of independent means need encounter no difficulties at all. […] His was the leisure without sympathy — an attitude as fatal as the strenuous; a little cold culture may be raised on it, but no art. (HE, Chapter XXXIX).

Granted, this image of an academic making unbiased (read: sterile) epistemological judgments from an ivory tower is nothing new. Nonetheless, as I come upon the close of my undergraduate education — and as I glance over some of the la-di-da things I have just written — I see that there is a touch of Tibby-ism in me. I would be lying if I said the pomp and circumstance surrounding academia doesn’t appeal to me on some level, though I know this ceremonial mystique to be riddled with elitism. All the same, I am quite content to sit in secluded libraries, under straight-faced oil paintings, and spend college dinners discussing Chartism. Talk about ivory towers.

That said, the exercise of discussion, if done with care and self-awareness, is vital. I hope no one consciously believes that the mark of education is speaking in hermeneutic tongues and navel-gazing. Intellectual growth cannot spring from apathy, affectation or arbitrary contrarianism. As Forster conveys, we must engage with society at large, not solely with some coterie, to even begin to process the world, to reform it, and to produce works of any depth. And (clichés incoming!) the more we engage, the more nuanced life becomes, and the more challenging it is to pass rigid judgments. But above all, Forster shows us we must embrace emotion, a touchstone of our lives. After all, is not the crux of so many academic disciplines to explore the human condition?

So don’t read “Howards End” because it’s “serious literature.” Don’t write it off because it’s old and, therefore, somehow arcane. Read it because it’s difficult to grasp — as most everything is. “Only connect!” indeed.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Anabelle Meyers, Norah Catlin

CW: spoilers, mentions of death, age-gap relationships, and chronic pain  

In the spring of 2015, Irish author Sally Rooney reflected on her time as the top competitive debater in Europe in her essay “Even If You Beat Me,” which appeared in The Dublin Review. Though ambivalent about her accomplishments and ashamed of how convincingly she proposed solutions to “weighty issues” she knew little about, Rooney admitted that “the feeling of flow, that perfect, self-eliminating focus” she experienced during debates was exhilarating and even a bit mysterious. The persuasive, complex arguments her brain crafted on the spot seemed to pour out of her mouth effortlessly: “Hitting that perfect rhythm while speaking, connecting concept to response, drawing examples out of thin air, you feel just like I imagine a pool shark must. Complex things become simple,” she explained. 

Nothing is ever simple in Rooney’s writing, but her novels “Conversations with Friends” (2017), “Normal People” (2018), and “Beautiful World, Where Are You” (2021) unfold in a lucid, measured style filled with back-and-forth dialogue that contains the kind of “perfect rhythm” to which Rooney refers. 

In her latest novel, “Intermezzo,” Rooney departs from her usual style and chooses to focus on characters who are so out of sync with each other that it seems unlikely they will ever share common ground. This slightly surprising move is less surprising when we consider the title’s meaning; the word “intermezzo” can refer to an interlude in music and an unexpected chess move that forces an immediate response from the player’s opponent. It seems, then, that Rooney wishes to draw our attention to the surprising decisions and power plays that interrupt the flow of each character’s life and drive the plot of the novel.

“Intermezzo” follows two brothers — Peter and Ivan Koubek — as they deal with the recent death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their increasingly strained relationship with each other. For much of the novel, Peter, a thirty-two-year-old human rights lawyer, tries to suppress his grief and, instead, focuses on his relationships with two women: a college student named Naomi he’s dating, and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, who broke up with him six years ago after a traffic accident left her in chronic pain. Ivan, a twenty-two-year-old chess champion, agonizes over his father’s death and worries no one will truly understand him until he falls in love with Margaret, an arts center director roughly fourteen years his senior. Peter and Ivan haven’t been close in many years, but their father’s death and their disapproval of each other’s romantic partners heighten the tension, turning them into fierce opponents. 

The novel alternates between focusing on Peter and Ivan, and their respective chapters have distinct writing styles that highlight their differences. 

Peter prides himself on appearing polished and composed at all times, but the messy, imprecise prose in his sections reveals the doubt and anxiety festering beneath the surface of his smooth demeanor. His thoughts emerge in a fragmented, staccato stream-of-consciousness style that marks the moment in time and records his immediate thoughts and observations. The resulting prose is difficult to read, but it provides insight into the grief, regret, and awareness of Peter’s mortality that keeps him “trapped in claustrophobic solitude.” While making toast for Sylvia, Peter thinks: “Everything lethally intermixed, everything breaching its boundaries, nothing staying in its right place. She, the other, himself … Their father: from beyond the grave. Conceptual collapse of one thing into another, all things into one. No. To answer the first question of where to sleep tonight.”

Ivan’s chapters are filled with sharp, meticulously constructed sentences. Ivan is self-conscious about his interpersonal skills and second-guesses himself when speaking to others, often leading him to over-explain himself or remain completely quiet and “trapped in a familiar cycle of unproductive thoughts.” Yet, he is more honest about his feelings, opening up to Margaret about how much he misses his father and how afraid he is of forgetting him. “The person who’s gone has no reality anymore, except in thoughts. And once they’re gone from thoughts, they actually are completely gone. If I don’t think about him, literally, I’m ending his existence,” he reasons. 

Their respective chapters illustrate how incomplete, if not entirely wrong, their impressions of each other are. Peter views Ivan as a childish, “dour little weirdo” who can’t hold a conversation. Ivan finds Peter’s “smirking superiority” and casual tone of condescension insufferable. But they don’t come off this way to other people, and they seem to have the most trouble communicating with each other.

Competitiveness, it seems, is something Peter and Ivan have in common. During an awkward lunch, Ivan reveals that he hates losing a chess match, and Peter remarks that he hates losing court cases and couldn’t cope well when he lost debates in college. Though Peter and Ivan lose very rarely, they “both wanted their lives to consist of winning all the time and never losing.” For them, it’s not enough for them to win frequently; they must always be right and maintain a constant winning streak. 

Unintentionally or not, their unrealistic expectations turn every interaction into a competition and every conversation into a debate. They study each other, read into hesitation, and wait for the perfect moment to catch the other off guard. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the two brothers find it so hard to communicate — they’re both always keeping score and trying to out-maneuver the other. 

But Peter and Ivan also share something more powerful than competitiveness: hope. At one point, Ivan lets go of his impulse to strategize and tells Margaret, “I mean, we’re both young, in reality, anything is possible. Life can change a lot.” In an uncharacteristically optimistic moment, Peter echoes this statement and thinks, “It doesn’t always work, but I do my best. See what happens. Go on in any case living.” Perhaps this is one of those rare times when they’re both right.

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Ivy Buck, Anabelle Meyers

For the students who encountered Clapp’s Recreational Reading collection prior to the library’s ongoing renovation, it may have been a bit underwhelming. I remember wanting to participate in the annual Goodreads reading challenge during my first year at Wellesley in 2022. However, I was surprised that Clapp did not offer a wide array of ‘fun’ fictional books. I saw popular titles like “The Selection” and “Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, but almost no newly published books. During conversations with Wellesley students, I discovered that many felt the same way. Some redirected me off-campus to the Wellesley Free Library and Wellesley Books for a fix of recreational reads. Some were unaware that we had an on-campus recreational reading section at all. 

But what is a recreational reading area, really? Clapp Library’s Resource Acquisitions Specialist, Kayla Valdivieso, described the Recreational Reading collection as a resource for our Wellesley community to interact and relax with popular and fun reads which represent a variety of voices and experiences. From fiction and nonfiction to graphic novels (including the full collection of the “Heartstoppers” series) and manga, Clapp’s Rec Reads has expanded despite the temporary shutting of the library’s physical doors. Located in the Mods until Fall 2025, Clapp continues to offer borrowable books (most of us just have to walk a bit farther). I personally utilize the Rec Reads section to revive my tired, braindead self after reading countless fascinating (though hard to digest) scientific and economic papers. I find it refreshing to be able to read fifty pages of a fiction book in the same time that it would have taken me to read six pages of a research article. I let the storytelling take over with my recreational reading, allowing my brain to go on autopilot for a bit. 

During our conversation, Valdivieso mentioned that out of the many new titles that the library purchased for the Rec Reads collection, she is most excited for “True Biz” (2022) by Sara Novic. This YA novel takes place at a boarding school for Deaf students, highlighting the use of cochlear implants, the evolution of Black ASL, experiences of children with Deaf parents, and more. Moving forward, Valdivieso hopes to purchase new titles every month for the Rec Reads collection. Already available are best-sellers such as “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus (2022 B&N Book of the Year), “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” (2023 B&N Book of the Year), “Remarkably Bright Creatures” (Wellesley Book Club general pick for the month) and a collection of TikTok-famous romance novels by Emily Henry. 

If you would like to see your favorite titles amongst the Wellesley College Rec Reads collection, Valdivieso recommends that students share their interests with the library using this form. The form is also available in QR format on the Rec Reads shelf in the Mods (room M406, right across from the thesis carrels). Currently, there are fifty newly-acquired titles available, ready to be borrowed by any Wellesley student looking to enjoy a cozy read over some hot chocolate this fall!

Contact the editor responsible for this story: Ivy Buck

Carter Jackson began the event with the reading of two excerpts from “We Refuse”: one which discusses how a white doctor denied her great-grandmother a life-saving medical treatment, and another which examines the story of Carrie Johnson, a Black teenage girl who, during a riot in Washington, D.C. in 1919, armed herself with a gun and shot at white mobsters to defend her neighborhood. Carter Jackson exemplified these stories in “We Refuse” as different forms of Black resistance throughout American history. 

In an interview with The Wellesley News, Carter Jackson described the origins of “We Refuse,” highlighting the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to George Floyd’s murder in May 2020 as a key inspirational factor for the book. After months of worldwide physical and online protests against racially-motivated police brutality, Carter Jackson reflected on how little had truly changed:

“It felt like we got to the fall … and we didn’t achieve anything we sought out to accomplish,” she said. “I felt like all of this momentum was very symbolic, and I also felt like it was very limiting.” 

Carter Jackson began to think about the perceived binary of resistance — violence and non-violence — and how Black people subvert this limitation to combat white supremacy. She settled on five expressions of resistance that she believes have been particularly important to the survival of Black people in the United States and beyond: revolution, protection, force, flight and joy. However, Carter Jackson hopes that those who interact with “We Refuse” will take it upon themselves to add more tools to the list that she has started.

Dendere and Carter Jackson opened their discussion with revolution, the first expression of resistance on Carter Jackson’s list and the primary theme of “We Refuse”’s opening chapter. In the book, Carter Jackson defines revolution as an act of “replacing a broken system with a just one.” She holds that the American Revolution in 1776 was “actually not that revolutionary,” and that it was only with the abolition of slavery in 1865, and the Reconstruction period that followed, that the country underwent a real revolution. “America was not born in 1776, it was conceived of in 1776,” she said. Even with the progress made in the years after the Civil War, Carter Jackson argued that “the revolution is still incomplete.” 

During their subsequent conversation on protection, Dendere asked Carter Jackson to discuss the story of Margaret Garner, a young enslaved woman in the American South who, in 1856, killed her baby to protect the child from future enslavement. Garner’s act made national headlines, and became the inspiration for Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 novel “Beloved.” 

“A lot of times, parents saw death as a form of deliverance … If [your children] are separated from you, you only have your imagination to think about what might be happening to them,” Carter Jackson said. “I put this story in this chapter because I do see it as an act of radical love, and radical protection.” 

Carter Jackson went on to discuss the complexity of flight as a form of resistance, and what makes it different from the other tools which she analyzes in “We Refuse.” Firstly, she noted that it is incredibly difficult to flee a bad situation, particularly for Black people. She pointed out that the United States requires visas for entering individuals from every country in Africa, unlike those coming from European countries such as Germany or Italy. 

“What white supremacy does is it prevents Black people from having mobility, from leaving the space you’re in — whether that’s the ghetto, the Caribbean, or the continent,” she said.

In addition, Carter Jackson argued that flight is about the individual or the family unit, rather than the community at large, making such action a more complex, but no less important, form of resistance. 

“While I’m a person of means, and I can move freely, my individual mobility does not uplift the collective … It is a reprieve, but it is not a permanent or collective solution,” she said.

Dendere and Carter Jackson ended their conversation on a lighter note with a discussion of joy,  the focus of the final chapter in “We Refuse.” 

“For me, joy is a weapon,” Carter Jackson said. “Joy fortifies me, and everyone I know.” 

She described how laughter and mockery, and “poking fun at the ridiculousness of racism,” provides a refuge from the sting of societal inequality. Carter Jackson expressed that it is crucial for the health and happiness of Black people for them to seek refuge in spaces that have nothing to do with whiteness or white supremacy. In her concluding remarks, Carter Jackson recalled howling with laughter after she and her husband found a video of their young daughter singing off-key, a moment she holds close to her heart. “What does that have to do with white supremacy?” she asked. “Nothing. That’s the point.”

Contact the editors responsible for this story: Ivy Buck, Norah Catlin

In the acknowledgments of “A Scatter of Light,” Lo writes that the novel was conceptualized in 2012 and that she began writing it in 2013. In 2013, I was in sixth grade. This fact is not here to make anyone reading feel old — rather, I’m trying to illustrate just how long Lo spent on this book.

After reading it, though, I am quite certain that “A Scatter of Light” was just the right novel for this point in Lo’s career. 

Poignant and reflective, taking place just when gay marriage was legalized in California, “A Scatter of Light” is told from the point of view of Aria Tang West, a biracial Chinese and white teen from — where else — Wellesley, Mass., who goes to live with her white grandmother in California over the summer after an incident at school that drives a wedge between her and her friends. There, she discovers the queer community for the first time thanks to her grandmother’s gardener, Steph.

This book is a continuation of Lo’s previous book, “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” in spirit — it is also a queer coming-of-age novel set in the Bay Area — but also in that you’ll actually see what ended up happening to Lily and Kath decades after their book ended.

I’ve been sitting here for a while, trying to figure out how exactly to describe this book, and I’ve determined that there is no way of describing what it’s like to read it. You’ve just got to read it yourself.

This is the story of one girl’s very eventful summer. Aria discovers so much about herself through her relationships with Steph’s friend group and the experiences that they give her. As a group of queer people in their twenties, they take Aria under their wing, and she inevitably gets tangled up in their drama even though she knows she shouldn’t.

I am not an artist, but “A Scatter of Light” feels like a love letter to the art community. As much as Aria is a STEM person (she’s going to MIT in the fall!), her and her grandmother’s love of creating art and looking at other people’s art permeates the pages. 

It takes talent to craft such a quiet but powerful story. Lo has made me feel all the emotions Aria feels through the course of the novel as she experiences so many different highs and lows. It’s weird; the book is actually pretty slow in pace and lingers on a lot of details I didn’t expect. But I think that makes it all the better.

One last thing: “A Scatter of Light” has a lot of crossover appeal. That is to say, if you typically read a lot of adult novels, you’ll still want to pick this up, and if you read lots of YA, this might be a gateway to adult fiction for you. So please pick it up. Seriously.

“A Scatter of Light” comes out on Oct. 4, 2022. I received an early copy from the publisher, Dutton (an imprint of Penguin Random House) in exchange for an honest review. I would also like to take this opportunity to publicize Lo’s book launch event at Porter Square Books’ Boston location on the release date! Please go! 

This week, we’re talking about “How to Excavate a Heart.”

I don’t care for the holiday season. I don’t like dogs. I don’t like oddly specific fields of science (unless they’re linguistics). So you might be wondering why I decided to read a book about a paleoichthyology lab intern living in Washington, D.C. for winter break who falls in love with the owner of a corgi she’s been walking while her housemate, the usual dog-walker, is gone for the holidays. (Oh, also, they’re both Jewish, which I am not.)

And to that, I say: it was gay.

I’m just kidding. Everything about this book is actually incredibly endearing, and you will fall in love with this book faster than Shani and May fall in love with each other. (It only takes them, like, three weeks. Lesbians move fast, etc.)

Regular readers of this column will know by now that I love a good love story. A proper romcom has to have a few elements for me to enjoy it: a perfect sense of humor, a third-act breakup that actually adds to the story, characters I can easily love and a certain unexplainable charm to the whole thing. Jake Maia Arlow’s YA debut manages to capture all those details and more. 

I cannot remember the last time I felt such a wide range of emotions while reading a book. Arlow has perfected the art of putting the “com” in “romcom” (but rest assured, the “rom” part does not disappoint). Shani and May’s interactions and Shani’s inner monologue are seriously incredible, and the situations that Shani ends up in will make you laugh, cringe and quite possibly cry.

Also, I should probably actually talk about the romantic plotline! I will not name names, but I recently read a book where the main couple had zero chemistry whatsoever, and Shani and May were a breath of fresh air. They’re absolutely adorable. Their conversations are chock full of banter. You will be begging for them to kiss before they actually do, and then when they do, you’ll probably cheer out loud and then feel very embarrassed that you had such a visceral reaction to a bunch of words on a page.

Maybe I lied a little when I said I didn’t care for the holiday season. This book made me look forward to it. No, I am not going to have a whirlwind romance with a girl my mom almost kills when we first arrive in town while it’s snowing, but this book did make me crave a warm mug of hot chocolate and a fun snowball fight. 

Above all else, Arlow manages to capture a distinct, awkward, mistake-filled part of the queer experience that I crave more of in YA novels. Shani is a hot mess, and I love that about her. She fights with her mom, she doesn’t know how to interact with her crush and she shares a little too much with her lab coworker about her burgeoning love life. But she’s trying her best.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will be hanging posters around the College’s bulletin boards to advertise this book. Yes, I will actually be doing that. Also, I think that means I’ll have to do that to advertise my own book in, like, a year. God, that’s terrifying.

Before reading this book, do have a look at content warnings. Particularly, while the tone of this book is overall lighthearted, there are references to the main character’s past experience with sexual assault.

“How to Excavate a Heart” comes out Nov. 1, 2022. Many thanks to HarperTeen for the early copy (and to Jake for letting me blow up your DMs while I was reading).

The last time I reviewed a Chloe Gong book was about a year ago, when I read “Our Violent Ends.” This column has come so far since then that I’m almost embarrassed to link that review, which was unbelievably short and had very little flair. 

Since then, my opinion of Gong’s work has only increased, and her latest installment is a welcome addition to her growing catalog of Chinese historical fantasy Shakespeare adaptations.

“Foul Lady Fortune” picks up about four years after “Our Violent Ends” left off. Rosalind Lang, cousin of the now-dead Juliette Cai, has been working as an agent for the Kuomintang under an alias. Her secret weapon is her mysterious immortality; after an illness that nearly killed her and a treatment from a strange doctor, she now can’t age, can’t sleep and heals from injuries almost instantly. 

And then Rosalind gets assigned on a new mission: find out who’s been behind a series of chemical killings taking place across Shanghai. Her partner on this mission is Orion Hong, and the two of them pose as husband and wife as they spy on the people believed to be behind the attacks. As they uncover more, though, things start to get more complicated than either of them could have imagined.

I haven’t even told you the half of this story from that little blurb. 

First and foremost, you’re going to catch up with many more of the characters in Gong’s first duology. Celia Lang and Alisa Montagova play major roles in this book, as they both work for the communists along with Orion’s older brother, Oliver. (Ben and Mars also get a quick mention!) Alisa, now 17, is even sneakier than before, and Celia has grown even more into her identity, no longer the Kathleen Lang she was once known as. I was ecstatic to read more about them, and Gong definitely delivered.

I was enthralled by the rich setting and world-building in this book. My mother is from Shanghai, and I could constantly see bits of what I know about the city and its culture reflected in this book. The historical backdrop, too, adds to the effect. With the impending invasion of the Japanese and the growing tensions between communists and nationalists, I almost felt more immersed here than I did with the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers, even though I know that Shanghai did have a lot of gang activity in the 1920s.

This is a tiny detail that isn’t important to anyone who isn’t Shanghainese, but usually when there’s food described in a book by a Chinese author, there are a few dishes I simply don’t recognize. Not the case here! Everything Rosalind ate was something I grew up eating at home. (Serious question: is it specific to Shanghai for lamb to be seasoned with cumin? Do other Chinese regions not do this?)

But for me, the highlight of this book was the amount of banter seen in pretty much every interaction between all of the characters in every setting, from high-speed chases to moments alone. Rosalind and Orion are a lot snappier with each other than Roma and Juliette were, and I ate up every minute of it. Orion’s relationship with his sister Phoebe was also extremely fun to see; I particularly had a fun time when they argued in front of Rosalind about stealing each other’s lovers. 

Speaking of which: I love bisexual people. Love to see them in historical settings. I can’t go without talking about the fantastic queer representation I’ve grown to expect in Gong’s books. Most queer terminology wasn’t around yet in the 1930s, but in addition to Orion and Phoebe’s bisexuality, it’s pretty explicitly shown on-page that Rosalind is demisexual. Her internal conflict around the way she’s attracted to people — her need for a deep emotional connection — was incredibly palpable. 

Obviously, I was thrilled to see that, as an asexual Chinese American; it’s extremely rare to find a-spec characters in media, and even rarer for these characters to be non-white. But “Foul Lady Fortune” does not disappoint with its queer representation. Literally every member of the main cast is queer except for Oliver; see this tweet for more details. 

Most of all, though, Gong’s storytelling abilities shine through in this book. I was at the edge of my seat the whole way through. Even though she always tends to drop a few bombshells at the end of a book, I was still blown away by the sudden revelations, and I’m already hungry for the sequel.

“Foul Lady Fortune” comes out on Sept. 27, 2022. I received an early copy from the publisher, Margaret K. McElderry Books, in exchange for an honest review. 

And there E.B. was, 10 years out from Wellesley, with a whole book deal with HarperCollins, telling our class about how to be better writers. She literally could not have been cooler. 

E.B. and I have talked a number of times since then, sharing stories of the publishing industry as she’s neared publication. A year and a half after that guest lecture (that I barely remember), I’ve finally gotten to read the book in question: “Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter.” It’s far from my usual tastes — I rarely read nonfiction, and the only pet I’ve ever had was a fish. And yet, this is one of my favorite reads of the year.

Part memoir, part research and wholly filled with both heart and humor, “Good Grief” explores the experience of losing a pet and the human connection it brings. Across cultures and time, people have mourned their pets in a lot of different ways, and through interviews with experts and regular people, as well as in personal anecdotes, Bartels weaves together tales of dead pets and the humans who grieve them. 

I’m not quite sure what I expected going into this book, but it’s oddly fitting that “Good Grief” is what it is. Bartels has cared for lots of pets over the years, and as we read chapters on how different people grieve their pets, information is sprinkled with anecdotes about all of Bartels’ own dead pets. 

From a guinea pig that wouldn’t stop biting to a tortoise who escaped a backyard to Bartels’ two family dogs, stories about all these dead (or not — who knows if the tortoise is actually still kicking it) pets brought me to giggles and to tears and sometimes both. I particularly felt a sense of connection with a story about a betta fish named Wanda shared by Bartels’ first-year triple at Wellesley. 

(You might already guess that the fish died, but I’ll save the cause of death for readers of “Good Grief.” All I’ll say is that it felt like a very Wellesley way to die, if that makes any sense.)

I had absolutely no idea there were so many ways that people deal with the loss of their pets. I suppose I knew that you could taxidermy a dog or sneak a dog’s ashes into a person’s coffin, but as I was shown more and more paths a grieving human could take, I felt awed by the diversity of pet mourning possibilities.

Now, of course this is a biased review. I won’t even pretend that it’s not; I know E.B., after all. But take this as a recommendation anyway: “Good Grief” is a fantastic read, whether you’re an avid animal enthusiast or haven’t even owned a single fish. I think I want to get a dog now.

“Good Grief” comes out on Aug. 2, 2022. I received an early copy from the publisher, Mariner Books (an imprint of HarperCollins), in exchange for an honest review. Also, if the College doesn’t get E.B. to do a book signing on campus, I will riot.

My grandparents are all still alive, actually, but the concept of death caught up to me anyway. I’d lie awake at night petrified by the thought of never waking up, the idea that I and everyone around me would just be gone. It only got worse during the pandemic, escalating to full panic attacks whenever I pondered the idea.

So it’s safe to say that the whole concept of Emma K. Ohland’s “Funeral Girl” — an asexual girl who speaks to ghosts and learns to cope with the inevitability of death — really spoke to me. 

16-year-old Georgia Richter has grown up in the Richter family funeral home with her parents and twin brother. She is surrounded by death pretty much every day, and it gives her a great deal of anxiety to consider that one day, she and everyone she knows will have their turn on the embalming table. 

Since she was young, Georgia has had the ability to summon and talk to ghosts, as well as send them off into the ether. (And no, that does not ease her anxiety whatsoever, because where do they go?) One day, when her classmate unexpectedly dies, she does what she always does and summons his ghost so he can have one last word. Except he wants to stay around for a bit, so she lets him. 

I don’t have many panic attacks about death right now, but those thoughts never totally went away, so reading this book was intensely relatable. I felt at times that Ohland had somehow accessed all of my thoughts and spit them out onto paper. “Funeral Girl” is the kind of book that makes me feel like it was written specifically for an audience of me — even though that is obviously not the case. 

Georgia’s friendship with Milo (the ghost) is heartwarming and heartbreaking. Milo absolutely did not deserve to die, and I cried my way through the process that it takes for Georgia and Milo to accept his death. (Seriously, I think that I was just full-on sobbing while reading the entire last quarter of this book.) 

What really got me was that Georgia’s asexuality actually contributed to her worries, which just really felt like a personal attack. Life is scary, and having That Person to do it with you is a major source of comfort for many people. But if you don’t desire that type of companionship, then what are you supposed to do? Terrifying to think about, right? 

One of my favorite things about this novel is that Ohland allows Georgia to be the messy teenager we all once were. The main scary thing that occupies your mind, whether that’s friend drama, an impending exam or massive existential dread, is incredibly consuming when you’re young. This can cause you to make some pretty poor decisions, and Georgia makes a lot of those. Her relationships with her friends, her family and even total strangers are in flux, but what I love is that all those around Georgia are incredibly supportive and forgiving when she does open up to them. 

Above all, I think “Funeral Girl” is a story about learning to cope. This is a very real worry for a lot of us, and what Georgia learns (spoiler alert, I guess) is that there’s not one way to manage your fears. That’s a very powerful message that I definitely needed to hear, and I think a lot of teens and young adults do too. I have a feeling this book is going to be really important for a lot of kids.

“Funeral Girl” comes out on Sep. 6, 2022. I received an early copy from the publisher, Carolrhoda Lab (an imprint of Lerner Books), in exchange for an honest review. Also, not to brag, but I did, in fact, get to meet Ohland at a book signing a few weeks ago, which was the coolest thing in the world.