I loved your review of The Wall - especially your reflection on the lives your grandparents lived! really sweet - peace is so hard to understand when you're young (unless you have gone through sickness like me) because I definitely feel what you referenced about almost envying that way of life! Makes me excited to read my copy of The Wall that tantalizingly looks at me everyday. Soon!
So interested that you read A Girls Story and Sad Tiger side by side. I love you Sad Tiger review and all the ways you managed to say what I didn't in mine. I could have reviewed the book for about 50 pages. I love the comment about there is no innocence in youth - there is nothing I love more than a book that says children know way more than you think stop treating them like idiots!
Young pics of Petya are iconic girl you look so edgy! That filter! Sorry for the 8 min voicenote - hope you enjoyed it x
Thank you, Martha. You are right… when you are younger you chase excitement, as you grow older (and/or wiser)… you just need peace. I am sorry that being sick has brought you there prematurely but ultimately, it’s where you need to be. I think you would really like The Wall. It is excellent on so many levels - the writing is so evocative and builds in thin layers, little by little, with the overall effect being completely overwhelming. No neat ending there either, which I know you like too.
I was stunned at the parallels between A Girl’s Story and Sad Tiger, what an amazing coincidence that I read them back to back. I hadn’t planned it in that way. I loved reading your thoughts on it and I kept thinking that there is no way to spoil the book, because even if we gave it a chapter by chapter breakdown, a reader would still be stunned by the writing itself, the matter-of-fact-ness of it, the emotional excavation… I loved your voicenote and I loved that we read it together.
The number of tripod photoshoots we all did … it was a LOT. And so many of those photos were taken on film, developed at CVS…. 🫠🫠🫠
I couldn't relate to your feelings about the quartet more. It's such an emotional journey and it's hard to leave the two girls. Relatedly, your voice note about The Days of Abandonment absolutely made my week.
Aside from the Ferrantes and Leigh Stein's book, I haven't read any of the rest you write about but they all sound fab.
Also 23 year old Petya is beautiful and perfect! Aside from the hair, you look the exact same. And I think we can all agree that you need to read Rebecca!
Oh! I need to send you an update to the drama! There is more!
I have a copy of Rebecca at home, I know I will like it… maybe this fall!!!
23 year old Petya WAS beautiful and perfect, and filled with self doubt. I live my life to make her proud and I am constantly apologizing to her for giving up on so many of her good ideas… we both just needed more time.
Thank you for the thoughtful assessment of LEVERAGE! I'm super pleased with your response to the novel, especially considering your experience in corporate America and your proximity to financial supervillains.
It wasn't easy making our modern-day neoliberalistic hellscape hilarious, but I'm a special kind of unwell.
Oh, I am so glad, Amran! I think it’s so hard to write a book like yours — funny but serious, I don’t think anybody will walk away from it thinking… oh, it was no so bad after all… No. It’s worse than most people imagine and the type of behavior that gets rewarded in that environment is every bit as unethical and self-serving as you describe… The humor comes in the way you tell the story but the overall sense of having read the book - at least for me - is that I read an insider take-down of an industry that is predatory and harmful. I also need to thank you for personally reminding me why I left my big corporate job a few years back. I would not have survived otherwise.
Someone just pointed out that there were no beach reads on this August list... I had not even noticed. I just want to be destroyed every time. I don't know what that says about me...
Let me know if you read any of these! The Wall was my favorite but I loved them all so much.
Oh Petya!! How I love these posts. It's wonderful to see those photos of your grandparents after hearing about how The Wall evoked their memory for you... our conversation about it was very special. <3
I haven't read A Girl's Story but I am intrigued - the only Ernaux I've read is Shame. I loved it and so I have a strong feeling I'll love A Girl's Story based on how you described it. Ernaux understands shame so well, I admire how she refuses to shy away from it.
After seeing Martha's and now your review of Sad Tiger it is now firmly at the top of my TBR. Hunting for a copy!!
Thank you so much! I tagged you so many times in this post, I thought... she will be sick of me. But I do feel like we are reading off the same invisible syllabus these days. I am basically adding everything you mention to my TBR immediately.
This was only my third Ernaux, so I am no expert ... but I thought that this particular book was SUPER STRONG. I have often wondered why some of these types of experiences we have as young girls feel so stuck in our bodies and awful so many years later. Like, for example, when I was in 6th grade this boy asked me to be his girlfriend and I didn't even know him well but said yes because I was so flattered to be asked. And then he told everyone that I had said YES and it turned out it had been a bet with his friend if I would. I still remember the total humiliation of it and having absolutely nobody I could talk to about it. I have obviously had MUCH harder things happen to me since, but I think those earlier experiences have an outsized influence on us because our capacity to handle them at the time is so limited, the trauma of it stays in our bodies. I felt that A Girl's Story started in a similar place... why do I still think about that thing that happened 60 years ago?! Why can't I forgive myself?!... It's honestly so beautiful. I also ordered Shame, it's in my September pile!
Re: Sad Tiger --> GOOD! Martha and I have done our job well!
It does feel like there is an invisible bookish string connecting us at times!
I feel you — reading Shame also brought me back to such specific, long-buried but unforgettable moments in my childhood. I think experiencing meanness at the hands of other children, while less “major” than lots of the pain we feel later in life, feels almost worse because it’s senseless and often irrational. giving 6th grade Petya a hug!!
Petya, it is! I love being wrecked by all the reads, and am desperately trying to find my way to the literary side of this platform after writing some pieces on grief and forgiveness, then fiction. I’m rather “unnarrow”. Haha
Any of you bookish beauties want to give me some reccs on who to follow and read here, I’d love that.❤️
Fuck Nino for real!!! Loved reading A Girl's Story with you and it too made me a "blob of feelings." Adding the Wall and Sad Tiger to my TBR immediately.
Always love reading your reviews so much. Really connected with your response to 'The Wall' and adding that one to my list for some introspective autumn reading. 🤍
"and what better way to resist the chokehold that capitalism has on us than to laugh at it and punch it in the face?!" Hahahaha, God, I love you.
Love the baby Petya portraits and I love that you have such grace, humor, and tenderness with your younger self. It's such a peaceful place to inhabit!
Sad Tiger sounds intense but so beautiful. Adding it to my TBR.
Flesh by David Szalay is the contemporary book that has stayed with me the most throughout this year. I find myself reflecting on it every time it pops across my timeline. I couldn't stop thinking about it for days after I finished it.
Those were the days, Jenovia! So much art direction! So much FASHION. 😂😂😂 As much as I joke about it now, it definitely was a very creative and expressive time on the internet and I don't think people understand how much THAT internet moment has influenced what we do online today. I also think that a lot of that work was dismissed because it was the creative labor of young women... Now that the world has figured out how to monetize it, it's acceptable again.
You saw that my husband was just reading Flesh over the weekend, I may need to pick it up!!!
I enjoy your monthly reading round-ups and this was especially good, Petya. I'm going to add Leverage to my TBR. I read Natasha's Brown's Universality this month because reading Booker nominees is one of my reading goals, I'll have to read Assembly next. I actually wrote a post about Universality, https://davenashiswriting.substack.com/p/memes-rage-and-borrowed which is something I meaning to do more of when I finish books.
The book that has stayed with me most vividly is On the Calculation of Volume I. I know that you've heard about it. It's effect on me has caused me to check out more absurd and existentialist books. I reread Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I'm reading America now by Jean Baudrillard, it's like if Alex De Tocqueville was a postmodernist. These books all draw me to places that unsettle, and it's like Type 2 fun.
I read along loosely with Kolina's Ferrante books on her substack, The Underlined https://substack.com/@kolinacicero/p-167111698 . I loved My Brilliant Friend so much that I don't want to be disappointed in the rest of the series. It's why I haven't read On Calculation of Volume 2. Suspense is a great state. But eventually I will read both series. Probably.
Thank you so much, David! It means the world to me. Obviously, we learn and feel inspired by everyone we meet ... but there's a special place in my heart for fellow readers who like the same books as me!
I haven't read Universality yet but I have it in my house. Assembly is one of my favorite books I read this year and Leverage, actually, reminded me A LOT of it... totally different writing style and a very lighthearted take on the same issues, but there are a lot of parallels between the two books around the degree to which we are asked to compromise with our ethics and integrity in order to fit into the workplace.
Re: The Neapolitan Quartet -- I loved each book more than the last one. It was an amazing experience. I am not pushing to rush through them the way I did. You can just save them for when you really need a good book.
I loved your review of The Wall - especially your reflection on the lives your grandparents lived! really sweet - peace is so hard to understand when you're young (unless you have gone through sickness like me) because I definitely feel what you referenced about almost envying that way of life! Makes me excited to read my copy of The Wall that tantalizingly looks at me everyday. Soon!
So interested that you read A Girls Story and Sad Tiger side by side. I love you Sad Tiger review and all the ways you managed to say what I didn't in mine. I could have reviewed the book for about 50 pages. I love the comment about there is no innocence in youth - there is nothing I love more than a book that says children know way more than you think stop treating them like idiots!
Young pics of Petya are iconic girl you look so edgy! That filter! Sorry for the 8 min voicenote - hope you enjoyed it x
Thank you, Martha. You are right… when you are younger you chase excitement, as you grow older (and/or wiser)… you just need peace. I am sorry that being sick has brought you there prematurely but ultimately, it’s where you need to be. I think you would really like The Wall. It is excellent on so many levels - the writing is so evocative and builds in thin layers, little by little, with the overall effect being completely overwhelming. No neat ending there either, which I know you like too.
I was stunned at the parallels between A Girl’s Story and Sad Tiger, what an amazing coincidence that I read them back to back. I hadn’t planned it in that way. I loved reading your thoughts on it and I kept thinking that there is no way to spoil the book, because even if we gave it a chapter by chapter breakdown, a reader would still be stunned by the writing itself, the matter-of-fact-ness of it, the emotional excavation… I loved your voicenote and I loved that we read it together.
The number of tripod photoshoots we all did … it was a LOT. And so many of those photos were taken on film, developed at CVS…. 🫠🫠🫠
I couldn't relate to your feelings about the quartet more. It's such an emotional journey and it's hard to leave the two girls. Relatedly, your voice note about The Days of Abandonment absolutely made my week.
Aside from the Ferrantes and Leigh Stein's book, I haven't read any of the rest you write about but they all sound fab.
Also 23 year old Petya is beautiful and perfect! Aside from the hair, you look the exact same. And I think we can all agree that you need to read Rebecca!
Oh! I need to send you an update to the drama! There is more!
I have a copy of Rebecca at home, I know I will like it… maybe this fall!!!
23 year old Petya WAS beautiful and perfect, and filled with self doubt. I live my life to make her proud and I am constantly apologizing to her for giving up on so many of her good ideas… we both just needed more time.
Thank you for the thoughtful assessment of LEVERAGE! I'm super pleased with your response to the novel, especially considering your experience in corporate America and your proximity to financial supervillains.
It wasn't easy making our modern-day neoliberalistic hellscape hilarious, but I'm a special kind of unwell.
Oh, I am so glad, Amran! I think it’s so hard to write a book like yours — funny but serious, I don’t think anybody will walk away from it thinking… oh, it was no so bad after all… No. It’s worse than most people imagine and the type of behavior that gets rewarded in that environment is every bit as unethical and self-serving as you describe… The humor comes in the way you tell the story but the overall sense of having read the book - at least for me - is that I read an insider take-down of an industry that is predatory and harmful. I also need to thank you for personally reminding me why I left my big corporate job a few years back. I would not have survived otherwise.
Glad you got out! I'm sure you're much saner -- I know I am.
At the risk of total, crass obsequiousness, I legit believe you're the perfect LEVERAGE reader. I'm hoping the book finds many other likeminded souls.
I gave my copy to my friend who works in wealth management. There is still hope for him!!!
Nino! You brought me back to the push and pull feelings of my favorite series
My friend said she can’t hear this name and not feel angry. 😂
Agree!
"nothing makes me feel more alive than being WRECKED by a book" — you are so right and that is why i'm adding every single one of these to my list
Someone just pointed out that there were no beach reads on this August list... I had not even noticed. I just want to be destroyed every time. I don't know what that says about me...
Let me know if you read any of these! The Wall was my favorite but I loved them all so much.
For me, beach reads are books that wreck you while you simultaneously enjoy the ocean.
Oh Petya!! How I love these posts. It's wonderful to see those photos of your grandparents after hearing about how The Wall evoked their memory for you... our conversation about it was very special. <3
I haven't read A Girl's Story but I am intrigued - the only Ernaux I've read is Shame. I loved it and so I have a strong feeling I'll love A Girl's Story based on how you described it. Ernaux understands shame so well, I admire how she refuses to shy away from it.
After seeing Martha's and now your review of Sad Tiger it is now firmly at the top of my TBR. Hunting for a copy!!
Thank you so much! I tagged you so many times in this post, I thought... she will be sick of me. But I do feel like we are reading off the same invisible syllabus these days. I am basically adding everything you mention to my TBR immediately.
This was only my third Ernaux, so I am no expert ... but I thought that this particular book was SUPER STRONG. I have often wondered why some of these types of experiences we have as young girls feel so stuck in our bodies and awful so many years later. Like, for example, when I was in 6th grade this boy asked me to be his girlfriend and I didn't even know him well but said yes because I was so flattered to be asked. And then he told everyone that I had said YES and it turned out it had been a bet with his friend if I would. I still remember the total humiliation of it and having absolutely nobody I could talk to about it. I have obviously had MUCH harder things happen to me since, but I think those earlier experiences have an outsized influence on us because our capacity to handle them at the time is so limited, the trauma of it stays in our bodies. I felt that A Girl's Story started in a similar place... why do I still think about that thing that happened 60 years ago?! Why can't I forgive myself?!... It's honestly so beautiful. I also ordered Shame, it's in my September pile!
Re: Sad Tiger --> GOOD! Martha and I have done our job well!
It does feel like there is an invisible bookish string connecting us at times!
I feel you — reading Shame also brought me back to such specific, long-buried but unforgettable moments in my childhood. I think experiencing meanness at the hands of other children, while less “major” than lots of the pain we feel later in life, feels almost worse because it’s senseless and often irrational. giving 6th grade Petya a hug!!
What a beautiful, brilliant assessment. This is one of the best things I’ve read on Substack to date. But I’m new, so I remain hopeful.😉
Oh! Welcome to Substack, Susan! I know I am biased, but the book-nerd corner of this platform is exactly where you want to be!!!
Petya, it is! I love being wrecked by all the reads, and am desperately trying to find my way to the literary side of this platform after writing some pieces on grief and forgiveness, then fiction. I’m rather “unnarrow”. Haha
Any of you bookish beauties want to give me some reccs on who to follow and read here, I’d love that.❤️
Welcome! Check out the Bookstack Directory on my site!
I will do! Thanks!
Love how you tie your life—photos and all—into each post. Your Substack is a weekly joy.
Here’s a favorite Nino meme: http://imgflip.com/i/a52r5r
I LAUGHED OUT LOUD!!! Let me know if you want a sticker!!!
How timely, I just read the first 20 pages of The Wall last night! I hope I enjoy it as much as you.
Love the photos from the archive!
You will never look at cows the same way...
Great 💕📚💕 I’m presently reading Arundhati Roy’s fascinating memoir ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’💎.
I just had another friend message me about that book! It has been vaguely on my radar but now I am interested!
Fuck Nino for real!!! Loved reading A Girl's Story with you and it too made me a "blob of feelings." Adding the Wall and Sad Tiger to my TBR immediately.
Sad Tiger after A Girl's Story was a very powerful experience for me!
I just love the way you summarize your reading and find the through lines and connections to this life we are all living.
Janet, thank you for that comment. It means so much to me, especially coming from you.
Always love reading your reviews so much. Really connected with your response to 'The Wall' and adding that one to my list for some introspective autumn reading. 🤍
Thank you, Lauren!!! I think that The Wall will feel very personal to you, given your recent move and slowing things down on purpose.
"and what better way to resist the chokehold that capitalism has on us than to laugh at it and punch it in the face?!" Hahahaha, God, I love you.
Love the baby Petya portraits and I love that you have such grace, humor, and tenderness with your younger self. It's such a peaceful place to inhabit!
Sad Tiger sounds intense but so beautiful. Adding it to my TBR.
Flesh by David Szalay is the contemporary book that has stayed with me the most throughout this year. I find myself reflecting on it every time it pops across my timeline. I couldn't stop thinking about it for days after I finished it.
Rebecca is a perfect espooky season read. 🪞⚰️❤️🔥
Those were the days, Jenovia! So much art direction! So much FASHION. 😂😂😂 As much as I joke about it now, it definitely was a very creative and expressive time on the internet and I don't think people understand how much THAT internet moment has influenced what we do online today. I also think that a lot of that work was dismissed because it was the creative labor of young women... Now that the world has figured out how to monetize it, it's acceptable again.
You saw that my husband was just reading Flesh over the weekend, I may need to pick it up!!!
I enjoy your monthly reading round-ups and this was especially good, Petya. I'm going to add Leverage to my TBR. I read Natasha's Brown's Universality this month because reading Booker nominees is one of my reading goals, I'll have to read Assembly next. I actually wrote a post about Universality, https://davenashiswriting.substack.com/p/memes-rage-and-borrowed which is something I meaning to do more of when I finish books.
The book that has stayed with me most vividly is On the Calculation of Volume I. I know that you've heard about it. It's effect on me has caused me to check out more absurd and existentialist books. I reread Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I'm reading America now by Jean Baudrillard, it's like if Alex De Tocqueville was a postmodernist. These books all draw me to places that unsettle, and it's like Type 2 fun.
I read along loosely with Kolina's Ferrante books on her substack, The Underlined https://substack.com/@kolinacicero/p-167111698 . I loved My Brilliant Friend so much that I don't want to be disappointed in the rest of the series. It's why I haven't read On Calculation of Volume 2. Suspense is a great state. But eventually I will read both series. Probably.
Thank you so much, David! It means the world to me. Obviously, we learn and feel inspired by everyone we meet ... but there's a special place in my heart for fellow readers who like the same books as me!
I haven't read Universality yet but I have it in my house. Assembly is one of my favorite books I read this year and Leverage, actually, reminded me A LOT of it... totally different writing style and a very lighthearted take on the same issues, but there are a lot of parallels between the two books around the degree to which we are asked to compromise with our ethics and integrity in order to fit into the workplace.
Re: The Neapolitan Quartet -- I loved each book more than the last one. It was an amazing experience. I am not pushing to rush through them the way I did. You can just save them for when you really need a good book.
Ferrante quartet fans: My Brilliant Friend : Elena Ferrante (author), : 9781787706026 : Blackwell's https://share.google/teBc1R6ozCwicQjBt
Oh, that's gorgeous. I have the ugly cover versions of the books and was just thinking that I want to buy a better looking set! This may be the one!