Hello, fellow book club members. I’m very excited that it’s my turn to pick a book and I hope my selection doesn’t make you despise me.
I’ve been here four months now, and I know the rules: The book has to be under three hundred pages, obscure enough so that you will respect me, but not so popular it is read by women on the subway who over-accessorize. No books with whimsical watercolor covers of a woman on the beach who’s returned to her childhood home harboring a dark secret, the secret being she’s up nights trying to find the right book for her book club so they won’t judge her too harshly.
‘Is it too early to reference the Booker Prize – I mean, the Man Booker? If I’m remembering the rules, someone has to mention it at least once in a meeting, but with the second reference, if the book was merely short-listed, you have to add, “But of course, that year, Hilary Mantel won.”
So, for my selection, I’ve chosen a book by a European writer because they’re more likely to have a name that’s difficult to pronounce. Also, you can also throw in the name of their translator and claim that the parts that suck are their fault.
Did I just say “suck”? I meant to say, “where the motivation was muddied”. As a writer myself – not that I am in any way in the class of the people we discuss; I am less than the dirt on the bottom of their shoes when they to to the podium to receive the Man Booker award – I must say I cannot bear muddy motivation. Your wheels spin and you sit there all day.
So, the book I -- Wait! Outside! There’s a woman with an oxygen tank scratching at the window, trying to get in.
Oh. She talked too much at her first meeting and you disinvited her. She needs the tank because she has cancer. I must say, I’m shocked. How could she not know that you say no more than ten words at your first meeting? And the first seven are, “Thank you so much for inviting me.”
Okay. So, the book I have in mind, “Oh, Merde, Nous N’avons Plus D’œufs”, is by a French woman who had an affair with a low-level Russian diplomat twenty years her junior. She became so obsessed with him that nothing else mattered. She was like, “We’re out of eggs, I have to go shopping, where I might run into Vladimir.” “Where are my Louboutins? Vladimir loves to see me kneeling naked in them on his kitchen floor, cleaning the oven.” “Goodness, look at the time, it’s already ten minutes past Vladimir. Just the mention of his name makes me thrust my hand down my $75 Simone Pérèle knickers, which did not go well at that town hall meeting with Macron, the hypocrite.”
Oh. You read it last year? In the French? It was derivative of Anaïs Nin.
I love Anaïs Nin. It’s the umlaut in her name, it’s so cool. Do you know that Anaïs Nin had her own printing press? It was in a tiny building in my neighborhood, on East 13thStreet. There used to be a great coffee shop there where I’d pop in with The New York Post to read my horoscope…
Oops.
Man Booker Prize! London Review of Books! Hilary Mantel!
So, my backup suggestion is a new novel by a Mongolian writer. It’s called, “The Yak’s Lament” and it’s about a yak who willingly sacrifices his wool to help a peasant family get through the winter, but questions his actions after the shepherd’s wife knits the wool into a crop top, which does not look good on her at all.
No, I didn’t know. The book’s been canceled. Cultural appropriation. The author is not a yak and had no right to presume how they’re thinking.
Those cookies look delicious, may I?
Oh, right. No cookies till you’ve been here six months.
Reprinted with permission from the inimitable Joyce Wadler
Please credit the art used.