The Maris Review, vol 55
And then there's one mystery I cannot at all recommend...
What I read this week
Mutual Interest by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
I love a book about the schemings and machinations of a lowly born woman who then claws and climbs her way to the top of society. I'd say it's one of my favorite genres of historical fiction. So Mutual Interest is entirely my thing. It's a big Gilded Age novel about sex and ambition and capitalism and a three-pronged marriage of convenience. We need a new term for that. Maybe it's more like a throuple of common benefit.
It's the story of Vivian from Utica, who as a teenager spends the summer in Manhattan with a more connected friend and decides she wants to stay there. She'll do anything to stay there, in fact. She's ready to learn all of the rules about how the aristocracy works so she can win the game, even if she has to hide her sexuality (as just about every queer person did at the time). If she's vicious and devious in her journey to the top, well, hating the player is not what this situation calls for.
She clocks Oscar Schmidt, a middle manager in the soap industry, as the kind of man (queer) who might also benefit from a transactional relationship. They marry. And then Vivian sets her sights on Squire Clancey, a nepo baby of an old New York fortune who has plenty of spare cash to fund new business ventures. She plays Cupid with Oscar and Squire, and she ends up with her very own personal care empire. If she can do it, anyone can! Or at least that's what she tells herself when she hears those less fortunate complain that the whole system is unfair.
Mutual Interest is narrated in a playful and voicey third person that is not quite Wharton but I still found captivating. But I would understand if the narrator is not for everyone. Here is the best thing about writing a book review in a newsletter: I can do whatever I want, and I think the best thing to do is to have you read the Interlude below and if you're into it, this book is for you. If not, I have zillions of other books I can tell you about.
Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder by Rachel McCarthy James
I can't believe there haven't been a zillion more nonfiction books about a single subject. Readers want them! For the past few years I've scouted books for a podcast (which I won't name) for single-topic new releases that might make for good episodes, and it's a weirdly fallow field. For every request for a recommendation I get for a book "kind of like Salt" (Recent faves include Butts and Palo Alto) there are so few books that actually fit the bill.
But now we've got a cultural history of axe murders to add to the small pile, and it is as disturbingly delightful as its title and cover may lead you to believe. Rachel McCarthy James has co-authored an excellent true crime book with her father, and Whack Job is perhaps a more zippy but still thorough entry in the true crime category. It's arranged by date, starting with short chapters set in prehistorical times when axes were tools (and murder weapons) of primitive humans, on to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, through the Vikings and (famously) the Tudors, and on through the present (yes, Lizzie Borden is in there).
Throughout McCarthy James contextualizes what the axe meant to different people. For so many, it was a tool that was nearly ubiquitous for everyday tasks, and so it was a convenient weapon when its users needed it to be (think, Nat Turner). But the axe was also used in ritual killings (human sacrifices were a big thing in the ancient world) and state violence (pre-guillotine, at least). When later it was replaced by the chainsaw (mostly for tree felling, but also for murder) and the gun (much less messy), the axe becomes an anachronistic kind of weapon, perfect for horror stories about deranged serial killers.
Whack Job is fun because it's easy to pick up and put down, perfect for if you only have 10 minutes but want to get a little reading done. And then when you reach the end, all of the fragments of the aeons-long story of the axe come together, let me quote blurber Sarah Weinman here, to "stand in for the full, messy, bloody spectrum of human behavior."
Here is a mystery that I cannot recommend
It appears that the Chicago Sun Times not only used AI to write a book list, but the AI hallucinated fake books by actual authors? And then they ran it in print without anyone even looking it over? I hear the entire summer section (confirmed to be real here) was likely written by ChatGPT, including tips about grilling and other shit?
Is this my worst professional nightmare coming true? I have a book coming out this summer! Do I have to hope that one day some publication's gen AI will write fake words about my actual book?
What a time to be an author! What a time to be a critic who gives book recommendations with my own brain! How fucked are we? (Please share this newsletter or buy my book?)
New releases, 5/20
The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien
Aggregated Discontent: Confessions of the Last Normal Woman by Harron Walker
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
Gingko Season by Naomi Xu Elegant
Aftertaste by Daria Lavelle
Murder in the Dollhouse: The Jennifer Dulos Story by Rich Cohen
Supersonic: The Complete, Authorized, and Uncut Interviews by Oasis