The Maris Review, vol 110

**More patience from you required because I'm definitely not my sharpest this week:

After so much water leaked into our apartment last weekend, we found out that we have to completely pack up our apartment and move out while gut renovations happen, timing unknown – somewhere between four and six months. Which means we might as well just move elsewhere. No use paying for a hotel and for storage when we can start fresh. But that means we're scrambling to find a new apartment and packing up our current one and I am questioning, once again, why the hell I have so many books? (This, of course, is a rhetorical question.)

What I read this week

Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth

I have read my fair share of dystopian sci-fi novels. This one is special.

Deb Olin Unferth's writing engages all of the senses in describing this new world in which much of Earth's population has died off, along with all of the fish and various animals. In this new sad place (Earth in 50 years? Earth in 10 years? Less?) Dylan Stein grows up in a pod under the ocean. Shed dreams of the air and sound and colors of the world above the sea, a Little Mermaid of the Apocalypse desperate to make it to the surface.

When she does finally emerge as a young adult, her adventures are not so vivid, but there is joy. She falls in love with a woman who may or may not be a droid, and develops a fascination with sand, a hope for new life to reemerge:

"She thought about sand. Its mutability. When dry, it moved like water. When wet, a solid. The motion of sand, its small stirrings, such as sand avalanching into patterns. Its large advances, its great project of sweeping around Earth with the winds and the tides. Its endgame, its deep settling at the bottom of the ocean, only to be thrown upward in great planetary disturbances."

The narrative voice is sly and funny without being overly cute, which prevents the mood from getting too heavy even when the subject matter is bleak.

DISCLAIMER: For the first time in the history of my newsletter, I haven't finished reading Earth 7 yet. I have 90 pages left to go. Unless something drastic happens I'm still prepared to recommend this one wholeheartedly, and I hope to write more about it when I'm not so frazzled.

The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke

My parents have wanted to talk to me about this novel since it came out, and now I understand why. So much of the murder mystery The Ending Writes Itself is about the publishing world and how fucked up it is. For the past 25 years my parents have heard all sorts of book world horror stories from me. I imagine they found this novel cathartic and wanted to me to experience it too.

Evelyn Clarke is the pen name of VE Schwab and Cat Clarke, fantasy and YA writers, who've joined together to write a thriller that skewers the book industry even while playing with all sorts of genre tropes. They tell the story of six midlist writers in a variety of genres – horror, romance, thriller, sci-fi, and YA – who are summoned to a castle on a private Scottish island owned by a wildly successful author of a mystery series who is known for throwing great salons.

But when they arrive, his agent informs them that the author has died, and that the six of them must compete to be the ghost writer who would finish the author's final book in his most famous series. He's left everything but the last 10K words. They have 72 hours to write the perfect ending, and of course their phones and laptops are put into a safe to be collected at the end. But then, of course, the writers start dying...

It's a witty good time and it's full of righteous rage, even if the components of the murder mystery don't entirely add up.

Bookshop Anti-Prime Day

A reminder that Bookshop.org is running an anti-Prime special in which they'll offer free shipping from June 23 to June 26. Now is the perfect time to go on a book-buying spree and to say a hearty FUCK YOU to Jeff Bezos.