The Maris Review, vol 87

Maris Kreizman

13 Jan 2026 — 5 min read

The theme of this week is consumption. And corgis.

What I read this week

The Hitch by Sara Levine

This might be the only book I'll ever read in which I know a dog death is coming but I soldier on anyway. For those who are concerned, the scene happens mostly off the page, and the tone of the novel is too zany (this is a compliment) to linger too long. Especially because the spirit of the dead dog reemerges in a 6 year-old boy. Hence the evocative jacket design. Let me back up.

Rose Cutler is the embodiment of what Republicans might imagine progressive, "woke" women to be, a woman whose entire personality is vegan, a woman who is so judgmental that her nephew's parents call her Aunt Rant. Perfidious about every morsel of food that enters her mouth, and always careful to consider the political and environmental consequences of any actions (she hates that her brother and his wife are staying at a resort in Mexico rather than, say, "any of the less developed fishing villages in the Yucatan." Excuse me for being defensive, but this sendup of childless dog ladies who are maybe sometimes too morally strident hits a little close.

The dog is Walter, a not entirely trained Newfoundland who Rose loves very much: "I don't care what anybody says: Dogs don't supply unconditional love. But they let you love them, even ravish them, without any humiliating remarks – and that's a service."

The six year-old is Rose's nephew, Nathan, who Rose is excited to watch while her brother and sister-in-law are on vacation.

The corgi is Hazel, who the overly rambunctious Walter fells on a walk. But fear not – Hazel reemerges in Nathan's body as a playful yet brilliant spirit who quotes Shakespeare and tells knock knock jokes and knows what you got up to last night.

How does Rose handle this doggie bodily takeover? Spoiler alert: not well. And that's where the fun begins. Rose is a hapless heroine who "had love and worry twisted up like sheets in a dryer," and it's delightful to watch her flail right up to the point when she realizes that her own body might have been occupied by demons and shitting cats all along.

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

We know this story: precocious teen lusts after high school teacher who resists her advances until he doesn't. Don't Stand So Close To Me, etc etc. It takes a gifted writer to a well-trodden path and make it distinctly her own. Jennette McCurdy has the chops. I didn't read her mega-bestselling memoir about growing up famous with a maniacal stage mom, but I am here to vouch for her fiction. Her writing cuts through the cliche partly because she is so good at evoking the stultifying sameness of the day to day even when there's a lot of graphic sex happening.

Half His Age is the story of Waldo, a precocious (aren't they all?) senior in high school in Anchorage, Alaska. Waldo is too wise and too cynical to care much about what happens at school until she's placed in Mr. Korgy's creative writing class. Mr. Korgy is a mildly charismatic, 40 year-old married dude who has a lot of opinions about David Foster Wallace and French New Wave. He is worldly as hell to a kid whose sex and love-addicted mom is often absent, whose kitchen only contains processed food if there's any food at all, who is lonely in the way only smart teenage girls in small towns can be.

What McCurdy nails are the ugly details, the ones that especially reveal themselves under those dressing room lights that you find in a Victoria's Secret in a nearly defunct mall (that's where Waldo works). Waldo is first and foremost a consumer. She loads up a variety of online shopping carts with fast fashion and cheap nail polish, hoping each time that you might be able to buy a new identity on sale at Forever 21 for $12.99. But more likely it will be a "fun" shirt that will sit in her closet until it makes its way to a landfill. If Rose in The Hitch allows only the highest quality stuff to enter her home and her mouth, Waldo is her opposite (this includes Mr. Korgy's penis, obviously). Rose and Waldo are on two ends of the same spectrum, and it's hard not to root for them both as they seek balance by the end of their respective novels.

Ilya and Shane are coming for CoHo

Divorce Memoirs by Not-Rich People

There's a new divorce memoir out today that is getting a lot of buzz. I'm sure it's great, but I want to focus on divorce memoirs by excellent writers who do not have oodles of inherited wealth and who would probably appreciate a bump in book sales. Here's a little list:

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz

No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce by Haley Mlotek

Sucker Punch by Scaachi Koul

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story by Leslie Jamison

Clam Down: A Metamorphosis by Annelise Chen

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith