Booby-Trapped Friendships, Celebrity Gossip, and a Cocktail that's Same-Same But Different
Plus, a romance that dances all over the third rail...
Happy International Women’s Day from your friend, an International Woman! I know, I’m not the first person to make that joke today, and I will absolutely not be the last. It gives me strong 007 vibes whenever I say it, though. I’m just waiting for my tux and my Aston Martin with Q’s snazzy modifications.
Recently I read and loved…
The Worst Woman in London by Julia Bennet
As a genre, romance tends to work in dichotomies - opposites attract, grumpy-sunshine, city-country. Cheer on the hero/heroine, boo the villain, a little bit like a pantomime with more sex. But I’ve found that the best romance novels either dig deeper into those contrasts, or they outright challenge them. The Worst Woman in London is Exhibit A for the latter. Bennet’s characters exist in shades of gray - they’re fallible and afraid, they’re embittered and cynical, and they sleep with people they’re not meant to. (Any hint of infidelity is a third rail for many romance readers and writers, but Bennet bravely challenges that standard.) If there’s any villain in this book, it’s the mores of high-class Victorian English society, where women were either pristine angels or shameless whores, divorce meant both financial ruin and social death, and maintaining appearances mattered above all. I got invested in all these characters, even the supposed villain, as they searched for some kind of happiness in the face of very, very painful obstacles.
Wahala by Nikki May
In contrast, Wahala is a cautionary tale par excellence. The three women leads, all half-Nigerian women living in London, are deeply discontented with their lives. Work, relationships, family: nothing lives up to the images in their heads. Then in comes Isobel, a whirlwind of designer clothes, ever-changing hairdos, and flashed cash, encouraging Simi, Boo, and Ronke to let loose, throw off the reins of domesticity, make themselves happy instead of other people, for once. But are Isobel’s promises too good to be true? Wahala is a tightly-constructed, suspenseful story, and like the three women, we don’t realize that a warm, characterful story of friendship and identity has turned into something much darker until it’s too late.
Bring on the Empty Horses by David Niven
If you’re wondering how I ended up writing fiction, I’d say one reason is that I was lucky enough to grow up with some gifted raconteurs. My grandfather Abe and my godfather Craig (may they rest in peace) could have a whole room in stitches at their sheer audacity. The percentage of truth in Abe and Craig’s anecdotes was almost certainly not 100%, but neither of them were men to let facts get in the way of a good story.
Reading Bring on the Empty Horses meant spending several delightful hours with a top-notch raconteur. I love stories of Old Hollywood anyway (I’m not a big podcast listener, but You Must Remember This is glorious), and David Niven’s memories of the early days of cinema and his friendships with Clark Gable, Cary Grant, and Humphrey Bogart are highly entertaining.
(Fair warning: this was originally published in 1975, and is very much a book of its time in terms of how Niven writes about people who are not straight white men. If that’s not something you can accept, this isn’t for you.)
I also enjoyed…What Women Want by Maxine Mei-Fung Chung and Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
And I mixed…a Pineapple Rum Sour (Redux).
In case you were wondering, I don’t mix a brand-spanking new cocktail every week. Sometimes I don’t have time to find a special ingredient, sometimes I’m in the mood for an old favorite, and sometimes, as my husband’s people have it, I simply can’t be arsed.
Two weeks ago, all three of these factors collided, and I almost made my usual pineapple rum sour (4:2:1 rum-lemon-simple syrup, shake). But I found a little fresh inspiration in a recipe for rum punch in the amazing Jamaican cookbook Motherland. I wouldn’t mix an entire batch of punch for two people (that would lead to the most abandoned of Lost Weekends), but I borrowed some ingredients from Melissa Thompson’s recipe to zhuzz up my usual rum sour. Lime juice instead of lemon gives a more complex tartness, a dash of Angostura bitters contrasts beautifully with the sweet and the sour, and a few gratings of fresh nutmeg (not powdered, this is not a pumpkin spice latte) over the finished drink give a big kick of spicy fragrance when you lift the glass to your nose.
Makes 1
2oz/60ml Plantation Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple Rum
1oz/30ml fresh lime juice
1/2oz/15ml rich simple syrup (To make this, dissolve 0.5cup/100g sugar in 0.25cup/50ml water and leave to cool.)
1 dash Angostura bitters
Lots of ice
A whole nutmeg
Special equipment: a microplane
Combine the rum, lime juice, sugar syrup, and Angostura in a shaker with ice cubes. Shake until the outside of the shaker gets covered in condensation, 15-20 seconds. Double strain into rocks glasses filled with ice. Use the microplane to grate a sprinkling of fresh nutmeg over the drink.