Fighting Appalachian Ghosts, Exploring London Gardens, and a Cocktail I Just Made Up
Plus: The latest Kate Clayborn
A few weeks ago, I went to see a work-in-progress theater piece - a monologue by a comedian who wanted to try something less funny and more earnest and personal. Friends, it was bad. The kind of bad where I felt bad, because clearly no one had had the courage to tell the comedian early on that they needed tostart over, and now they were going to take what was clearly the raw, unadulterated product of their broken heart and yearning soul and put it in front of hundreds and hundreds of strangers…and probably get terrible reviews. Yikes.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the monologue for several days, breaking it down and putting it back together in my head to figure out what had gone so wrong. It got my creative juices flowing from an entirely different source…and I realized that it was the first piece of bad art I’d seen in years. Reviews and word-of-mouth and confidence in my own preferences mean I consume a lot of good art, some great art, and the occasional piece of spectacular art…but I, and I think you too, have been sheltered inside a filter bubble that channels us towards stuff we’ll almost certainly like. The bad play pierced that bubble, just for a night, and it shocked my brain out of a rut.
Anyway, to counteract the relentless rain, here’s a piece of spectacular art that I think is California sunshine in musical form:
Recently I read and loved…
The Other Side of Disappearing by Kate Clayborn
To the surprise of no one who’s been reading this newsletter for a while, I loved this book very much. I don’t have a ton of auto-buy authors, but Kate Clayborn is one of them. So I’ll talk about an aspect of her writing that’s underrated in romance novels - she writes really, really good supporting characters. When you’re writing a story that’s driven by one relationship, it can be so easy to leave the main characters existing in a vacuum, or worse, to surround them with paper dolls masquerading as other people. But Clayborn is brilliant at creating complex, imperfect people that both illuminate the main characters more clearly and have their own realistic arcs over the course of the story. The Other Side of Disappearing has a beautiful central romance, but I was equally gripped by the conversations between MC Jess and her teenage sister Tegan, and by the work discussions MC Adam has with his hard-driving boss Salem. If there were a romance writing MFA, I’d absolutely put Clayborn on the syllabus.
The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19 1/2 Front Gardens by Ben Dark
Looking back on the most uncertain days of spring 2020, it’s not an overstatement to say that our neighbors’ front yards kept me sane. My husband I would go for our daily stupid walk for our stupid mental health, and on those strange, static afternoons, what changed every day were the plants. Multi-colored roses budding and unfurling. Apricot and cherry trees turning fuzzy and pink-white with blossom, gacarandas exploding like purple fireworks. Four years later, reading The Grove took me back to the good part of those walks. Professional gardener Ben Dark spent weeks wandering up and down the same street in his neighborhood in South London, observing all the different front yard plants that Londoners take for granted and diving deep into their backstories, from wisteria and flowering cherries to buddleia and London planes. As I read, I felt like I was ambling with him - his writing voice is equal parts easygoing intelligence and gentle wit. If you need a relaxing read, I’d definitely recommend this.
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
I did not know I needed an Appalachian Gothic novel in my reading life, but my debut author friends sung its praises so much that curiosity overwhelmed me. I’m so glad it did, because Opal, the protagonist of Starling House, is an absolutely brilliant creation. She is ferocious and defiant and will lie, cheat, and steal to protect the people she loves. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass if you like her, or care about her, but you absolutely will. The worldbuilding in this book is also incredibly rich. Harrow evokes both a dying Kentucky coal town struggling with pills and corrupt power companies, big box stores and evangelical churches, but also a parallel magical world with a lonely paladin living in a collapsing sentient house trying to keep bloodthirsty beasts from swallowing the dying coal town whole. This is genius, please read it.
And I mixed…Bitterest Oranges.
I used my newly made vin d’orange to stir together an adaptation of an Americano, which long-time readers will know is a little bit of a fixation of mine. (It’s refreshing, it’s easy to make, and it’s best friends with potato chips and olives, what else do you need?) Orange and Campari love hanging out in the same glass (see also: Garibaldis, or just mixing a shot of Campari into orange soda). But I found that vin d’orange was definitely sharper than the Americano’s traditional sweet vermouth, so I changed out the soda for tonic water to give extra sweetness and another complimentary bitter flavor.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 oz/50ml vin d’orange
1 1/2 oz/50ml Campari
Tonic water to top
To make:
Stir the vin' d’orange and Campari over ice until chilled, then top with tonic and garnish with a fat orange slice. Sip with salty potato chips to hand.
Housekeeping - I’m spending most of the next two weeks on the road (mostly learning about wine in Tuscany, yes I am a lucky so-and-so), so the next newsletter will arrive in your inboxes on 24 April.
And some articles The Slowest Burn and I have been featured in lately:
Talking (and mildly cussing) about cups versus grams along with other illustrious women in food…
Kieran O’Neill got a shoutout in this listicle about goofball love interests…
And Naina Kumar talked how excited she was to read The Slowest Burn!