The Years Start Coming And They Don't Stop Coming And They Don't Stop Coming And They Don't Stop Coming And They...
Kate Atkinson, Fenne Lily — "Do you think I would kill you, Eve?"
This month I worked the polls and saw more than one grown man throw a tantrum. I also had the privilege of working with some of the most hardworking people in local government, and I learned the ins and outs of the electoral process. I also turned 26 and bought two new masks. What a time to be alive.
I missed writing this newsletter. It would be a lie to say that I haven’t had time to work on it, but when I did have that time I didn’t want to spend it in my own head. I didn’t want to focus on how a piece of media made me think or feel, even though it’s normally something I like very much. I got lost in some books and shows and albums, and then went to work and focused on the tasks at hand, and it felt pretty good. That time gave me the energy to miss this type of writing, which ultimately helps me become a better writer/reader/listener.
Maybe. Maybe that’s just an excuse. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been into lately.
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Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
I absolutely judge books by their covers. When I received my library hold of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, the cover made me think it would be some kind of fluffy murder-mystery-of-the-week type of book, and I was annoyed. It’s not that kind of book at all. This has nothing to do with the review, but maybe I should go back to third grade to revisit other maxims I’ve ignored.
The story is a trip through significant historical moments through the eyes of a mother, a little girl, a young lady, and a resigned, middle aged woman. What makes it different from any other historical fiction is the conceit: the main character never dies. Or, she dies a lot, and always comes back. We follow her as she suffers various fates — death shortly after birth, death as a child, death in The Blitz. Then the story starts over, and we’re brought back to 1910 when she was born.
Unsurprisingly, the scenes I found most striking took place during the Spanish Flu pandemic. Although it was a time before 24-hour news outlets and streaming, so much of the attitude — and the mistakes — were familiar. “We have to continue to live our lives,” a character says at one point in order to justify a risky situation that we might now call a “super spreader event.”
Reading this book during lockdown made me appreciate it in a way I likely would not have when it was released in 2013. Right now it feels like days repeat themselves, but at the same time I ponder the moral implications of the smallest actions — grocery shopping, eating at a restaurant, ordering pizza. These small actions have greater consequences and involve other people, and, reading Atkinson, I found myself thinking about how these choices could create different paths, have unintended consequences down the line. It’s not exactly a revelation to say our actions have consequences and affect others, but the What Ifs that are explored here offer vivid scenes that really underscore the potential scope of one person’s actions.
It’s not a perfect book. Sometimes Atkinson’s story lines feel far-fetched or cheesy, even for a weird time- and genre-bending novel. But I found it engrossing nonetheless, a text that was difficult to put down and that had me thinking about characters when I wasn’t reading it. And I think it’s a testament to Atkinson’s writing that such a strange, not-quite-science-fiction story forces itself to be taken seriously.
Plus, it’s just nice to have a point of reference for this weird pandemic mundanity that isn’t Groundhog Day.
Breach by Fenne Lily
One of the last concerts I went to was to see Lucy Dacus. Fenne Lily was the opening act, and it was a great match. They both have warm, velvety voices and clever narrative lyrics set to mellow electric guitar. In the days after the show, I listened to Fenne Lily’s On Hold and, while I liked it well enough, it did feel like a beginner’s album, a little lacking in variety and polish (said as someone who has never and won’t ever release her own album, so take that with all the necessary grains of salt).
Breach, Fenne Lily’s 2020 release, was a welcome expansion on the singer/songwriter’s talent. Tracks like “Elliott” have warm sting arrangements, while “Berlin” features some fuzzy guitar distortion, and my favorite track, “Solipsism,” feels a little like a Cranberries tribute. These builds and flourishes elevate the album from some chill indie songs to a record with a beginning, middle, and end.
Reading the names of songs, I was worried that the lyrics would be cloyingly overwritten, but that wasn’t my experience. Songs like “Solipsism” and the catchy “I, Nietzsche” are pretentious only in the way that all twenty-somethings are pretentious. The questions and scenes within the songs feel like the self-probing, existential kind of ruminations that I and most of my college friends experienced in undergrad (at a liberal arts school, of course). And when you’re going through that, it doesn’t feel unoriginal or pretentious, it feels formative and important and — I would argue — it is. Fenne Lily captures that feeling beautifully, weaving references to books and music with the stories of dating someone kind of shitty in your twenties.
Fenne Lily is at her best when she plays with hooks and experiments with her voice, using dubs and embracing production. This is a great cooking-dinner-album, and I’m excited to hear more from her.
The Killing Eve Soundtrack
It’s a tall order to curate music for a series that speaks to its nature, matches or enhances the vibe of a scene, but that isn’t distracting or too on-the-nose. The music used for BBC’s Killing Eve is nothing short of perfect. Like the characters themselves, there’s a balance of feminine and sinister. Tracks might have pop or disco beats with a sonorous crooning. Other tracks use slow, tense builds to add to whatever scene they’re backing beautifully. Even if a listener hasn’t seen the show, I imagine that they could understand something about the characters and the show’s intricate tonal shifts just by listening to the soundtrack.
What should I check out next? And, as always, let me know how I can do better.
Thanks for reading! See you later.