A good story doesn’t just copy life, it pushes back on it.

April reading pushed back on it all: love, power, poverty, and war.

Before I get to the books I read in April, I have to address yesterday’s announcement! For the 10th anniversary of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, the series will be published as one special edition. One volume spanning sixty years and 1,248 pages.

This is notable because when Ferrante wrote the quartet, she thought of the story of Lila and Elena as a single piece of fiction. Understandably, a book that large would be difficult to sell. But I appreciate that Europa Editions is releasing a deluxe edition with Ferrante’s original vision in mind. (And the cover got a major upgrade. For all the beauty inside those books, the covers leave much to be desired.)

The book will cost you $65, but for Ferrante Fans it’s not a book; it’s an artifact. If you’re new to her, here’s an unofficial syllabus to get you started on her oeuvre.

A love story, a divorce story, a cautionary tale, and a Pulitzer prize winner

Because it took me what felt like forever to read Demon Copperhead, I’d begun to think April was a wash as far as reading went. Before writing this essay, had you asked me what books I read in the past month, the only answer I would have been able to come up with was Demon.

Maybe this has to do with the space the book took up, not only in terms of hours spent reading but in terms of hours spent thinking of the book afterwards. Maybe it’s because I haven’t heard anybody — not one single person — say something bad about the book, so I was surprised by how long it took me to read it.

It turns out I read more than Demon Copperhead in April. I started out by reading four books of poetry, which is a departure from what I typically read. I also read a fun romcom and two nonfiction titles: a whistleblower tell-all and a divorce memoir “tell-mine.”

April's reading took me to dark places and light, reminding me that reading widely isn't easy — but it's always worth it.

In Demon Copperhead, the narrator and namesake of the story says he learned from a teacher that a good story doesn’t just copy life, it pushes back on it. The books I read in April push back on it all: love, power, poverty, and war.

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

This is the whistleblower book that Meta tried to kill, thereby ratcheting up interest and propelling the book to #1 New York Times bestseller status. Written by a former Facebook executive, Careless People is a maddening but not at all hard to believe story about the heinous way the wealthy behave and the great lengths they will go for power.

I hate that what stands out most to me about this book is the coverage of Sheryl Sandberg, the so-called advocate of women asserting themselves at work and at home. I hate it because the real villain here is Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the goon squad working for him, but because Sheryl is a woman — and one profiting off of other women supporting her Lean In work — I felt more disappointed in her. It’s like I expected Zuckerberg to pull the crap he pulled, but Sheryl asking her employees to lay in bed with her while on the company’s private jet? This shocked me, so this stuck with me.

I listened to Careless People¹ and it was narrated by the author, which made it feel like she was telling me her work history over a beverage rather than through a book. It made my blood boil and I probably wouldn’t have read the whole thing were it not an audiobook, but in terms of story- and truth-telling — and shock value! — I think it’s well done.

It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan

I haven’t read a book by

Annabel Monaghan

I didn’t like. She strikes the perfect balance of humor and heart, and makes readers fall in love with her characters — even the ones who start out on the wrong side of the enemies to lovers line.

It’s a Love Story features an all-grown-up child actor turned studio executive with mixed, embarrassing feelings about the popstar she has to chase and the cinematographer she has to chase him with. She battles sexism in the film industry, which is buoyed by a warm, welcoming family that reminds her that she’s better than the person she pretends to be. Like all the best romcoms, this book pushed every one of my sensory buttons.

It’s a Love Story comes out May 27!² Pre-order your copy here.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

This was a recommendation from

Amanda Karch

when I asked readers for poetry suggestions. Maggie Smith is a poet, but You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a memoir, or what the author calls her “tell-mine,” as she can’t tell all; she doesn’t know all sides of the divorce she writes about.

The title of this book comes from the final line of the viral poem, Good Bones, that changed Smith’s career. As her career evolved, so did the relationship with her husband and the father of her two children. The memoir is, unsurprisingly, a beautifully written telling of how Smith kept moving during and after the dissolution of her marriage. The chapters are short, some are as small as three words, and the writing is rhythmic and choppy like a poet’s prose would be. It’s a gorgeous telling of a dark, dark time.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

This book left me wonderstruck, I hardly know what else to say, and given that so much has been written about this Pulitzer Prize winner, I’ll keep it light. Demon is about a boy growing up in Appalachia, a child of the foster system. He experiences abuse, hunger, and addiction, all while trying to paddle up a rushing river of grief. A red-haired, green-eyed Melungeon, Demon — whose birth name is Damon, but like pretty much everyone else in the book, he goes by a nickname — tries to be good and to do well by the few good people in his life, but circumstance find him — and pretty much everyone else in the book — on a constant drip of opioids.

But Demon pushes back on life in his own way, and his story is one I think readers will be talking about for generations and generations.

Poetry

April being National Poetry Month, I focused on a genre I never give enough time to. I wrote in full about the four poetry books I read here, so I’ll skip over the descriptions. What I will say is that reading these poems radically changed how I approached my own writing and even my own reading. The words pushed me to think, in the case of You Can be the Last Leaf, of war and cadavers and destruction; in the case of Beautiful Chaos, of the moments of motherhood we often skip over once we get through it.

After this reading experience, I vow to myself to seek out more poetry.

The books I read were:

• You Can be the Last Leaf • Selected Poems written by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, translated by Fady Joudah;

• Beautiful Chaos: On Motherhood, Finding Yourself, and Overwhelming Love by Jessica Urlichs;

• Day of the Child • A Poem by Arra Lynn Ros;

• a Year & other poems by Jos Charles.

See the full post about April’s poetry reading here.

What did you read in April? What are you underlining?

What I’m reading: Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly

What I’m underlining: [From You Could Make This Place Beautiful]: “It was the middle of winter in Ohio, bleak and washed out and bitterly cold. I would sigh a small round circle into the frosted windows, like a miniature porthole, and look out at the world I no longer felt I belonged in or to.”

Love, Kolina

---

When you purchase books through my links, you support this newsletter and an indie bookstore of your choice at no cost to you.

1. Thank you Macmillan Audio for the audiobook.

2. Thank you Putnam for the book.