#EDAN LEPUCKI

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Time's Mouth | Author: Edan Lepucki | Publisher: Counterpoint Press (2023)

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Time’s Mouth: A Novel

Edan Lepucki.

[palmtreepalmtree]

The LA Times released a list of the quintessential Los Angeles books, and I'm sort of whatever about these lists, but the love for City of Quartz by Mike Davis is universal and glorious. They had writers help compile the list and explain their nominations, and for Mike, they shared a few of the things people said about his book, and this was my favorite:

“Everyone is going to list this book, so I’m not going to try to write anything about an obvious classic.” — Edan Lepucki

[tocourtdisaster]

Tagged by @clumsyyhearts to list 10 books that have stuck with me, so here we go.

1. Coyote by Allen Steele

2. Stiff by Mary Roach

3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

4. California by Edan Lepucki

5. Feed by Mira Grant

6. Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

7. Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

8. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

9. The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

10. The Martian by Andy Weir

Honorable mention short stories: Sandkings by George R.R. Martin and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.

Tagging (but honestly no pressure) @re-white @mysticalchildisis @castrahiberna @kimuracarter @truthhux and anyone else who wants to do it. 😊

[bookjubilee]

Book Review: ‘Time’s Mouth,’ by Edan Lepucki

bookjubilee.com http://dlvr.it/St62KC

[otherpplnation]

855. Edan Lepucki

Edan Lepucki is the bestselling author of the novel Time's Mouth, available from Counterpoint Press.

Lepucki's other books include the novels California and Woman No. 17. She is also the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Esquire Magazine, and The Cut, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.

***

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[mysoul4books]

I have no self control when it comes to buying books. Someone take away my credit card or change my book outlet password for me.

[quote-junkie]

You think you know how a story begins, or how it's going to turn out, especially when it's your own. You don't.

Edan Lepucki

- “Woman No. 17″

[thehappyscavenger]

Books read in August 2018

Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams

I feel like I only hear about modern books through tumblr, but this was a good pick and I knew it when I requested it from the library and it was confirmed by the opening page. 

This is a short story cycle which was something I was taught in university but apparently no one has ever heard of because books like this either get shoved under the umbrella of novel or short stories when it is a SHORT STORY CYCLE i.e. a group of loosely connected short stories that are set within the same community. I love short story cycles because you get the nice bite sized pieces of a short story but then you also get that interconnectedness when previous characters pop up in the background. Anyway, this cycle takes place in the near future (2035) in San Francisco (I think, IDK it’s not important). It deals with one family and a few friends and acquaintances of the family where the woman of the family works for this machine that gives you suggestions for your happiness based on your DNA. Some of the suggestions are benign and some are quite sinister. 

It’s not very plotty but I liked it anyway, the way it deals with happiness, tech and the near future. 

Tresspass by Rose Tremain

So this book was a STRUGGLE. I think I got it from the library in 2017 but I just kept renewing and finally I was like maybe I should read the thing, but the first chapter was so dull I put it down and then I couldn’t remember anything so I had to re-read it and then it turned out to have mutiple pov chapters so any time I was slightly invested in someone within a few pages there was a new character. 

I started reading it because Clio Barnard did a movie adaptation of the book. I saw the movie and “adaptation” is a real generous term because it has very very little to do with the novel. The novel is about two sets of siblings: English siblings Anthony and Veronica Verey and French siblings Audrun and Aaramon Lunel. When the events of the book occurs both are in their sixties but still involved in warped relationships with each other caused in part by parents who were abusive and neglectful. And honestly it’s not really a bad book, it just took me a long time to get invested, like literal months to read the first 100 pages and then a day to read the rest because by then I was curious about what happened. 

Despite being really spare (it’s only about 250 pages) Tremain packs a LOT into the story. She seems like someone who really gets early childhood trauma and how it can completely fuck you up. For example the English set of siblings, the Vereys, had a mother who was neglectful and one sibling remembers her as an angel and has become stunted, while the other remembers her as a demon but is really protective of her brother. The dynamics between the Lunels are even darker (there is child sexual abuse involved) but Tremain is incredibly delicate and understanding of the relationship between them in a way that is twisted but feels real. I also appreciated that it was about siblings in their 60s. So much literature focuses on children or teens that it’s rare to get a book like this that focuses on people in their late adulthood. 

Not my favourite book and I’m not sure who I would recommend this too, but I have immense respect for Tremain as a writer after reading this. 

The Overstory by Richard Powers

LOVED THIS. This book was longlisted for the Man Booker prize which is how I heard of it. I should always read books with covers with concentric rings cause somehow it always pays off. 

The Overstory is a book about climate change as told through 9 Americans. But really it’s about climate change as told through our lust for wood and our destruction of natural forests.  The writing is just superb in this one. It’s Literature with a capital L and a long luxurious read that is rich and enjoyable. Burned through all 500 pages of this in a few days. 

Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki

I think this was another tumblr discovery that I read because it was described as a neo-noir. I was kind of indifferent to it especially because it had been sold to me as a book about the friendship between two women but it was actually more about a working relationship with two women who were mostly obsessed with the men in their lives. 

The book takes place in California and is about these two women, one a rich Hollywood Hills housewife and the other an art grad who she hires as a sitter to watch her youngest son. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this and both characters have complicated relationships with their mothers which is briefly touched on but it’s mostly about their obsessions with different men. Like Lady, the rich housewife, is inappropriately obsessed with her older son, indifferent to her younger son, separated from her perfect husband and obsessed with her ex who walked out on her almost twenty years before. There’s long passages that are just her talking about all these different guys and maybe if the book was JUST about that I would have cared but since it was only half about that it just felt aimless and meaningless. 

I will say this: it was a quick read. 

Authority by Jeff VanderMeer

This is the second book in VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. I read the first one, Annihilation, and didn’t like it enough to keep reading the rest of the triology. But then the movie adaptation came out and I remembered how haunting the book was so I thought maybe I would give the second book a shot. 

Well. I was kind of ambivalent about the first one but Authority was worse. The first one takes place at the site of an area on earth that’s possibly been taken over by aliens and has sort of a Stalker feel to it. This book takes place outside of the invaded area in a research centre. It’s basically full of paranoia and bureaucracy but it’s so long and boring. Also there’s something about the way it was written that makes it feel like VanderMeer was basically writing it hoping someone would turn it into a movie. Like an elaborate scenario. Not a fan but I feel like at some point I’ll read the third book just to finish it off. 

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

This was a sweet book and another one I began a long time ago (possibly in April) and then put off reading. But only because I liked it so much and I wanted to make it last (and it’s such a short book). I left it much too long, but at last, in only a day I finished it. 

It’s quite a sweet book about a group of 4 unhappy women, all strangers to each other, who decide to rent out an Italian castle together for the entire month of April.

I don’t want to spoil too much but it’s quite funny and sweet and romantic. A charming book. It was a best seller when it was published and it’s been made into plays and films over the years but I can’t imagine it being as charming on the screen as it is on the page. Pure loveliness.

[justanotherliteratureblog]

So? Many? Questions??

Reading California by Edan Lepucki was a rollercoaster for me. The backstories were great, and the premise was good. The conflicts felt so forced, though. Maybe it’s because Micah is the one behind much of the conflict, and he ends up creating the conflicts himself. Who knows. I did want to talk about he last section of the book a bit though..

So at the end of the novel, we find out that Pines isn't nearly as perfect as the governments running the Communities would have the general population believe. Even Micah doesn't reveal the infrastructural problems Pines is going through. The only issue we, as the readers, hear about before Cal and Frida end up there have to do with the pirates, which Micah ran out of the area. Even that isn't true though, because Micah was seen doing deals with the pirates to keep them off of the land surrounding Pines and The Land.

It seems that Micah has become his own little government. He runs The Land, with help from a couple of men, he maintains relations with Pines and the pirates in order to procure supplies and protect his people, and he runs votes on certain issues. When we first hear of Micah, from Cal and Frida’s memories, he seems like the type of person to advocate for anarchy – someone who’s willing to put everything at risk to destroy the government. He even staged a suicide bombing so that he could go incognito and do the Group’s work without concerning himself with familial ties. To see him become a democratic leader of sorts is kind of confusing. He even advocates for the Communities, at least as a way to get supplies and as somewhere somewhat safe for his sister to run to. It’s just weird to see him in that role after we seem him getting recruited into the Group and how his thoughts change as a result.

How would have things turned out if Micah stayed and advocated for Frida and Cal to stay within The Land? Would everyone have rioted against Micah, Cal, and Frida? Would they allow Frida and Cal to stay so long as they got rid of the baby? What if Pines hadn’t accepted Firda and Cal? They could have been taken at the gate and forced to be Hatters, or throw back out.

Now back to Pines. The food there sucks, even though the citizens are getting the nutrients they need. But everything comes as a pill or shake, meaning that their teeth have become useless. This should be causing so many dental issues. The women are expected to be housewives, which seems like a huge step back considering this novel takes place around 2050. The clothes are shoddy, but they are made to look professional. To me, it seems like the Communities are just prolonging the inevitable collapse of society.