am reading // june 2025
Bite-sized book reviews for everything I read in the last month.
Is tomorrow already July? When did that happen?
Two special mentions this month: The Elephant’s Journey and Angela Y. Davis: An Autobiography were gifted to me by one of my best friends and my adoptive little brother respectively. Obrigada, merci, Pedro, Alex. All other books are, as usual, from the American Library of Paris.
An Elephant’s Journey, José Saramago
In the middle of the 16th century, King João III of Portugal gifted his cousin, the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, an Indian elephant named Solomon. Now, how do you get an elephant from Portugal to Austria, a distance of some 3,000 kilometres? You walk it. And that long, strange journey is the basis for Saramago’s utterly delightful, often uproariously funny novel. Real and imagined characters are rendered with Saramago’s special wit and irony; the story is as much a testimony to the whims and weaknesses of people as it is a tale of compassion and friendship, the spectrum of humanity unleashed upon the walk of a beast. It is a masterful book.
When the Going Was Good, Graydon Carter
Trust the once 25-year editor of Vanity Fair to write a good memoir, full of candid memories from the golden age of print magazines, when writers could fly business class and stay at the Chateau Marmont. Carter is a fantastic raconteur, bringing readers behind the scenes of the publishing world and explaining how he became one of the top editors and culture makers of his time. I loved the sometimes irreverent way Carter reflects on the industry he has devoted so much of his life to, as well as his sweet callbacks to life in Canada. His writing is as effortless to read as it is enjoyable.
The Use of Photography, Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie
“I miss being in love.” That is what I wrote in my little notebook while reading this slim text. Part photo series, part personal essays, The Use of Photography is a sort of memoir co-written by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, confined to a period in time in which they were lovers and Ernaux was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. The duo took to photographing their clothes after making love; each chapter has a reflection from each author on one of these photos. Unsurprisingly, the themes of sex and death appear throughout, as Ernaux and Marie write about mortality, bodies, and violence. It is a fascinating and engrossing experiment full of wonderful phrases like, “We should be jealous of songs” and “I’ve always had the impression that making love in a hotel is without consequence because there, in a sense, you are nobody.” And of course, anything by Ernaux will have you philosophizing, too. My example, from that same notebook: “We say that life is the opposite of death, but perhaps the counterpoint to dying (ie. not existing) is not life, but rather, love (ie. everything).”
Audition, Katie Kitamura
Kitamura is an expert at using obfuscation to create unease both for her characters and her readers. Her writing is at times removed, almost cold, creating uncomfortable tensions — and she did this without exception in Audition. There is also an interesting cadence to the writing, a lilt that feels intentional in its slight awkwardness, which made the surprise moments of conflict visceral, discomfiting. Competing realities and a nervy protagonist and an abstract-ish way of writing makes Audition compelling, if also a bit confusing; it’s a heady novel (meaning, not a beach read) that takes some thinking, some patience, to get through.
Flesh, David Szalay
I almost returned this book when I got back to Paris. I wasn’t sure if I’d finish it before it’s due date (48 hours after my return). I started reading it at half past midnight and got to page 133 of about 350; I definitely finished it in time. It is, without hesitation, an excellent book. It traces the slow unravelling of a regular man whose entire trajectory is altered by an early broken boundary, and how it infiltrates the decisions he makes, especially around love. Written with a propulsive delicacy, Flesh is one of the best bits of fiction I’ve read in recent memory.
Angela Y. Davis: An Autobiography, Angela Davis
Another fantastic, candid, articulate memoir, revealing details of a life beyond the headlines. Davis is generous especially in her retelling of life in jail; she gives all her kindness and grace to the other women who were incarcerated in and around her. A special treat in this edition is the inclusion of several forwards spanning nearly fifty years from first (1974) to latest (2021) publication. From the text itself, I often found myself pausing to re-read sentences that could apply to the situations that will define today in the future. An example is her reaction to fellow students’ behaviour in the face of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962): “Some of them got into cars and took off in a panic, saying they were on their way to Canada. What was so striking about the students’ response to the crisis was its strongly selfish quality. They were not interested in the fact that the people of Cuba were in terrible jeopardy […] They were interested in themselves, in saving their own lives.” Bound to repetition, humanity is sentences to suffering.
Isola, Allegra Goodman
Now this is a beach read, with substance! Historical fiction that reads like a romance — with polar bears and castaways to keep things interesting. In this novel, Goodman reimagines the life of Marguerite de la Rocque, who was marooned on an uninhabited island in what is now known as Newfoundland by her thieving, jealous uncle. She survives by being tenacious, resourceful, and at one point, purely desperate. An adventurous tale of redemption, Isola is an entertaining, emotional and rewarding read. As an added nod in its favour, though there are no direct interactions with Indigenous peoples, when needing to refer to the inhabitants of the new world, Goodman and her protagonist refer to them as “warriors” — a positive departure from the terms used in similar stories of voyages to the Americas.
The Proof of My Innocence, Jonathan Coe
A delightful, contemporary political thriller set during Liz Truss’s tenure as Prime Minister of the UK, which was famously outlasted by a head of lettuce. Coe’s novel takes the same cheeky tone as a post-pandemic meme, bolstered by believable protagonists and a handful of dastardly suspects. Incredibly amusing and with a thick enough plot to just keep you from guessing the culprit, this is a novel that knows and uses its genre incredibly successfully.