It’s a tale as old as time — the heartwrenching, steam-inducing, bodice-clenching story of a woman falling head over heels in love with a man who’s more red flag than person. Except in the case of the best-selling book A Court Of Thorns And Roses and its subsequent series, author Sarah J Mass didn’t just use these tropes to establish herself in the romance market— she used fairy porn to revive an entire subgenre of publishing.
Let’s wrench things into an imaginary present tense. Why do I decide to have a go? It’s not to honour or acknowledge Russell Jones or his parents. Sorry for that dismissal, but I’m just 17, and far too centred on my spotty self to consider anyone else.
Nor do I enter out of any commitment to literature/writing. My motives are much more focused. I want to win and have my name read out in assembly. I want applause. I want to be admired.
As you might expect, the book provides a clear insight into the immigrant experience in the sixties. She writes: “At times you might be openly abused, called names. That was very unpleasant. I think that’s why those of us who came from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia formed strong communities so that we could feel a sense of belonging.”
At once sweeping and incisive, Clein’s book positions eating disorders within histories of capitalism, technology, popular culture, and social media. The story she spins hasn’t simply stuck in my mind; it’s caused a reconsideration of language—the words I and the people around me use as we talk about our bodies, our relationships to food and movement.
As she relates in “Somehow: Thoughts on Love,” Lamott has somehow (actually, on a senior dating site) found her Neal, and, three days after receiving her first Social Security check, became a first-time bride. In her trademark godly yet snarky way, she extracts every life lesson from her latest new experience with the deft zeal of a chef reducing flour and fat to roux. “Love is compassion,” she writes, “which Neal defines as the love that arises in the presence of suffering. Are love and compassion up to the stark realities we face at the dinner table, and down the street, and at the melting ice caps, or within Iranian nuclear plants and our own Congress? Maybe, I think so. Somehow.”