This is the book that was inspired by Ballerina Farm and the controversies embedded in that whole concept--stuff I've been consuming with a big bucket of popcorn in my lap over the past few years, so I was intrigued to see what the book would be like.
I am not sure I've ever read 391 pages as fast as these ones. It helps that I was off work and the heatwave made anything else rather unfeasible, but that is still wild.
In brief, it is a novel about Natalie Heller Mills, a young, very religious Christian woman in the US who marries young, drops out of college (Harvard, no less), is almost immediately disappointed in her husband and then goes on to create a career for herself as a virtue-signalling Instagrammer who pretends to run a ranch 'just like in the olden days'.
The whole operation is, naturally, built on a small loan gift of 5 mio. dollars from her politician father-in-law, out-of-frame nannies, state of the art kitchen appliances and a crew of around 20 part-time ranch hands as well as a barrel of pesticides here and there, but who's counting. :)
Then, one day, Natalie wakes up, and everything looks different. In fact, everything looks like she has stepped back in time and is actually living in the pioneer days like she was cosplaying to do before.
In the first 30 pages, I thought, 'This is about as subtle as a mallet to the head.' There is at least one barb on every page, and they are flying in every direction. It was a fascinating deep dive into the special brand of religious rigour these public figures build their brands on, and just no end of commentary on the patriarchy, religion, misogyny, the attention economy, rage bait and all the things that are blasted at us every time we visit the internet these days.
The author did a good job of describing Natalie's gradual development from a floundering but ambitious young wife stuck in a marriage she won't allow herself to leave, to an unhinged propagandist who seems deeply co-dependent with an audience who loves to hate her—and whom she loves to hate right back.
Her religious upbringing had trained her to perform long before any cameras were pointed at her. She smiles when she's miserable and all her put-on meekness is a stone veneer over absolutely caustic take downs of her husband that start early on, like on page 28 when she prays, 'And please give my husband a spine. I'm tired of him needing to borrow mine.'
Her piousness is convulsive and desperate, like an ill-fitting glove, and I kept thinking about that episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Malcolm gives himself an ulcer by holding back his usual biting remarks. Her inner voice polices her in an increasingly frantic manner, to the point that it feels like there are two different voices in there fighting for the upper hand. (Which must make this fun as an audio book!)
Natalie does the things she's 'supposed' to do but it's so clear that none of them are a good fit for her. She has many children but she doesn't seem to like any of them. In fact, she is wary and outright threatened by her eldest daughter when the latter is barely a teenager. 'She is almost a woman, she cannot be trusted'—and it's as raw and insightful of a moment as it is tragic. Later on, she gives us a fabulously insane moment when she literally doesn't recognise another daughter for a few moments.
She speaks the language of digital media and has some good business instincts and would have likely been successful as a shrewd and hard businesswoman if she had actually graduated, gained some skills and gotten a job. A lot of it felt like those times you hear about super elaborate crimes and think, this person could have gotten so far if they had ever considered using their powers on the right side of the law. Natalie could have gotten so far if she hadn't chosen to make everything as hard for herself as humanly possible.
She could have had it so easy. She could have completed her Ivy League education, actually matured, lived an easier life making good money, she could have supported her husband when he wanted to raise his kids and teach in primary school instead of shoving him down radicalising rabbit holes, and she could have actually enjoyed her life instead of merely screaming at herself that she was happy. But some people just never are, are they.
She says that the Angry Women who leave her nasty comments are 'defined by their infinite capacity for restlessness'. By contrast, she is defined by her infinite capacity for pain, which she bitterly calls ‘discipline’. She has committed herself to a narrowly defined role and sees it as a point of pride that she has the discipline to withstand the brutality of it. Just like a ballerina who performs gracefully on bloodied feet.
The religious self-effacing is worn like a badge, although we only get Natalie's inner voice to know how she really feels. We don't know how the other Christian women around her feel--only what they say out loud. And it's stuff like, 'Men are like babies—their needs are not negotiable.' said by her mum on page 97. Natalie echoes this somewhat on page 118, referring to her husband as 'this fairy-tale fever dream of a man-child I'd married.'
But even her mum is aware of the shortcomings of men—they are really seen as something to manage and steer all while making it look like they are the leaders. And she had wanted Natalie to get a degree. Maybe Natalie's mum was cosplaying her performative Christianity in a way that wasn't clear to little Natalie growing up--after all, the mum only had two children instead of as many as her body could bear, and she never remarried—she protected herself within the framework set by the religion. However, Natalie didn't see through the pretense.
When her sister tries to broach the subject of how this life had been sold to them through, essentially, false advertisement, Natalie reacts strongly and loudly to shut that down immediately. Sunk cost is a bitch.
The descriptions of the unhappiness behind the shiny facades are exquisite. Living with her political class in-laws made me think of Elizabeth Taylor in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'. Both Natalie's mother's and her mother-in-law's solutions to the pressures in their lives are a quiet form of horror. Both cheerfully built their own cages and so, in the end, did Natalie. Because the image of her life was more important than the life itself. The aesthetics came before anything else.
That's why she flails for so many pages trying to prop up her useless earthworm of a husband. She has painted herself into a corner and now has an uphill battle trying to turn him into a worthy figurehead for her operation. Dimwitted Caleb who will occasionally have a weak lightbulb moment, only for that lightbulb to faintly fizz and pop without leading anywhere.
Mind you, these people met at Harvard!
Around page 150, Natalie's many instances of shutting herself down make me think the words 'psychological self-mutilation'. I imagine her stomach ulcer again. And I think, 'Thank goodness I am not American.' This is horror, but it's very American-flavoured horror which, let's not forget, draws super close parallels to real-life Ballerina Farm and to a lesser degree Ruby Franke as well. I can't see that this type of cultish behaviour would fly in Europe. It also makes me think that I don't want to be reading so many American books.
As Natalie gets more and more unhinged in the last 100 pages, I relished the language, and it was quite entertaining to watch her self-censorship increasingly fail and all her (official) principles fall like dominoes.
In fact, the story is peppered through with hypocrisy. Not only does Natalie directly lie about the use of pesticides and keep quiet about all the staff she has on the ranch (and all the animals dying), she also hides money from her husband and is quick to decide that his mistress will of course have an abortion if he has gotten her pregnant (after hundreds of pages of droning on about ‘His creations’), and when she said how her father-in-law would know an out of state doctor they could trust, it was such a delicious nugget. 😂
While there is a lot in the story that is ridiculous, there is also plenty that is dark and creepy. When some big conservative YouTuber discovers her after Caleb talks about her Instagram on some manosphere forums, he gives her a shoutout on a live stream, leading to her launch into conservative superstardom. ‘Look at how hard this woman works. Look how exhausted and beautiful she is. This, my friends, is the true American dream.’ he praises on page 240.
The American dream is an exhausted woman.
For a tiny moment, Natalie questions it. ‘Did I look exhausted? And why was that a good thing?’ But the moment passes and she hurtles onward toward insanity. Because without her martyrdom, what does she actually have?
I got this in the library app just a few days ago when I wanted something ad free to listen to while cleaning and doing jobs around the house. I ended up getting quite engrossed in it and listened to long chunks of it each day until I reached the end.
It was an entertaining story, partly because I am a big consumer of podcasts on romance fraud and scams and so perhaps is author Lisa Jewell. The antagonist certainly fit many of the tropes known in true crime cases, but this being fiction, it has some extra layers of nefariousness to make the story extra juicy.
It was fascinating to watch the man at work, spinning his tales, deftly deflecting suspicions. By his own admission, he enjoyed having to think on his feet and seemed to thrive on it where some of us would crumple under the stress. But it was even more fascinating watching things slowly unravel for him, and it got delightfully comical whenever the whole thing descended into a simple lack of object permanence.
Although some specifics were fairly outlandish, the overall modus operandi was realistic—it felt like so many of the real-life stories covered in podcasts and documentaries. That’s what made it compelling, the parts that felt real. What this book could give us that most of those podcasts and documentaries don’t is the antagonist’s point of view. And it was executed well.
The ending was good and fit the story. It could have easily been trite, but even those last paragraphs were full of emotion and weight.
I will be off to the library app now to see what else by Lisa Jewell I can find!
I quit this audiobook at just under an hour because it was so bad.
I had to join a waitlist for this in my library’s app. I was interested, I was keen, I was more than ready to like it. But, oh my word, it was utter shite.
Within 15 minutes, I hated everybody mentioned, including the author. Even so, I pushed on because surely it would get better? At nearly an hour, I had to face facts and ditch it.
Why didn’t she use a ghostwriter? Why didn’t the editor do something about the inexplicable shark attack story that went on and on and on? Why was there a waitlist?
I am not sure who this book is for, maybe other Silicon Valley careerists? I don’t care. Bye, Felicia.
I picked up this book at the library because I was attracted to the cover with two people posting letters in a pillar post box and the little envelope drawing on the spine. The post is great. I send post every week. This title clearly signals an epistolary novel so I couldn’t resist.
The story is about Betty and Guy who randomly meet at a paintball event and after some friendly banter part their ways never to see each other again. However, big events change the course of both of their lives and they get back in touch and develop a friendship through postcards and letters.
Overall, it’s a mostly forgettable book. Some of it is clumsy. There are some editing oversights too which give the novel a shabbier look—literally syntax issues. Then there is a jump to emotions that you can’t really take all that seriously because it feels like it’s based on nothing. The author isn’t bringing the reader along well enough. I got to 100 pages in and was still wondering whether I would finish it (out of 381 pages).
To be fair, it’s quite funny, but… it’s clumsy. Too much exposition, even when it’s technically delivered as dialogue, and that makes it unnatural. People say very implausible things. It’s the sort of situation where family members will rehash in detail what happened ln their childhood like it was news to everyone and it’s obviously for the benefit of the reader.
It has some fun and lovely turns of phrase that I liked, such as:
(After someone says ‘Life’s too short not to do what you want.’) The ‘you’ settles on me.
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And I’m staring my madness in the face.
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The obvious questions, what he’s doing here and why, go off like popcorn in my head but I can’t quite catch them.
Sometimes there is too much tell and too little show. People are very explicit and eloquent about their feelings rather than just embodying them.
Some resolutions certainly feel like short-circuits that were chosen out of necessity to tie a neat bow on absolutely everything.
***Spoilers***
Kudos to the author for not forcing a happy ending with babies. We’re not getting a magical resolution to real medical obstacles. Instead, the one who wants kids changes their mind and children are not a dealbreaker anymore.
Finally—finally it’s not all about babies, people can have lives of their own, they can be happy without them, they are not forever living with a hole in their chest and all that nonsense. Ahhh, that was nice.
Murder at the Christmas Emporium by Andreina Cordani
I recently discovered that ‘Christmas crime’ is an entire sub-genre of crime novels–some cosier than others. This one is not exactly what I would call cosy (my main exposure to cosy crime being ‘The Mystery at the Second-Hand Shop’ by Anna Grue, a book with multiple murders made ‘cosy’ by frequent mentions of the protagonist’s soft and round form as well as all her baking). It is actually quite tense, and the main character is someone who has a lot to hide, even from us readers. This adds a lot of interest to the story.
The Christmas Emporium is an old-fashioned and exclusive specialty shop in London (somewhere in the Square Mile, from what I could gather) where a number of shoppers turn up for a special, invite-only opportunity to shop on Christmas Eve. However, when they try to leave, they find themselves locked in, cut-off from the outside and unable to call for help. What at first looks like an inconvenient mishap quickly turns sinister as the night claims its first victim and the group realise they are being hunted. But why? Does anything connect them, or are they just a random group of strangers being hunted for sport by a madman?
Not being versed in crime novels, I was well into the book before I felt certain I had worked out whodunnit, and just as I was lulled into a false sense of security, two or three more twists towards the end of the book both thrilled and delighted me. Give the protagonist depth, and you give depth to the whole book, and in this case the protagonist is both complex and not necessarily likable. That ‘tang’ is just what is needed to offset all the ‘sweetness’ associated with a Christmas setting.
Maybe that is why Christmas crime novels are a thing–there is something in the juxtaposition of all the sugar-sweet decor, music and tradition on one side, and the shock of death on the other. Luckily, in this book, the author does not overdo the cosiness. Maybe some of the tie-ins at the end are a bit much and there is a bit of a Small-Universe Syndrome, but like I said, I am not that versed in crime novels and maybe that is just the done thing.
Andreina Cordani has authored a couple of other Christmas crime novels–something to keep in mind for next December.
Here is another author I first found through a podcast: Dr Rangan Chatterjee has a long-running podcast called Feel Better, Live More, and he’s also been a guest on numerous others. He has also written other books and was in the BBC series Doctor in the House. So he has spent a lot of time communicating to the masses about health and encouraging people to take ownership of their own well-being.
However, apart from a number of his podcast episodes, I haven’t read or watched his other stuff, and this was the first book of his that I’ve read.
It was a quick read because, although the book looks hefty, it is actually quite airy and contains a lot of large and calming photos as well as visual elements that give it a very nice presentation. There are particularly some wonderful nature photos and a photo of a very lush allotment that brought me right back to my childhood. Somehow they just exuded peace and quiet and, more specifically, being disconnected from devices. I couldn’t tell you why specifically devices, I just know I love looking at those photos.
The text is broken down into manageable pieces, there is just enough repetition to reinforce the main points without talking down to you, and the book actually starts with a really helpful overview of everything the chapters contain so you can see all the concepts at a glance. The language is straightforward and relatable, the hallmarks of all good pop science.
It is not a book you must read from start to finish and it’s built with that in mind. It’s very easy to dip in and out of, go to the parts that are most relevant to you, and use what you want.
The 4 pillars are Relax, Eat, Move, and Sleep, and he writes that the decision to start with Relax was deliberate because we as a society are so stressed (just look around you this December!). The layout and design of the book have a very calming effect–it is a calming book to read. Clearly, I have chosen myself a theme this winter.
The challenge with a book like this is not to get overwhelmed by the many different exercises and guidelines you could be implementing in your life. There are so many that you could spend hours doing them each day and then struggle to fit in a job and family or social life around them. That would not be realistic, and Dr Chatterjee addresses this himself: Do what you can–the more, the better–and then go for it again tomorrow.
That feeling of pressure was why I stopped listening to his podcast a long time ago now. He was going too much in the direction of all the optimisation bros out there. He would have many different guests on who would talk about interventions of their own, and he would typically say, ‘That sounds very interesting, I’m going to try this myself’, or, ‘I’m going to try this with my family’. I was getting stressed out on his behalf. I thought–when do you have time for anything else? When do you work? When do you sleep? Go out? Travel? There are millions of these optimisations out there. They can’t become another job or obligation.
I had to remind myself while reading this book not to take it as a checklist of all the things I now must start doing or else I am a failure. Rather, it is a menu from which to choose a few things each day or week as they fit in with my other circumstances. It is like eating different vegetables, which he also talks about–variety is part of the benefit.
The big overview table at the start of the book works really well as just such a menu, and I imagine that it was a deliberate choice by ether the author or the editor–and I must add that I feel the editor did a really great job here. Although Dr Chatterjee is an excellent communicator, it does feel like a professional editor’s hand pulled this up to the next level. Props to them.
I did have favourites among the interventions, and the screen-free sabbath is at the top of the list. (I think I will have one tomorrow!) The first time I did it, I was elated to find that I hardly felt any pull towards my phone even though I had been afraid that I had lost the ability to be offline. It was such a great feeling to realise that this was far from the truth and I enjoyed my day immensely–getting lots done, having a clearer head and thinking back to my childhood in the 80s.
I also connected with his point that we have outsourced our food choices to massive global corporations which is not a great place to be. They will of course care far less about our health than about shareholder value. In fact, our health can be actively targeted for the sake of shareholder value, so we need to step up for ourselves. The same point can be made about our attention in this attention economy. I find that this makes it easier to combat the phone. If it benefits Mark Zuckerberg, it can’t be good for me.
Another interesting point was that apparently, we in the West are increasingly becoming resistant to the hormone leptin, also known as the satiety hormone. So we’re never full, we’ve never had enough, and that sounds rather emblematic of a few other of our behaviour patterns.
There is a chapter with several exercises dedicated to waking up our ‘sleepy glutes’, something those of us who work at a desk likely know about. I intend to try those soon and see what they do for me. In the chapter about sleep, he points out that there is a tendency to view sleep as something optional rather than completely crucial to our health. Sleep is by some even seen as a weakness, and I am reminded of that statement by a Netflix executive that their greatest competitor is precisely sleep.
A lot of the book is common sense stuff we’ve probably heard before. While it’s great to have it backed by scientific evidence in an attractive package, that’s not necessarily the main benefit of the book. Rather, it is that it gives us an opportunity to sit with these concepts and reflect on our own ideas about what a good life is and how we can get there. Taking charge of our own well-being is a great first step on that road.
The full title of this book is Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A Little Book of Festive Joy, but you can see how that would have been a tad long to have as a blog post title. :)
I absolutely love Christmas. I did not grow up celebrating it but got into it as a teenager, not as a religious holiday--although that's of course what it is--but for its aesthetics, the special food and music, the special jumpers, the special films and the beautiful lights to brighten up a dark season.
I make a big deal out of it now as an adult and the more I add to it, the more stressful it has also become because there is so much I want to do but I only have a limited time to do it in. Then, things end fairly abruptly after New Year's Eve, while there is so much more winter left that could use soft, twinkling lights, cosy time with the family and good cheer.
A couple of years ago I heard about this book through the author Beth Kempton's podcast, and this year I have finally read it. I have been trying to 'crack the code' on December for a little while and hoped that this book would help me get there.
For me, the challenge with Christmas has been all the cards and gifts I have chosen to send to friends. I also have several friends' birthdays and other events in November and December so it can be a logistical obstacle course. I've tried preparing for it all earlier but somehow it doesn't really feel right to be thinking about Christmas presents in July, you know?
The book Calm Christmas is very interactive. First, there are many working questions throughout that encourage you to really think about your preferences and choices for Christmas, since Christmas is not just one thing for us all even though it does happen at the same time.
Then, there is an accompanying website with many more resources which is referenced multiple times. I have for example found an interesting looking list of gift ideas that will be helpful to me.
And finally, there is the podcast which is currently in its fifth season. I ended up with a stack of notes by the time I was done, and I do think I will be able to work them all into a roadmap for my own future Christmases.
Throughout the book are little anecdotes submitted to her by people from various countries, her own memories, little poems, etc. She does a decent job of creating a cosy atmosphere although I occasionally found the tone a bit much, even as a mega fan of Christmas.
One submission outright irked me until I read it more closely; a story in chapter 1 from someone describing going out at night to cut down trees in 'communist Bosnia':
'In mid-December we would go to the forest in the deep snow to cut down our tree. This was forbidden by the regime, but we did it anyway, as did many other people. You couldn't see any of them, and we didn't talk, but you could hear the thwack of axes all around.'
At first I thought he was claiming that Christmas had been forbidden in Bosnia, which is nonsense, but in fact he only says that cutting down trees was... because those would have been state-owned forests. But he doesn't go into that. Lol.
I also couldn't help noticing that the author mentions writing courses several times throughout the book--as something you might do if you spend less on Christmas and save money, as something you might gift, etc.--and it's hard not to feel like she's plugging her own courses. I am so allergic to advertising that it doesn't take a lot to put me off and this is definitely noticeable. (Fun fact, Beth Kempton's Way of the Fearless Writer is also on my TBR list.)
Calm Christmas is a cosy book and it is in many ways probably aspirational. I am aware that when I buy books, I am really wishing for more time to read; when I buy crafting supplies, I am wishing for more time to craft. Time is a big factor with books like this. The scarcest resource. Don't we all fantasise about doing everything more slowly and mindfully, properly enjoying the moment before it passes forever? When did you last take the time to anticipate something rather than just hurtle towards it?
That's the fantasy in Calm Christmas too, but it's a fantasy with some practical advice and worksheets to help you (maybe, hopefully) achieve it. A lot of it is common sense, but it's common sense presented very attractively, and you know what--although I managed to stress myself out with it all this November, I still experienced some peaceful, cosy, lovely moments while immersed in this book. My heart rate slowed down and I physically relaxed. I enjoyed writing my lists and reminders to help me make the most of it and 'get December right'.
The last two chapters of the book are for the time after Christmas so I will be revisiting the book later this year, and no doubt again next year. There is just so much to consider and choose from, and the challenge is not to let it become another thing to check off on an already bulging to do list, not to allow the book to be merely aspirational but a practical and useful tool.
I really like the idea in the last chapter to give ourselves a gentle January instead of launching into the new year super energetically and trying to reinvent ourselves when we really want to hibernate (and need to recover from the hectic month before). I was going to set some reading goals as my New Year's resolutions but maybe I will keep them very small and set seasonal goals throughout the year rather than having one giant goal.
And maybe if I take one of Beth Kempton's writing courses, I will learn to write shorter blog posts instead of writing a whole other book while talking about a book. :) When I say I had stacks of notes, I mean stacks...
Bridget Jones’s Diary was published almost 30 years ago and I only just read it for the first time this summer. I had seen the film, of course–multiple times. I had seen the second one too but decided to get off that train there and haven’t watched any of the later ones.
This was a bit of a nostalgia trip: Bridget and her friends are forever calling each other, sometimes on their ‘portable phones’. She also smokes like a chimney and is ostensibly trying to stop, but it’s hard to fight a nasty habit when your life is a total mess. Book Bridget is, in fact, even more of a mess than film Bridget, but interestingly, she never really tips over into insufferable incompetent territory like I have seen so many other book heroines do in works that I now realise were probably trying to emulate Helen Fielding’s style of writing.
Her mother is worse. Her side story is crazier than in the film. I started out feeling quite sympathetic towards her, but it doesn’t take her long to go right off the rails and stamp out any warm feelings I may have initially felt.
There were several laugh-out-loud moments, but my favourite was when Bridget actually talks to her friends about Colin Firth (and Jennifer Ehle) and the 1995 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ adaptation. It was such a surreal moment for someone who has watched the film before reading the book, like watching space fold in on itself–it was incredibly meta and just hilarious.
I rewatched the film after reading the book, and I am fairly sure that Crispin Bonham-Carter, who plays Charles Bingley in the 1995 adaptation, has a cameo in it as one of the people talking to Salman Rushdie at the launch party of ‘Kafka’s Motorbike’. In true mid-90s fashion, I will not google this to verify (if Google is even capable of giving any answers any more).
There were some minor annoyances with the book: the diary shorthand can get to be a bit too much, and the same goes for the stats that go with every entry (weight, no. of cigarettes, scratch cards, etc.). I suppose that’s the trouble with gimmicks in books–they’re a fun novelty the first few times but then it quickly gets old. This is outweighed by the humour, however, and I didn’t want to open my blog with any other book than this one.
Read it for the humour and the nostalgia. Then watch the film again–it will soon be December, and I do think many people view the original Bridget Jones film as a Christmas film. If you’re in London, go to Borough Market where she used to live and step into the book.
