You may cringe while reading ‘The Simp.’ That’s how sharp Roshan Sethi’s Hollywood satire is

Cover of The Simp, a Hollywood satire by Roshan Sethi

After a bumpy start, I was able to cringe-enjoy “The Simp,” Roshan Sethi’s ambitious satire about an Indian actor willing to do whatever it takes to gain entrée into Hollywood’s inner sanctum during the industry’s peak DEI years.

Sethi, a doctor who bluffed his way into his own Hollywood career as a Harvard medical student, begins his debut novel with an exhaustively detailed job listing for an executive assistant to an unnamed Hollywood power couple. Inspired by a viral ad — Sethi dedicates “The Simp” to the anonymous family that placed it — the description’s basis in truth may explain why it didn’t grab me as an opener. To this long-time Hollywood observer, the absurdly long list of duties seems depressingly realistic rather than amusingly satirical.

Practiced prevaricator

Luckily, “The Simp” quickly moves into more interesting territory. Raj pursues the executive assistant job so avidly he turns off Ellen, the officious house manager conducting initial interviews for the couple. We soon learn about Raj’s backstory: While attending USC he came out to his wealthy parents in India and quickly learned the downside to telling the truth about himself.

By the time he applies for the assistant job, he has been bouncing around the fringes of the industry for a while: He has had some backers but lost a potential slot in a diversity showcase when he lashed out at the benefactor that took him under her wing after meeting him at a BLM rally.

Raj has issues, in other words, and lies to a remarkable degree. No executive assistant experience? No problem! Raj invents some, along with references he impersonates in unsolicited phone calls to Ellen.

Acting the part

Once he gets the job, he treats it as challenging acting role, sublimating his desires so abjectly the macho director husband bequeaths the titular nickname upon him. Jim’s wife Anna demands precision from Raj but grows increasingly secretive as a writing project occupies her time; their young child just likes the attention Raj gives him.

This arrangement was always going to end badly, and so it does. I will not spoil how it comes undone nor the book’s satisfying denouement.

Sethi invokes William Makepeace Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair” throughout the tale, referencing it frequently as Raj’s favorite book. “The Simp” is even subtitled “A Novel Without a Hero” in an homage to the 1848 British classic about conniving Becky Sharp and obedient Amelia Sedley. Such is the novel’s ambition and Sethi’s clarity about his lead character’s flaws.

‘It’s all over Variety!’

Your appetite for “The Simp” may vary depending on your tolerance for humiliating behavior. I had to put it down several times while reading, but never for long: I wanted to see how it played out. “The Simp” is an ambitious debut novel that tackles thorny racial issues bedeviling Hollywood and contemporary society at large.

“Diversity is in now,” an encouraging acting coach advises Raj as the industry, and many outside it, reckoned with George Floyd’s 2020 death. “It’s all over Variety!” As someone who worked for Variety then, I can confirm it was. But indeed, that moment faded amid industry belt tightening leading up to and following brutal labor stoppages in 2023.

“I’m really afraid of the minority-victim story,” the author recently told Vogue. “I think I had an overly extreme reaction to that and wanted Raj to be as complex as possible.”

DEI roller-coaster

The multi-hyphenate, who works nine weeks a year as an oncologist in Boston, began serving as a TV consultant as a medical student, then became a staff writer on “Code Black” before creating “The Resident.” He also found time to move into film writing and directing — “7 Days,” “Call Jane” and “A Nice Indian Boy” are among his credits. Notably, his partner Karan Soni stars in “7 Days” and “A Nice Indian Boy.”

During his decade-plus in Hollywood, Sethi has watched the industry’s changing attitudes toward diversity and inclusion wax and wane.

“I started in the industry in 2015, so I have seen the pendulum swing from really racist to less racist back to somewhat racist, and I think going on that roller-coaster journey made me write the book,” he told Vogue, noting that early in his Hollywood career almost everything he wrote was for white characters.

The diversity years, as he calls the short-lived period, “gave us all a glimpse or a taste of something else before it snapped it away. That process left us all feeling a little bittersweet,” he continues, “but as you know from the book, my feelings about it are complex, because it was never so straightforward.”

“The Simp” by Roshan Sethi, Simon & Schuster, available now

First published on my Lititude substack

Justin Halpern’s debut novel is a real corker of a tale

Books, Words+Pixels, Writing

Get Lost by Justin Halpern book cover on a pale background' — The author of “Sh*t My Dad Says” started “Get Lost” during the 2023 WGA strike.

I’m always on the lookout for novels with Hollywood ties and I recently devoured two. Justin Halpern’s “Get Lost” and Roshan Sethi’s “The Simp” are both comedic fiction debuts from established screenwriters. Otherwise, they vary tremendously in scope and intent; each has much to recommend it.

I’ll start with “Get Lost” because I read it first. Halpern, an executive producer and co-showrunner of “Abbott Elementary,” spins a heartfelt yarn about a bristly baseball scout forced to team up with her deadbeat dad to find her missing mother in California’s Central Valley. Complicating matters: this isn’t the first time Lila’s mom has disappeared, and cops suspect her father Dix, long split from Mattie, killed her.

Halpern, whose name might ring a bell as the author of @ShitMyDadSays Twitter posts way back when, has fun unpacking Lila’s rocky relationship with her fun-loving father, a former baseball player who’s treated like a local hero despite past jail time. Much as she hates to admit it, Lila needs Dix’s charm to open doors as they trace her mom’s recent activities and the origins of a mysterious deposit in her bank account. Their sleuthing leads them into the big bucks world of almond farming in the Central Valley and shady charitable activities by Russian siblings. The reader learns about Mattie’s mental health struggles and affinity for collecting miniature lighthouses; Lila’s experiences in foster care facilities are also woven into the tale.

Inside baseball

“Get Lost” benefits from the author’s intimate familiarity with baseball and appreciation for irrepressible father figures. A college player before an injury crushed his dreams of going pro, Halpern parlayed his early social media success into a 2010 non-fiction book and TV series starring William Shatner. Befitting his professional experience — he has credits on “Harley Quinn” in addition to the Peabody Award-winning “Abbott Elementary” — Halpern knows how to deliver comedic beats and keep the plot moving. “Get Lost” unfolds at a brisk pace.

His description of the Central Valley and the ag business that fuels so many towns there is an added treat for anyone familiar with the region, as I happen to be thanks to in-laws residing there. “Get Lost” starts in Valencia, home to sprawling production studios north of Hollywood proper, but quickly moves north to the land of almond orchards and so many other crops.

Picket line inspiration

Halpern began “Get Lost” while sidelined from screenwriting during the 2023 WGA strike, and recently told Variety’s Mike Schneider he had completed “about a third or maybe even half of it” by the time it ended. Much work on “Abbott Elementary” with fellow showrunners Patrick Schumacker and creator-star Quinta Brunson later, he finished his July 7 book. He and Schumacker are also taking another stab at adapting his 2012 nonfiction book “I Suck at Girls,” this time with Netflix on board.

Halpern’s goal with “Get Lost”: to deliver laugh-out-loud moments and more emotion than you might expect from a thriller beach read. “It’s really a character piece,” he told Schneider, “about a father daughter relationship and how can you move past a parent who has let you down at every step of the way.”

Lest you’re wondering, Halpern heaps praise on his mother before thanking his dad, wife and well-known Hollywood scribes in the book’s acknowledgements. Note to self: it really has been that long since I covered digital media and Twitter began turning aspiring writers into professional ones.

“Get Lost” by Justin Halpern, Cardinal, available now. More on “The Simp” here.

This post was originally published on my Lititude substack.

Pity poor socialites whose lives turn upside down. Or don’t

Books, Words+Pixels

"Strangers" and "Someone Else's Husband" both revolve around socialite wives — “Strangers” and “Someone Else’s Husband” revolve around socialite wives — one fiction and one very human.

Gretchen Falk is privileged and doesn’t care who knows it. The socialite protagonist of “Someone Else’s Husband” lies to police about her husband’s need for medication and literally stamps her feet when she can’t take him home from the New York City precinct where he is being questioned as a potential murder suspect.

By this point, she has already called her Park Avenue life with Richard “as close to perfect as one could reasonably get.” Except, of course, it never really was. As Kimberly McCreight’s twisty murder mystery unfolds we learn more about Gretchen’s snooty upbringing, Richard’s rough childhood and her willful ignorance about her children’s problems. Frankie, a vibrant artist that Richard befriended on a Mt. Kilimanjaro hike with his Dartmouth buddies, serves as secondary narrator, and is dealing with her own past sexual trauma; various friends and family fill out the tale.

The story’s basic contours may seem familiar to viewers of prestige TV adaptations of books such as “Big Little Lies” and “The Perfect Couple.” “Someone Else’s Husband” also made me think of another literary socialite: Belle Burden. I had been avoiding her bestselling memoir about the sudden rupture of her outwardly perfect marriage but decided to read “Strangers” to compare the stories Gretchen and Burden told themselves about their marriages — one fictional and one very human.

‘Strangers’ dangers

Where fictional Gretchen is imperious, real Burden is timid and careful about appearances, compliant by nature. I found some of her behavior exasperating, but the book has clearly struck a chord with many women; a recent New Yorker story about apparent financial omissions in “Strangers” prompted a heated backlash from her supporters.

Her husband’s behavior was deplorable, no question about it: The day after his affair with another woman was exposed early in COVID lockdown, he walked away from their 20-year union and day-to-day parenting of their three children. Most galling to Burden: No matter how much she presses him about his decision to leave, he can’t or won’t give her a satisfactory explanation.

Financial ignorance is not bliss

So she replays their courtship and marriage for clues to its eventual demise she might have missed. One thing she didn’t do: protect herself financially. We learn that the Harvard grad with a NYU law degree, descended from the wealthy Vanderbilt family and famed socialite Babe Paley, didn’t read the joint tax returns she signed, so had no idea how much money her husband (called James in the book) was earning as a hedge fund executive. Earlier in their marriage, she financed two residences with her own trust funds and added him to the title, thereby entitling him to half of them under the terms of the prenup her family attorney advised her not to sign. Under it, Burden was not legally entitled to any monies her spouse earned while she was taking care of their children.

Surprising no one who has ever been involved in a messy estate battle, her husband’s attorney does make a play for his share of both properties during divorce proceedings. The very prospect of it sends Burden into an emotional tailspin. “I could not afford to buy James out of either home,” she flatly writes. “I would have to sell both.”

Here, we’ll have to take her word for it. As the New Yorker’s reporting indicates, Burden has a sizable inheritance, though she won’t have access to some of it until her stepmother dies. Her rep told the publication keeping either the New York City apartment or Martha’s Vineyard home would have been “neither feasible nor financially responsible.”

No emotion spared

Ultimately, the attorney drops the claim. But we don’t get to that revelation until Burden has spent page after page outlining her distress at the prospect of losing her homes; she describes her attempts to lobby his male friends to intercede on her behalf and outrage when mutual friends socialize with him while their homes hang in the balance. “Strangers” began as a Modern Love column for the New York Times that Burden expanded to a full-length book. Where the original essay was necessarily compact, “Strangers” plumbs the author’s fragile emotions in exhaustive detail.

You can be sympathetic to Burden’s plight while also wondering whether you’re getting the full picture about what was really going on at various moments. In “Someone Else’s Husband,” the reader learns that Gretchen isn’t the most reliable narrator, and it seems at times like the same might be said of Burden. Or maybe she just has tunnel vision about a very fraught period in her life.

It’s a process

Whatever the case, I bristled at the way she portrayed her editor’s very reasonable disclosure that the New York Times would give her ex a chance to respond to her Modern Love essay before publication.

“When the editor first contacted me, he told me that James would receive a fact-check call. I hadn’t understood that he would need to approve the piece as a whole, or I had missed it, this critical step in the process,” she writes.

Except getting his reaction is not the same thing as seeking his approval — a distinction it might seem a trained lawyer could appreciate.

“Showing him the essay and considering his response would be the beginning of the process, not the end,” the editor tells Burden after she suggests the paper’s protocol would silence many women.

Again, that’s a reasonable response from a journalist point of view. But Burden felt doubted and proceeds to theorize that her ex would object to being written about and the Times would drop the piece. “They would not risk a lawsuit, especially when the subject was a wealthy man, a former lawyer,” she writes. So she sat on it for a spell.

In the end, she sent it to her ex. His anti-climactic response: “Your article is good, sad, hard to read, I’m supportive.”

No pity, please

Fictional Gretchen isn’t nearly as deferential to men or women; she doesn’t worry about seeming sweet and feminine — or likeable. And she flat out rejects the notion she should be pitied when cops come knocking on their door, search warrant in hand. “I can take care of myself!” she silently rages early on. “You have no idea what I’m capable of!”

By the end of “Someone Else’s Husband,” we have a clearer picture of what that might be. Gretchen is snobby, and her behavior can be maddening, but she’s far more interesting a narrator to me. It helps that we don’t have to solely rely on her interpretation of events; Gretchen’s family and friends challenge her views, while Frankie has her own perspective on events. In “Strangers,” we just have Burden’s take.

Fans of either book can look forward to a potential Hollywood adaptation. McCreight is co-writing an adaptation of “Someone Else’s Husband” for Lionsgate TV and 3Arts, while Netflix has optioned a film adaptation of “Strangers” with Gwyneth Paltrow set to star and executive produce; Heidi Schreck, the playwright who wrote the Tony Award-nominated play “What the Constitution Means to Me,” has inked a deal to pen the script.

Given the healthy appetite for stories about rich women whose supposedly perfect marriages are unexpectedly turned upside down overnight, we can surely expect more book to screen adaptations to follow.

“Someone Else’s Husband” by Kimberly McCreight, Knopf, available now

“Strangers” by Belle Burden, Dial Press, available now

Originally published on my Lititude substack

‘Alan Opts Out’ delivers, plus a look at Ellroy’s latest

Books, Words+Pixels

Just say no, Nancy Reagan urged us in the 1980s. But what if we apply her drug advice to status-chasing consumerism and always-on work connectivity?

In “Alan Opts Out,” a consummate adman begins to question his priorities after a pitch for a milk campaign goes horribly awry. He slowly withdraws from the agency he co-founded and attempts to curb his family’s extravagant spending habits. Predictably, those around Alan are perplexed. “You still have a job, don’t you?” take-charge wife Vivian queries after she finds him home on a weekday, while neighbors raise their eyebrows at his offbeat behavior, which includes washing his hair in a bird feeder and camping out in the family playhouse.

Alan lives with his family in Greenwich, Conn., a wealthy town famous for its New York City adjacent strivers, but he could just as easily reside in Brentwood or other moneyed enclaves around the country. And that is part of the appeal of Courtney Maum’s latest novel. Many a resident in these enclaves, I venture to guess, has at one time fantasized about opting out of the rat race like Alan does.

Why I liked it

The author satirizes consumerism and the suburbs in a gentle, yet affectionate way. We learn that Alan became fascinated with marketing campaigns at an early age in Michigan and why fellow Midwesterner Vivian is so frantic about gaining acceptance from their community’s popular crowd, no matter how mean girl their behavior can be. Vivian and Alan’s daughters have their own quirks, though their mother clearly wishes they didn’t for conformity’s sake.

As the novel unfolds, we also learn more about their neighbors, good and bad, while Alan begins to reckon with the discomforts that go hand in hand with living a simpler life. The narrative culminates in an elaborate party with a surprise ending that I will not spoil here. Throughout the novel, Maum weaves in neighbor exchanges on social media as amusing meta commentary on community activities.

Modern-day Bartleby

The story took a while to get going for my taste, and I briefly considered ditching the book, but am glad I did not: Once Alan begins to opt out the narrative comes alive. The modern-day Bartleby the scrivener would simply prefer not to engage in work and society conventions he no longer finds meaningful, but he’s never mean or pedantic about it. Even his exasperated wife can’t help but admire the way he sticks to his guns. Maum previously worked in advertising, and it shows in her depiction of Alan’s work and the stress involved his creative enterprises. Do yourself a favor and say yes to “Alan Opts Out.”

‘Red Sheet’ by James Ellroy

It’s been so long since I read an Ellroy novel that I forgot that I prefer my hard-boiled fiction on the minimalist rather than the maximalist side. And he’s a maximalist, albeit one with comic flair. There is much to enjoy in “Red Sheet” for fans of old L.A. and JFK era crime busting in the City of Angels: The action picks up just after the conclusion of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: Fred Otash is running an anti-red probe at Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s behest, keeping future police chief Daryl Gates apprised of his rule-skirting activities along the way. Gubernatorial candidate Dick Nixon, Playboy czar Hugh Hefner and future mayor Tom Bradley also figure prominently in this historical yarn replete with seedy businessmen attempting to cater to the so-called integration generation.

People are killed in lurid ways, pills are popped and much heroin is ingested. For me, the book is best read in small doses, but as always, your mileage may vary.

“Alan Opts Out” by Courtney Maum, Little, Brown, available now

“Red Sheet” by James Ellroy, Knopf, available now

Originally published on my Lititude substack

On binge watching and disappointing lit adaptations

Books, Words+Pixels

Taggie and Rupert gets close in Season 2 of Rivals — Taggie and Rupert gets close in Season 2 of Hulu’s bonkbuster “Rivals” adaptation.

Whenever possible, I watch TV shows the way I prefer to read books: All at once. Others may complain that binge watching is ruining the television business, but not me. Once I’m hooked on a narrative, I tend to devour one episode after another until I’ve exhausted all available options, just as I keep reading page turners regardless of the late hour or other pressing concerns. Even when I know the end is coming, I frequently feel bereft when it arrives.

Such was the case when I first stumbled across “Rivals” on Hulu. I wasn’t familiar with Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster 1988 book or the Rutshire Chronicles series it is part of, but quickly succumbed to the adaptation’s charms, chief among them a budding romance between tremulous Taggie O’Hara and rakish playboy Rupert Campbell-Black as performed by Bella Maclean and Alex Hassell, respectively. Most familiar to me, and likely other American viewers: former “Doctor Who” star David Tennant, who portrays ruthless British TV exec Tony Baddingham, and “Poldark” star Aidan Turner as Taggie’s father Declan, an Irish BBC journalist that Baddingham recruits to his station in the Cotswolds.

Season 2 of ‘Rivals” arrived last month, and it is one of three TV lit adaptations I have been watching recently, along with Apple TV’s “Imperfect Women” and “Margo’s Got Money Troubles.” Sadly, Hulu shifted its release strategy for this season of “Rivals,” doling out 12 episodes in two metered batches: The last episode of the first six began streaming June 5, then there will a break before the second six episodes arrive later in the year.

Like the original ‘Dynasty,’ but racier

If anything, Season 2 storylines are even more sexed up than the first, evoking memories of “Dynasty” and other racy nighttime sudsers of the 1980s, shoulder pads and all. The show’s R-rated storylines verge on campy — Episode 5’s medieval-themed Golden Gauntlet competition between Baddingham’s Corinium and upstart Venturer is a prime example of the season’s high-spirited ‘80s-style shenanigans thus far. But the best thing about “Rivals,” at least for me, is that the show, like the book it is based upon, never takes itself too seriously. Cooper was apparently heavily involved in the adaptation, signing off on Season 2 scripts until the week before her 2025 death at age 88, per various U.K. reports like this and this.

Heavy on melodrama

“Imperfect Women” could have used some of Cooper’s fun-loving spirit. Apple TV’s Emmy bait limited series is prestige melodrama of the starriest kind: It boasts high-octane performances by Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara and lots of gorgeous L.A. scenery, but doesn’t make a lot of sense. The thriller, adapted from Araminta Hall’s 2020 book of the same name, unpeels the fractured friendship between three middle-aged friends from college after one of them is killed. Star and producer Washington lobbied for the adaptation to be shifted from Britain to L.A. in the wake of brutal fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and in some ways “Imperfect Women” plays as a SoCal version of “Big Little Lies.” It’s not as good but at least the locations are suitably luxe.

I caught up with “Imperfect Women” mid-run and stuck with it almost despite myself, rolling my eyes at some of the characters’ actions yet curious to see how the underlying mystery would resolve. Alas, I enjoyed creator Annie Weisman’s “Physical,” an Apple TV series centered on just one complicated woman, far more.

Meanwhile, in O.C….

Of these small-screen lit adaptations, I’m most mixed on “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” David E. Kelley’s adaptation of Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel. Tonally, it seems all over the map: jokey narration about Margot’s ill-considered affair with her college professor gives way to nuanced performances by a cast that includes Nick Offerman as Margo’s wrestler dad struggling with addiction and Nicole Kidman as a female wrestler turned lawyer. Elle Fanning, also one of the show’s producers, does a good job as the naïve student who turns to OnlyFans to support her unexpected family in a decidedly unglamorous portion of Orange County, while Michelle Pfeiffer digs into her role as Margo’s conflicted mother. I’ll be watching to see how “Margo” and “Imperfect Women” fare this Emmy season; the first round of voting began this week.

New books

As fun as it can be to get caught up in a narrative, sometimes you unexpectedly hit a wall and have a hard time picking up the book (or TV series) again. I experienced that with one of the trio highlighted below and I’ll get into that later. But first: two smoother reads.

‘Whistler’ by Ann Patchett

Daphne is browsing exhibits at the Met when her husband Jonathan notices someone following her. Turns out it is her stepfather Eddie, whom she hasn’t seen since she was a girl. The two reconnect and revisit a traumatic car accident that injured them both. As Eddie is integrated back into her family’s life, Daphne learns more about him — and the truth about his short marriage with her mom. Patchett’s novel, which takes its name from a story tells Daphne when they are stuck in the crashed car, deals with aging, grief and found family.

‘A Pair of Aces’ by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

The authors of “The Personal Librarian” and “The First Ladies” have reteamed on a book about the unlikely collaboration between Eunice Carter, Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, and brothel owner Polly Adler in the case that helped to bring down notorious mob boss Lucky Luciano. The narration sympathetically cuts back back and forth between both women, showing the battles and prejudice each had to face. It’s a fascinating look at two unheralded figures from our recent past that left me eager to learn more about both. Reese Witherspoon recently selected it for her book club

‘Land’ by Maggie O’Farrell

I’ve had so much success reading books outside my usual sweet spot lately that it was only a matter of time before my luck ran out. So it did with O’Farrell’s novel about a mapmaker in post-Famine Ireland circa 1865. I began it with high hopes, having recently visited relatives on the Emerald Isle, but put it down when the author ventured into mystical territory. Others have raved about it, however, so I will try again later before marking it as DNF. In the meantime, here is a link to some of those reviews by others.

Originally published on my Lititude substack

On ‘New Skin,’ L.A. and horrifying addiction to plastic surgery

Books, Words+Pixels, Writing

I try to keep an open mind, really, I do. But like Fanny Feng’s visiting daughter in “New Skin,” I struggle to understand the allure of cosmetic surgery. Especially on a repeated basis.

But Fanny is determined — and a survivor. In quintessential L.A. fashion, the victim of multiple botched procedures ends up on a reality show about extreme beauty makeovers. The big prize: more plastic surgery.

Appropriately enough, Sarah Wang’s debut novel introduces us to 26-year-old Linli and her estranged mother during a post-surgery bandage reveal. Even though Linli has braced herself, she is horrified to see her mother’s deformed nose and witness the leech therapy her doctor prescribes to reduce pooled blood.

A Taiwanese immigrant who overstayed her student visa decades earlier, Fanny began her dalliance with plastic surgery when her daughter was young and never stopped. Linli tells the doctor Fanny has undergone hundreds of cosmetic procedures — that she knows about.

“How much work had she gotten since I’d seen her last,” wonders Linli, who moved away three years earlier. “I scanned her face, the entire thing immobile from years of Botox injections. Useless. It was impossible to take inventory in a landscape that was constantly shifting.”

Reluctant return

Linli is on the brink of moving from Washington state to New York for graduate school when she is summoned back to Fanny’s side. Soon she’s sucked into her mother’s medical dramas: She cooks for her and watches “America’s Beauty” with her. Before long, she is driving Fanny to shadowy San Gabriel Valley establishments that provide black market beauty treatments to Asian clientele. To pay the bills, Linli begins working for a nonprofit near La Brea Tar Pits.

Over the course of the novel, we learn more about her childhood and Fanny’s scrappy beginnings in America. When Fanny becomes a contestant on “America’s Beauty Extreme,” the drama escalates to a near fever dream. Linli makes a series of questionable choices; among other things, she ingests an unknown drug at a Laurel Canyon house party. I didn’t fully buy her behavior at times but did share her growing appreciation of Fanny’s resourcefulness.

L.A.’s horrors and charms

Linli’s descriptions of her mother’s macabre body horrors may remind you — as it did me — of “The Substance,” but Wang’s book is centered on a milieu freeways apart from Hollywood. At its heart “New Skin” is a story about immigration and the sometimes-fractured bonds between mothers and daughters. I ended the book with a smidge more understanding about Fanny’s addiction to cosmetic makeovers.

As for its setting, L.A. readers will surely appreciate Linli’s affection for speeding north on the Pasadena Freeway and visiting Little Dume beach in Malibu, not to mention omnipresent jacaranda trees and bountiful bougainvillea. The mother and daughter are deeply rooted in the San Gabriel Valley’s sprawling Asian diaspora; “New Skin” benefits from the author’s intimate knowledge of the area and what it’s like to be a second-generation immigrant raised by a single mom.

“Writing about Los Angeles always puts me back there in a way that’s embodied and visceral,” Wang, who teaches writing at Barnard College, recently told L.A. Review of Books. “My friends and family in L.A. know me in a way that I’ll never be known by anyone else.”

My caveat

Reader beware: “New Skin” is a compelling read but not for the faint hearted: Linli frequently describes her mother’s procedures in bracing ways. “Very gruesome, aren’t you?” the doctor remarked when she asked about the possibility of necrosis on Fanny’s infected nose. And the fraught relationship between mother and daughter may upset sensitive souls. But take heart: even while sparring, they are deep-down symbiotic, bonding over episodes of “America’s Beauty.”

Observes Linli: “My mother could still make me laugh harder than anyone else.”

“New Skin” by Sarah Wang, Little, Brown, available now.

Originally published on my Lititude substack.

Treat yourself to ‘A Perfect Hand,’ Ayelet Waldman’s slyly subversive Jane Austen update

Books, Words+Pixels, Writing

Dearest reader, I have another book recommendation for you: “A Perfect Hand.” Ayelet Waldman’s latest novel is a slyly subversive tale about the constrained choices of unmarried women in 19^th century Britain and well worth diving into.

Written in a period style familiar to “Bridgerton” fans, “A Perfect Hand” centers on Alice Lockey, a lady’s maid who is reading Jane Austen’s “Emma” when she meets a visiting valet in the servants’ quarters of a country estate. Immediately smitten, Alice and Charlie become unlikely matchmakers, conspiring to bring his quirky boss and fun-loving Lady Jemima together and thereby remove obstacles to their own romance.

More than matchmaking

But while matchmaking figures prominently in Waldman’s plot, just as it does in “Emma,” the author of previous books including her “Bad Mother” memoir has more on her mind than marriage itself. That becomes clear with the introduction of Lady Jemima’s spinster aunt. Miss Sarah Bennett not so coincidentally shares a surname with the family that figures prominently in “Pride & Prejudice,” although hers is spelled with two t’s rather than one and she is decidedly plugged into Britain’s burgeoning feminist scene. Notably, “A Perfect Hand” begins in 1879, more than six decades after the publication of “Pride & Prejudice,” by which time the women’s suffrage movement was well underway in Victorian England.

Miss Bennett befriends Alice when she learns of her interest in a feminist pamphlet and encourages her to borrow her copies of books by the likes of Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. As the romance between Alice and Charlie progresses, we meet his independent older sister, along with her tenant farmer parents, who are eager for their daughter to find security through marriage.

Poor choices

But Alice begins to question all her options: As an abigail, as lady’s maids were then called, she is at the beck and call of her young mistress at all hours. And as an unmarried woman, her salary automatically goes to her father first; when she gets married, her earnings will become her husband’s property. Miss Bennett has more freedom as an unmarried woman living on her own due to a modest inheritance; amusingly, she dresses in colorful caftans at home but more subdued garb when visiting her sister, Lady Alderwick, at her estate. Even Lady Jemima, who has access to her father’s funds, feels pressure to make a match while she still commands the attention of desirable men.

Men have their struggles too

Charlie has endured his own struggles, spending years in the workhouse due to his alcoholic father’s penchant for drinking away any earnings. As an adult, he takes care of his mother and sister Mary, considering it his duty as the man of the family. Nor is he put off by Alice’s bookish ways; he delights in showing her parts of London she has never seen. Waldman portrays him affectionately, reserving her satire for his aristocrat counterparts.

Indeed, Waldman pokes fun at supposedly genteel folk of both genders. Lady Jemima, we quickly learn, has incredibly stinky feet along with questionable taste in men; Lord Wynstowe is gently lampooned for his obsession with measuring facial features. Fans of drawing room comedies will find much discourse about gowns, hairdos and jewels — along with so much more. Debates about the nature of servitude and the rights of women set the novel apart from traditional 19th century fare, with the future Emmeline Pankhurst among those making the case for equality within Alice’s earshot.

Surprise ending

The novel takes a turn toward the end that its witty narrator warns the audience is coming. Even so, it might surprise some readers: I felt compelled to immediately re-read “A Perfect Hand” to retrace its plot; happily, I enjoyed Waldman’s witty asides even more the second time. But as always, your mileage may vary.

Feminist appeal

My Quaker ancestors were suffragettes, so I have extra interest in the subject. Admittedly, however, I know less about suffrage battles in England than in America; reading about these figures in fictionalized settings just made me want to learn more about their work.

About that twist

I’m being deliberately vague about the book’s twist ending to avoid spoiling it for potential readers. But I will share this: Waldman apparently came up with it midway through writing “A Perfect Hand.” Originally, the author told NPR, she envisioned the book would be “my version of Jane Austen, my very favorite kind of book.” The author had mapped out its expected contours, she wrote in a recent Lit Hub essay, only to end up deviating from them when the unexpected twist “arrived on my imagination’s doorstep like a bouquet of perfect peonies on the first day of spring.”

Enjoy.

“A Perfect Hand,” Knopf, 304 pages, $28

Originally published on my Lititude substack.

Why reading ‘American Fantasy’ made me thank algorithms for once

Books, Words+Pixels

American Fantasy by Emma Straub book cover

Let me be honest with you: I avoided “American Fantasy” based on its premise. Emma Straub’s novel revolves around a ’90s boy band nostalgia cruise and a) I get extremely seasick and b) I am, ahem, not demographically appropriate for that boy band era. But my book apps kept recommending it, so I took the plunge. Once I started reading, I did not stop.

There are three alternating narrators in “American Fantasy”: Sarah, a no-nonsense cruise director just dumped by her galpal, 50-year-old Annie, recently divorced and making the best of a vacation she was supposed to take with her true believer sister, and reluctant Boy Talk vocalist Keith, strong-armed by his bandmate brother into participating. In sensibility, I fall closest to skeptical Annie, who observes rabid fandom on display all around her with anthropological amazement; she never forgets that her younger sister, laid up with a broken leg, is a member of that particular tribe.

Luckily for Annie, her replacement roommate is an old hand at Boy Talk cruises. Maira expertly guides Annie, reeling from a career setback as the cruise gets underway, through carefully choreographed activities. Non-judgmental and ready for a good time, she companionably orders one Sexy Sunrise refill after another for them both to enjoy.

Not so smooth sailing

Sure enough, just as Maira predicted, Annie quickly falls back under the sway of the band she once adored in her youth. Back then, she was “a Shawn girl,” fond of the older Fiore brother who in adulthood does all that he can to keep Boy Talk fans happy. Scotty, closeted during the band’s heyday, is painted as likable and desperate for cash, while Corey just wants to soak in the adulation and rehabilitate his Hollywood bad boy image. Pony-tailed libertarian Terrence spends the cruise pawing over his new wife; in a running joke, he is frequently referred to as the least liked member of the band.

Sarah, meanwhile, has her own challenges corralling the band and a hapless young employee. Shawn’s bearded guru further unsettles the band’s already tenuous equilibrium as we learn more about Keith’s chilly marriage.

Why I like it

At its heart, “American Fantasy” is a story about embracing change and breaking old habits that no longer fit. As someone who learned how to start over early, I’m a big believer in the power of change at any age. Yes, it can be messy and fraught, especially when forced upon you, but that does not mean it is not worthwhile. To her credit, Straub does not shy away from the turbulence her characters navigate on the giant vessel, emotional and otherwise. (Poor Keith suffers from sea sickness in addition to vexed feelings about his brother and spotlight-stealing Corey.)

At the same time, the author keeps the narrative lightly comedic; she has fun with the fan experience but avoids getting too pointed about it. She embraces the fantasy elements inherent in such ventures — the chance to see your childhood crush up close! — and incorporates wish fulfillment into a plot that keeps humming along, just like the cruise.

Inspired by New Kids on the Block

Unlike me, Straub comes by her affection for boy bands naturally. As a kid, she was crazy about New Kids on the Block and got the idea for “American Fantasy” after seeing an ad for a cruise with the band in 2022. At the time, she told Vogue, she was grieving her father’s death and had just finished “a sad book.”

One year later, “American Fantasy” already sketched out in her mind, she boarded a NKOTB cruise to get a better feel how these nostalgia-fueled boy-band ventures actually operate.

“I didn’t go on the cruise until 2023, and I had spent basically all of that year planning the book, so I already had all of the characters,” she told the Vogue interviewer, a self-proclaimed Backstreet Boys fan. “But observing how it all went down and imagining how the characters would interact with each other onboard was really helpful.”

The author knows there are people that have negative associations with fandom — I, for one, am highly ambivalent about the fanboy approach to entertainment journalism — but makes a case for its positive aspects.

“I think it’s meaningful to love something and to be a fan of something — to care and to talk about that thing with other people who love it,” Straub recently told Buzzfeed. “Fandom sometimes gets in trouble in the internet age for being toxic, and there are darker sides of it, but there’s also the beautiful, sweet heart of it.”

Algo world

Sometimes, like Annie, you just need to let go of your reservations and surrender to the experience. Given the array of novels that give me pause, I’m extra glad for the ones I speed through with nary a cringe, as was the case with Riverhead’s “American Fantasy.” Much as I hate to admit it, algorithms sometimes know me better than I know myself.

Pic of the week: Snails in the wind

Came across hundreds of snail blowing in the wind on a trail near my house.

Originally published on my Lititude substack.

August 21, 2026You may cringe while reading ‘The Simp.’ That’s how sharp Roshan Sethi’s Hollywood satire is

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July 29, 2026Justin Halpern’s debut novel is a real corker of a tale

July 9, 2026Huntington surfers by the pier, early July

Teens take charge in ‘Young World.’ Then things really get scary

Books, Words+Pixels

Young World by Soman Chainani book cover on asphalt background

When my good friend Phoebe started telling me about her latest editing project, I leaned forward in my chair. “Young World,” by the author of the School of Good and Evil series, revolves around a high school kid who stumbles into the presidency after instigating a youth revolt against older politicians unable or unwilling to fix problems enveloping us. As she spoke, visions of Zohran Mamdani, the youngest New York City mayor in more than a century, danced in my head. “Could you send me an advance copy?,” I queried. (More on the current occupant of Gracie Mansion later.)

Thankfully, she did, and I dove right into “Young World,” marveling at how Soman Chainani captured the zeitgeist in a geopolitical thriller that manages to be exceedingly topical while also heartfelt: Readers never lose sight of the teen preoccupations bedeviling the narrator, a 17-year-old who lives with his basketball coach father in St. Louis before his fateful victory and has a strained relationship with his mother, now remarried, along with a secret crush his pals deplore.

Arctic trouble

Benton Young is still getting his bearings at the White House when Sweden’s prime minister, one of 12 Revolting Youth leaders installed around the globe following the American election, calls a G-8 gathering to discuss the future of Dragontail, a fictional Arctic island rich with oils and metals that various countries are vying to exploit. If this scenario makes you think of Greenland, the Arctic country Donald Trump keeps threatening to annex, well, there’s good reason for that. The tussles over Dragontail expand to include India and China and power the remainder of neon-orange infused novel, which is interspersed with faux government documents, news articles, social media soundbites and illustrations.

One of the many colorful explainers in Soman Chainani’s “Young World,” a Random House YA book.

How did he do it?

Given how tricky it can be to stay ahead of current events for longer lead projects, be they books, TV shows or movies, “Young World” seems remarkably prescient. So how did Chainani do it? The answers lie in his weekly Diary of a Novel entries.

The author launched the Sustack initiative one year into writing “Young World,” pulling back the curtain on his creative process and personal life during the more than two-year lead-up to the book’s publication. Nowadays, he shares a lot of anecdotes about life on a Missouri farm with his partner, but Chainani came up with the basic premise for “Young World” while still living in New York City, dismissing it then as too difficult and outside his wheelhouse to tackle himself.

“I just knew in my gut that it would make an absolutely mind-boggling novel or movie or television show,” Chainani writes in his first entry, describing efforts to convince others to take the idea and run with it. “I just couldn’t be the one to do it.” Then, after finishing his School of Good and Evil fantasy series — six books and two prequels — he sat down to write another fairy tale book series he had been imagining, only to hammer out the first chapter in the book that would become “Young World.”

Mamdani connection

Moving to St. Louis for his then-new relationship further helped give him insight about the alienated youth that would help propel Trump to his second presidency and Mamdani to Gracie Mansion a year later. In a twist of fate, Chainani first met the future mayor while serving as an assistant to his filmmaker mother, Mira Nair, while waitlisted for Columbia Film School; Mamdani was then a mere 12 years old. After the relatively untested politician triumphed over former governor Andrew Cuomo in the primary last June, Chainani predicted similar victories ahead.

Once the author committed to his teen president premise, he needed to come up with a global conflict that might still be relevant when readers got their hands on the finished book several years later. He found his Arctic answer when a Washington University professor and a colleague both referenced potential border disputes in that region during a two-day period.

Years later, a screenwriter who had worked in the White House asked Chainani why he had picked the Arctic. “I have no clue,” Chainani confesses in diary entry published after Trump’s second inauguration. “It certainly wasn’t conscious.”

Instead, like a fisherman waiting on a calm, empty sea, he felt a tug on the line — and trusted his creative instinct. He and his colleague Jun discussed using the actual country of Greenland in the novel, but Chainani moved forward with a fictional option instead.

“There are many things like this in ‘Young World’ — stories and characters and twists I settled on years ago that are starting to pop up now,” he explains. “None of which I take credit for. Instead, I’m starting to understand the power of our unconscious processes to see what’s actually happening under the surface of things, rather than what we think is happening.”

Trumpian delay

Chainani was affected by our Disrupter in Chief in one way, however. The former filmmaker had begun shopping TV and film rights for the book shortly before the 2024 election and noticed an immediate reluctance to engage with political material after Trump won, so stopped those conversations until he finished the book. Chainani has since restarted the adaptation conversation, Variety reported in a story coinciding with the book’s publication.

I delayed writing this until I could re-read “Young World” in print, rather than digital form. Although I’ve gotten used to reading books in digital formats, “Young World” really benefits from a tactile reading experience. Digital screens can’t do justice to the neon orange on the cover or throughout the 480-page book, just as the author fretted in his diaries.

One teensy advisory: I clutched my oldster pearls at the strong language in Benton’s diary entries, but that may say more about my lack of familiarity with YA books these days than anything else.

“Young World” by Soman Chainani, Random House, 480 pages, $22

Originally published on my Lititude substack.

August 21, 2026You may cringe while reading ‘The Simp.’ That’s how sharp Roshan Sethi’s Hollywood satire is

July 29, 2026Redondo jetty surfers, late July

July 29, 2026Justin Halpern’s debut novel is a real corker of a tale

July 9, 2026Huntington surfers by the pier, early July

On Kelly green pants, ‘True Color’ and the ‘Preppy Handbook’

Books, Words+Pixels

Kory Stamper's True Color outlines battles over descriptions of Kelly green, begonia and more — Kelly green makes a few appearances in Stamper’s book.

Kelly green trousers were all the rage in my Connecticut high school, and I was among the many students who wore them, along with bone white and khaki versions. As was the fashion, I selected a grosgrain ribbon watch band1 and other accessories to complement each day’s outfit, delighting in subtle color interplay between my choices.

When we moved to a Philadelphia burb straight out of “The Official Preppy Handbook” midway through high school, I was surprised to discover that my new classmates favored less vibrant garb in late disco-era beiges and burgundies, but the dye was already cast for me: Decades later, I still favor pops of color in my outfits, and have long been attuned to amusing wordplay clothing companies sometimes employ to entice potential purchasers of their offerings.

Hooked on hues

Do I want to buy a sweater that is peppermint ice, jade mist or smoky thistle, or would I be more likely to choose one described as light pink, pale green or dark purple? I prefer lyrical options any day, though as someone with a smattering of experience mixing paints for artistic endeavors I have been known to wonder what type of color recipe designers used.

So, what I’m saying is: I’m hooked on hues. Kory Stamper’s “True Color,” subtitled “The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color — From Azure to Zinc Pink,” promised playful lexicology about a topic near and dear to my heart and it delivered. But it also gave me a deeper understanding of the science of color and the stakes involved in standardizing them — from determining the proper shade of margarine (there used to be laws prohibiting food companies from making butter-like spreads look too much like the real deal) to the paint on battleships (guess wrong and U-boats may sink them, military leaders fretted during World War I).

Beguiled by begonia

Stamper takes us along on her journey through the dusty New England archives of Merriam-Webster, where she began working in 1998, as she untangles the rich story behind the color definitions that appear in the company’s massive unabridged dictionary. Stamper’s own love affair with color began when she stumbled upon the entry for begonia while updating the Big Book. The first two definitions for begonia were botanical, as to be expected, followed by a third: “a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see CORAL 3b), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet william — called also gaiety.”

From there, it was off to the races for Stamper, who uncovered pitched battles over the proper approach to defining color, pleas for additional color plates and blown deadlines, plus nervous breakdowns and unheralded women who picked up the slack for men incapacitated by mental health issues. Kelly green makes its first appearance in an early description of a hummingbird’s feather on a microscopic level and pops up a couple more times, along with too many other tones and tints to name or count.

Still waiting

The problem in defining colors, the lexicographer makes clear in her book, is their very mutability depending on light and shade. What’s more, we see colors reflected in objects around us, be they an orange or yellow banana, and form our own associations with them. Brutal production schedules — and Merriam-Webster’s reliance on outside experts who squeezed in dictionary work on the side — created their own challenges for editorial teams trying to keep the massive undertakings on track. The third edition of the unabridged international dictionary, dubbed W3 internally, was published two years late in 1961, Stamper notes, “a million dollars over budget, scads of editors crushed under its heavy, churning wheels.”

It was such a massive — and fraught — experience that Merriam-Webster would not begin work on a comprehensive new edition until nearly half a century later in 2010. It has yet to arrive.2

The Official Preppy Handbook cover — This copy of the “Preppy Handbook” has traveled with me back and forth across the country.

Prep talk

Because I was able to find my original copy of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” please allow me to circle back to it for a minute. Late in the book edited by Lisa Birnbach3, there’s a description of “go-to-hell-pants” that I don’t remember from my initial read. It’s a callback to a Tom Wolfe riff about vibrant trousers favored by Bostonians summering on Martha’s Vineyard: In a 1975 story for Esquire, Wolfe describes the “go-to-hell air” of pants in “checks and plaids of the loudest possible sort” or implausibly bright solid colors, further expounding on the types of checks and plaids in his signature style.4

Five years later, the “Preppy Handbook” picked up the satirical thread. “In casual wear, it is considered very spirited, very fun-loving, to wear one offbeat, loud item — usually the pants,” its authors state, tongues firmly in cheek. “The favored color is lime green,” the blurb continues, “but go-to-hell-pants come in other similar shocking colors.”

And yes, as travelers through certain quarters of New England know, such pants may have embroidered figures on them, be they ducks, whales or lobsters. But, as the book cautions: “Being fun-loving should never be confused with being nonconformist.”

“True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color — From Azure to Zinc Pink,” Knopf, $32

Footnotes

1 The Country Store of Concord outpost we patronized is long gone but Cable Car Clothiers still carries grosgrain ribbon watch bands similar to ones we wore, and belts as well.

2 In the meantime, a copy of the third edition boasting more than 460,000 entries can be yours for $129.

3 Birnbach revisited the territory with 2010’s “True Prep,” co-authored with Chip Kidd.

4 Wolfe’s full description, reprinted in the 1976 essay collection “Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine”: “…the pants had a go-to-hell air: checks and plaids of the loudest possible sort, madras plaids, yellow-on-orange windowpane checks, crazy-quilt plaids, giant houndstooth checks, or else they were a solid airmail red or taxi yellow or some other implausible go-to-hell color.”

First published on my Lititude Substack.