Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews

                                                

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 

Title: Who Is Maud Dixon?
Author: Alexandra Andrews 
Release Date: 3.2.21
Publisher: Little, Brown, and Company 

Goodreads Summary:
For readers of The Silent Patient - a taut, twisty, character-driven suspense novel about a famous novelist and a small-town striver locked in a struggle for fortune and fame.

Florence Darrow is a small-town striver who believes that she's destined to become a celebrated writer. When she stumbles into the opportunity to become the assistant to "Maud Dixon," a celebrated-but anonymous-novelist (think: Elena Ferrante), she believes that the universe is finally providing her big chance. The arrangement feels idyllic; Helen can be prickly, but she is full of pointed wisdom on both writing and living. She even invites Florence along on a research trip to Morocco, where her new novel is set. Florence has never been out of the country before; maybe, she imagines, she'll finally have something exciting to write about herself. But when Florence wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car crash, and Helen is dead, she begins to imagine what it might be like to 'upgrade' into not only Helen's life, but also that of Helen's bestselling pseudonym, Maud Dixon...


My Review:

"The charade was on."

I'll cut to the chase...I LOVED every page of this novel and frankly I'm shocked that I'm not seeing more advanced reviews for this book. Currently there are only 21 posts with the #whoismauddixon hashtag on Instagram and 83 reviews on Goodreads. I mean, what?! Author Alexandra Andrews' writing compares to Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Ruth Ware--full of uncomfortable situations, unlikeable characters, and cutting dialogue. As with any mystery it's important to not give away too many details so I'll simply say that I totally recommend this. 

Animal, Vegetable, Junk by Mark Bittman

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal
Author: Mark Bittman
Release Date: 2.2.21
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Goodreads Summary:
From hunting and gathering to GMOs and ultraprocessed foods, this expansive tour of human history rewrites the story of our species—and points the way to a better future.

The history of Homo sapiens is usually told as a story of technology or economics. But there is a more fundamental driver: food. How we hunted and gathered explains our emergence as a new species and our earliest technology; our first food systems, from fire to agriculture, tell where we settled and how civilizations expanded. The quest for food for growing populations drove exploration, colonialism, slavery, even capitalism.

A century ago, food was industrialized. Since then, new styles of agriculture and food production have written a new chapter of human history, one that’s driving both climate change and global health crises. Best-selling food authority Mark Bittman offers a panoramic view of the story and explains how we can rescue ourselves from the modern wrong turn.



My Review:

I was pulled into the framework of this book with statements like "Food has always been political, but as time passed, our relationship with food--how it gets into our hands--has been shaped more and more by government and policy" and "If you are looking for the roots of today's income inequality, you might start here, with a federal donation of land--the foundation of most wealth--to an exclusive club of white men."

As I got deeper into the reading I loved how the author touched on so many aspects of our evolving food production and eating habits, and when I say "so many" I mean "sooooooo many." From cooking/freezing/sealing methods and the commercialization of sugar, corn, soy, and GMOs to creations of The National Dairy Council, The National School Lunch Program, The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, and Food for Freedom--this book covers A LOT.

The parts I had problems with (you know when you read something and think "that doesn't sound right" or "really?") were difficult to follow up on because there were no citations. This may be because this is an eARC, but I felt like some statements were being pulled from unreliable secondary sources.

Overall, I did enjoy this book, specifically the section on the origins of ketchup and the "smart" aka ruthless measures Heinz took to eliminate all competition at the turn of the twentieth century.

We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: We Play Ourselves 
Author: Jen Silverman
Release Date: 2.9.21
Publisher: Random House

Goodreads Summary: 

After a humiliating scandal, a young writer flees to the West Coast to start over, where she is drawn into the morally-ambiguous orbit of a charismatic filmmaker and the teenage girls who are her next subjects.
Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as "a fierce new voice" and "queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea." But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming, and flees to Los Angeles to escape -- and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline's next semi-documentary movie, which follows the girls' violent fight club, a real-life feminist re-purposing of the classic.

As Cass is drawn into the film's orbit, she is awed by Caroline's ambition and confidence. But over time, she becomes increasingly troubled by how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teens in the name of art. When a girl goes missing, Cass must reckon with her own ambitions and ask herself: in the pursuit of fame, how do you know when you've gone too far?

My Review:

I was initially drawn to this novel due to the description of the protagonist Cass as a queer, feminist playwright and was intrigued by the idea of a feminist twist on Fight Club. I was really excited to read this but it took me a while to get into it and I couldn't figure out if it was me (I've really been struggling with reading for the last few months) or the storyline. As I got deeper into the story I realized it is because this novel is full of character studies that are so well written that I was empathizing with each character and their relation to each other in a way that was making me read more slowly (much more slowly.) I was so impressed with how Silverman was able to build these character arcs and intersperse the creative concepts and processes of theatre and documentary film-making. There is so much more to this book (sexuality, identity, scandal, the marketability of #MeToo) but I loved this for Cass' coming of age story. I definitely recommend this but I believe readers will love it more if they are interested in theatre/film production, the creative process, and/or a queer woman's rollercoaster ride of fame, infamy, and personal recreation. 

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

 

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Echo Wife
Author: Sarah Gailey
Release Date: 2.16.21
Publisher: Tor

Pitched as a "page-turning near-future domestic suspense novel...combining the eerie family drama of Shirley Jackson with the propulsive pacing of Ruth Ware" when I first heard of The Echo Wife my interest was piqued, but when I read the following my eyes really lit up: 

"Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be. And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband. Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and the Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up. Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty."

I mean, this is what I am looking for in a novel about genetic engineering and clones: pushed (or totally ignored) ethical boundaries, "cheating" spouses, and questions about identity. The Echo Wife gives readers all this and more playing up the "in another life who would I be" aspect of many women's psyches. I loved how the author kept Martine and Evelyn so cool and collected but with anger and resentment always bubbling right under the surface, threatening to spill over. This tension and the condensed timeline really drove the story along. I was originally impressed with Sarah Gailey's writing in Upright Women Wanted and after reading The Echo Wife I'll be adding her to my "Auto Read Authors" list.