Leigh Stein

Despite having not been to the Land of Enchantment myself, New Mexico has been on my pop culture radar this year, mostly through Netflix marathons of Roswell, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul. Naturally, I picked up Leigh Stein's memoir, Land of Enchantment, interested in someone 's take on New Mexico.

Stein's memoir is about her relationship with her abusive ex-boyfriend, with whom she spontaneously moved to Albuquerque where they lived for 6 months. Those 6 months in New Mexico were clearly pivotal to name the entire memoir after the state's nickname. Stein writes with a casual flair that's easy to read. Given that she's writing about her relationship with an abusive boyfriend, the casualness is at times disconcerting. It is very clear that writing this memoir was cathartic for her, especially given that the book starts with her abusive ex's funeral (motorcycle crash) and her examination of their relationship in light of his death. Honestly, this book would have benefited greatly had Stein wrote it in another 5-10 years with the more refined perspective that comes with age and life experience.

The title of the book itself comes across as a cheap marketing ploy, because the book isn't so much about New Mexico, it's about Stein's relationship with her ex. New Mexico is very secondary and really, the setting for just a handful of chapters in the book. On one hand, Stein's abusive boyfriend isolated her by not allowing her to drive anywhere in Albuquerque; on the other hand, her descriptions of New Mexico from later solo adventures without the boyfriend are not that vivid beyond tourist-y blurbs you'd get on Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. This was disappointing, since New Mexico was what attracted me to the book. If you are truly in need of a good book that takes place in and throughout New Mexico, I recommend Kirstin Valdez Quade's Night at the Fiestas.… (meer)

"To be honest, I grew up working-class in Cupertino. Both my parents worked, like, a lot. My dad is an anesthesiologist and my mom is an econ professor at Stanford. When I tell people I'm from Cupertino, they assume I grew up immersed in tech and startup culture, but I really had zero exposure. Everything I've built, I built it myself."

This is a send up of internet social media. Maren and Devin are friends who started a website together, a social media site focusing on women taking care of themselves. Richual, "the most inclusive community platform for women to cultivate the practice of self-care and change the world by changing ourselves," is just as terrible as it sounds. Maren and Devin are scrambling to pull together financing, although Devin leaves plenty of room for the expensive self-care required for her image and Maren is scrambling because she has plenty of student debt and the nominal pay until the site becomes profitable is not enough to support her and her not entirely hardworking boyfriend. Then there's Khadijah, the sole Black employee who is always positioned front and center of any publicity pictures, and who single-handedly writes most of the content, who is trying to keep this job going now that she's pregnant and her partner plans to become a house-husband.

Doug was like fifteen or twenty years older than Evan and I, old enough to have bought a Nirvana CD back when that was the only way to hear music, but not old enough to be our dad.

This novel is ridiculous, but never unbelievable. Richual allows women to compete over how much self-care they engage in along with the idea that self-care is work every bit as important as social activism. None of the characters are laudable or even that nuanced, but somehow Stein gets the reader to care about all of the women, no matter how shallow and no matter how little they learn along the way. If you're even glancingly familiar with millennial/gen Z internet culture, this novel will feel all to close to reality and if you're not, I'm not sure what you'll make of it.… (meer)

I read to page 90 and would have stopped earlier but it was the only book I had with me. Today came with two long subway rides (I am glad they are updating the tracks during Covid, but I am getting a little tired of express trains being made local) and also a long wait since my friend was late to meet me at the museum and the coffee places are still all closed. So read it I did.

The premise: the main character graduates from Northwestern where she had been given a full ride free of charge. Instead of getting a job and maybe living with a bunch of people in a dive while she works at Starbucks and figures out her life, she decides to move back in with her parents. They seem like lovely people, and all she does is bitch about them and the fact they have redecorated "her" room. I have a college senior, and he would never be so nasty nor would he hang out with such stunted and unpleasant people. He also has an artsy major and he is graduating amid Covid and so he has been job hunting for months already though he does not graduate until May. Whatever he does he will do it is a city, and its likely to be something with an arts component (so unlikely to yield the big bucks) and so he fully expects to have lots of roommates for a while. We get along great, and he is always welcome under my roof, but he also feels like it is time to be an adult. I don't even understand this person or her choices.

In addition to my problems with the central narrative, this book is terrible. The writer seems unable to craft a decent sentence to save her life, let alone a good paragraph. The story is snarky in the manner of an overprivileged 8th grader. Every scene is bloated, though to be fair the bloat understandable since the foundation of this is so rickety and undernourished. The main character is of no particular interest unless you are attracted to lazy whiny ungrateful people who care only about their own comfort and pleasure and have the intellectual curiosity of a ferret. I was hoping Esther would overdose on her recreational Vicodin, but no such luck. How did this get published? Its the worst thing I have read this year by a longshot, and I read a lot.… (meer)