Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

Your first clue that this romantic comedy is a break-up story is the list that kicks it off: Reasons Why It's Good I'm Not with Jen. Here begins Andy's obsessive wallowing. To be fair, he deserves a good wallow; he was blindsided when Jen ended their relationship with little explanation after four years. At thirty-five, Andy's a struggling comedian who's not always emotionally mature but who is self-aware enough of his toxic traits so as not to be totally intolerable. He copes with the break-up by leaning on his friends (many of them married with kids, almost none of them single), drinking copiously at the pub, phoning it in at his gigs, rebounding with a twenty-three-year-old Gen Z'er, and diving down the rabbit hole of nostalgia again and again. It would be easy to find him exhausting if he weren't written with such levity, but I found him so damn likable and sympathetic even while thinking, you've got to get it together, dude!

And then there's Jen's side of the story, which adds a new dimension to Andy's, highlighting problems you (and perhaps Andy) didn't know they had, which is infuriating as well as illuminating because while it takes two people to have a relationship, it only takes one to end it.

The Unmothers

by Leslie J. Anderson

With Teeth

by Kristen Arnett

Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler

We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Any Person Is the Only Self

by Elisa Gabbert

Still Life with Chickens: Starting Over in a House by the Sea

by Catherine Goldhammer

I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood

by Jessi Klein

We Are Too Many: A Memoir [Kind Of]

by Hannah Pittard

I love this (kind of) memoir for satisfying the inappropriate curiosity I so often feel when the relationships of people I actually know end. Pittard spills all of the tea about the demise of her marriage, which culminated in her husband's affair with her toxic best friend. It's a raw and creative account of betrayal with a story structure that includes hypothetical and imagined dialogue as well as remembered conversations. I was up all hours of the night listening to the audiobook (narrated by the author!) and it was an intimate experience: like being on the phone with a friend needing to verbally process the end of life as she knew it.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

by Rufi Thorpe

A young woman unexpectedly becomes a young mother after an affair with her English professor. As a broke college drop-out with a newborn, Margo's running out of rent money and employment options. She turns to her estranged father--famous in the world of pro wrestling--and OnlyFans in a messy, hilarious, and human attempt at building a life. I especially appreciate the way Margo takes control of her own narrative, partly accomplished by switching between first and third person in the telling of her story.

As Margo puts it, "It's true that writing in third person helps me. It is so much easier to have sympathy for the Margo who existed back then rather than try to explain how and why I did all the things that I did."

There's a great deal of nuance for all the quirk of this novel. For every penis-as-a-Pokemon description, there's a deeper insight into the work involved in sex work. I'm so very here for it.