You know what actually Gone Girl was right
Sometimes being deranged is the appropriate response to what's going on
OK you know how last week I joked about one of the upcoming issues of this newsletter being that Gone Girl was right well guess what it wasn’t a joke it was real and you’re living it.
One time for no reason I started a fight with my partner Danny where I insisted the character Gone Girl from the book and movie “Gone Girl” did nothing wrong. I know this was a flimsy argument. Sometimes I just pick kneejerk girlboss arguments for no reason because some mechanism in my brain starts building up steam or something and then I say some shit that does not hold up under scrutiny such as no sport on earth should be divided by gender or nude art in a church should be fine and encouraged actually (to be fair this one was about a church covering up historic art deco ornamentations in a theater it took over and you know what I’m still prepared to argue this one Free The Harpy Titties till I die). Anyway, all that to say, I understand about Gone Girl from the book and movie “Gone Girl” isn’t a moral actor or a good person. She did do murder and masterminded an elaborate framing of her husband, arguably an overreaction to her situation.
BUT ALSO???? Can anyone really say there is a completely sane and rational way to respond to being a woman? In this climate?? Like, is raising someone to think that their sex organs mean they’re biologically predisposed to housework and bad at math really a winning recipe for a non-mad populace? Can sometimes biting someone be therapy? Look I’m not defending the characters in these books or espousing their actions but am I gonna say I don’t get it? Also no.
Hungerstone is the entire reason I’m writing this. It is such a clear-eyed look at the horror that is the prospect of being Assigned Female in this world, a stripping away of pretext and subtext that was as jarring as Neo waking up in that vat in The Matrix.
The protagonist has been lying to herself her entire life in order to be a part of the pageant of heteronormative Victorian womanhood. She creates a hard shell around herself, a mask of performative compliance, and pretends to be satisfied with the small cage deep inside where her consciousness still barely flickers.
Until she almost runs over a woman lying in the road, an apparent victim of an overturned carriage, who teaches her that hunger is a good thing. I feel like most days, depending on my news intake and socialization, I could imagine walking into the woods forever, and it’s this ferality that the protagonist is allowed to uncoil into that makes this book such a satisfying read.
Woodworm is about two women who just can’t seem to get away from their house, which is so haunted. The grandmother and granddaughter who live there are at odds with each other (the grandmother sees saints that look like insects and the granddaughter just beat a murder charge) and at odds with the house (it does this cute thing where it makes a knocking noise at the back of the wardrobe to try and get you to go in there. Do NOT go in there) and generally reciprocally antagonistic toward everyone in the neighborhood (apart from the cats). There’s also a body in the wall, from decades ago, and I don’t think I need to tell you that it’s a man’s. “In this house you don’t inherit money or gold rings or monogrammed sheet sets … Rage and a place to lay your head, that’s the most you’ll be left around here,” the granddaughter tells us. Come spend 150 pages with these wretched women in their wretched home as they seethe! It’s more fun than it sounds.
I swear one day I am going to write about wild ass thrillers where the premise is already threatening to overturn the boat before you even open it- I’m talking Multiple Murderers Running Around or 2 Many Twins or This Entire Writing Retreat Is A Trap or There Are Multiple Murderers Running Around On This Writers Retreat Which Is On An Island (With Twins). I want it to be clear I love these books, very much, I just like to know that’s what I’m getting into.
Beautiful Ugly was like, aaaaaaaalways toeing this line for me (there’s only like two tones a book can take with a logline like ‘a struggling writer relocates to a remote island in the Scottish Highlands a year after his wife vanished without a trace, only to keep catching glimpses of her on said remote island’) but its greatest strength was consistently giving me something so odd to be curious about every five pages through the entire book. It was like watching Lost for the first time. What do you mean there’s a skeleton hand in the floor of your rental cabin. What do you mean phone service on the island is out but the villagers don’t have their story straight about why. What do you mean despite this the phone box is still working but only to emit the voice of your missing wife.
OK I’m sorry but in order to explain its inclusion in this newsletter I do have to spoil the twist a bit. You’ve been warned.
After many weird happenings that I thankfully don’t have to spoil for you, the protagonist finally realizes that the island is entirely populated by women after the locals, betrayed by a man from the mainland, decide to start actively recruiting women (most of whom have suffered some kind of gendered abuse) to eventually replace every vacancy.
The protagonist finds this out when he stumbles upon a secret meeting at their church, where the stained glass windows are all emblazoned with the words “WE. WILL. NEVER. FORGET. OR. FORGIVE.” And then they reveal their plan, which is to make him live on the island forever writing books and donating most of the proceeds to the community as punishment for a crime of his own. They then proceed to do this.
I’m standing up and clapping. Great Gone Girling. Well done.
Have you ever seen that clip from Euphoria where Sydney Sweeney insists to Jacob Elordi with those huge eyes that she’s EVEN CRAZIER than Alexa Demie’s character? Well if you can imagine this being the dynamic between an adult woman and a ghost possessing her family’s vacation rental you are getting a good chunk of what’s going on in Diavola. The protagonist’s family is toxic as hell to her from the very beginning of their week in the Tuscan countryside together, which does not improve the more time they spend in their cursed AirBnB under the thrall of a medieval ghost. However, this does mean is that she is ultimately able to defeat the ghost with the power of Strong Boundaries. And YEAH, some people DIE, so what. We’re ACTUALIZING here.
*****
I’m realizing that I’ve done a lot of Girl Books since this newsletter’s inception. I promise in the spirit of equality I’ll do boy books someday. What books are boys in. The Catcher in the Rye? The Red Badge of Courage? I’ll figure it out