Books for a summer’s day
Food for the brain, the soul and the stomach, Maddy Phillips selects three of the best.
1 Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman’s Guide to Careers, the Apartment, Diet, Fashion, Money, and Men, by Helen Gurley Brown
Sex and the Single Girl was first published in 1962. Its author, the late Helen Gurley Brown, was a Cosmopolitan editor (in the era when that magazine actually had some social significance) and was roughly as fabulous as a 60s version of Samantha Jones.
Now, you might think that following the teachings of a 60-yearold dating and self-help guide would lead a person just a little astray in the modern dating landscape. You would be completely right.
However, the brilliance of Sex and the Single Girl for the 2019 reader is not the actual content of Gurley Brown’s brisk directives, although some of them remain surprisingly relevant many years on (she dispatches the relationship dynamic with womanising ‘‘Don Juan’’ types as follows: ‘‘You know all the time he is unworthy of you – ruthless and sadistic in his boyish way – but you are too hooked to do anything about it.’’)
What is so wonderful about the book is Gurley Brown’s wry, spry enthusiasm for the sheer scope and variety of the dating experience. This is an extended pep talk on the glory of singledom, delivered by the world’s most fabulous, worldly, mysteriously wealthy aunt.
Of course, given its vintage, some portions of the book are best read with horrified detachment. Ignore everything Gurley Brown says about weight (‘‘Lose every ounce of baby fat. It only ever looked good on babies’’) and homosexuality.
The stuff about feigning interest in certain sports to attract men must be disregarded: that is a prescription for endless hours spent watching the visual chloroform that is test cricket.
But! So much of it is feminist gold, and highly entertaining feminist gold at that. All so much more remarkable when you consider the era in which Gurley Brown was writing. And in other ways the book’s age only adds to its charm: ‘‘little green ribbon knits’’ are worn and Crepes Strawberry are eaten by the women featured, and there is a total absence of the words ‘‘Tinder’’ and ‘‘Bumble.’’
Gurley Brown’s unabashed enthusiasm and optimism is a literary espresso for the jaded singleton. I am entirely confident that you will love Sex and the Single Girl. So confident that if you aren’t gripped within the first 15 pages I promise to submit to a full week of Gurley Brown’s ‘‘A Diet Men Like’’: a terrifying regime of a small portion of steak paired with a single chilled white wine, to be consumed three times per day.
2
Feast: Food that Celebrates Life, by Nigella Lawson
In many ways, these are the best of times. For example, Lime scooters exist.
In many, many other ways, these are the worst of times. For example,
it is now virtually impossible to venture into the social media wilderness without reading sinister, spurious allegations that zucchini fries are as a good as the potato kind, and that avocado mixed with cocoa powder and stevia tastes just like a Lindor ball.
This is, frankly, lunacy. Luckily there is an antidote. She is creamy of skin, dark of hair, and mellifluous of voice. She is a Lindor ball in human form. She is Nigella Lawson.
She does not just write recipe books. She writes cookbooks that are worthy of reading cover to cover. Feast is her magnum opus. Reading it in January, when the nation is wracked with post-Christmas guilt and readying to surrender to the neon claws of Les Mills, is delicious sedition.
Lawson reminds us of the way food brings people together; how central food is to celebrating ‘‘anything that matters’’. Within the pages of Feast are the best roast potatoes you will ever eat, a giant pan of carbonara for lovers to haul to bed with them to sate post-coital appetites, the glorious Chocolate Cake hall of fame. There is a recipe for every social requirement and emotional need. The recipe headnotes are soothing and gently self-effacing – unmistakably Lawson. Read Feast from front to back and feel the sweet succour wash over you before you’ve even cooked something. Then cook something, preferably for people you love.
3
Hillbilly Elegy ,byJD Vance
J D Vance grew up the child of Appalachian hillbillies in Middletown, Ohio. His childhood featured fistfights, an endless succession of stepfathers, and an erratic and drug-addicted mother. His neighbourhood was one of poverty and hopelessness. Somehow he still ended up at Yale Law.
This American Dream-ish class mobility is obviously a politically charged subject, and white American poverty has been a hot topic of political conversation since Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
Vance offers some tentative conclusions on social mobility and how the diabolical state of affairs in places like Middletown has arisen, but Hillbilly Elegy is no polemic. It is Vance’s story, and Vance’s story is one of intergenerational trauma: the kind that is depressingly relatable to far too many of us, whether Appalachians or Aucklanders.
Vance on his mother’s preferred approach to marital conflict resolution: ‘‘Never speak at a reasonable volume when screaming will do; if the fight gets too intense, its okay to slap and punch, so long as the man doesn’t hit first; always express your feelings in a way that’s insulting and hurtful to your partner.’’
Standard lessons for children of dysfunctional households, then. Equally resonant is Vance’s eventual difficulty in negotiating a romantic relationship as an adult, having grown up with his mother’s example:
‘‘So I’d scream and I’d yell. I’d do all the hateful things my mother had done. And then I’d feel guilty and desperately afraid. For so much of my life, I’d made Mom out to be a kind of villain. And now I was acting like her. Nothing compares to the fear that you’re becoming the monster in your closet.’’
Hillbilly Elegy is a rare insight into a culture about which most New Zealanders know little, and a sobering reminder of the enduring nature of trauma. Read it and find your thoughts duly provoked.