Finished on 7.8.25

Weeeee, I loved this book! This is the kind of novel that makes my soul leave my body and float around the room. It reminded me soooo much of my favorite author, Elif Batuman. It’s hilarious, incisive, and full of great one-liners. The plot is silly and ultimately unimportant in that the book is really all about its narrator and how she approaches the world. It’s such a joy and I hope to read much more by this author.

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My favorite quotes:

“I’ve always been motivated by pleasure, never by money, because money I had enough of and pleasure one cannot possess.”

“You’re right that the American flag also features the color blue, but one cannot get to the bottom of it with all those stripes and stars. What an overbearing flag, just the thought of it twists my eyeballs.”

“All imported from Korea, the world capital of skin like porcelain, purity, and nothingness. Two thousand more years of snail cream and you will see a woman’s brain through her face.”

“I wanted to be close to him, not in a dependent way, but in the way it’s nice to live near a convenience store.”

“When you walk into a woman’s house and it’s sparkling clean, you never think of all the madness entailed. You just praise her and maybe feel a hint of jealousy. You never think about all the years she spent on her knees, breaking nails and huffing Mr Muscle.”

“I mean, how could the devil be the dream?”

“Trenchcoat occupied a different position in the city, I knew this when he suggested that we meet on a weekday. When you work, you belong to a certain class and its hours. You leave your apartment every day at the same time, get on the same train, stop at the same convenience store on the way home, always at the same time. I thought about that often, how there were millions of people in the city, like Trenchcoat, to whom I had no access, because we were living on different schedules.”

“I never use the dryer, it’s an enemy of clothes, and therefore an enemy of the earth. I also don’t know how to use it, because I grew up in a hot climate, where a shirt dries during breakfast in the sun.”

“Wearing heels was important to me. I couldn’t have worn heels teaching in a school with dirt floors.”

“You know, I said to them, a six can easily become an eight with the right manners and clothing, it’s not the same for women, you’re lucky to be men.”

“The homeless camp was no longer there, maybe they were home for Christmas.”

“Art is about taste, and taste is formed by experience, I said. Don’t ever let anybody dictate your taste, it’s as absurd as someone dictating your memory.”

“Pointing at the screen with my fork I told him, They have too much of an advantage over us, too much money, our only chance is to play by different rules. Sasha liked hearing me speak, especially when I was passionate or angry. He asked me if I was suggesting violence as the answer. They have that too, I answered, I don’t know what our advantage is, I haven’t found it yet.”

“I left her in front of the bathroom mirror, she was applying some lip gloss. Myself, I could never look at my reflection, let alone touch up my beauty, in public. I thought it was unladylike and a sign of insecurity.”

“The Federal Reserve keeps printing money, but otherwise there are a finite number of particles in this world. We are mortal, but matter is constant.”