I read three books this week, so I decided to post all the reviews together today. Edited to add: It turns out that I actually finished four but didn't want to ruin the alliteration of Three on Thursday.
The
first is one that Sarah read last week, and I read the second one in an
attempt to try and make more sense of the first. Abigail Thomas’s What Comes Next and How to Like It is a quiet,
contemplative memoir that reads less like a traditional narrative and
more like a collection of fleeting thoughts, small, intimate moments
stitched together in a non-linear, almost stream-of-consciousness style.
Comprised of short vignettes, the book moves through grief, friendship,
aging, creativity, and the strange, often unanswerable question of how
to keep going when life keeps taking. Thomas’s prose is
undeniably sharp and direct. There’s a spareness to her writing that I
appreciated; she wastes no words, and many passages carry a kind of
understated honesty. Her reflections on long-term friendship offer
glimpses of something deep and sustaining, even when the rest of life
feels uncertain or diminished.
That said, the fragmented
structure, while stylistically interesting, made it difficult to fully
engage. The vignettes often felt more like impressions than
explorations, and I found myself wanting more depth and more cohesion.
While there are moments of insight, they felt fleeting, and I struggled
to come away feeling truly enlightened, moved, or even particularly
educated, which are qualities I tend to look for in a memoir.
Ultimately,
this is a book that seems more about sitting with life as it is rather
than drawing meaning from it. For some readers, that may be enough. For
me, it felt a bit too slight to leave a lasting impression.
I came to A Three Dog Life after reading What Comes Next and How to Like It,
mostly hoping to better understand the events that shaped Abigail
Thomas’s later reflections. In that sense, this book provided some
helpful context. It fills in the emotional and practical realities
behind the fragments of her more recent work. This memoir centers
on the aftermath of her husband’s traumatic brain injury, and the life
Thomas builds in response to that devastating shift. While her signature
style is still present, with brief sections and a somewhat
impressionistic structure, it felt more cohesive here. Her emotions are
written more clearly, and I was better able to follow the arc of her
experience, from shock and guilt to a kind of fragile stability.
Thomas’s
prose remains spare and direct, which works well for the subject
matter. There are moments of genuine insight, particularly in how she
grapples with what it means to remain connected to someone who is, in
many ways, no longer the person you knew. I also appreciated that I did
learn something from this memoir, about care giving, adaptation, and the
ways people continue living after unimaginable disruption. That’s
something I tend to look for in memoir, and this book delivered more of
it than her later one.
Dogs, as the title suggests, play a
central role here, not just as companions, but as emotional anchors.
Thomas’s deep affection for them is evident, and they help shape the
quieter, rebuilt life she describes. It’s striking, too, that despite
everything, she manages to carve out a decent, even meaningful life.
Still,
while I admired much of what this book was doing, it didn’t fully land
for me on an emotional level. The distance created by the fragmented
style sometimes kept me from feeling as immersed as I wanted to be. I
gave it 3.5 stars, but couldn’t quite round up.
Maxim Loskutoff’s Old King is a quiet,
unsettling novel that lingers in the spaces between men, between
ideologies, and between the myth of the American frontier and its
unraveling. Set against the rugged backdrop of Lincoln, Montana, the
story follows Duane Oshun as he runs away from a divorce in Salt Lake
City and stumbles into a logging community and the orbit of a reclusive
neighbor, Ted Kaczynski, along with some other reclusive and stubborn
men. There are few women in this book, and they are definitely secondary
characters.
I’ve always had some degree of interest in
Kaczynski, with my own connection to Lincoln through having a cabin
there. That familiarity made this novel feel quite grounded. Loskutoff
captures the place with an authenticity that’s hard to fake, the rhythms
of the town, the isolation, the quiet tensions simmering beneath
everyday interactions. Lincoln is more than just a setting; it’s a force
that shapes these men and their choices.
What makes Old King
particularly compelling is that it isn’t really about Kaczynski, at
least not in the way one might expect. Instead, it’s about the
intersection of several lives of along Stemple Pass Road, men who circle
one another, sometimes barely aware of the impact they’re having. Their
connections are loose, almost accidental, yet deeply consequential.
Loskutoff explores how proximity alone can bind people together, for
better or (more often) worse.
The author's portrayal of Kaczynski
is especially fascinating, neither sensationalized nor excused, but
rendered as one thread in a larger tapestry of disillusionment,
masculinity, and environmental grief. The “Old King” itself, the ancient
Douglas fir, stands as a powerful symbol of what’s being lost, and of
the competing values that drive these men toward conflict.
This
is not an easy or uplifting read. There’s a quiet inevitability to the
tragedy that unfolds, and it’s striking how none of these men emerge
unscathed. Their lives, shaped by isolation, stubbornness, and a kind of
muted longing, seem destined to collide in ways that can only end
badly. Still, Old King is a deeply rewarding novel, thoughtful,
atmospheric, and sharply observant. It asks difficult questions about
progress, connection, and the stories we tell ourselves about
independence. Three and a half stars rounded up.
Yesteryear is an ambitious, unsettling
debut that’s at its best when it leans into its sharp social critique,
even if it occasionally stumbles under the weight of its own ideas.
The
premise was irresistible to me: a carefully curated “tradwife”
influencer suddenly forced to live the actual reality of early
19th-century life. Burke wastes no time stripping away Natalie’s glossy,
performative existence and replacing it with something brutal, filthy,
and deeply disorienting. The contrast between the Instagram fantasy and
the physical toll of survival is vividly rendered, and often genuinely
disturbing. There’s a visceral quality to these sections that kept me
turning pages.
What worked well for me was how pointed the novel
is about performance, of femininity, of faith, and of morality.
Natalie’s confidence in her own superiority, built on a curated life and
a rigid belief system, feels uncomfortably real. I actually know a
woman very much like this; she professes to be deeply religious, but she
has also openly expressed that her faith makes her better than others.
That familiarity made Natalie less of a caricature and more of a
recognizable and unsettling type. Burke clearly understands the
psychology she’s writing about, and that lends the book a sharp,
sometimes biting authenticity.
That said, the novel doesn’t
always balance its themes as smoothly as it could. At times, the satire
feels heavy-handed, and the story’s central mystery, what exactly is
happening to Natalie, loses momentum as the book toggles between
possibilities. I found myself much more invested in the idea of the
story than in its eventual direction. I'll admit that I childishly
wanted Natalie to get her comeuppance, but I'm not sure that happened.
Parts felt rushed, particularly given how extreme Natalie’s
transformation is meant to be.
Still, Yesteryear is a
thought-provoking read, especially for anyone interested in the
intersection of social media, gender roles, patriarchy, and belief. It’s
sometimes uncomfortable and unafraid to ask questions, but sadly, it
doesn't explore those questions in any depth.
Some different reading for me this week, but that's what keeps things interesting. What are you reading?
