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Matthew Sciarappa

@matthewsciarappa

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🏳️‍🌈. little book reviews.

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Like a more bumbling Sally Rooney novel (complimentary), I WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY by Jem Calder captures how attraction reduces us to the most idiosyncratic versions of ourselves.
🍸🖤
A situationship with a 12-year age gap descends into existential hell in #IWantYouToBeHappy. Chuck is in his mid-thirties, a floundering copywriter fresh off a broken engagement. Joey is in her early twenties, a barista/aspiring poet searching for some sense of security. One night, the two meet at a bar—odd gestures, too personal disclosures, a clumsy kiss—Calder’s precision in capturing every misstep is a wonder and a joy to read. It’s a match made in proximity; Chuck & Joey replicate a familiar modern dating ritual. As Joey presses further into Chuck’s life, Chuck reveals his true nature (he’s a self-conscious prick). The rest is an ironic, cringe-worthy, brilliant display of side-stepping, alcoholism, apologizing, and accepting the least. It’s unclear whether Chuck & Joey sincerely wish the title of Calder’s novel to one another, but god are they desperate for someone to wish it to them. I find the ultimate success of this book lies within Calder’s willingness to leave it all unsettled. No one seems very happy, and I loved it. by @matthewsciarappa

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3 days ago

new booth, same NYCC 💥💫 by @matthewsciarappa

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5 days ago

My attention span continues to suffer so I’ve opted for brevity & whimsy with T. Kingfisher’s NINE GOBLINS.
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Part field guide, part history, #NineGoblins lives up to its subtitle of “low fantasy and high mischief.” It follows the Whinin’ Niners, the nineteenth infantry of a Goblin Army, all of whom have dispositions and interests that fall somewhere just outside the already inevitable chaos of a goblin horde. In a time where goblins, elves, and humans triangulate in war, this motley crew lives by the motto, “Too dumb to desert. Too smart to die,” as they bumble through battle.
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It’s clear this was an early self-published novella from T. Kingfisher. While the concept and humor deliver, it lacks the finesse of more recent publications. Still, it was a treat for me as I continue to regain my focus/endurance for reading. by @matthewsciarappa

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6 days ago

As a mythic sandstorm obscures the sun, two men fall in love in Karim Kattan’s EDEN AT DAWN (translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman).
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The wind itself narrates #EdenAtDawn, and perhaps this is why there’s a spiraling quality to Kattan’s writing: introducing a word or image, looping it within subsequent sentences, and building out paragraphs. While I suppose much writing is inherently structured this way, there’s a trance-like quality here that imbues each page with sensuousness: “And there were also tunnels running from one market to another, from one quarter to another. Tunnels offering a path from a zawiya to a jeweler’s… Tunnels where he came to understand the beauty of boys.” Similarly, he will introduce bouts of sentences with repeating subjects, echoing rhythms and structures to compounding effect. But given that no chapter is ever more than three or four pages, these stylized moments never overwhelm.
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Platitudes about the tandem delicacy and ache of desire don’t quite do justice to a book as rich as this. For such a small trim size and only at 288 pages, it reads with gravity. The fear from a nation’s occupation, the fire of sudden attraction, and the fight for freedom are all captured with poetic precision. Shoutout to the @nationalbookfoundation for popping this gem onto my tbr. by @matthewsciarappa

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13 days ago

It’s suddenly 80° again in NY, so I feel way less guilty posting this banked photo from my summer vacation. If you’ve followed my reading, you may know every year I bring a Miriam Toews novel to the beach, but this year, I also brought along her daughter, Georgia. To little surprise HEY, GOOD LUCK OUT THERE was a similarly bittersweet, funny, perfect beach read.
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#HeyGoodLuckOutThere follows an at first unnamed narrator as she checks into rehab. As her days become itineraries she reflects on what brought her there—harrowing glimpses of her past life seeping into meals and activities, new housemates and group meetings. Toews walks a sensitive middle ground unveiling the narrator’s life. She avoids sensationalizing, opting for a dry, self-effacing tone. The quips are plentiful, the smile is wry. And for all of its earnestness, darkness, and depth, it never feels anything but pleasurable to read. Perhaps overstaying its page count a bit, we do see the narrator check out of the institution and wade back into reality. While I found Toews’ handling of the fragility of sobriety to be engaging and tactful, the novel does reach a sort chronological prosaism, leaving little to the imagination. But overall, this was a winsome debut, and what a joy to see that morbid, sardonic humor runs in the Toews family. by @matthewsciarappa

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14 days ago

BRIMSTONE by Callie Hart was the first book I was able to actually read after finishing the Booker Prize Longlist. Between burnout from that annual project and the stress/reading of starting my new job, I truly needed something mindless to enjoy. So shoutout to this frenetic sequel of pure, heterosexual nonsense. I will be reading the next one 😌✨ by @matthewsciarappa

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15 days ago

I read EXIT 8 by Genki Kawamura (translated by Sameeha Anwar) unknowing it was a novelization of a film of a video game, and despite the layers of remove, it was a fun little gut punch.
🩸♾️
A man receives life-changing news just before getting trapped in an uncanny, violent purgatory, somewhere within Tokyo’s subway system. His instructions to escape are clear, but not without difficulty. And through a series of mind-melting trial and error, he makes his attempts. If the metaphor weren’t clear enough while reading, Kawamura spells it out perfectly by the end: “The life I longed for could only be reached through a series of choices—hard, painful choices—made in the struggle between moving forward and turning back.” So while I don’t want to spoil the unsettling images or tiny twists throughout this slim novella, I will say I think this was a solid slice of existential horror, told with dramatic flourish and topped off with a surprisingly sentimental ending. Perfect for a long commute. by @matthewsciarappa

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22 days ago

Honestly a grotesque amount of smiling for one weekend 🐦✨ Baby’s first Shelves! by @matthewsciarappa

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a month ago

THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT by Chloe Aridjis is an enchanting, if temperamental, ode to human connection.
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I won’t pretend to fully grasp the Freudian concept in the title of #TheShadowOfTheObject, but what we witness in this book is how when Flora’s hand is bitten by Diego the dog, she becomes untethered from her sense of self. Via the friendship of an ailing woman named Wilhelmina, she comes back into a new way of life, one colored by their exchanges around Wilhelmina’s prized possession, a magic lantern. Flora and Wilhelmina become projections of one another with the lantern doubling down on the metaphor. In impressionistic (sometimes word salad-y) vignettes, shadows and reality entwine to paint a richly psychological portrait of wounds and recovery. But as Aridjis asks “How to retrace your steps when you weren’t tracing them to begin with, only following what you thought was a certainty?” it’s clear that unmooring the reader in a way that mimics Flora’s experience is the goal. This a plotness yet pleasing read. If you’re willing to buy into the compounding effect of its dreamlike chapters, then you will leave having experienced a brisk bout of existential beauty. by @matthewsciarappa

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a month ago

“Life, the littleness of it.”

A pitch perfect memento mori, Emma Cline’s SWITZY follows man with Alzheimer’s as he flies to Zurich to willingly end his life.
☁️🗓️
The triumph of #Switzy is Cline’s ability to deconstruct narration without sacrificing clarity. A close third person trails the main character, David, as he declines, blurring and sharpening along with him. Snagging on disparate threads—a shampoo slogan, a mnemonic device, some primitive impulse to smile—sentences give way to something more textured and sensory. A chain-linking of vivid associations propels the turn of the page. And all throughout, Cline navigates David’s stormy interiority, frustrated and humiliated and yet resigned, with both empathy and scope. We understand his belligerent outbursts both from his own slighted perspective and that of the caretakers struggling to tame him. We are contiguous with David in every darkened mood, leap of logic, or misfired synapse. Through him, we glean an all-encompassing examination of a common tragedy. So not to be like “she did her big one,” but… she did her big one. This book has more finesse and confidence than any of Cline’s to date. by @matthewsciarappa

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a month ago

THE PALM HOUSE by Gwendoline Riley paints dreary vignettes of a friendship across time.
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Lest we forget the phrase “fuliginous nooks yielded uncertain streams of piss” from Gwendoline Riley’s First Love, #ThePalmHouse resurrects the author’s abuse of language, favoring syntactical ASMR over specificity. Be it oxymoronic (clouds depicted as “flat, extravagant, painterly puffs” or a woman hurries past with “a look of determined abstraction”), redundant (a character is an “indiscriminate freelancer”), or vague (walking down the street “with a new tincture in the air now”), the descriptions in this book leave me wincing. Riley seems determined to discover meaning in the most roundabout ways possible. A sentence like “Putnam opened our second bag of salt and vinegar, then carefully split one seam and spread the crisps out a bit.” feels out of order, leading with flavor before food—vibe before meaning—all to let you know a man went in on some chips. Occasionally playing with texture in this way might be fine (yes, I know what this sentence means) but to endure pages of this kind of capriciousness is exhausting. More so, it distracts from the dialogue, which is far more intuitive and only occasionally lofty. I think were this novel a playscript, I’d have loved to see it staged. I could have enjoyed these characters ordering drinks and snacking while they drifted through time and memory. But as it stands, with Riley’s prose so in the way of itself, I don’t want to hang out at the pub. by @matthewsciarappa

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a month ago

A psychological experiment deconstructs and reforms one man’s ego in Luke Kennard’s BLACK BAG.
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A surprisingly voicey entry for the Booker Prize Longlist, and yet, like many of the other books, #BlackBag is deeply concerned with the undoing of contemporary masculinity. A struggling actor lands a job for a university professor in which he must zip himself into a garment bag and, silent and unmoving, attend class. This is a contemporary recreation of a 1967 experiment conducted at Oregon State University. With only eye holes and leg holes, he must also navigate campus with some unexplained goal of unsettling students. While the novel opens with a pithy, 4th wall-breaking monologue expressing the unnamed narrator’s desire to tell his story in first person/present tense, very quickly, he takes a liking to “Black Bag,” referring to Black Bag in the third person as an alter ego.
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An edge of cynicism cuts through the otherwise frothy qualities of this book. As the narrator states: “This is my big chance to do absolutely nothing, as thoroughly as possible.” And yet, acting as Black Bag, his value to others increases tenfold. Doing nothing has resulted in a submissive sexual relationship with a stunning woman, a fervent get rich quick scheme with his roommate, and ultimately the appreciation of Black Bag’s campus peers. The narrator’s absence has resulted in a greater impact than his failing acting ambitions ever could. The complicity and absorption of his identity means more for society. But Kennard is clever enough not to warm to this conclusion, ultimately skewering the experiment as an ironic display of late stage capitalism and a rejection of true, human empathy. This was a charming read. by @matthewsciarappa

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a month ago