The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey. A thing am realizing about myself is that, despite being quite contentedly partnered, I love breakup stories. This book is a twofer, a literal do-si-do that can be started at either end: half memoir, half autofiction, both stories written without chapter breaks. I read the autofiction first simply because my library book was stickered in a way that concealed the second book, and admired the uneasy yet familiar setting of two friends hashing out their major life decisions in the course of a single evening. The memoir unfolds over a longer period of time with a larger cast of characters, but there are recognizable overlaps with the fiction so that it gave me the comfortable sense of revisiting a known story.
Eleutheria by Allegra Hyde. This climate novel braids together three stories: the arrival of idealistic Willa Marks to an eco-warrior compound led by a charismatic wealthy man in the Bahamas; Willa’s early life raised by doomsday preppers in a bleak near future climate scenario; and the history of European settlement in the Bahamas, fraught with as much idealism and cynicism as the eco-warrior compound preparing to launch on those same shores. At times the braid felt a little too loosely tied together for me–as if the author had a list of issues and scenarios that interested her, and was trying to squeeze them all in–but as it happens, I am ALSO interested in sustainable living, fomenting social change, and poking holes in the climate elitism of the rich, so I very much enjoyed the ride. Willa’s fish-out-of-water first person perspective was pretty compelling–although unsettling, as you realize how much she craves an authoritative figure in her life, which ultimately leads her to the compound–but the Bahamian history sections were unexpectedly lovely, and served to place the somewhat strained plot into a larger global and historical arc.
An Original by Nell Stevens. I think I would like to meet Nell Stevens someday. First she wrote a deliciously sensory ghost story set in the ramshackle monastery where Chopin and George Sand escaped to conduct their affair and work on their respective creative projects–amazing. Now, in An Original, she has written a Victorian art crime novel–forgery, how delightful!–that is also extremely gay, and the main character has face blindness (which I also experience to a lesser degree). Interestingly, the book also pivots on a case of identity fraud that strongly resembles the real-life case that inspired Zadie Smith’s The Fraud, which at first got an eyebrow raise from me–it sometimes happens that multiple books come out on the same niche subject in a short time, when there’s just something in the air–but as the plot unfolds, it emerges that Stevens is doing something very different and interesting with it. I choose to see this resemblance as another dimension in which the book plays with the idea of originals and copies.
Middle Spoon by Alejandro Varela. A dishy epistolary novel constructed of emails written by an anxious 40-something narrator who is gluten- and dairy-intolerant, securely married with kids and a loving husband, surrounded by scintillating friends, and absolutely wrecked by his first heartbreak. The emails, it emerges, are a coping strategy suggested by the narrator’s therapist; he writes but does not send them to the younger man who broke off their relationship. Some of the emails pine, some of them rage (it feels very injust to the narrator that his loving open marriage, which permitted the relationship with the younger man, should also be the cause of its ending), and some of them stumble through self-reflections. The book pokes a little fun at its narrator, who is really old enough to know better than he behaves, and despite his minor epiphanies there isn’t much plot to drive the book. (It’s best in short, gossipy bursts.) But the character remains sympathetic at least in my view–in particular, I respect this depiction of how fresh and destabilizing love and heartache can feel, even in one’s 40s.
Some short poems and prose I liked:
Untold by Tara Campbell
Gloria Mundi by Michael Kleber-Diggs
Elsewhere
I’m always sad when emerging writers start up a Substack in hopes of increasing their audience. There are some very good reasons not to do that, but I’ll let some well-paid newsletter writers–who write some of the only newsletters I pay for–explain the business decision of it all.
If I still ran a food blog, I would definitely highlight these unusual elegiac cakes: Inside Out: On grief, cake, and the illusion of safety
Just a nice interview with a bookseller!
This newsletter gave me the proverbial lolsob about *waves hands* all this: Yeah, I’m seeing it too
Love the idea of “paper towns,” and other tricks to prevent map plagiarism.
Love a little vibes-based reflection on a cultural phenomenon, like how two mountain peaks in a square became the universal icon for “image.”
AI in the news:
Donald Trump Is the First AI Slop President (Wired, October 29, 2025)
How Catastrophic Is It If the AI Bubble Bursts? An FAQ. (The Ringer, November 4, 2025)
The AI Data Center Boom Is Warping the US Economy (Wired, November 5, 2025)
‘Pluribus’ Includes “Made By Humans” Disclaimer In Credits Amid AI Discourse (Deadline, November 7, 2025)
AI Is The Ultimate “Forced Meme” (Aftermath, November 12, 2025)
The Data Center Resistance Has Arrived (WIRED, November 14, 2025)
Meta’s AI Data Center Sparks a Crisis in the Bible Belt Over the Power of Faith (Capital B, November 19, 2025)
Learning with AI falls short compared to old-fashioned web search (The Conversation, November 19, 2025)
Minutiae
November: a sprint to December. I have been preoccupied with two projects–my thesis, an an environmental writing program I am working on with another local writer–and both are proceeding, unsteadily but surely. I also started a short online class on writing nonfiction book proposals.
I planned a park hang with some friends, and it happened to fall on the only beautiful day we had practically all month, so we were not too cold under the ruddy sunlit trees. After that, November got wet and windy, but I nonetheless spent a lovely afternoon brunching and chatting and doing a very little writing with my writing group in New Hope. One Saturday, I planted three trees in South Philly, washed the dirt out from under my fingernails, and then took a train to see my college BFF in an immersive murder mystery play that had us trotting all over the theater. I carried home a winter cold which knocked me out for a weekend, but spent the holiday weekend pleasantly busy with dinners, ballet class, and the traditional Black Friday Wissahickon hike.
I finally found my way back to my reading practice–rereading old favorites seems to have worked, and I was excited to have new novels come in from the library this month. I started watching Pluribus, which I find enjoyably unsettling. I also watched the new del Toro Frankenstein–on my home TV, which is too bad, because it is lush and would have been gorgeous on a big screen, but perhaps for the best because I would have cried in the theater. I am but a simple moviegoer! Broad strokes work perfectly well on me! I also watched Nia DaCosta’s luxurious, seething Hedda and loved the whole mess of it. A party of perfectly miserable people and yet I would have loved to have been there, dancing with abandon and making mistakes in the hedge maze.
Sara Davis 