Running Up The Hill

And I'm thinking about appetite (always).

After a very full, not-just-a-little stressful few days, we ended the weekend on a patio at an Italian restaurant downtown. Dappled sunlight. Fancy drinks for the girls. A cold glass of Falanghina for me. We ordered pan-seared branzino with lemons and capers and fat tubes of rigatoni in a pale pink tomato sauce. There were zeppole for dessert with a crème anglaise just thick enough to coat the spoon. Seventies Italian pop streamed over the speakers. It was perfection and oh boy did I need it.

Captured at an exclusive little place known as my kitchen. Happy hour!

I've been sitting with some big themes lately — hunger, desire, what it means to seek pleasure as a way of feeling alive — partly because I'm deep in the work of trying to sell a book about exactly that, which is its own particular comedy. It turns out describing your appetite is easy. Justifying it to strangers is so much harder.

I often think about Flamingo Estate's The Guide to Becoming Alive — the gorgeous coffee table book full of lush photography and interviews with absolute icons. If you haven't picked it up, do yourself a favor. He writes about quieting the voice that makes you want to compare yourself to others, the one that makes you self-conscious and small. Instead, it’s about attuning yourself to pleasure as a form of freedom. Not as indulgence, but as attention.

There's nothing like grief or stress to send you straight to the table.

• These new Iris & Romeo Lip Cocoons in pretty, subtle colors have become the first balms that I reach for.

• If you have to enquire in order to see a price, that’s usual a sign that you’re clicking where you don’t belong, but it won’t stop me from pining over one of these Emma Grant x ODD Rockers. Magnificent.

• Part of the Reformation x Courtney Grow collab, these sort of wacky little flats look marvelous paired with jeans and a white tee as styled on the site.

• After lusting after it for months (thank you Julia Luis-Dreyfus for the excellent ad sell on your podcast), I took advantage of a Memorial Day sale and ordered a Mill food recycler. No more gross bowl on the countertop or stinky compost bin outside our back door. This thing is sleek and beautiful and composts every single thing (meat! bones! nuts and pits!).

• I typically don’t love scary shows — I have enough trouble sleeping as it is — but Widow’s Bay is so darn funny that it’s quickly become one of my favorites. Matthew Rhys!! He’s incredible. And, yes, there are plenty of thrills and moments where I simply turn my head, but I’m going to be crushed when it’s over.

• My favorite soft pant now in a cropped length so I don’t have to drive around looking for a tailor for weeks on end. Small town living.

• Stripes on stripes! This whole look from Zara is exactly what I’ll be wearing for days at the bookstore. Basically in pajamas, but still so chic. These are also very good from their collab with Caramel.

The Hill by Harriet Clark

I just finished reading The Hill by Harriet Clark and it completely defies one of my traditional Novel Pairings.

Suzanna is nine when we first meet her, making her way up the hill to visit her mother, who is serving a life sentence in prison. She is nearly 18 when The Hill ends. The whole thing has a sort of dreamlike — or nightmarish — quality that is both fragile and lustrous. It’s also funny in a brutal sort of way. It is about familial love and faithfulness and persistence in a world that is determined to keep loved ones apart. Lovely and lonely.

I loved it and I also wanted to be through it, if that makes sense.

This exchange between Suzanna and her grandmother is such a great snapshot. Funny and devastating:

“I’m not dead yet.”

“I know.”

“I might never die.”

“I know.”

“I’m deciding.”

“Right now?”

“All the time.”

Most books I read create a world I can dress — there’s a sensibility or a setting or a texture that translates into style. The Hill has a texture I wouldn’t want to wear out in the world. And I think that’s the whole point. It is a book that refuses the exercise. Remarkable and strange and brilliant, and completely unlike anything I’ve read in a long time. Please read it so we can talk about it.

Sofia Coppola and Vendela Vida (!!) have shared their book lists for our upcoming event and The Hill is at the very top of Vendela’s list. I cannot wait to talk to her about it.

Because The Hill defies style pairings, I’m approaching this from a slightly vibe-ier point of view.

1. A duffel bag for all of Suzanna’s trips to and from the prison.

2. An excellent toothbrush to tuck into her toiletry bag.

3. There’s something very youthful about this shirt — the colors, the contrast neckline — that says young Suzanna to me.

4. Suzanna needs a new phone case (and so do I).

5. Too obvious to include a jumpsuit for a novel about incarceration? But make it linen, short-sleeved and done in an excellent espresso color.

6. The Hill by Harriet Clark

7. Canvas plimsolls never go out of style.

8. Kate Bush on repeat while reading this.

9. A perfect blue button down to see her through young adulthood (and beyond).

10. This whole look styled by Leandra Medine Cohen for Zara is exactly right, but it’s the long-sleeved polo that is speaking to me for this character.

Hope you’re reading something good 💚