Stranger Things

On ruptured identity and the slow rebuilding of a life

Thank goodness it’s finally February because January felt like it was 487 days long. It has been outrageously quiet at the bookstore. Aside from the UPS guy, I barely see a single person. So, even though I am dreading the inevitable bugs that will pop up like a game of whack-a-mole, I am also thrilled to finally get a new everything: a new system, a new and infinitely improved way to order books from publishers, and a new website where you’ll get to browse current releases and best sellers and whatever curated book lists I’m inspired to create.

I get it, people are post-holiday poor and sticking to New Year’s resolutions to budget be responsible. But I’m hoping a functional website will be a game changer. For the first time since opening the doors, customers will have shopping options beyond the scope of my 250 sq ft store!! Glorious. Now, to figure out shipping!

Remember how all of our photos used to have that washed out Instagram filter??

I’m sure the random and frequent crying this past week has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my baby, Faye, is turning nine. In addition to a tea party with some friends, she has asked for two things: a hamster and pierced ears. And, because I cannot be trusted to read things like dimensions, there is a now a box the size of her entire room leaning against the side of our house. It’s apparently the world’s largest hamster cage.

So, I will assemble the cage and find not-a-Claire’s to get her ears pierced and watch my baby grow up before my very eyes. Cue the waterworks!!

• The only thing I want to wear right now. Andrew is so jelly of my extreme comfort. Waffle pants and matching shirt.

• My size is already long sold out (even though these dropped on Saturday) but that won’t stop me from pining for this outrageously cool ring.

• A Blueberry Olive Oil Snacking Cake for a little sweetness anytime of day.

• Amy Poehler’s podcast with Claire Danes was a total delight. I love her enormously. Also, Jordan Catalano forever.

• His & Hers may not be the most high-brow television, but boy was it entertaining. The weird female relationships of Hunting Wives meets the gruesome menace of Under the Bridge.

• While the east coast is pummeled by snow, we’ve been having a bizarrely warm start to the year. 70 degree January days means that I’ve been reaching for my favorite lightweight Doen blouse (mine is a discontinued cerulean blue). The cost per wear must be now-redundant pennies.

• Hello, spring! Adding these cropped cotton pants to the rotation.

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden

As someone who has been working on a memoir for the past few years — I signed up for an online writing class during the pandemic and fell in love — I am ashamed to admit that I don’t read a lot in that genre. Fiction is escapist which tends to be what I crave right before bed.

But, drumroll, I finally wrote my query letter and have been thinking about comps that aren’t more than five years old, the threshold stipulated by my brilliant editor. Phyllis Grant’s Everything is Under Control coupled with Zauner’s Crying in H Mart are the closest, but they were both published in 2020 so no dice. As we were brainstorming, a customer pre-ordered Belle Burden’s Strangers — an instant bestseller — and I immediately added a copy for myself. Let me tell you, I tore through it. I cried, I gasped, I was gobsmacked by the casual descriptions of extreme wealth, I was enraged and empathetic.

The memoir opens in 2020 at the beginning of the Covid lockdown when Belle’s husband of 20+ years announces that he wants a divorce. It comes out of nowhere and he abandons Belle and two of their children at their second home on Martha’s Vineyard (!). This loving husband leaves without so much as a backward glance.

Where our two stories overlap is in the wild rupturing of identity. We are both betrayed, her by her husband, me by my body. I recognized, intimately, the collapse of a former life and the slow, disorienting work of rebuilding a self from inside that loss. There is grief and there is hope.

I cried reading about Belle’s eldest daughter learning to cook for, wanting to nourish her mother. I nodded when she said she felt like an outsider at school pickup and social gatherings, like people were whispering about her. The sense of unfairness, like she had been denied a life that was all but promised.

Food dots the pages, which you know I love. As does nature. A sense of place. And, though it takes time, it was glorious watching a woman own her hunger. A hunger she didn’t even know she had.

1. The world’s coolest tennis stuff for weekends at the country club.

2. It’s Martha’s Vineyard, people! Of course there’s an L.L. Bean Boat & Tote.

3. I could relate to so many of Belle’s coping mechanisms, like using jigsaw pieces to quiet a riotous mind. Something sweet like this French Flower Garden would be nice.

4. A preppy oversized shirt in a classic banker blue as a nod to her hedge fund husband.

5. Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden

6. Who are we kidding? All of her sweaters are almost certainly impossibly soft Jenni Kayne’s.

7. Belle and her daughters dig for clams and then turn them into Linguine Vongole. Alison Roman’s version would really take things up a notch.

8. Belle also takes long walks, something I’ve done for years as a sort of moving meditation. She wears Blundstones, which I found fascinating.

9. Until summer rolls around, Belle can be found in jeans and a sweater. The fit, the wash, the waistline — these Madewell’s are classic, classic, classic.

10. Lab-cut white sapphires for that quiet luxury feel.

Sending lots of 💚

Hope you’re reading something good.