Pun Salad

I added this book to my get-at-library list thanks to its inclusion on the NYT's Best Mystery Novels of 2021 list. Unavailable at Portsmouth Public Library, I used an Interlibrary Loan pick at the University Near Here to get a copy from Brandeis University.

The narrating protagonist is Eve. She's a cocaine-snorting lesbian witch, who sees ghosts, and communicates with a dead friend via text. And, although it was in that "best mysteries" list, there's very little mysterious content here. The friend was a suicide, not a murder faked to look that way. Another friend goes missing, and that worries Eve, but is eventually tracked down unharmed, he just wanted to get away. There's no criminal activity, save for whatever is involved in Los Angeles illicit drug consumption these days.

Honest summary: Eve has a difficult time with relationships, and this book recounts her efforts to sort things out over the space of a few days.

Eve talks about everything. On page 118, a waiter brings her enchiladas, warning her: "Hot plate". And:

When he turned away, I touched the plate with the sides of both of my hands. Whenever a waiter tells me a plate is hot, I have to touch it. I want whatever heat anything is giving off.

Hey, me too! Except I just use one finger, not the sides of my hands. And not for some weird attraction to heat, I just consider what the waiter said to be a dare. Similarly, I watch the blood donation needle go into my arm even after—nay, especially after—the Red Cross phlebotomist tells me that I might not want to.

If you found that last paragraph uninteresting and irrelevant, I don't blame you. And that's the way I felt all through this book, because Eve tells you every single thing that goes through her brain, without regard for relevance or interest.

Eve, and all the other major characters in the book are perpetually on emotional hair-triggers, ready to take offense at each others' actions or remarks. Nobody has a detectable sense of humor. (Although the word "sardonically" appears twice on the back cover description, sorry, that's not the same thing.) Everyone's online, all the time. Except for that missing guy. All in all, the book is not a great advertisement for the Southern California lesbian lifestyle. Eve is not "gay" at all.

But there are a couple explicit lesbian sex scenes. Is that what it takes to get a book banned at Portsmouth Public Library?

So: it's clear that many people like this sort of thing; ratings at Amazon and Goodreads are pretty high. And that NYT reviewer liked it too. But it wasn't my cup of tea.