books we love – Pop Fiction Women

Have you ever experienced fate with a book?

Fate intervened to put Cat Steadman’s work in my hands at the right moment. Why hadn’t I read SOMETHING IN THE WATER before? It was published in 2017, not so old to be classic or vintage, but also not new. Nor can I claim it was obscure, since it was an early Reese Book Club selection. All I can say is it was fate that someone recommended this book to me after reading an excerpt of my current work-in-progress. And now that I’ve finished, I want to build a statue in honor of that person. What high praise!

NO SPOILERS in this review.

Another twist of fate: because it was personally recommended to me I bought it without reading the book jacket copy. Have you ever done this? It can be a real game changer. The first time I got lucky in this way was with the Secret Life of AJ Fikry. I was so glad I didn’t read the back cover before I finished that delightful book. Marketing people care more about you buying the book than enjoying the book and sometimes, though not often, this interferes with the reading experience.

The first 100 pages of Cat Steadman’s debut explores a relationship slowly breaking under the stress of life, while also building towards this same couple’s wedding. I had no idea what was coming at that point. I didn’t even realize that they would literally see “something in the water”, let alone have any indication of the havoc it would wreak on their relationship. The last 240 pages dovetail the relationship troubles with the “something in the water incident.”

Here’s what works: the pacing. I could NOT put this book down. I walked around with it. I stayed up too late and woke up too early with it. I found myself saying things like “I probably have time for one page right now” twenty times a day.

Here’s what also works: the contortion of the unreliable narrator device. This book is written in very very close first person. We are thinking with — and as — Erin, the wife. She is confused at times, about what she should do, about who is on her side, about who she needs to fear. And as a result we feel confused, but our reading brain alerts us that we’ve seen this before. There’s a little twinge that says, hey, brain, maybe ERIN is the one we shouldn’t be trusting with this account of things. Erin proves to be unreliable only in the way all humans are, she misses cues and puts on blinders, but she’s never fooling the reader, even when we feel like she might be intentionally leading us astray. The result is a captivating story that keeps the psychological thriller reader on her toes.

Here’s what doesn’t work: that phrase might be a stretch. The whole book works. BUT I really struggled with the last quarter section before the ending (it resolves well). This is the period in most books when things go over-the-top. People are murdered by the numbers, or in wild ways, or all hell breaks loose. Writers and editors call this raising the stakes. If you’ve been raising the stakes throughout the book, by the time you get towards the ending things should be at preposterous levels. You need that in order to force resolution. It can often be the most eye-rolling part of a novel, but subconsciously it might be necessary, or at least it’s expected in certain genres. Cat Steadman keeps it cool though. There’s a final confrontation that does get a little wild, but maybe it’s not wild enough. Or maybe it’s undercut by the opening scene where we know she’s burying a body.

Here’s what also works: exactly what I said didn’t work above. Honestly, it’s hard to say. After all, I’m still thinking about this book. It was exceptional. Maybe that’s the best thing to aim for?

DON’T skip it: if you’ve heard comparisons with Gone Girl and you hated Aimee Dunne. Erin isn’t Aimee at all. In some moments she feels like it, but she’s not.

DO skip it: if you aren’t interested in the slow descent of relationships, and the question, when DID we start to go bad?

BONUS: Something In The Water was written by the prolific working British actress, Catherine Steadman, most famous in the US for her role as Mabel Lane Fox on Downton Abbey. Cat recently released her third novel, THE DISAPPEARING ACT. I already bought it and have it sitting near the top of my TBR pile!

This is a “highly recommend” from me. The concept and the execution are incredibly strong.

It’s been weeks since Kate and I recorded our Little Fires Everywhere episode, and it’s one I can’t stop turning over in my mind. Actually, “turning over” is the wrong phrase to describe it. Thoughts of that episode pierce my thoughts, swirl around my mind like a hurricane, cloud my brain like steam from a laundromat vent.

Specifically, these disruptive thoughts revolve around our conversation about the Little Fires Love Triangle of Pearl, Moody and Trip.

Kate wondered if Pearl and Trip were keeping the intimate relationship a secret because Trip was ashamed of having sex with Pearl. Kate seemed to suggest that Pearl would have no reason to want to keep it a secret. Or she might even want people to know, because Trip is a catch. But she was mainly focused on the hardest gray area — that because the result of them wanting to keep the relationship a secret, that the lying that came from it was unequivocally wrong no matter the reasons behind it.

In our debate, Kate was firmly #teamMoody (over #teamTrip) but I saw it differently. I was all in for #teamPearl. I saw her agency and I understood the unstated rationale behind her actions. I vehemently defended Pearl’s right to keep the secret with Trip, even if it meant lying to Moody.

But my defense didn’t sit well with me, like a raspberry seed in between two molars. So I spent time unpacking why we — or really, I — had relationships or encounters that I wanted kept secret. Well, there’s probably too many reasons to mention, but the ones I want to explore deeply come around what it means to be a high school girl.

Is there anything wrong with a young girl (Pearl is 15, a sophomore in high school) wanting intimate experience? Kate and I would agree that there isn’t, but in reality society is uncomfortable with a young girl exploring her growing sexuality. And that begins at puberty, an age which terrifies people.

Is there anything wrong with a young girl wanting intimate experience without telling everyone?

Of course I would say no, right? That’s what I said about Pearl in our Little Fires episode. And I said that because I have kept secrets without there being any internal shame. I wasn’t embarrassed about what I was doing, and neither was my partner.

A girl with instincts, openness and interest in intimacy, should be allowed to safely and wisely explore those feelings. But doing it in the open? That’s so much more complicated. I don’t think I realized how much shame was coming from the outside — that I’d learned that it was easier, and had better results, if I kept it a secret. That’s how to avoid what I called high school, but is now referred to as “slut shaming.”

Here was a high school scenario for me: I hook up with a guy — at a party, after school, in private. It is assumed we have sex, because why else would you be discreet about it? What other reason do you go “find a room”? If you lock yourself in the bathroom, it’s because you’re having sex. If you meet up with no one around and don’t tell anyone, it’s because you’re having sex.

It seems a high school girl can’t do anything besides make-out in front of a crowd and have sex.

That’s because there’s very little articulated in between. Not in movies, TV shows, even on social media where there are tons of overt and cliched “sexy” pictures with no reference to what one might do with that sexiness, or how it might feel. No mention of touching breasts, of finding erogenous zones around ears or behind knees, of skin to skin, of writhing around with your clothes on (the health class 101 “dry humping” thanks for the reminder, Lady Bird). These were all such normal parts of my high school experiences, but they are rarely portrayed or discussed. I wonder if it’s because adults lose sight of these “in between” phases or whether it’s because in high school not everyone feels free to explore them. I understand why.

I did explore these feelings and as a result was on more than one occasion excluded from parties, the focus of some nasty gossip, the target of hurled insults. One night, our school did a charity “fashion show” and I wore the borrowed dress of an upperclassman. First of all, I had been specifically forbidden to wear anything she donated for the show because she thought I was a slut. I did it anyway, and she confronted me, made a huge scene about it. Apparently, now the dress was ruined because it had touched my disgusting used body. I was a fifteen year old virgin.

Thankfully, this is where I really developed my “give zero f*cks” muscle. I had no choice but to learn how to move forward with labels like slut and tease (yes, both). Part of the lesson I learned was not caring about what other people said about me. But also, part of the lesson was learning to keep things a secret. All secrets require lying.

I suppose there will still be people who say instead of lying I should have changed my behavior. What I wished I could have changed was other people’s interest in the things I did in private. But I couldn’t. And not exploring physical intimacy felt more wrong than lying to protect myself.

It was in those encounters that I learned what felt good to me and what didn’t feel good. In fact, I learned how to FEEL good, and I learned it in a way that didn’t come from how I looked or how I acted. In intimate acts I was trying to please no one but myself. I learned to direct my partners. I learned to be fully in my body. I learned to let go.

I also learned how to say no. I learned to say stop. To say stop for now, to say stop forever, to say stop for today, even if another day we went farther. To the same extent that I wasn’t trusted and believed outside of intimacy, my partners were the opposite. They respected my word and accepted it. Some people might be able to get all those experiences with one partner. I’m okay if you call me a slow learner. It’s better than the alternatives.

But this WAS about Pearl, Moody and Trip. And I still have questions.

How much do you think Pearl was motivated to keep the secret knowing that other girls in school would call her a slut or a gold digger or a social climber?

Does Moody deserve the truth in a way that would force Pearl to tell him about the relationship against her desire? If Pearl felt she could not break the secret of her intimate relationship with Trip, should she have ended her friendship with Moody rather than lie about her whereabouts when she was with Trip? Should she have told and suffered the consequences? What if the consequences were cruel or unfair retaliation?

As the premiere of the TV adaptation of Little Fires Everywhere approaches, I am nervous about how this love triangle will be portrayed. I desperately hope they will give Pearl even more agency and empowerment rather than stepping into cliches and out-dated tropes.