Favorite Things April Edition
Ripley, The Tree Doctor, and Mètaclef
Favorite show right now
Ripley
I’ve been watching the new show Ripley and it’s so gorgeous I have to recommend it! Photographed in black and white with a huge depth of field, it means that every detail is sharp and textured — and we’re talking about Italy in 1960 so that means every mosaic tile, every stone, every carving on a picture frame just begs to be looked at. And they are using actual locations, not soundstages, and you can tell.
Normally all this might distract you from the acting but no. The actors (Andrew Scott from Fleabag and Sherlock; Dakota Fanning, and Johnny Flynn) are all understated and extremely skilled at doing the minimum and revealing the maximum.
Just watch it.
What I’m Reading
The Tree Doctor by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Such an unusual book. Set during the pandemic and fires in California it’s eerily familiar since it’s so recently specific.
The premise: a fifty year old Japanese-American woman who grew up in California and lives in Hong Kong with her husband and two kids flies back to California regularly to help her declining mother and ultimately place her in a care facility. On one of these trips, the lockdown occurs and she can’t get back to her family, nor can she see her mom in the care facility. She is alone in her childhood home with its huge garden full of trees and plants and teaching a class remotely to university students about the oldest novel ever written, The Tale of Genji. I love a book that includes another book within it. It’s something I can’t ever resist.
At the plant nursery she meets a man who takes care of trees. Her isolation and his fascination with her garden leads to a strange ‘pandemic affair’. Part nature writing, part erotic novel, part California literature, this book will change into something else the second you think you know what it is. And yet, it’s so interior and familiar, that it feels like you are listening to someone you know telling you their most personal thoughts. And it’s so physical that you can almost feel them too.
Metàclef Writers at Lit Crawl Sebastopol
I’ll be reading some of my recent work at Lit Crawl on Saturday, April 13 at 2pm. Here is the schedule.
What our name means
“‘Metàclef’ is a portmanteau of meta and à clef (from the term roman à clef — literally a “book with a key” — which fictionalizes purportedly real events. The meta aspect refers to the self-conscious deconstruction of the work's invention by the presence of the author themselves. Subgenres of Metàclef fiction may include the ‘mem-noir,’ ‘narra-natrix,’ or ‘loca-lore.’”