january 2022: gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss
Happy New Year!
Lunar New Year is on February 1st this year, and as this year is the Year of the Tiger and the tiger is one of the luckier animals on the zodiac, I’m hoping for some good luck for us all given that we’ve started off this year with a new covid variant sweeping much of the world.
I’ve called this month’s theme ‘gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss’ because the books I’ve been reading recently seem to fall into one or more of those categories and because I can’t resist a good meme.
The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time by Maria Konnikova
This is a nonfiction book breaking down the different tricks and techniques con artists use to get in our heads and fool us. If you’re familiar with behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow on heuristics and ways our minds jump to conclusions prematurely to save energy, The Confidence Game is written is a similar vein, although it is certainly more practical. Konnikova cites examples ranging from serial impostor Ferdinand “Fred” Demara giving ‘fake it until you make it’ a new meaning as he performed surgery on actual humans without any medical education and only a book (amazingly, they all came out of the operating room in better shape than they came in) to the art world shaking scandal of Glafira Rosales passing off fake Abstract Expressionist paintings—that’s Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, etc.—as real for decades to sommelier Rudy Kurniawan passing off fake wines as real. All fascinating stuff.
Given I had seen both Sour Grapes, an excellent documentary on Kurniawan, and Made You Look, the Netflix documentary on Rosales and the forged paintings, I was probably fated to read The Confidence Game. Last year, I also watched the Netflix-produced anime The Great Pretender, which is about a group of international con men and was a fantastic watch. After reading The Confidence Game, it’s clear that the people behind The Great Pretender did their research on exactly how cons operate: the little details, from how you need at least two people to lure in the target and then give them an offer they can’t refuse, are pretty much accurate. The Great Pretender is also the first time I’ve seen someone going through an In-N-Out drive thru in an anime, so it’s worth watching just for that too.
Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper
This is my pick for a light, funny Valentine’s Day ready romance! Payback’s a Witch is a sapphic witch romance novel that’s what you get if you turned Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’s Triwizard Tournament into a sapphic rom-com and replaced Voldemort with an evil gaslighting ex-boyfriend. Payback’s a Witch’s heroine Emmy Harlow is a former witch from Thistle Grove, a small town in Illinois home to witches, but she moved up to Chicago for college after being dumped by Gareth Blackmoore, the evil ex-boyfriend, and now works at a startup. She returns to her hometown to help run the magical contest between the four families that founded the town and falls head over heels for Talia Avramov, a witch from the Avramov family, which means she’s an edgelord goth LOL. She too has been scorned by Gareth Blackmoore, who is a nasty piece of work, so they team up and come up with a plan to get revenge.
Payback’s a Witch is a lot of fun to read and was funny and cute. I liked the take on modern-day witches and how they fit into the modern world, and Emmy was a fun, likeable protagonist. Lana Harper is actually coming out with another book set in the same world later this year, and I’ll be checking it out once the library gets ahold of it!
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro has stated on record that When We Were Orphans, his take on the detective novel first published in 2000, isn’t his best work, so I went into this with tempered expectations. To give a brief rundown: Christopher Banks, is a British detective in the 1930s who grew up in Shanghai until returning to England an orphan. He decides to return to Shanghai to investigate what happened to his parents—or so he claims.
When We Were Orphans is less of a detective novel and more Ishiguro referencing and then throwing away the classic tropes that make a detective novel a detective novel, though that wasn’t entirely clear to me until I reached the last 20% of the book. The settings of both England and Shanghai were depicted in a way that I could imagine them in my head. Christopher interacts with very few named characters who are Chinese in both past and present despite a good chunk of the book taking place in, well, China, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the experience of British expatriates to Shanghai given the time period and Christopher’s sheltered upbringing. As typical of Ishiguro, if you’re interested in reading, my tip is to avoid spoiling yourself beforehand because figuring out what exactly the narrator’s self-delusion is and how deep it goes is half the fun of reading as you get deeper into their heads, and boy does Christopher Banks make it fun.
The book starts out slow, but the incredibly disturbing ending takes the meandering of the first half and makes it obvious why it had to be so slow for the novel to work. I think Never Let Me Go did a better job at balancing being both horrifically disturbing yet slice-of-life tranquil. Never Let Me Go would be my first recommendation to anyone who hasn’t read Ishiguro before, but did I enjoy When We Were Orphans despite the flaws and a few major twists (if you’ve read it, I’m talking about what Uncle Phillip talks to Christopher about) that are IMO barely believable in a strict historical sense? Yes. Absolutely. I did enjoy reading When We Were Orphans, and it left me wondering if I’ve ever gaslit myself even half as badly as Christopher Banks does to himself. Which, given the blind spots talked about in The Confidence Game, there’s a nonzero chance of.
That’s all for January! Stay safe out there, everyone :)
tina