Worms Best Reads of 2023
Pierce
The Observable Universe by Heather McCalden (forthcoming release by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2024)
TISSUE: MAKING anthology edited by Donna Marcus Duke and Sam Moore
God with Revolver by Rene Ricard
Israel/Palestine and the Queer International by Sarah Schulman
ATMOSPHERES OF VIOLENCE: STRUCTURING ANTAGONISM AND THE TRANS/QUEER UNGOVERNABLE by ERIC A. STANLEY
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
Ingress by Kate Morgan
I start reading Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl on the bus at 5:45am, on the way to the airport, as a distraction from myself to not cry. I imagine it looks either completely pathetic or effortlessly chic of me to be rubbing at my reddening and watering eyes at this time of morning; a sorrowful little simp or a new detritus East London t-girl lewk? Or, I’m just a literary sub. This book instantly rattles around my mouth, I feel it creating a mass on my tongue and as I swallow some of the hilarity inscribed to the pages, everything gets stuck and jammed at the back of my throat. I long to be able to shapeshift the way Paul is able to, our main character that defies gender by transforming as he pleases between male and female; mostly for sexual exploits (which are so terrific), but later in the book for love. There’s a distinct longing that’s drawn up and out of me, I want to be as distinctly magical as him, but for what reason? So much of my own transition has been about the challenges brought up to be either ‘passing’ or — for some, including myself, the distinction of — remaining ‘clockably’ trans. Both feel very punk, but I don’t think I’m safely placed in the aesthetical for now. Do I want to keep my stubble or do I surrender to laser hair removal and burn away the follicles forever? This is a question — not directly, but still resonates — that’s brought up in the novel when Paul falls in love with a strictly dyke4dyke girlfriend. Together, they discuss what it would mean for Paul to return again to his boy-body having (mostly) been transformed to a girl for the basis of their relationship. This, for me anyway, was enough to provoke an onslaught of tears with the thought of never really knowing when the transition will be over; where the desire to play with one's characteristics will ever be sedentary, finding an end. It’s not that I’m actively working toward this, I think at some point (hopefully) it will just be nice to not find myself fully consumed as I am now with my being perceived self. It’s fun to also see it on the page, to feel a sense of liberation as Paul kinda shrugs at the idea of not knowing if he will morph again, whilst negotiating that it’s still an option for him. His partner says it’s in his nature to change, which made me think a lot about the nature — the organic functions — of transness. I wondered if it’s true for all of us that shifting will dominate our lives forever; if when we come into collaboration with things — other systems, people, places — we will find ways of contradicting, juxtaposing, and remolding; if my existence will always be one that is manufactured and engineered by pharmaceutical companies and how my body is at the disposal of doctors to prescribe (or withhold) the care I wish to receive for my body. The best parts in the novel are when Paul uses queer theories to substantiate his attractions to things, when he plays with gender during sex, and recklessly feigns himself to a life of liberatory queerness that’s effortlessly normalised throughout the novel. That’s something I admire about the world that’s been built here by Andrea Lawlor, everything when at its most stable is queer, and what we get to experience as a reader is a character complicated by the gender variability struggles that still exists within queerness itself; through the tribulations of their adapting body and the identity politics surrounding this. In a super un-goash way, Lawlor fills in the delicious trans and gender non-confirming gaps to literature that I haven’t seen or felt before and it felt like a very fortuitous read. My only criticism then, to round out the review, is that I didn’t enjoy the ending. I had a frustrated cry about it, it just didn’t land for me. I don’t mind an unresolved narrative, Imogine Binnie (as I wrote about last month) nailed that, but here it just felt like Paul became meak (?). I loved Robin, a fellow shapeshifter Paul meets, she is a darling, but as they got close to discussing ‘what they are’ and trying to figure the origins of their abilities, it was cut short. Which, maybe is the most trans thing ever (grr, so good so bad), but I wanted more fantasy. Robin offers to mentor Paul, she seems a little more skilled at mimicking people when she shifts her physicality, but that never came either which felt like a shame to see variable people collide. Instead, their relationship was intimately distanced; we also didn’t get the t4t narrative. Spoiler: Paul in the final act of the novel never shapeshifts back into a girl and I found that heartbreaking. I had hoped that maybe there would be a threat to losing his powers, that there would be an ultimate choice to be made, but nothing like that came up. Loved it, I want more Paul.
Arcadia
Raving by McKenzie Wark
This year I “started wearing less and going out more” as the old adage goes, and as I prowled through the London nightlife I was captivated by the spirit that is conjured in these sweaty, dungeon-like spaces. I turned to Wark’s Raving for some intellectual guidance and found so many useful concepts and ideas there that it became an instant favourite.
"Could we have a kind of desire, of ongoingness, that is like a kind of techno? The kind without excessive language, overused. The kind without too much memory. The kind that dances."
Panza de Burro (Dogs of Summer) by Andrea Abreu
This was maybe the second book I read this year and I’ve thought about it every day since. The style of this book is truly unforgettable. Andrea Abreu is such a force, I can’t wait to read whatever she comes out with next.
La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat) by Mario Vargas Llosa
I read this in the Dominican Republic at the start of the year as I went on a two week holiday with my mum. The book is about the Dominican dictator Trujillo and tracks the 24 hours leading up to his assassination. Sometimes life is unfair (Kissinger, Pinochet, Franco) but sometimes people get what’s coming to them.
Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux
Everytime I picked up this book I would spiral. I hope my friends never let me obsess this much over a MAN (ew!). But if I do, they must make sure I write a book as brilliant as this.
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
I also read this while on holiday, to Malaysia, visiting my brother. There were twists and turns right till the last page. Such an artfully woven narrative, navigating themes like age, war and love but also broaching the topics of Malaysian history, the art of Japanese gardens and so much more. Thoroughly, thoroughly moved by this book.
clem
Eat Your Mind by Jason Mcbride
The Other Side: A Journey into Women, Art and the Spirit World by Jennifer Higgie
Bard, Kinetic by Anne Waldman
Remembered Rapture, the Writer at Work by bell hooks
Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko
I’ve had a fabulous year of reading this year. I’ve not QUITE hit my Goodreads goal of 60, but I’m 10 off and I’m determined that I’ll get there by the end of the year. I actually had to look back on my goodreads to remember which books I had read this year, and given Remembered Rapture is now the book that I have donned my all-time-favourite, I guess that makes this my best year of reading?
Caitlin
Your Love is Not Good by Johanna Hedva
Joanna Hedva is one of my favourite contemporary writers and their latest novel about a Korean American artist navigating the pageantry and slipperiness of the contemporary art world did not disappoint. And while it has its fair share of some pretty insufferable characters, Your Love is Not Good is peppered with moments of serene clarity and razor sharp observation. It's cutting and funny and insightful, though the big questions that it asks around identity, class and art remain largely unanswered, perhaps because they are largely unanswerable.
This Ragged Grace by Octavia Bright
This was one of my favourite reads of the year for its wisdom and honestly. Though it’s at times a tough read, charting Bright’s ongoing recovery from alcoholism and her father’s diagnosis and ultimate decline into Alzheimer’s, it’s also an incredibly generous and hopeful book. It weaves bits of theory and the work of artists such as Louise Bourgeois alongside Octavia’s experience of renewal, grief and coming to terms with change. She often finds herself turning to the rhythms and tides of the natural world, finding solace but also expansiveness and challenge. I interviewed Octavia for Worms 8 where we discussed This Ragged Grace, her writing practice and the idea of ‘taking things lightly’ and how that can be a radical act in itself.
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner
I also had the pleasure of chatting to Isabel Waidner for Worms 8 about their latest novel that follows the plight of working class writer Corey Fah as they attempt to redeem the trophy awarded to them as the 2024 winner of ‘The Award for the Fictionalisation of Social Evils.’ It’s characteristically wild and irreverent, a crazy, slightly unhinged journey through wormholes and many temporal dimensions. It’s also, as with all Waidner’s books, hilarious and in our conversation we got into the power of humour as a mode of relating to the world, particularly as a queer or working class person.
Eat you Mind, The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker by Jason McBride
Like Clem this was also one of my top reads from this year. McBride handles Kathy like a younger sibling, equal parts love, protectiveness and a melodramatic eye roll, constructing an incomplete picture of an insanely creative, troubled, kind, bratty, anxious, tenacious, vulnerable, neurotic, selfish, prolific, wild and gentle person. She seemed to perform a different self to different people, sometimes warm and cuddly, sometimes manipulative and callous – it’s clear that in her work and life she always divided opinion. But I love how McBride takes her work seriously, reads it closely and uses it as the framework to understand her anarchic yet boundlessly creative life. I feel like this is what she would have wanted.
Outlaw Culture by bell hooks
Though I don’t always agree with all of hook’s points and ideas here, I love her fierce precision throughout (there’s a particularly scathing chapter about Madonna which is a fun and insightful read). She pulls no punches, but you do get the impression that she’s always willing to have her mind changed – if the case is good enough. The main assertion in Outlaw Culture, that “to claim border crossing, the mixing of high and low, cultural hybridity, as the deepest expression of a desired cultural practice within multicultural democracy means that we must dare to envision ways such freedom of movement can be experienced by everyone,” feels like a timeless and essential proverb to live by.
Enya
My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley
Lovebug by Daisy Lafarge
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcom
Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm
This year of reading I seem to have plummeted into murky, dark and mystical waters. Sometimes this darkness has been hilarious, such as Gwendoline Riley’s My Phantoms, in which a very dull and millennial narrator recounts awkward and painful encounters with her parents throughout her life. Riley’s use of speech holds this book so well, her characters speak in a way that is cutting and yet hilarious in their accuracy. Whereas Lovebug enters the woozy spaces between religion, infection, love and psychoanalysis to show how our lives are so fragile and infectious. Malcom’s curt prose allows us to peer into the weird lives and minds of 1980’s New York’s most esteemed Psychoanalysts. Strega doesn’t lift the veil but rather throws the reader into a misty and obtuse world that thrums between the horror of Twin Peaks’ The Red Room and The Virgin Suicides. I feel in good, and yet heartbroken company, with Pierce that we have both put Minor Detail on our list. It is a novel of in-between-lines horror, focusing on action rather than speech or feeling. These actions are of pure horror, the reader cannot feel at all comfortable, and especially now, we shouldn’t. I’m reminded of the opening line ‘Nothing moved except the mirage’. To me, it reads a call to try to name things, to raise consciousness and question the power of those who try to rewrite the history of Palestine. P.S: Sorry for my digital bookstack !! I’m out of London and also get books from the library a lot.
