Good reads by Phoebe Holden of @lessboysmorebooks for summer
It’s hard not to pick up everything Phoebe Holden recommends on her instagram page @lessboysmorebooks, including her podcast and tv show recommendations. And undoubtedly and most obviously, Phoebe herself has an unrivalled taste in pop culture, style and great books. So, when we asked her to share her first reads for summer months, she did not disappoint. Over to you, Phoebe
My year of rest and relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh
This book (which I’m sure you all saw plastered everywhere a few years ago) is a painfully funny and ungraceful view of privilege. Some think it is strange or overrated, I have read it maybe 4 times and adore it. The lead character/narrator is an unnamed, self absorbed twenty-something art history grad living in New York. She is totally obsessed with herself, she’s beautiful and lazy with a dark family history and an infuriating but sort of wonderful alcoholic friend called Reva (who she treats like shit). Most people I talk to find her repulsive, I find her sort of amazing. She’s a tragic trust fund baby completely bored of the world and struggling to get over her toxic ex boyfriend. She has a bat shit crazy psychologist who is happy to give her a prescription for anything and everything 24/7, the year of rest and relaxation is a chemical hibernation (she literally puts herself to sleep, dosing herself enough to only need to wake up to use the bathroom and eat from time to time) She has it all but she also has nothing, this book is bleak in the best possible way. I find her embarrassingly relatable at times, I mean don’t we all secretly wish we could just sleep through periods of life? no? That could just be my wavering mental health talking….I’d get too many UTI’s for that to be realistic anyway.
“Reva was only a week older than me. On August 20, 2000, I turned twenty-five in my apartment in a medicated haze, smoking stale menthols on the toilet and reading an old Architectural Digest. At some point I fumbled in my makeup drawer for eyeliner to circle the things on the pages I found appealing—the blank corners of rooms. I heard my cell phone ring but I didn’t answer it. “Happy birthday” Reva said “I love you”
Insatiable - Daisy Buchanan
This is such a great, horny summer read. Filthy and so funny yet so much depth, it follows Violet a 28 year old living in London and hating her job. She meets a chic couple at an art exhibition who offer her a role at their start up leading her down all sorts of crazy paths. Violet is so loveable, she accidentally applies for said job with her current work email and constantly throws out great little quips like “my heart can take an emotional pounding, but my skin is not game” She is very relatable, booking champagne dinners for her boss knowing she has just enough money in her account to get a can of coke for lunch (as long as she goes to the shady dairy that splits four packs to sell individually) this book jarring yet really delicate at times, you will go from cracking up to welling up multiple times.
“I had grown up believing the female body was a problem to be solved”
Sorrow and bliss - Meg Mason
I cried a lot reading this book. A raw, honest, laugh-out-loud funny and totally heartbreaking experience of a woman struggling with an undiagnosed mental illness. This is the most accurate text on the reality of crushing mental health I have ever read, the entire way through you just want to hold the narrator and tell her she’s going to be okay. You 100% feel Martha’s bewilderment and agony of not being able to figure out what she is going through, or how to express it properly. Martha is 40, her marriage has ended so she is forced to move back home with her distant poet father and alcoholic mother. Her husband Patrick is sweet-natured and has loved her forever, you truely feel it in your heart every time she (brutally) pushes him away
‘Utterly’ he said ‘I loved you utterly’
Martha is desperate for a baby but a doctor tells her it isn’t safe due to her medication, she doesn’t look into this further and it crushes her silently throughout the book. Seeing the end of Martha and Patricks marriage is awful but even worse is watching Martha realise once it's too late. I love this book so much, it’s such a special read and a real sense of comfort for anyone who has been labeled “crazy” when they were just trying to figure it all out
“Ideally, Martha, you want to figure out the reason why you keep burning your own house down”
“Everything is broken and messed up and completely fine. That is what life is. It’s only the ratios that change. Usually on their own. As soon as you think that’s it, it’s going to be like this forever, they change again.” That is what life was, and how it continued for three years after that. The ratios changing on their own, broken, completely fine, a holiday, a leaking pipe, new sheets, happy birthday, a technician between nine and three, a bird flew into the window, I want to die, please, I can’t breathe, I think it’s a lunch thing, I love you, I can’t do this anymore, both of us thinking it would be like that forever.”
Year of the Monkey - Patti Smith
This book was so lovely to read. A unique memoir on a transformative year, traveling across the US contemplating life and death. It felt like being invited into her mind, it is so intimate and lovely. Landscape meets dreamscape. The beginning and end link together so perfectly, I was gutted when it was over. It was heart breaking but more so beautiful, slightly religious in a way that for me was appealing for the first time. I love the horses references and everything she eats - how it is described (eggs and ham, sausages and plums) One of my very best friends Laura gave me this for Christmas and it truely did feel like friendship to read. It toe’s the line between memoir and poetry, I finished reading this alone in a restaurant and recommend you do the same.
“Here’s what I know, Sam is dead. My brother is dead. My mother is dead. My father is dead. My husband is dead. … Yet still I keep thinking that something wonderful is about to happen.”
Greta and Valdin - Rebecca K Reilly
Another book you have probably seen everywhere and for good reason. Greta and Valdin has some of the best characters, you fall in love with each and every one of them for entirely different reasons. A heartwarming novel on modern family dynamics. Set in Aotearoa you can immerse yourself in the text and live each characters experience which makes for an even more enjoyable read. Greta and Valdin are siblings, he is the queer over-thinking middle child. She the equally queer baby of the family. Both characters struggle to navigate love and loss, Greta is assertive and hilarious but it’s Valdin I truely fell for. An awkward genius with a pure and gentle heart pining for his ex boyfriend Xabi. (who once drove around Auckland in a Ute but now drives around Buenos Aires in one) All of the scenes describing the family/family dynamics are so interesting and wonderful, I was desperate to be invited for dinner by the end.
*contains spoiler below
‘I love lilacs so much. I love Albania. I never thought I would feel like this. I never thought the happiness I could feel would be with my head on your chest watching dash cam videos of people all over the world lying on the ground pretending they got hit for insurance money. I love you so much. All I want in my life is for us to be together with Nes and maybe a turtle, if he wants, and maybe a dog, if you want, because you should have what you want and I hope that what you want is me and I hope you want me to be the father of your child because thats what I really want. Xabi. Will you marry me?’
‘Valdin —‘
‘Because all good if not, that’s chill’ I put my hand up to my jaw to stop a tear running down my neck
‘yes’
‘are you sure?’
Not that kind of girl - Lena Dunham
I adore Lena Dunham, some people consider her controversial - I think she is a genius. When it comes to Nepo babies, she is the best of the best. Razor-sharp wit, incredibly intelligent, thick skinned and brutal only to herself. She is brilliant and it shines through every one of these self exposing essays. This was something I read when I was a fair bit younger but I still love it just as much. It got me through two break ups and countless fall outs with friends. It is funny, jarring, relatable and outrageous. If you have watched her hit HBO series GIRLS you will adore this as Hannah is both inspired and played by Lena so this is essentially the same (you should also be sure to watch her first film Tiny Furniture) “There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman.”
'I still love you’ he says ‘but I have to go my own way’
‘so you want to break up?’ I ask, trembling.
‘I guess so’ he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging. Later my mother comes home from a party and finds me catatonic, lying across the bed, surrounded by pictures of him and me, the mittens he bought me for Christmas folded beneath my cheek.
“you will find,” she says “that there’s a certain grace to having your heart broken.”
I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it.”
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman
This might be the most heartwarming book I have ever read, a sweet and funny novel about the survivor of childhood trauma. Eleanor works in an office and speaks to no-one, they all think she is a freak and she has no interest in any of them. Over the weekends she passes time with vodka and takeaway pizza. She is rude and socially offbeat but totally oblivious to it. She sees a photo of a pop star and decides he could make a suitable first boyfriend (think 12 year old girl going to a Harry Styles concert assuming he will see her in the crowd and propose) she goes about preparing herself mentally and physically for their first “date” and along the way makes her first real friend. The book is witty and charming, Eleanor Oliphant is painfully awkward in the best possible way, walking in her suitable, supportive shoes will leave you grinning from ear to ear.
“No thank you,” I said. “I don’t want to accept a drink from you, because then I would be obliged to purchase one for you in return, and I’m afraid I’m simply not interested in spending two drinks’ worth of time with you.”
Images & Words : Phoebe Holden
