Dispatches from the Girl Cave
Article by staff
We all know about Man Caves, those oases of masculinity in the predominately female domestic space, equipped with stereotypically macho decor and entertainment. The gender geography of Brazos Bookstore has turned this cultural idea on its head with the Girl Cave, our tongue-in-cheek name for the back-of-store nerve-center run by Augusta, Brooke, and Ülrika. Augusta manages inventory, Brooke oversees returns and shipping, and Ülrika covers everything from gift buying to various programs for our many young readers. And somehow, despite all the hours they put in to keep the bookstore’s blood pumping, they find time to do some serious amounts of reading. In this week’s Brazos Book List, we’re doing some literary spelunking, rappelling into the learned depths of our beloved Girl Cave. Check out these recent recommendations, on our shelves now!
Augusta recommends:
The entire time I was reading this book I kept thinking, ‘She shouldn’t be pulling this off!’ but she does. And it’s magnificent. At the heart of MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON is a quiet story of redemption between Lucy and her mother, who comes to look after her while she recovers from surgery. What makes this book so compelling? Probably Lucy’s strong narrative voice and her firm claims like, for example, if the conditions are exactly right you can hear the corn grow. Can you hear the corn grow? I don’t know, but this book really good.
This is one of our recent staff favorites, a new novel translated from Korean that is getting a lot of attention. A woman starts having eerie dreams and they inspire something unconventional by Korean standards—to become a vegetarian. But this sets off a bizarre downward spiral, and it’s creepy to watch her slip into madness and how her family reacts to that. THE VEGETARIAN is broken into three sections, each focused on a different family member watching her lose her mind. From a cultural perspective, vegetarianism is not very big in Korea, so by not eating meat, she’s dishonoring her husband, her family, on and on, which adds onto her another layer of guilt. As you turn the pages, you watch her spiral out of control and never come back.
THE LOST DAUGHTER begins as a story about a woman finding freedom in middle age. After her daughters leave Italy to go live with their father in Canada, the protagonist is surprised to feel relief, rather than sadness. She decides to celebrate by taking a vacation to the south. For a few days, she is relishing her new life, but when she meets a strange family her trip takes a dark turn. Elena Ferrante is the it-woman of contemporary international fiction, and this is one of her best books. I love it.
