Book Report: Topics of Conversation

19. Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation (2020) (4/5/21)

This is another in a series of books I've read lately by smart women with a contemporary literary style of experimentalism. Think Jenny Offill, Eula Biss, or perhaps especially Rachel Cusk with her mostly nameless narrator (as here) who engages in illuminating conversations (ditto, somewhat). 

I picked this one up because Merriam-Webster, the dictionary, is starting a "book thing," and this is their first choice. "Edgy, wry, and written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism," they say, "this novel introduces an audacious and immensely gifted new novelist."

Well, maybe. I definitely appreciated (much of) the writing skill and the edginess of the subject matter. I did not, however, fall anywhere near in love, or even like, with the narrator or her friends, family, and acquaintances.

The book plays out over 17 years, starting with a conversation in Italy when the 21-year-old narrator is nannying a 40-something's 7-year-old twins, and the mother tells a story about an earlier love affair that wasn't all nice. That sets the tone for the following nine chapters, which move forward chronologically and back to the U.S.—mostly California, here and there. And yes, many of the subsequent chapters also have to do with sex, control, desire, shame, yearning, as told in conversations, or rather, usually, monologues. It's the story, I guess you'd say, of the narrator's grappling with "what it all means." How to find one's center. How to move forward, if that's even possible. It's bold, and not always comfortable. Or successful.

Although I didn't especially like the book, I guess I'm glad I read it. I can't quite put my finger on what the problem was with the narrator and those she had conversations with. The brutal honesty didn't lead to revelations? The self-loathing didn't lift? It was all too heady and calculated, without enough heart? The narrator knew she was "the smartest one in the room"? Overall, there was a harshness to the lessons learned that I didn't find redemptive. Though then again, maybe that's just life? We don't actually live in a fictional universe where all the threads get pulled together.

Oh, and in the first eight chapters alcohol is a consistent crutch. That doesn't help.

At the very end, the last chapter or two, I finally got a sense that the narrator might—after having become a mother—actually have softened and discovered some agency, so I did finish the book feeling some relief. But it felt like too little too late.

For the quotation that I like to include in my reports, here's this, which gets at the overall sourness, though here it's also a little sad. She's talking with her mother, who has just bought a jade plant and several bouquets:

"Leads on any jobs?" [her mother asks]. I shrugged again. It's the flowers I hate, fresh bunches almost every day, tossed, fine, composted, before any hint of wilt, like bright blooms aren't a luxury, like they're some kind of need. When we argue about the flowers, the arguments I make are about waste and about money, valid arguments both. Though in fact what I hate about the flowers is that they are, for my mother, a source of pleasure, that my mother believes in allowing herself pleasure, in indulging her various material desires. What I hate about the flowers is that they are an example of the many ways in which my mother extends her kindness also to herself. 

I most likely won't be picking up Popkey again . . .