A Bridge Too Far ... On Alex Pretti by Robert Arnold

A reflection on a person's life and death, prompting reflection on current events and their implications.

Worry - Alexandra Tanner

I have been sidelined by my annual bout of January pneumonia and needed something lighthearted to read while I was laying about. The New York Times described “Worry” as “a fabulous comic novel of young adult angst that puts a humorous spin on the fixations, disappointments, aversions and maladjustments of adulthood.” It sounded undemanding so I dove in.

Jules and Poppy are adult sisters who don’t like each other very much. Jules has a boring job and an apartment in New York City. Poppy arrives on her doorstep and moves in with her temporarily though both have strong misgivings about the arrangement. Poppy has terrible skin allergies and an attempted suicide in her past. They have a deeply dysfunctional relationship with each other and with their mother who has become a doomsday prepper and is involved in some sort of shady pyramid scheme. 

Jules spends most of her time scrolling through the social media accounts of very odd right-wing, anti-vax, Jesus worshipping mothers. Poppy scratches her hives. They fight a lot, they are, without exception, shallow and unlikeable. 

I waited for something to happen but nada. There was a lot of snappy patter that kept me working my way through to the totally unexpected and disturbing ending. 

Terrible Things Are Happening Here

 “Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone. The Christians in Holland are also living in fear because their sons are being sent to Germany. Everyone is scared. Every night hundreds of planes pass over Holland on their way to German cities, to sow their bombs on German soil. Every hour hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of people are being killed in Russia and Africa. No one can keep out of the conflict, the entire world is at war, and even though the Allies are doing better, the end is nowhere in sight.”

― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Tourists!!

Panorama - by Derek Neal

The town had only one grocery store, and Steve wondered where the locals did their shopping. Certainly not here, but perhaps in a supermarket outside of town, one that required a car. Along with Julia, he picked up some Italian cheese, prosciutto, grapes, and a bottle of local wine, and they made their way up the hill to the house they’d rented for the week.

The two friends from college were proud of themselves. They weren’t staying next to the sea with the rest of the tourists, but in a different village altogether, one that required a short bus ride and where no other passengers got off. In the village, the few streets that existed were carved into the hillside, each one so narrow that they were forced to walk behind one another, instead of side by side.

It had been a long day, and they felt they deserved to indulge. They’d gone hiking high above the town, starting early and rising with the sun. The trail followed the curve of the hills, the open sea to one side, vineyards to the other. What lay before them not visible beyond a few yards. They heard fellow hikers before seeing them, but rarely was any Italian heard. When two groups passed each other, each group always smiled and let out a garbled “Buongiorno,” before reverting to their respective languages. Steve complied and mumbled “Ciao” a few times, but soon he began to feel like an imposter, playing at being Italian, or playing at being whatever it was people thought being Italian meant, and he resigned himself to nodding politely in response to the other travelers.

Back at the house, they opened the windows to let the late afternoon sunshine in, and realized they could access a small platform via their own bedroom window. It seemed to be a sort of roof, but instead of a house below, there was a suspended passageway that you could pass beneath. Steve climbed through the open window, and from inside Julia passed him a plastic table, two chairs, and what they’d bought at the store. Once everything had been arranged, it was a sight to behold: on one side, the hills bathed in light from the low hanging sun, on the other, the pink and yellow hued town perched atop the blue sea; then there were the two of them, and a plate of rich, sumptuous food in the middle.

They touched their wine glasses together, looked each other in the eye, and made a toast: “To Italy!”

Read More:  3 Quarks Daily

Literary Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026

 This is a mammoth list of 314 books to read in the New Year, with something that will appeal to everyone. The titles that jumped out at me after a quick scan past the covers, without even reading any of the blurbs: a novel by Julian Barnes, a memoir by Mark Haddon, a biography of Larry McMurtry, Anne Enright’s new novel, historical fiction by Francine Prose, fiction by Deborah Levy, a new Ann Patchett, another unearthly delight byEmily St. John Mandel.

The Second Coming

I awoke very early this morning, coughing from a nasty chest cold, to the news that Trump had unleashed an unauthorized and unlawful attack on Venezuela. Yes, I thought,Yeats accurately envisioned this rise of fanaticism, the unwinding disintegration and the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem.

The Second Coming 

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Dinner Party - Viola van de Sandt

I accidentally read this book, having confused it with The Dinner by Herman Koch who is also a Dutch author. It was only after finishing The Dinner Party that I noticed it was published just a few months ago and the other was a book I’d been meaning to read for years. Oh well. 

The Dinner Party opens with this paragraph: 

 “Stella says I should write a letter. It can be addressed to her, or to no one in particular, or perhaps to a friend. Someone I trust. Do I have anyone like that?”

We learn that Stella is Franca’s therapist who has Franca write down her thoughts in the form of a letter to aid in recovering her memories of a traumatic dinner party a year ago and something to do with a knife. There are many flashbacks and flash forwards that can be confusing.

Franca is a troubled young woman whose fiancé, the seemingly perfect Andrew, has informed her that he is hosting a dinner party at their home for some of his colleagues. She is expected to prepare a special meal for them and he suggests rabbit. She is less than enthusiastic but sets about shopping for food and drinks for the guests. There are many visceral descriptions of rabbit carcasses and violent acts committed on the kitten Andrew has brought home that leave us questioning what is real.

The guests are mostly obnoxious men. Unexpectedly Franca’s platonic friend, Harry, who she has not seen in a very long time is brought as a plus one by one of the other guests. Before, during and after dinner copious amounts of alcohol are consumed and the party goes from bad to worse. 

This is a novel about suppressed female rage with a surprise twist at the end. It held my interest despite some nauseatingly disturbing descriptions and a cast of mostly despicable characters.

A Philip Larkin Christmas

“What an awful time of year this is! Just as one is feeling that if one can just hold on, it won’t get any worse, then all this Christmas idiocy bursts upon one like a slavering Niagara of nonsense & completely wrecks one’s entire frame. This means, in terms of my life, making a point of buying about six simple inexpensive presents when there are rather more people about than usual, and going home. No doubt in terms of yours it means seeing your house given over to hoards of mannerless middle-class brats and your good food & drink vanishing into the quacking tooth-equipped jaws of their alleged parents. Yours is the harder course, I can see. On the other hand, mine is happening to me.” - Philip Larkin

Via Memo Of The Air

Ravishing

This is an excerpt from Eshani Surya's Ravishing. Surya is a chronically ill South Asian writer living in Philadelphia.

Her mouth drops into a hesitant o when she first looks at herself in the mirror.

The girl on the screen films whenever she can. Her phone’s camera, a hungry eye, beckons. But she doesn’t mind being wanted. The more people keep watching her, keep calling her the best of the best, the more her mind loops with clever visuals instead of memories she’d prefer not to fall asleep to. So she records. So she posts—online. So, she presses her phone to her chest and waits for the comments to come in, all of them for her.

Today, the girl on the screen uses her thumbnail to slice open a box. Inside, a tube. Inside that, a product she layers over her face. Now she starts filming, and as the cream is absorbed there is a twist and a tug, like something caught needs release. It hurts, but in a good way, like floss parting the gums around a tooth, startling the mouth with blood. The girl’s features rearrange and for a split second her whole face looks mangled. She doesn’t flinch. In editing, she speeds up the process so no one notices when things go gruesome.

The girl’s face sculpted, elongated, augmented exactly as she wanted it. She smiles, both at that and at how her view count ticks up as soon as she posts. Her followers send her blue hearts, green hearts, whatever color heart their fingers hit first. Some crimson ones, too. Blood, the girl thinks again, then makes herself forget.

Later, the girl on the screen deletes her video and reposts a better version of it. She edits out one clip—her mouth, in that hesitant little o.

Read More: Literary Hub 

The Lost Girls of Rome

I want to read Donato Carrisi’s murder mystery The Lost Girls of Rome  after reading about it at The Narrative Within. Sandra Vega, a forensic analyst with the Roman police department. A few months ago, in the dead of night, her husband, an up-and-coming journalist, plunged to his death at the top of a high-rise construction site. The police ruled it an accident. Sandra isn’t buying it. 

The last two books I’ve read (The Dinner Party and What We Can Know) have been heavy so I’m hoping a murder mystery will be an easier read in comparison.

Read more