A midweek Shirley pick-this-up

Two of my friends wrote books and they are very, very good.

Jun 09, 2021

Hello, and happy Wednesday. Today I am sending out a quick-hit Shirley bonus because you’ve all been very good this week. Treat yourself, you are the future, etc., etc. 👇 👇

Two of my friends wrote books! This happens from time to time and it’s never not exciting. So I’m going to say it two more times: Two of my friends wrote books! Two of my friends wrote books!

These particular books were published a few weeks ago. They’re very different from each other, which makes them both fun and challenging to write about in the same space. But why do we cling to the idea that categories matter? They don’t. I read both, I loved both, and I think you may love them, too. And so I would like to share.

The Guild of the Infant Saviour, by Megan Culhane Galbraith

May 2021 (Mad Creek Books)

First up is a nonfiction title: The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book, by my friend Megan Galbraith, a delightful, wise, effervescent, emotionally generous, and inspirational human who I feel eternally fortunate to know. (👋, Megan!)

This one is a deeply moving memoir, combined with so many other things, including creepy dolls (a big plus). It begins, narratively at least, with Galbraith’s quest to find her birth mother—a teen mom who was sent to the titular Catholic charity in New York City in the 1960s to have her baby then return to her previous life, like poof, nothing to see here, people—while Galbraith herself is pregnant with her own first child at age 29. The book is also part reportage (did you know about Cornell’s “practice baby” Domecon program that ran from 1919 to 1954? I didn’t, and it is wow), part visual art project, part prose poem, and part knock-you-to-your-knees-with-stunning-observations-of-what-motherhood-womanhood-personhood-and-the-search-for-your-whole-self-can-mean. (Remember that word because it’s likely to be Merriam-Webster’s 2021 Word of the Year.)

I opened Guild one Friday morning when I expected to get a lot of writing done; I closed it that Friday night with no writing done, so many chills, and so much admiration. This book is what I like to call holy-shit good, meaning it’s difficult to describe but impossible to forget.

You can buy it here.

The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, by Colleen Oakley

May 2021 (Berkeley)

It is a truth universally acknowledged amongst writers that it’s really, really hard to write something people call “easy to read.” As for writing something that’s easy to read and enjoyable and full of deep emotion and hard truths and humor, well good luck with that, sister.

This brings us to the latest from my friend Colleen Oakley, who manages to accomplish all of the above in every damn thing she writes (seriously, it is mind boggling). I met Colleen when we were both baby editors at the same magazine in NYC and went to many a weeknight event together where we were plied with endless glasses of white wine. We had a boss who weirdly tried to pit us against each other, but rather than make us competitive, it only made us better friends and admirers of each other’s work. (The devil, it turns out, wears thin.)

Oakley’s brand is unconventional love stories that are generous and warm (just like her!) despite their sometimes dark premises (just like her!). In this one, her fourth, the invisible husband isn’t so much invisible as dead—the victim of a crab boat accident at the start of the book. Even so, his wife goes on pretending he’s still living, walking him to the docks in the morning, chatting with him on the street, bringing him out to eat and the like. Oh, everyone else on the tiny, charming Chesapeake Bay island also pretends he’s still there. This is all well and good until (yup!) a stranger, who happens to be a young journalist on the hunt for his next podcast idea, comes to town.

You probably think you know where this is going, but you probably don’t. Even if you did, the charm of Oakley’s fiction is that, despite the fact that the premises are fantastic (and sometimes fantastical), the heart of her stories lies in her characters. I am a Colleen super fan and I read everything she writes; it’s still not enough. More, please!