what i read in june

all the books i read in june

I know there’s still a day left of June, but next week I’m moving house and work is very busy, so there’s no chance I’ll finish another book before the month is over. June has truly flown by, I actually can’t think too much about the rapid passing of time because it makes me spiral. Thankfully, there are lots of exciting things happening: I’m moving onto a new chapter, and I have some posts and plans for this Substack that I'm really looking forward to sharing over the next few months. So it's all onwards and upwards from here!

Here’s everything I read in June:

Lonely Mouth - Jacqueline Maley [3]

Matilda works at a busy Sydney restaurant, controlling her cravings through monthly feast-purge cycles until her half-sister Lara returns, unearthing family secrets that threaten Matilda’s carefully ordered life.

This was an interesting reading experience because this book has a lot of components I like in a novel, but ultimately, the author bit off more than she could chew. There’s a great novel in here somewhere; it just gets lost along the way.

Through Matilda, Maley examines the complex and often nonsensical coping mechanisms we use to repress the past and its painful memories. There are many difficult subjects explored in this novel, and I appreciated how they were handled sensitively. I also liked the whole concept of ‘lonely mouth’ - the feeling of wanting to eat something when you’re not hungry but just for the physicality of having something in your mouth, often to soothe or fill an emotional void.

But the novel suffers from being too ambitious, attempting to cram too many plot lines into one novel. Though the writing was good and at times very poignant, it was structurally messy and the ending came about far too quickly. It would’ve benefitted from a tighter edit.

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Delusions - Cazzie David [3]

An essay collection about leaving your twenties behind, chronicling David’s attempts to mature and reckon with the illusions and delusions that shaped her early adulthood.

I didn’t know anything about Cazzie David before reading this, which I initially thought would be a good way to approach an essay collection, but as this was a collection of personal essays maybe I should’ve researched her a bit first. (Now I know she is a director/nepo baby, and is Larry David’s daughter).

Despite being personal essays, they did feel rather generic, and some became a little repetitive. Like with most books about the internet, it felt a bit like preaching to the choir. I’m Gen Z, I grew up online, so I already know it’s rotted my brain and exacerbated my body dysmorphia. David’s writing voice is good and she’s able to strike the balance between humour and introspection, but a lot of the essays were expressing similar sentiments and experiences I could read in personal essays here on Substack.

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Kitten - Stacey Yu [4]

Fresh out of college and far from home, Katie becomes infatuated with her order boyfriend’s cat, Silver.

Some books will resonate deeply at specific times in your life, and I would definitely recommend Kitten to people in their early twenties, when you leave the education bubble and are spat out into the working world. Katie is a character living in the grey, stuck in the liminal space between childhood and adulthood. She’s very passive, and in lieu of making any adult decisions, she instead channels her energy into her obsession with her boyfriend’s cat.

What stood out most was the novel’s honesty; there is an undeniable relatability in that paralysing uncertainty of your twenties, when there’s so many decisions to make that you decide you don’t want to make any at all. While Katie’s lack of agency can feel frustrating, she makes for an interesting character study of someone acting as a bystander in their own life. I particularly enjoyed the exploration of the mother–daughter relationship and how growing older can create distance in our familial relationships. These sections work well to add emotional depth and context to Katie’s arrested development, and were some of the most moving in the novel.

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Mother Mary Comes to Me - Arundhati Roy [4]

A memoir detailing Roy’s career so far and her turbulent upbringing under the shadow of her fierce, pioneering, and frequently abusive mother.

I love a book which explores complicated mother-daughter relationships (as above), and this memoir has that in spades. This is probably the coldest take ever, but I was blown away by Roy’s writing; its fluidity and emotion made it read like fiction.

Roy paints her mother with all her foibles and contradictions, although I would’ve liked some more introspection from Roy about herself. Maybe because she gives so much life to her mother in these pages, she has little room (or emotional energy) to dig into her own battle scars left over from their turbulent relationship. But Roy never gets saccharine about their relationship, nor does she try to tie anything up in a neat bow. Her admiration for her mother sits right next to her resentment, which is what makes this memoir feel so painfully human.

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NW - Zadie Smith [4]

In northwest London, four locals try to make adult lives outside of the working-class council estate where they grew up.

So many people told me to save this book for the summer and they were right! This is Zadie Smith at her most experimental, and while it takes a little time to get into the rhythm of it, you soon realise just how brilliant and intelligent a novel it is. At its core, it explores the chasm between your roots and your pursuit of social mobility, and the quiet guilt that comes with wanting to shed parts of your past.

It touches on identity and how it intersects with geography, while also examining the ways socio-economic forces shape our relationships. Whenever I read a Zadie Smith, I’m in awe of her talent for dialogue — it’s probably what I enjoy most about her work. I’m quickly running out of her books to read, and it will be a genuinely sad day when I catch up.

As always, I want to hear what you read, loved, and maybe didn’t love, in June. Anything you’d recommend? Have you read any of these books? Leave a comment and let me know 💌