Spilled Milk is my monthly wrap up where I talk about some of my favourite things from the last month. Things I’m reading, enjoying, looking forward to—sort of anything floating my boat.
For me, perfect weather in Montreal happens in September: I’m wearing shorts, but also a sweater that I’ll sometimes throw over my shoulders. There’s a little baby breeze and warm sun rays kissing my exposed limbs. I can still sit on a restaurant terrace because there’s a heater one or two tables away.
These perfect days are peppered across three or four weeks before mid-October turns the city rainy, cold, and a little gloomy. I intend on soaking it up while I can!!
Here is an overview of how my month went:
I got a piece published in
!!
It’s truly a gorgeous issue, I’m so happy to be a part of itWent to the Sweat Tour, and it was one of the best concert experiences I’ve ever had! I love dancing, and I love f*ggotry!!
Started diving and swimming again in a masters league! It’s been so fun to get back in the pool, but my god do my shoulders, back, legs, and arms hurt
I got a piece published in Weird Lit!!
I’ve been toying with a longer horror project for a while, but had this idea for a short story and I like how it came out. It’s a nasty little thing 🪱I’ve been crunching fallen leaves all over town… my jacket collection is shivering with anticipation
The following is a list of some more things I couldn’t get enough of.
What I Read
Below is a rundown of every book I read in the month of September. I’ll also be adding a star next to my standouts, like a starred review where a star isn’t a 1 to 5 scale, it just means good!
When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill
This novel tracks the lives of various girls in 1800s Montreal. I always have high expectations for books that are set in Montreal seeing as I was born, raised, and still live here.
The central relationship we follow is between the young heiress to a sugar fortune, and the daughter of poor socialite wannabes. The two are linked by a traumatic event when they are very young, and the rest of the story sees them dip back and forth into each other’s lives.
When We Lost Our Heads beautifully captures all-consuming obsession and jealousy in many forms (money, power, toxic friendships, toxic partners etc.). It also has a fiery honesty that I loved, and which reminded me of the girlhood excavation I’ve seen happening in online spaces.
Overall I liked this book, but I didn’t love it. I found it to be long, and the scope of it is very large which means there were entire sequences that I felt strung along through and don’t think necessarily paid off in the end. My favourite piece of this story is one of the characters, who becomes a writer, starts weaving feminism into the stories she writes. This ends up creating a social movement of sexual liberation across the city. Very fun! A lot of interesting social commentary in these pages.
Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez
This novel is a hazy dreamlike recollection of a life, which made it feel more accurate. It’s as if someone decided to pull the threads of jumbled up bits and pieces from their memory and turn it into something cohesive—seeing as this is autofiction, that may be the case.
Hombrecito is a coming-of-age that follows a young boy who immigrates to the US from Columbia with his mother and brother. The story is his exploration of his queerness, his development into adulthood, and his fraught familial relationships.
I liked this! It’s well-written, super propulsive, and I’d definitely recommend. I will say that it lives up to being the product of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, so if that’s your vibe this will really work (I’ve been obsessed with spotting IWW books by their writing style—
has a perfect video about this).Writers & Lovers by Lily King ★
I’ve put off reading this for so long. I would pick it up, attempt to read the first chapter and give up. When I finally stuck to it, something clicked and I devoured it.
The novel is set in Massachusetts in 1997 and feels perfectly Nancy Meyersian. We follow Casey, a writer in her late twenties, as she deals with her mother’s passing, her messy love life, her restaurant day job, and her pursuit of a fulfilling creative life.
^This series of texts I sent my friend while reading sums up my experience. The book should have a warning for writers in the querying trenches because it perfectly bottles up that experience.
Plain and depressing? Kinda. Amazing? Definitely, I loved it.
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson ★
Caleb Azumah Nelson is an incredible talent and I will read anything he writes. This follow up to his debut, Open Water, did not disappoint.
Told over the course of three summers, it centres around the life of Stephen as he faces the precipice of his future: What career to pursue, whether or not to act on the feelings he has for a friend, how to navigate relationship dynamics with his Ghanian parents.
There is so much intimacy in this book. Through grief, friendship and community, a textured life is laid bare. Something else I took away was this weight of expectation that is palpable throughout (social, familial, and more).
Music is a huge element of this book narratively, but there’s also a really interesting thing Nelson does where he loops ideas and turns of phrase over and over again as if they were the chorus of a song. Masterfully done, and so beautiful.
The Rich People Have Gone Away by Regina Porter
The book is set in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, as a pregnant woman and her husband head to Upstate New York to get out of the mess of COVID in the city. Before they even get to their country home, the woman goes missing.
Incredible premise, I was so hooked… until it started to fizzle a little bit. The book covers so many different characters and perspectives, digging really deeply into so many lives, that it doesn’t manage to stay as engaging the whole way through. It was doing so much that it didn’t do any one thing as well as I think it could have.
I still enjoyed this. My favourite part was the COVID setting, which was really compelling to read so removed from that reality (wiping off groceries, social distancing, so much fear…).
Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner ★
I was so looking forward to reading this, and I’m so happy to say it did not fall short. It’s beautiful and simple and intimate and loud and messy. There’s so much life in this book.
Shred Sisters is a coming-of-age story that follows Amy, a straight-A student, quiet, demure, easy girl, and how she grows up with a sister, Olivia, who is the complete opposite. Amy is the Glass Child calm to Olivia’s destructive storm.
On a craft level, the writing is wonderful. There’s so much specificity in the experiences Amy goes through, she really feels like a complete person. Lerner also displays great mastery of pacing—this book flies you through a life without feeling rushed and while keeping you hooked.
There’s so much I could say about why I loved this book, but most of it feels too personal to share. I was really taken by this depiction of someone shaping themselves despite (or because of) having a missing piece.
Side note: I think In Her Shoes, the 2005 Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz vehicle, is an interesting companion movie to accompany this book.
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
This is a sapphic cult classic from the 70s about growing up as a lesbian in the American South at the time.
It’s the coming-of-age of a poor adopted girl who comes into her queerness, and wants to live by her own rules. We follow her through college, into adulthood and through her pursuing her passion for film.
This is a work of autofiction, and it feels like it. We get pulled through so much in a short span with all the learnings packed in neatly—this works for an autobiography, but here felt more like hitting bullet points.
I also think it’s important to note that the time of publication is very clear in the subject matter. While it exemplifies a rejection of the status quo, it also sometimes depicts a rigid view of gender, expression, sexuality (the butch slander alone…). Despite all of this, I didn’t hate the book. I can see why it was so beloved for its boldness, but I don’t know if I could make a blanket recommendation of it.
Survive the Night by Riley Sager
I am a big proponent of the Palate Cleanser Book, and this is exactly that. The kind of book that sucks you in, tell you a quick story and spits you out without too much staying power—I usually get mine in the form of a thriller!
A friend lent me this book because it had many of my niche “interests”: 90s slashers/serial killers, campus setting murder spree, and road trip horror. It’s the story of a college student whose best friend was the latest victim of a local serial killer, as she hitches a ride with a stranger to go back home.
This wasn’t great, and that’s totally fine. I found that it relied too heavily on this idea that the narrator daydreams so hard she mistakes these moments for reality… Over and over and over again. Unreliable narration can be interesting, but this was a bit too much for me.
What I Watched & Listened To
Several times this month, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “I am worried about the state of television.” This was prompted by a quasi-tandem viewing of The Perfect Couple and the newest season of Selling Sunset. I was being hyperbolic, but literally how do you mess up a coastal town murder mystery series with Nicole Kidman?
Despite the flops, I consumed some incredible media this month.
Movie: The Substance
Heavy-handed doesn’t even begin to cut it (positive). This movie takes a sledgehammer to the cult of youth/beauty and the pressures thrust onto women and their bodies.
Stellar performances, so much violence, incredible writing, all of its elements worked for me. I can’t wait to watch it again.
TV: English Teacher
I’ve loved Brian Jordan Alvarez since the Caleb Gallo days, and English Teacher really feels like the grown up version of what he created almost a decade ago.
This is a hairline fracture away from being a millennial eye roll, but somehow it works. It’s funny, balanced, not too preachy, really stupid, and just a great watch.
TV: Pop Star Academy: Katseye
I think Pop Star Academy: Katseye is this generation’s The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll and PCD Present: Girlicious. This buckwild borderline social experiment of putting twenty girls from all over the world in a pop star bootcamp for two years, and in the end only 6 make it into the group.
The show was such an interesting watch, and the song Touch has been on repeat in my house ever since.
Reading Goals Update
I didn’t read a nonfiction book, a poetry collection, or my next James Baldwin… I’ve really been slacking on my reading goals, but there’s always next month!
On My Bedside Table
A spooky dispatch from my bedside table and the books that litter it, hoping to be read soon.
Living Things by Munir Hachemi, an eco-thriller about four young people from Madrid whose trip to the south of France turns nightmarish
Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, a gothic sapphic vampire novel
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, four friends living on a Blackfoot reservation are haunted by an entity out for revenge
Voice Like a Hyacinth by Mallory Pearson, five classmates dip their toes into the occult to unlock their creativity (Comes out January 7th 2025)
A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez, a short story collection from Latin America’s queen of horror
Have you read any of these? Are any of these non-negotiables? Are any of them skippable?
Tell me what you think in the comments!
That’s been my month!
Until next time 🤠
Congrats on all the published work, you’re a star!! Also the only time I’ve been to Montreal was in september and it was so close to perfect I thought about immigrating right then and there.
Writers & Lovers is a forever fav, but I’m never quite sure if it was just a right time, right place sort of read. you have me wanting to reread it to find out !! and def picking up shred sisters now on your rec
Also also bc I can’t shut up, seeing The Substance TONIGHT and also really loving English Teacher (spot on about being so close to millennial cringe lmao but it works) and am fascinated by Popstar Academy too!! Ok I’m done now 😭
& so proud of your pub creds!! paloma & weird lit have TASTE babes