#All This Could Be Different
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Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different (Viking, 2022), in “Ten Questions”
#Sarah Thankam Matthews#C Pam Zhang#All This Could Be Different#Ten Questions#Writer's Block#Writer's Life#Quote#Inspiration#Fiction#Viking#2022
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All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews
Today's sapphic book of the day is All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews!
Summary: "Graduating into the long maw of an American recession, Sneha is one of the fortunate ones. She's moved to Milwaukee for an entry-level corporate job that, gruelling as it may be, is the key that unlocks every door: she can pick up the tab at dinner with her new friend Tig, get her college buddy Thom hired alongside her, and send money to her parents back in India. She begins dating women--soon developing a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful dancer who always seems just out of reach.
But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It's then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all."
#lesbian#queer#sapphic#wlw#lgbtqia#lgbtq#lgbt#books#book recs#booklr#book recommendations#literary#literary fiction#contemporary#contemporary fiction#all this could be different#sarah thankam mathews
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I let out a great exhale. Tried to imagine Rion, the two-million-dollar pink mansion where our friends would never be evicted, where we could eat the food we grew ourselves, where we could sit together in our hot tub under the stars. There was something indistinctly moving to me, in a world where everyone was laser-point-focused on individual striving, to reframe anything around collective ambition. I also wished to throw my margarita across this restaurant. How was anyone expected to dream loftily about the future when the present ground them down into powder and nothingness?
Sarah Thankam Mathews, “All This Could Be Different”
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New Releases: August 2022
New Releases: August 2022
Riley Reynolds Crushes Costume Day by Jay Albee (1st)
Note: This is the first book in a new series that has four books releasing on this date.
It’s book week at school, and nonbinary fourth grader Riley and their best friends craft hard for the Dress Like Your Favorite Character Day. Colorful fabric! Paint! Glitter! They are ready to make the biggest and best group costume ever! But most of the…
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#A Killing in Costumes#A Taste of Gold and Iron#Aaron H. Aceves#Alexandra Rowland#Alexis Hall#All This Could Be Different#Ashton Noone#Ben and Beatriz#Chip Pons#Courtney Kae#Dead Flip#Emily Lloyd-Jones#Felix Silver Teaspoons & Witches#Harry Cook#High Times in Low Parliament#Husband Material#In the Event of Love#Jae#Jay Albee#Kate Alice Marshall#Kelly Robson#Mademoiselle Revolution#Mason Deaver#Michelle Tea#Moon Dark Smile#My Government Means to Kill Me#Naseem Jamnia#Rasheed Newson#Sara Farizan#Sarah Thankam Mathews
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6 Incredible Books to Read This AAPI Heritage Month
It’s Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month, and that means it’s a great time to make sure you’re reading and uplifting AAPI authors! I compiled a list of six great books that have been published over the past two years (and that I read in this past one) written by AAPI authors. These books span genre, time period, age range, and setting but each centers their Asian protagonist.
She…
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#aapi authors#aapi month#all this could be different#asian american and pacific islander heritage month#books to read#by Jocelyn#daughter of the moon goddess#fiona and jane#jean chen ho#last night at the telegraph club#malinda lo#my sister&039;s big fat indian wedding#sajni patel#sarah thankham mathews#she who became the sun#shelley parker-chan#sue lynn tan
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dat sweet sweet cortisol glow of adult life, a luminous rectangle
“What would remain of the things I had learned about history and science and literature, come four or five years, I did not know. What was the point of knowing anything, of learning how to think, that favorite phrase of my American teachers, if all it did was burnish my contempt for the mentally negligible project managers and associate division directors all around me? I should have majored in Microsoft Excel.”
Sarah Thankam Mathews, All This Could Be Different
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Review: All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews
I was delighted to get a copy of this novel, which depicts a snapshot of the life of a queer millennial immigrant. I got vibes of Sally Rooney and Lily King from the synopsis and was expecting to meet characters who I could thoroughly relate to and cheer on.
Sneha has just graduated in the middle of a recession but she has landed an entry-level corporate job that allows her to live in Milwaukee and send money to her parents in India. She enjoys a life of socialising with her friends and begins dating women, developing an infatuation with a beautiful dancer called Marina. However, hard times are on their way and Sneha is facing a job loss and eviction. She is also struggling to get close to anyone and realises that she may have to confront the horrors of her past, if she is to be happy in the future.
Sneha’s job is very reminiscent of the kind of thing that many twenty-somethings fall into after they graduate. It’s almost certainly not what they want to do but it’s something that will pay a living wage. The situation with her boss and the job deteriorates throughout the narrative and I thought this was a really relatable yet not often spoken about phenomenon. In many novels about millennial characters with dull jobs, those jobs appear to be quite stable with progression and that has always baffled me because it is so at odds with what I’ve experienced in the real world. So, I take my hat off to the author for depicting that realistically!
Sneha comes from very humble beginnings and her family’s story will be similar to that of many immigrants to the western world. This is one reason I couldn’t work out why Sneha seemed to come across as very narrow-minded and stubborn at times. Perhaps it is a sign of our cultural differences, but I did find it hard to warm to her.
My first realisation that I didn’t like Sneha came from her refusal to see Tig, a plus size Black woman, as a romantic option. As the story goes on, they build a really lovely friendship and I was so happy that happened. However, her initial disgust of Tig’s body really raised my hackles and it wasn’t the only time that happened.
It happened again when Sneha dismisses non-binary and genderqueer people as ‘elitist, American nonsense’. The fact that her friend Amit, who is also Indian, is the one explaining gender differences to her suggests that Sneha’s transphobia perhaps isn’t a product of her culture. By the end, Sneha is around gender diverse people and she isn’t cruel to them, suggesting that perhaps she has learned but she never addresses her previous attitudes towards genderqueerness. I could have forgiven her for making these small-minded comments had she been a teenager but I believe she is supposed to be 23. It got Sneha and I off on a really bad foot and while I slowly thawed during the following pages, I still didn’t really love her by the end.
Marina is a great character who appears to be much more emotionally mature than Sneha. Due to this, I didn’t think that they were a great romantic match but I knew that Sneha could learn a lot from Marina’s openness. Like Sneha, I too fell a bit in love with her and could have watched her twirl across the pages for far longer.
Like many immigrants, Sneha struggles with her identity, which is what the title of the book alludes to. After her trip back to India, she starts to see her life almost as a split screen of what is and what could have been if she’d made different decisions. It’s her sliding doors moment and the turning point of the book. She starts to make steps to improve her life after this and become the woman she wants to be. To do that, she has to face the abuse she suffered as a child and not allow it to close her off from love and happiness.
There is a really lovely part where Sneha realises that the trees she is looking at are from the seeds she scattered as a child. Those trees exist because she was there before. That thought really drives the second half of the book and forces her to realise that the past shapes the future. I thought this was a really beautiful sentiment and actually quite inspirational for all of us to do better.
All This Could Be Different is an interesting glimpse into the struggles of a millennial immigrant. Although I didn’t wholly like her as a character, she has plenty of lovely friends who I adored. There are some very problematic elements of the book including transphobia, desire for whiteness and objectification of Black bodies. It makes it a tricky book to really love because I felt myself bristling several times but I appreciate what the author was trying to do.
#all this could be different#sarah thankam mathews#literary fiction#lgbtq#book review#review#books#bookworm
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We’re taught that everything is finite and zero sum, Tig said. Money, food, houses, freedom. Zero sum when it ain’t need to be. The whole thing is that some things multiply. Create feedback loops. Like love and honesty. Like generosity. Creates more of the thing itself.
Sarah Thankam Mathews, All This Could Be Different
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Sometimes being an artist is feeling like a baker seeing a chemist making the deadliest liquid in the world and wishing you could make the deadliest liquid as well but you're a baker, not a chemist, and then you feel like your bread is worthless
#my stupid thoughts#this doesn't make any sense and that's the whole point#sometimes you see cool art and you love it and wish you could do something as cools as that#but it's simply *not* your style at all#and you end up thinking what you make is bad though it's not#it's literally just different#anyway that's me I'm the baker
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sometimes, it's not so much about the romance as it is about the devotion. the adoration.
#pacific rim#black sails#the x-files#the bear#game of thrones#raleigh x mako#jack x anne#msr#sydcarmy#theonsa#i could go on forever i think#for me personally it is also about the romance and i do think they should all kiss and be in love but thats not THE POINT-#*adam scott meme* its about the vulnerability and unconditional care one has with someone else#how many different ways can i make this same post lets count
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Don't end up like me, he added with an attempt at an ironic smile, his large eyes narrowed and unable to meet mine, and in that moment I thought my heart would fissure, shatter outward like a dropped clock.
Sarah Thankam Mathews, “All This Could Be Different”
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SO IVE BEEN GOIN INSANE SINCE THIS TRAILER DROPPED. JUST. SIMON. SIMON. SIMON.
#simon petrikov#fionna and cake#adventure time#goin insane over him#thers no words to describe how im feelin#i wish i could draw somehtin better but i am goin INSANE#FINALLY. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS. we are being FED.#ALSO?? HOW THEY SHOWED HIM EXACTLY WHEN THE LYRICS GO ''WHATS WRONG WITH ME'. LIKE HELLO???????#ive seen so many good theories PLEASE GOD WRITE FICS I AM BEGGIN I LL DRAW U FANART BLS HEL P#IDK WOT IM GONNA DO FOR A WHOLE MONTH#SOMEONE KNOCK ME OUT TIL THE 31ST. HIBERNATE ME. HELP.#also i need to put it out there the first thing i thought when i saw this trailer was simon is tryina rewrite fionna and cake#which is why their world keeps changin so much? idk idk#ive seen so many different ideas and they are all so good please help#ALSO GOD. THIS MAN IS JUST GOIN THRU IT. AND ITS ONLY BEEN A QUICK TRAILER.#im sorry for so many tags idk where to put these help#maybe i should make an actual blog for like. whatever. n reblogs. help.
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[Tutto questo sarebbe diverso][Sarah Thankam Mathews]
Mathews ci affascina con la sua voce sarcastica e una prosa scarna e ritmata, un calco perfetto della quotidianità e del linguaggio contemporaneo, che trova la sua massima espressione nei dialoghi e nei messaggi tra i protagonisti.
Sneha, ventiduenne di origine indiana, arriva a Milwaukee fresca di laurea, per un lavoro come consulente di una grande azienda. Il compito non l’appassiona, ma è ben retribuito. Naturalmente deve convivere con i nervosismi dei colleghi e, a casa, la preoccupazione che le instilla la presenza dell’amministratrice del suo condominio che abita nell’appartamento sotto il suo. È il primo anno del…
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#2023#All This Could Be Different#Bollati Boringhieri#Costanza Prinetti#fiction#Francesca Pellas#LGBT#LGBTQ#Narrativa#National Book Award#Sarah Thankam Mathews#Tutto questo sarebbe diverso#USA
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the clarity of catastrophe
“That sounds great, I said, may have added, I’m honored to get to work for you. All nonsense. Once I hung up I punched the air and yelled. I remember the restaurant as deserted, but it may not have been. This is not a story about work or precarity. I am trying, late in the evening, to say something about love, which for many of us is not separable from the other shit.”
Sarah Thankam Mathews, All This Could Be Different
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cersei lannister had about 3-5 business days of peace at the end of a game of thrones where it’s like. plan she singlehandedly concocted to murder her abusive terrible husband THE KING goes off without a hitch literally flawless execution most successful kingslaying in westerosi history. rhaegar outfit at his funeral. anyone who suspects foul play is in the dungeon or on her side. coup d’état equally successful. her bastard son installed as ruling king. ned stark in prison about to swear fealty to the lannisters and get ransomed cutting hostilities off at the pass. one stark kid in custody and littlefinger promised to take care of the second one. annoying brothers-in-law scattered to opposite ends of the kingdom away from her away from each other not a problem. lysa arryn doing fuck all. tyrion in enemy custody and not the walls. father and brother going to war for her. also jon arryn who she never liked is dead as a freebie. and then she never came down from this high but can you blame her
#asoiaf#if there hadn’t been like 4 different people going rogue on her could she have. swung it#all on like. negligible actual political education
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