2024: Let's Go

New novels, Saltburn, The Traitors and more

I’ve been gently easing myself into 2024 with a heady mix of old favourites, items that I’ve unfairly dismissed out of hand then finally submitted to and a few brand new bits and pieces.

I recently read The Husbands, the debut novel by Holly Gramazio, a writer and game designer from Australia. It’s about a woman called Lauren who comes home one night to find a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband. Disconcertingly, the pictures on her phone and household bills suggest he’s right. Lauren slowly begins to realise that her attic is creating an endless supply of husbands for her. I really like high concept stories and this one is a lot of fun. (Out in April)

I watched Saltburn, not because I particularly wanted to but because I needed to be able to participate in or at least understand the breathless discourse it has spawned. The film is an example of a cultural product that isn't very good but is really fun to talk about.

I found it to be totally incoherent and I loathed the ending almost as much as I hated the hollow denouement of Promising Young Woman, Emerald Fennell’s film from 2020.

Saltburn is a succession of visually arresting images and moments that have been strung together but do not cohere into a proper film. Glossy visuals and decent one liners are not enough. And that ending is both brain-numbingly predictable and completely stupid.

Annoying but probably still worth a watch. You know, for the discourse. 

The thing I love about The Traitors, as well as absolutely everything, is how dialled down Claudia Winkleman is. She’s still charismatic and funny and warm (even when she’s pretending to be very cross) but the shtickyness is gone.

I totally ignored series one, despite the insistent praise from various friends and the world’s media and then my brother-in-law sat me down last weekend and told me that my refusal to engage simply wasn’t on. So I nonchalantly started (straight in at series 2) and of course you know what happened next. 7 episodes later and I’m all in.

The show looks great, everything Claudia wears is perfect and I can’t get enough of the look on Paul’s face when he takes his hood off in the conclave. How brilliant was last night’s episode? “I’m voting for yourself.” Wonderful stuff.

A few other things I’ve mostly enjoyed over the last few weeks -

Slow Horses. Brilliant. No notes.

A thoroughly pleasing re watch of the 1985 film, Girls Just Want To Have Fun. An early role for Sarah Jessica Parker in which she is already demonstrating her most disarming quality - being totally unembarressable. Whether it’s in this film or Sex and the City, she is so good at being the subject of a mortifying situation and making it work in her favour by laughing at herself. Gets me every time.

I also finally got around to watching Before Sunrise, a perfect Sunday night film. Gentle, talky, lovely to look at. I’m excited to complete the trilogy.

I have very little time for famous people interviewing other famous people and I don’t particularly like Richard Curtis’ part in this interview for Vogue but Julia Roberts is wonderful. Of course she looks incredible in the pictures but she also comes across as a nice, well-adjusted and quite normal human being.

The just released and very hyped new novel, Green Dot by Madeleine Gray is about a disaffected woman in her twenties who embarks on an affair with an older married man at work. I read it and liked it enough but was underwhelmed. While Gray is funny and good at articulating what unhappiness actually feels like, it just never took off for me. Nonetheless, I’m interested to see how it’s received. If you’ve read it, let me know your thoughts in the comments.

I’m not usually big on the whole quantified self thing. I don’t count my steps or measure my days in data but I’m thinking of keeping a record of every book I read this year. Probably via a spreadsheet where I can make snarky/jolly little notes alongside each title.

Up until now, my bookshelves have kept the score because I mostly read the real thing and very rarely get rid of any, only the absolute duds. I lend out extremely reluctantly so I really do have quite a comprehensive overview of all the titles I’ve read in the last two decades or so. Let’s not get in to the storage challenges this poses - that’s for another day.

I’m not really sure what a log would achieve but I do feel it could be fun to have a definitive picture of your annual reading habits. What do you think? Good idea? Psychotic?

Please share in the comments below.

See you next time!

Hannah