June reads

Tigers on the Run and Tigers on the Way, Sean Kennedy. In the first, Dec and Simon have to deal with Dec's ex getting together with Simon's PA, as well as one of the gay sports teens Dec mentors going off the rails; in the second Dec & Simon have decided to have kids, after Simon's former PA Nyssa volunteers her services as a surrogate, but during the initial work up Simon is diagnosed with a testicular tumour. The series is definitely suffering from diminishing returns, as well as pacing issues and some technical slips (it is not possible to do IUI with donor eggs, so the whole bit about doing this and resulting accidental multiples doesn't work), and although I do like the characters they're wearing out their welcome. I don't think he intends any more at this stage - I will check out the YA spin-offs, though, as the different narrators might shake things up a bit.

Bone to Pick, TA Moore. Cloister Witte overcame his family background and works as a K9 officer in San Diego with his dog, Bourneville. Assigned to a case involving a missing ten year old boy, he has to work with Special Agent Javi Merlo, an abrasive Mexican-American officer who Cloister previously nearly assaulted over another case.

This is much stronger on investigation than on romance, as Javi's personality is a pretty big obstacle. But they do manage to work well together, and there's a sequel where, just possibly, Javi might manage more than a glimpse of character growth. But the best thing about this is Bourneville, who is a dog (not just a dog-shaped plot convenience) and a fabulous, competent one at that.

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, Nagata Kabi.

This manga memoir starts with the creator naked in a love hotel in Tokyo, with a lesbian escort she’s hired off the internet for her first ever sexual encounter, and then backtracks to show how she got there before moving on. Actually, by the time she hires the escort, she’s actually started to put herself together somewhat - after dropping out of university and failing to find anywhere she belongs, crushed by her parents’ expectations, she slides into depression, cutting and an eating disorder. It’s a job rejection that actually sparks her into action; a bakery ask her what she loves, and she says manga: they tell her that they can see her light up when she talks about manga, and that’s what she should look for in a job. Hiring the escort is partly self-care, partly a desire for intimacy, and (as always), partly to have something to write about; it’s not the breakthrough experience that she dreams of, but it is an experience and she does get value from it.

It’s a touching and also often very funny story (e.g. this line, “Things got increasingly less sexy as we searched for my hymen awhile,”, which is accompanied by suitable sound effects), and it examines loneliness and how to connect with other people, and how family and society set up expectations for this, in a very compelling way. Depression is hard to do in fiction without boring the reader, and the only fictional version I can think of right now that really worked for me is that bit in Donna Tart’s The Secret History during the winter. Sequential art can do it really well, as here, and also Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis & Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half) (also memoirs). She’s written more - My Solo Exchange Diary deals with the success of this - and I’ll track it down.

(I also note that both the escorts she hires are what I can only describe as “perky” - bouncy, enthusiastic, determined to make sure all parties enjoy themselves - and I'm curious as to how much of that is cultural.)