Above the paywall this week (amongst other things): Anora, Amandaland, the myth of ‘the perfect perpetrator’, fashion’s obsession with nostalgia, and a gorgeous piece on children’s books. Also, WHO ATE ALL MY SOCKS?
Under the paywall this week (amongst other things): Jilly Cooper, misophonia, background habits, why anxiety might be addictive, and — in a slight departure from the norm — my mini guide for rug sourcing: where to go, what to look for, and how to find the best-looking bargains. Ever since I shared a picture of a flatweave rug I’d commissioned via Etsy several years ago, I have received more Instagram DMs about rugs than anything else — even books. It felt like time!
I was telling my husband how hard I find it not to snack and he told me I had a lonely mouth. It turns out that there is a Japanese word — kuchisabishii — for when you want to eat something not because you are hungry, but simply because your mouth needs company. The literal translation is ‘lonely mouth’. I feel so seen
Could you ‘rawdog’ a movie? It’s not as porny as it sounds — it’s one of TikTok’s myriad viral challenges, where you watch a movie without any prior knowledge, or double-screening: no watching the trailer, googling the synopsis, looking up the actors on IMDb, reading the reviews, or sifting through Google Images to see if the actor 'has always been this hot’. Reader, it sounds terrible
As SHEIN prepares for its controversial IPO, I’ve been re-reading Nicole Lipman’s (excellently titled) long-read on the unstoppable rise of cheap tat. That there is a non-ironic clothing category called ‘mermaidcore’ still boggles me
If you were one of the women who re-thought their marriages after reading All Fours, hop on over to Miranda July’s tantalising comment section, which is functioning as an informal chat room for those who want to push the button. Writes July, their patron saint: “Try not to be too afraid of the mess that will come with tremendous change; it's a mess you'll become yourself through”
This is my most important dispatch from the whole week. What in fresh hell is this??? For context, this has accumulated in 2025 thus far. Someone really needs to make a true crime podcast about it
My favourite thing I read this week was the bestselling children’s author and polymath Katherine Rundell on the ingredients required for a children’s book, for The LRB. Writing books for children comes with great responsibility, says Rundell:
“Those who write for children have the chance to point them towards beauty that they do not know exists: towards versions of joy that they have not yet imagined possible… Children’s literature can be a form of distillation: of what it means to hope, to fear, to yearn”.
She provides an entertaining potted history of children’s literature and is particularly funny on Tolstoy’s stories for children which he wrote in the 1870s/80s, where everyone is dead or evil. “They went on to become popular throughout Russia and summon up the same feelings of delight and warmth that you find in Anna Karenina’s suicide scene”. It reminds me of Struwwelpeter (1845) a children’s book that I still have vivid nightmares about. As Rundell notes, there is the idea implicit in such tales (um, hi Hans Christian Andersen?) that “children are not to be trusted with the freedom of pleasure: they might break something with it.” That said, the high quota of orphans in children’s books is a necessary plot device, says the author, “because adults get in the way of adventure”. And anyway, she says philosophically, “we are all orphans in the end”.
The piece is stuffed full of morsels that made me gasp with delight: when Rundell visits schools, she notes that the children always choose the most old-fashioned names for their characters (Emily, Henry, Jack), names which have been “licked clean by kings and queens”; children’s books always need “a kinetic energy, but it can be inner or outer”; a children’s book must always include long words, so that the reader may learn a new one, like ‘disconsolately’, or ‘ponderously’, both of which Rundell learned from reading Beatrix Potter.
I could quote this piece all day, as is evident, so really you should just go read it for yourselves. It’s magic. And so are books. And children.
Amandaland is predictably funny — in that it is amusing and hits all the expected comedy beats — with some solid one-liners: “If it’s a choice between brain damage and helmet hair, I think you know where I stand” sniffs the ever-coiffed Amanda, who has fallen several rungs on the social ladder since her divorce and landed in ‘SoHa’ (as she has re-branded South Harlesden) where she is ‘collab-ing with’ (working on the shop floor of) a kitchen retailer. Lucy Punch is excellent as Amanda and casting Joanna Lumley (as her mother) is always a good idea, but Peter Serafinowicz’s accent is batshit. Motherland stans will love it.
I wonder how many people have the energy for another documentary about yet another celebrity predator, but Marina Hyde hits on something, with the myth of the ‘perfect perpetrator’:
“In our era, people have righteously debunked the myth of the perfect victim — but less so the myth of the perfect perpetrator. The perfect perpetrator is an evil stranger — yet sexual abuse is overwhelmingly likely to be carried out by someone you know, and who is pretty nice to you some of the time. These are complex and inconvenient truths, but they are truths.”
We are in the era of the redux and luxury brands are churning out re-issues of their archive hits: Dior’s saddle bag, Prada’s Re-Edition line, Gaultier’s tattoo print dresses. Why? Because nostalgia sells, writes fashion archivist and writer Alexander Fury on fashion’s preoccupation with nostalgia — and our desire to avoid the dismal present apparently extends to what we wear. Re-issues are not copycats and yet both have something in common with dupes: both are pretending to be something they are not, whether it’s a 2024 dress cosplaying as 1995 vintage, or a knock-off scored on Depop.
I finally watched Anora! (I’d been checking Prime for it every day.) It was funnier than I expected, and also too long — it felt bottom heavy. Mikey Madison is as compelling as everyone says; there’s a feline quality to her, alternately purring and hissing. Mark Eydelshteyn is good — in that he is awful, but not as vile as his oligarch parents — but ‘the Russian Timothee Chalamet’? Hmmmm.