In the opening scene of season 2 White Lotusthe camera comes to a halt above the Sicilian coastline. Blue and white umbrellas are lined up at precisely the same intervals. We see Daphne, a lithe blonde woman in a printed one-piece swimsuit. An Aperol spritz sits on her side table. A Louis Vuitton handbag rests on the chair next to her. Daphne is beautiful, clearly wealthy, seems well-endowed in many other ways, and seems happy.
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“This has been so much fun,” Daphne gleefully tells the guests next to her who have just arrived, “Italy is so romantic. Oh, you’re going to die,” before wandering into the water for one last swim and discovering a body.
The story began a week earlier and eventually returns to this same moment with Daphne on the beach: We now know that she and her devilishly handsome, sly husband love each other, but they have hurt each other so many times that Daphne may continue with her coping mechanisms of dissociation and retaliation, or she may snap.
There is a rich tradition of stories that give us glimpses into the lives of beautiful people who go on beautiful adventures, but that beauty can be illusory. It can even drive people to madness. White LotusEmma Clyne’s novels customerand the film directed by Bong Joon-ho. Parasites Examples of recent popular works include works by Patricia Highsmith The Talented Mr. RipleyF. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsbyand Stephen King’s The Shining.
This year, three works from this genre will be featured in the competition: Rachel Lion’s Fruit of the DeadScarlett Thomas Sleepwalkersand Kimberly King Parsons We were the universe. All of these films depict women losing something central to their identity — their childhoods, their success, their independence, their sisterhood — and then literally trying to escape that loss. They all arrive in beautiful places — a private island, a honeymoon in Greece, a river town in Montana — only to find that loss compounding in strange and dangerous ways.
Pack these books in your tote bag this summer, or enjoy a quiet read on the couch.
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Fruit of the DeadBy Rachel Lion
“I need to tell my mom something,” says Rachel Lyon’s 18-year-old camp counselor and protagonist, Corey. Fruit of the Dead“I can’t just disappear.” She gets a surprise offer from the father of her favorite camper: a month’s work babysitting for his kids on his private island. “Can’t you do that?” he replies with a smile, handing Corey a non-disclosure agreement. After all, she’s 18. She can make her own decisions.
Fruit of the Dead The film is based on the Greek myth of Hades kidnapping Persephone, daughter of Demeter, and imprisoning her in the underworld. In Lyon’s version, Corey, who has been rejected from every university he applied to and has no plans for the future, accepts a job offer despite the voice in his head telling him to run away.
Corey’s employer:Very enjoyable,very safety” Painkillers. Highly addictive, of course, and extremely dangerous. It’s not hard to imagine Lyon’s current inspiration for this enigmatic, charismatic, hedonistic character. Their names are written on White House dinner invitations and inscribed on museum walls. This man’s godlike wealth gives him the power to escape the real world at any time and take unsuspecting young women, with no reservations.
Lyon’s mythical inspiration serves as more than just the novel’s narrative backbone. On this private island, the stars are brighter, the grass is softer, the drinks are stronger – maybe laced with prescription-level drugs. Lyon’s prose is lush, languid, hazy, and deliberately warping the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Here, the lonely Cory loses track of time, loses track of whether she’s eaten anything recently, and loses all sense of her fragile identity. “Is this what it means to grow up, she wonders? Is this how it’s always going to be? Will I always be this sad, this lonely, this –?”
Most of us who have distanced ourselves from our younger selves know that turning 18 doesn’t make you an adult. Lyon certainly knows that. It becomes clear that Corrie’s boss intends to keep her on the strange fairytale island, grooming her to be a doll to play with whenever she visits her dream house. While the other adults on the island turn a blind eye, Corrie’s panicked mother embarks on an equally fascinating adventure to find her daughter and bring her home.
The point is, Corey’s boss is protected by non-disclosure agreements that his employees, who are technically adults, signed “of their own free will.” Corey is not protected from anything.
Sleepwalkers, Scarlett Thomas
“You’re seeing things that aren’t there,” Richard tells his new wife, Evelyn, in Scarlett Thomas’ novel. SleepwalkersEvelyn is convinced that the manager of the hotel where they are honeymooning is waging a “passive-aggression war” against her: “You’re getting really paranoid,” he insists, and becomes even more aggressive when she protests.
Sleepwalkers is a twisty, sleazy, and occasionally darkly humorous mystery. The Talented Mr. Ripley and Gone GirlEvelyn and Richard arrive at their Greek island hotel at the end of the tourist season, just as a massive storm is predicted to strike – exactly one year after a similar storm drowned an elderly couple known locally as “The Sleepwalkers.”
Thomas’s novel conceives of the novel as a way for readers to sift through a pile of compiled documents — letters from Evelyn and Richard, torn notebook pages, diary entries, audio recordings, and excerpts from hotel guestbooks — that purportedly describe the terrible events that befall Evelyn and Richard, the most terrifying of which is the dissolution of their marriage.
Evelyn is a former housekeeper and wayward playwright. Her one-woman play was a huge hit, but its subsequent TV adaptation was panned by critics as an “apology for the patriarchy.” She’s on the brink of losing her career and entering into a destructive marriage with financier Richard. Unless she writes something truly brilliant, her previous work will be forgotten. Instead, she writes Richard an incredibly long farewell letter.
Throughout the letters, Thomas portrays Evelyn as both a keen observer of people and their motivations and a hysterical woman with no sense of reality. Evelyn claims that a young man working at the hotel is frightened of something or someone. She suspects that the film producer who came to town to buy the rights to the “Sleepwalker” story is a conman. She is convinced that the mirror in her room has been replaced with one that looks “old, English, and shabby.” She is convinced that the hotel manager is undermining her while boldly having an affair with Richard. Does Evelyn see things clearly? Or is she, as her husband suggests, vain, jealous, and paranoid? She writes on multiple occasions that she “may have only imagined it.”
Modern readers are better, if not better, at recognizing that we are instinctively conditioned to trust men and distrust women, and that women are generally socialized to doubt their own judgment in uncomfortable or dangerous situations. Thomas manipulates our perceptions of what is true and where our loyalties should lie. In one scene, Evelyn’s suspicions are vindicated; in the next, she appears calculating, vengeful, possibly murderous.
Maybe Evelyn has lost her mind, or maybe she’s just like all the other women we’ve ever known.
We were the universeKimberly King Parsons
“Hey baby, how are you?” Pete asks his best friend Kit in Kimberly King Parsons’ novel. We were the universeThey’ve traveled from rural Texas to towns in Montana for what Pete calls “meaningful nature experiences,” and Kit nods absentmindedly as Pete explains the importance of approaching nature with an “open mind” and that the hot springs river they’re wading through is a “cauldron of nutrients” with a “monstrous” “microbiome.”
Ostensibly they’ve come to help Pete heal the wounds of a broken heart, but Kit soon suspects he has an ulterior motive. “Are you relaxing?” Pete insists, peering carefully at her from across the water. “There’s something about his question that I don’t like,” she thinks.
We were the universe The story begins nearly four years after Kit’s sister Julie died at age 19, shortly after which Kit’s daughter Gilda is born. Up until this point, Kit has managed to fulfill her role as a mother without letting her grief over Julie’s death show. But now Kit’s grief is beginning to show. When Kit nearly has a panic attack at the grocery store checkout, she runs for the door without her bags. “listen” she wanted to explain.My sister’s disappearance – the universe will never recover.“
Their sisterhood was almost supernatural. Kit describes Julie as a “genius” and someone with “unmistakable brilliance.” They could get into each other’s minds, communicate ideas without words, and see the same vision. They had an intimate, unspoken understanding of each other. Without Julie, Kit thinks, “No one would know me.”
In addition to the panic attacks, Kit has night terrors and becomes dazed around Gilda, playing “games” such as “the brush, mommy lying face down on the floor and Gilda putting barrettes and clips and rubber bands in my hair.” Though Kit’s body is with Gilda, her mind increasingly wanders to the past, and tends to be with Julie.
“Tomorrow will be healing,” Pete declares of the “positive nature experience,” eager to pull Kit out of her grief and back to life. But without the guardrails of Gilda and her husband’s care, Kit’s hallucinations of Julie become more vivid and intrusive. Kit feels Julie’s weight on the edge of her hotel bed (“StayI think.”), overhearing Julie on the phone with her mother (“Can I hear a voice on the phone? A voice?”), and feeling Julie’s presence when a light bulb flashes (“Hello againI think.”).
We were the universe It’s a quintessential ghost story, but also a story about living with grief, about being beautifully confused, and about finding forgiveness and understanding — and Parsons balances it all expertly, adding enough chilling moments to keep the reader guessing about what Julie wants and whether Kit can ultimately live without her.
