Friday Friyay: 'My Nemesis' by Charmaine Craig

Happy Friday! It's officially July and this month is honestly intimidating me a bit with everything I need to accomplish. But I'm trying to keep myself chill by reading and actually taking my free time. I also just uploaded my first podcast episode, so if you're up for some John Wyndham Sci-Fi, hop over to my episode on The Kraken Wakes. (I'd love some feedback if you do have time to listen in!)

One of the books I've been enjoying this week in my free time is My Nemesis by Charmaine Craig. I meant to read this ages ago and it somehow slipped between the cracks, but I'm very glad to have finally gotten to it. Pop over to my review if you're intrigued!

Tessa is a successful writer who develops a friendship, first by correspondence and then in person, with Charlie, a ruggedly handsome philosopher and scholar based in Los Angeles. Sparks fly as they exchange ideas about Camus and masculine desire, and their intellectual connection promises more—but there are obstacles to this burgeoning relationship.

While Tessa’s husband Milton enjoys Charlie’s company on his visits to the East Coast, Charlie’s wife Wah is a different case, and she proves to be both adversary and conundrum to Tessa. Wah’s traditional femininity and subservience to her husband strike Tessa as weaknesses, and she scoffs at the sacrifices Wah makes as adoptive mother to a Burmese girl, Htet, once homeless on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. But Wah has a kind of power too, especially over Charlie, and the conflict between the two women leads to a martini-fueled declaration by Tessa that Wah is “an insult to womankind.” As Tessa is forced to deal with the consequences of her outburst and considers how much she is limited by her own perceptions, she wonders if Wah is really as weak as she has seemed, or if she might have a different kind of strength altogether.

Compassionate and thought-provoking, My Nemesis is a brilliant story of seduction, envy, and the ways we publicly define and privately deceive ourselves today.

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.

BB:

'When I accused Wah of being an insult to women - "an insult to womankind" was my unfortunate phrase - we were sitting with our husbands at a fashionable rooftop restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. It was late, I'd made the mistake of starting in on a third martini, and straightaway I could feel the husbands begin to cower, whereas Wah confronted me with a look of hurt, almost to tell me that I'd betrayed some sort of feminine understanding.' 1%

Yeah, that's tense... I'd be immensely offended if I was Wah, but I would also feel incredibly embarrassed if I was Tessa. This is honestly such a tense situation and there are so many layers and themes at play here. I really had to confront my own unconscious biases while reading this novel as well. It's honestly a fascinating novel.

F56:

'Our friendship wasn't an ill-fated exercise in mutual vanity, two egos' Sisyphean rehearsal of arrogant and blasphemous lines; rather, we we getting somewhere - if nowhere other than closer to a publishable articulation of his experience as a man.' 56%

I picked this quote although I had no idea, at the time, what was going on and about whose friendship we're talking. I just loved the sound of "two egos' Sisyphean rehearsal", that's just hilarious to me because I recognise the academic pretension behind it so well.

BBH:

This week's question comes from Billy himself:

Which character do you identify with and why?

It would be very easy to just be like "Elizabeth Bennet" and then swan off into the sunset. But I'm gonna take a different road and talk about type for a hot second. I think I tend to identify with characters that are very in their own head, that have strong opinions about things and sometimes struggle to fit that into how the world really is. I'm also really drawn to characters who feel a lot of pressure, although I do tend to seek that in more dramatic SciFi/Fantasy narratives so that the pressure and worries are a little more abstract. I hope that makes some sense...

So that's it for me today! What do you think of My Nemesis? And what kind of characters do you identify with?