Normal people

Monday

Amelia Butler-Gallie

The peculiar appeal of ‘sad-girl literature’

A stack of books balances on a fluffy white Michael Aram bedspread: Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Lisa Taddeo’s Animal, Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie and Lily King’s Writers & Lovers all touted as “sad-girl lit-fic book recs.” Lana Del Rey’s lugubrious melodies play on repeat; “I’m pretty when I cry” and “baby blues / baby blues,” in particular, are favored lyrics. This is a specific quarter of TikTok (or BookTok), the lachrymose world of “sad-girl lit.

sad-girl

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What is the etiquette about watching graphic sex scenes as a family?

From our UK edition

Q. Please can you tell me the correct etiquette about signing the visitors book after you are married? Obviously you don’t sign your parents’ one before marriage — but your fiancé does. After you are married do you both sign — even if you have lived in the house all your life? — Name and address withheld A. There is no reason for any former child of a house to feel offended if the parent (or step-parent) asks them to sign the visitors book after marriage. It is not a veiled insult or a signal that ‘this is no longer your home’. The visitors book is a matter of record, which will be kept for decades, even for generations. Thus both members of the partnership should sign.

Thursday

James Delingpole

Superbly convincing: Unorthodox reviewed

From our UK edition

When I lived briefly in Stamford Hill I was mesmerised by the huge fur hats (shtreimel) worn by the local Hasidic Jews, and the wigs worn by their wives, and the almost tubercular pallor of their children. I often wondered how such a remote, aloof and archaic sect could possibly relate to 21st-century London. The answer, of course, was that they didn’t: they were like ghosts from another age, walking the same streets but not of this world. I wished I could get a glimpse of their private lives — and now, thanks to Unorthodox (Netflix), we all can. Loosely based on a memoir by Deborah Feldman, it tells the story of 19-year old Esther ‘Esty’ Shapiro (Shira Haas) who flees her ultraorthodox Jewish sect in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for a new life in very secular Berlin.