What’s Trish Sissons Reading?

This summer, I’m trying to embrace a ‘do it for the plot’ mentality. I’ve always been a fan of doing things on a lark, but this summer it feels important and urgent that everything be mad and seasonally specific. Notably, that has led me to crash a near-stranger’s birthday party, suit up for a 50 Cent show at a pool party on a whim, and start drafting stories that live somewhere between sheer nonsense and absolute blissful insanity.

My summer reading has also been walking a funny tightrope over a chasm of potentially bad decisions, reckless behaviour, emancipation, and skylarking; books that are masterfully confronting and escapist in equal measure.

Joanna Biggs’ A Life of One’s Own explores how nine women writers began again and approached life after moments of profound grief and heartbreak, some seeking the light, some dancing with destruction in a way that feels very true. It is a beautiful reminder that conventions are not mandatory and, for me, that on the other side of depression is a Van Morrison song and a sunny day if you wait it out long enough. 

On the fiction side, I’m halfway through Emma Cline’s novel, The Guest, and I find myself delighting in, and disappointed by, Alex’s reckless behaviour and poorly conceived plans that have served to reassure me that no matter how messy I think I am, there is always a hotter mess. 

Both Dolly Alderton’s Good Material and Monica Heisey’s Really Good, Actually attest to the beauty of this messiness as the great unifier (albeit with less petty theft and property damage), as both peak relatability and catalyst for what comes next. Apparently, if you want it to, the wildness can be a gateway to something a little more healthy, a little less self-destructive. But only if you’re looking for that sort of thing. 

In service of my social insecurity, I’ve also kept a copy of Mrs. Dalloway and various Tom Wolfe books on my person at all times to hoodwink the general public into thinking I’m clever and high-brow when I’m really something akin to a human raccoon these days, looking for treasure in the trash; a little feral, but ‘hey look, she has opposable thumbs like us!’

Finally, I also have the great privilege of reading work by my writing group friends, which I’m both smug and sad for you that you can’t read yet. Eventually though, I’m doubtless that their books will become your favourites.