Maybe it’s just watching the Met Gala coverage, but I miss big parties. I miss seeing people dressed up and self-conscious, the drama and the glitter.
“Scared” is kind of my default state when it comes to people. Like bears, or so I’ve heard. I’m scared of what people will think of me or how they’ll hurt me. I’m scared of the future and scared of humiliating myself. I’m scared of being remembered and scared of being forgotten. Scared of being liked, scared of being hated. Anxiety turned inwards.
There’s something about a big party that diffuses that for me, scatters it like empty cups. I can relax while people whose faces I can barely make out drunkenly yell things into my ears, I can compliment people all I want and it isn’t weird because they came here to be complimented, I can laugh too loud and nobody minds, I can slip outside when I get overwhelmed and nobody asks me what’s wrong when I get back. Nobody cares.
Nobody cares about me because everyone at a party thinks they are the main character. Everyone feels like the room is paying attention to them, and that makes them act differently. And I think that’s a fascinating way to approach a story.
I recently devoured a galley of a book called The Last Guest, by Tess Little, and it comes out in two weeks. It’s a locked-room mystery that happens at a glamorous birthday party in Hollywood, featuring a retinue of starlets and seasoned directors and broken families and the detritus of fame and, of course, good drugs.
Elspeth arrives at her star director ex-husband Richard’s 50th birthday party in his mansion in the Hollywood Hills. She was an actress, and he launched her career and fathered her now-adult child, who is also supposed to attend. All she wants to do is check the box: I showed up for my daughter, and once people have seen my face I can leave.
But that doesn’t happen. Her daughter doesn’t show and Elspeth waits and waits, drinks and drinks. She’d been expecting a crowd, but it’s an intimate gathering, seven other guests and Richard’s octopus Persephone, swanning around in its enormous tank, mystifying everyone.
Gradually, the night turns into a surreally intimate and creepily Lynchian bacchanal. And when they wake up the next morning, filled with dread and sweating liquor out of their faces, Richard is dead.
The question becomes not only why is Richard dead, but why were these people invited specifically? What ties them all together?
The stone-cold clarity of flashbacks contrast against the hazy hangover settling over the group as they try to piece together the unreal night they shared and the story feels like looking through a glitzy kaleidoscope. And where is Elspeth’s daughter, anyhow?
It’s a meditation on power—who has it and why, how they wield it in seemingly innocuous interpersonal interactions. It’s about abuse and control and manipulation. It’s about what we project onto strangers and acquaintances and friends in order to avoid seeing ourselves. It’s about ambition and possession, and about how, to paraphrase Mr. Watterson (and my HS yearbook quote lol), people would put rainbows in zoos if they could.
Despite the locked-room mystery being, like, just about the oldest trick there is, Little made it feel brand new—darker, stranger, alien. She puts you on a ferris wheel and pauses you over the top of Hollywood, looking down at the parties and the absurd wealth and the strange people and then takes you all the way back down to the dirty human ground.
It was one of my favorite books of the year. Maybe it will be yours, too.
Buy The Last Guest (10/5) at this link.
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Drinking: My farmer’s market had a stall last week with spirits from Cooper’s Daughter, a “woman-owned and family-operated distillery sourcing foraged and farmed Hudson Valley ingredients to make seasonal, small batch spirits.” I got the Black Walnut Bourbon which is divine, but the star for me was the Raspberry and Black Pepper Liqueur. That said: everything was incredible. Ramp Vodka??? Peony Liqueur?????? Smoked Maple Bourbon????????? How very fucking dare.
Reading: Food delivery workers have fucking had it and who can blame them and every word of this story is vital
Also reading: How to Blow Up a Pipeline, thanks to Linnie for this incredible rec
Pie: This Corn Flake crust pie, which is absolutely what you should do with your late-season plums
Cooking: Sorry for two NYT recipes, but this zucchini panzanella situation is the best (vegan!) thing I’ve ever put in my face and I would eat it daily
Watching: The best video on the whole internet?
Fairy Tale: Our ONE HUNDREDTH EPISODE, folks. what a ride. (I got a Baba Yaga tattoo to celebrate!)