Molly: Odds & Ends
I've decided that I'm too lazy to properly do accent marks on this little blog so you'll have to imagine them.
Consumption
John Banville
As a fan of John Banville's Quirke and Strafford books, of which the fourth really seemed like the last, I was excited to read his new novel Venetian Vespers without much info going into it. It's kind of a mystery, it's kind of gothic. I would say the best genre description is psychological thriller in a gothic pastiche.
One of the most impressive things about Venetian Vespers is how menacingly and uncomfortably Banville casts Venice. I had a Venice phase as a teen and long romanticized it as a place of glittering, impossible beauty. To Banville's narrator it is "this baneful, waterlogged city."
My wife remarked on the overarching stillness, saying it seemed to her the very essence of hushed romance; to me, every sound issuing out of those rank alleyways and skimming across the turbid expanses of intermittently and evilly glinting, oily waters was as a secret call, sly arrogant, suggestive, resonant with mockery and menace.
Banville's voice in the novel is like a beloved character actor showing up for a flamboyant few scenes in a limited series, having a great time and chewing the scenery. The reasons I find his detective novels so darkly compelling were still present, though, and I finished the book in a few days because it's slim and quick-moving.
When it comes to reading lately, I don't know what to do with my Dalgliesh-less life. I watched the Quirke miniseries and read the Q&S books but I hadn't read the Quirke books that weren't adapted so I picked up the fourth in the series, A Death in Summer. The pre-Strafford Quirke books were written under Banville's nom du crime, Benjamin Black. I was immediately plunged back into the same grey and paranoid mood as the Q&S books. Though not as purple and disdainful as his descriptions of Venice, the Dublin of the Quirke books is dark, insular, and usually under some kind of unpleasant weather. The England of Dalgliesh and by extension P.D. James is not a cozy place, but it's proud, beautiful, and the worldview of the series as whole has faith in human good and dignity. The Quirke books are misanthropic and bleak through and through, and I understand why some crime fiction fans find them to be too much.
Sometimes I think Banville is like a litfic Shuzo Oshimi in his depiction of sexuality. It's stressful and traumatic to be attracted to women in a Banville book...like really terrifying. Being horny is either the worst thing that could happen to you or it's going to cause you to do the worst thing you've ever done. He is in my canon of fiction that has a distinctively male psychological perspective, as in I actually feel like I'm understanding a male brain more deeply for reading it. I love his quiet observations of sensuality, like "he always found stirring the way that women had of sweeping a hand under their bottoms to smooth their skirts when they sat down..." Being with my husband has given me great insight into how being haunted forever by a thing a girl does is usually not some va va voom explosion of femimine beauty and wiles, but the equivalent of sunlight hitting glass at the exact right moment. Banville is a great, great writer, and his prose is so consistently captivating that I don't mind the cold, damp, and fatalistic atmosphere of it all.
Frankenstein
I watched this visual feast cinema event on Netflix with Paul and now I feel a little guilty about that because it's not what the Pope would prefer. Most nights I pray that if converting to Catholicism is truly the right path for me, that I would continue to be affirmed by my faith, my experience in the Church, etc. and that if it's not the right path that I would figure that out and accept it. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that the Pope defending cinema and going to movies in the theater really felt like an affirmation. I can't believe I get to become Catholic under the cinephile Pope. Anyway! Paul and I both like and respect Guillermo Del Tor even if neither of us are universally enamored of him. You have to love him because like the Pope and Nicole Kidman, he is a warrior for the art of film.
Frankenstein was good and I liked watching it! The lead performances were all very well cast and powerful, and Oscar Isaac as a disheveled madman is a million times hotter than in Star Wars. As I am not attracted to men younger than I am almost without exception*, Jacob Elordi is solidly in my "young actors I enthusiastically support and want to see thrive," the forever king of this group being Timothee. Mia Goth is so charming and lovable as weird, kind of awkward girls and her costuming is amazing. I noticed that in most scenes, you don't see her feet, which isn't so crazy for mid 19th century dresses but there was an effect of her almost floating. Being a parent has also made me a big softy about any kind of parent/child theme.
But Frankenstein validated something I've felt about GDT for a while now. When he does romance or gothic romance he plays it all so, so straight. Crimson Peak, The Shape of Water, and now Frankenstein are lavish and they draw you in but they are a little flimsy in the writing compared to movies like The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. I think it's moe, honestly. He can't resist a big, sweeping, normal romance and that pulled him away from making even a Frankenstein movie...not that.
*The exception is Anthony Boyle
Subtweets
Much like I call any 21st century film format a DVD, and any fan-made montage set to music an AMV, I think any critical blind item about other people on social media can be a subtweet. It's not like we can call a shot fired on substack...yeah.
The most irritating thing about the new old house man is not his beautiful wife, his children clad in tastefully rustic clothing, or his patronizing tone. It's that he knows what Doen is and will cite it by name.
A lot of people flirted with being reactionary in 2021-2022. Some of them self-corrected and are now normal, but some more right wing posters who I thought would occasionally have some wisdom have gotten stupider under Trump 2. It's like the idea of "their side" being in power has made them lazier thinkers. Especially the anonymous dad in New York.
I think people without children could stand to be a little less trigger happy about jumping into parenting discourse. Before I became a mother, I saw the frequent antagonism between parents and childless/free people as unnecessary. I'll just keep being myself and I won't do this, I thought. On the other side of it, I understand. It's difficult not to sound irritated or condescending as part of the group that has been on both sides of the divide. Most of it is hard to distill into good talking points so inevitably you wind up at some version of "you just don't understand!" I don't think it's possible to accurately transmit - not the joy exactly - the worthiness of parenting because the essence of the argument cannot be translated out of a language you only speak if you get the universal parent software download. I probably sound annoying now! I don't mean to. It's just like...we all have ideas of how we'd like to be as parents and the reality isn't so much "oh ha ha now you see you DO become your own parents" or that all your assumptions and aspirations are proved wrong as much as you realize all your preconceived ideas are incompatible with the universal parent software download. I will happily observe or participate in fellow parents hashing it out over gentle parenting vs. authoritative parenting, how much it's OK to complain on public forums, etc. but all I can say to people without children who have strong opinions is IDK man it depends.
But also on that note, I don't think "because I said so" is a good parenting practice. My son is only 2.5, and I've recently been reevaluating areas where I just need to tell him what to do, phrase things that are going to happen regardless as a declaration and not a question, etc. I don't fully subscribe to either major style of parenting and I think you can't know with a toddler anyway. There are a few priors from my childless life that I have and do intend to hold on to even with the universal parent software download and there are:
don't do that whisper yelling thing in public
don't say "because I said so"
My parents had a sort of disregulated parenting style that went through phases of being more authoritarian but in practice I got away with most things. The paradigm we were operating in was "obey adults and authority" whatever the application ended up looking like. I've had an anti-authoritarian streak in me from a tiny age and nothing, nothing sets it off more than being told to do something without any sense of why, or to obey a rule that nobody can explain the purpose of. Maybe this is stupid and childish, but I figure I can at least say "you can't have candy now because we have a piece of candy after your bath."
I'm tired of the very popular substack lady - the one with the husband and the fashion and the mild take about absolutely everything. She's a good enough writer to stop relying on couching everything in sarcastic disclaimers, too, so the persistence thereof is extra annoying. I don't begrudge her that she seems happy in her marriage and she seems like a good mom, but her reasonable centrist views have tipped too far into mock? disbelief about real problems many women have. Don't make me defend the "sex is the fifth shift" podcast ladies, I absolutely will not! But unlike the very easy to guess subject of this paragraph, I have been in both a bad and good marriage. It's complicated and depressingly easy to find yourself in a situation where you resent your spouse and find their bid for sex annoying, repellent, or even an affront to your own dignity. This can happen in marriages that aren't even abusive or far outlier bad. There is usually a lot more going on than bitches needing an attitude check or an SSRI.
I think I might have to retire calling myself a hetero-optimist, not because it's untrue, but because there is too much of a vibe of competing to be the purest, most enthusiastic man and straight relationship defender. Lucky for me I have this:
Every heterofatalist feminist straight woman needs a Kinsey 6 gay therapist to help rekindle her attraction to men. https://t.co/VydzwedBeR pic.twitter.com/7sFgLhtbRF
— Prof. Scammington 🏳️🌈 (@scammington) July 22, 2025
Perfume Corner
I've developed quite the taste for powdery, vintage makeup sort of perfumes in the recent past. Right now I'm wearing Bienaime's Jours Heureux. I got two samples from Bienaime, a French house that lay dormant for decades before its current revival. Vermeil and Jours Heureux were part of Bienaime 2.0's debut, and they both pay proud homage to their predecessors. Based on first wears, I like Vermeil a bit more. It might be the platonic ideal of a vintage makeup scent. JH's almond aldehydic opening was a cymbal crash for me, to Vermeil's orchestral warm up. But now, after a few hours heureux it's quite beautiful.
I also got Arquiste's Venice Rococo in the brand's new 30ml size, called, delightfully, chiquitos. The bottle itself is just such a pleasing object. As for the scent, it's the most powder bomb perfume in my current collection. And it does feel old. I feel a little bad but not too bad about wearing it to barre - I had to do the sweat test! Which it passed! - because it's powerful and unmistakably not like anything else you'd expect to smell in the room. Happily, it smells more like my romantic idea of Venice than John Banville's Venice. I can't do justice to Arquiste's own product pages, which include research and bibliographies for each scent and the historical moment they're meant to recreate. Venice Rococo is inspired by 18th century noblewomen's private quarters, called casinos or ridottos. Seriously, go spend some time on the website.
Wouldn't say no to a bottle: Dama Koupa, Reve D'Ossian, Charade
Liked: Velvet Vendetta, Doux Ennui, L'explicite, Noir Exquis, Studied, Celestial Object, Oeillets Louis XV, Fire At Will
Didn't care for: Sirene Privee, Peau Santal, Acrasia
Haven't sprayed yet: Violettes du Czar, Musc Amarante, Ethereal Wave