Comfort Me With Apples

October 1, 2021
Valente's latest is best approached without much in the way of expectation: there's a lot to tease apart in the story, and it's full of unexpected references and illuminating details. It begins with Sophia waking in the morning, thinking "I was made for him," and continues as Sophia goes about her day, interspersed with increasingly draconian HOA rules, and starts to unravel when she finds something she's never seen before. There is nothing in her experience that prepares her for such a thing. Her neighbors ask her, "Are you happy?" Of course she is. She has everything she needs, everything she wants. Why wouldn't she be happy? Her husband works long hours and is often away from home, but she has a perfect life and a perfect house; if the house is sometimes too big for her alone, well, it is still luxurious, the neighborhood still grand. It's a short book, but the way it builds itself on its foundation opens up wholly unexpected vistas; it will surprise the reader the way it surprises Sophia: with a well-crafted inevitability.

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October 25, 2021
This gem of a novella from Valente (The Past Is Red) packs a lot of intrigue into a brief page count. Sophia lives in the upscale gated community of Arcadia Gardens, a supposed utopian oasis under the management of the Arcadia Gardens Homeowners Association. The rules in Arcadia are strange and specific, forbidding, among other things, dancing and the building of structures for beekeeping, but all are said to be in favor of purity and harmony. Sophia’s life is basically a fairy tale, complete with a beloved husband at her side. But even as the reader takes in the frothy, enchanted atmosphere, there are hints that Sophia is teetering in an illusion that will soon launch her into darkness. This turns out to be the case when Sophia discovers a mysterious silver hairbrush and a dark tangle of hair in a locked drawer of their home and her fairy tale perception begins to dissolve. A masterful late reveal proves this to be a clever reworking of a famous story, reframing all that came before. Though there are some moments of excessive exposition, Valente packs in enough charm, curiosity, and foreboding to make this worthwhile. Fans will be delighted.