Books Lost to the Mists of Time

Millennial Nostalgia as a Third-Culture Kid - Part 2

Crossword Bookstore in Chennai, India

Earlier this week, I wrote about

Kate Kennedy

’s book One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting in and what it feels like to both relate and not relate, given that I’m a millennial that grew up all over the world. You can read that post here. I promised to share some of the art that has resonated with me over the years. And we’re going to start today, with books.

I won’t be writing about Harry Potter or Dawson’s Creek or *NSync (though I suppose knowing whether I preferred *NSync to the Backstreet Boys would be a window into my soul). I will be writing about the deep cuts—the books I found in bargain bins and read over and over again, or the TV shows I’ve never heard anyone ever discuss, but that my parents remember me racing home, from the bus stop, to catch. In other words, this series of posts is dedicated to niche recommendations (though, admittedly, perhaps niche only to Americans)—culture that you might enjoy now but has been lost to the mists of time. Therefore the TikTok algorithm can’t (re-)discover it for you, but I can.

First up, Sundowners by

Lesley Lokko

¹ When I was 16, I found a copy in a sale bin in the Crossword bookstore in Chennai, India (iykyk) and read it one big gulp. If you’re a fan of Robinne Lee’s Idea of You or Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta’s The View was Exhausting, you will enjoy this doorstopper (coming in at a mere 654 pages). The book follows four women from adolescence (largely at boarding school in Malvern, England) through adulthood.

There are all sorts of entanglements but I have always thought the beating heart of the book is two love stories. The first between between glamorous, spoiled, and at least to start, bigoted Rianne and, the scion of a Black, South African political family, Riitho. The second between Gabrielle (Gabby), a sweet, smart English woman with daddy issues, and Nael, a handsome, also smart, half-Palestinian man, with relatively fewer, mommy issues.

All four of the women face difficulties, and trauma—there is substance abuse and sexual assault, but what keeps you turning the pages is how each character’s story is interwoven with broader political headwinds. Lokko, of course, takes some artistic license, which she describes in an author’s note. The story starts in the 1980s and takes you from Johannesburg to London to New York to Martinique to Oslo to Accra (among other places). Cultural (and racial) identity is central to the book, and perhaps why this third-culture kid (now, adult millennial) loves it so very much. A glittering love story with anti-apartheid and anti-colonial themes, what could be more highbrowlowbrow than that?

I re-read the book in January and will admit not all of it holds up—there is a storyline relating to body weight that probably wouldn’t pass muster with an American sensitivity reader today. But, to me, and perhaps I am a victim of my own nostalgia here, the book is still worth reading and revisiting.

Pandora Sykes

wrote about her own comfort reads for one of my favorite newsletters

Books + Bits

and explained:

To be clear, neither Jilly [Cooper] or Jill [Mansel]’s books are without issue. Many of them were written 20, 30 years ago. They’re heteronormative . . . . .there’s a bit of fattist commentary/ tokenism, particularly in Jilly’s older ones. . . . .(the message was very much that when you’re that good looking, you can do anything you want) whereas now [they]’d be considered toxic and coercive. . . . .Books serve different seasons and speak to disparate parts of our inner emotional landscape. Jill Mansell is not my dirty secret, she is my private peace.²

Perhaps, Lesley Lokko is my private peace. In addition to writing great, racy novels (The Guardian’s term, not mine) Lokko is an award-winning architect, you can read more about her here. I have read her entire oeuvre and I have enjoyed many a plane ride more because of her books. Saffron Skies is my second favorite book of hers—but, please be forewarned there is a sub-plot involving the protagonist’s half-brother and forbidden love that is certainly cause for a raised eyebrow or two (maybe more).

Next up, Don't You Want Me? by

India Knight

. I think my mother purchased this and left it on a bookshelf in our home and with the permissive parenting of the early aughts, I was free to read it. It falls squarely in the same genre as Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic Series, but (and to borrow some phrasing from the Brits) is more of a saucy bonkbuster towards the end. Stella is a single mother on a quest to… have sex with someone? Anyone? Of course, she has a cute, ginger artist renting a portion of her home and you can see where this is going. But what makes this book stand out (in my memory) is that it’s absolutely, laugh-out-loud funny. Now that I’m (finally?) over 35, I can promise you that all of the observations related to Stella’s moms’ group (playgroup, if you’re English) still hit. I can also recommend My Life on a Plate by India Knight, which was filled with humor as well.

Also worth mentioning (and published around this time):

• Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella. I have no idea why this isn’t more people’s favorite book by Kinsella. An overworked lawyer heads to the countryside in shame, pretends to be a housekeeper, makes friends, and eventually restores her reputation and finds happiness. [If you have already read the book, I can’t recommend this podcast episode about it enough—it was so funny, I cackled.] More recently, I quite liked Kinsella’s new novel The Burnout.

• Can you Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella. I’ll leave it to the experts to provide you with a synopsis here as its been ages since I read it but I will say, you can totally skip the movie version of this book—Alex Daddario was great, the male lead was a snooze fest.

• The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice. Historical fiction about the years after WWII, a crumbling ancestral home, an Elvis Presley forerunner, and so much more. I believe this was a huge hit in the U.K. in the mid-aughts.

And three more suggestions, where the movie was probably better than the book (in my humble opinion), but they were published in the late ‘90s or early aughts so have also been lost to the mists of time:

• Le Divorce by Diane Johnson.

• Chocolat by Joanne Harris.

• Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes.

If you have any similar books to recommend, please drop them in the comments.

A programing note. This Substack launched on Sunday and this is my third post! Wahoo! I want to be transparent that after April 9, we will settle in to a more sustainable posting schedule—weekly or bi-weekly. And to be able to do that, I would still very much like to solve your *cultural conundrums.* If you have one, could you please reach out to me via Substack, e-mail, or carrier pigeon?³ Thank you so very much!

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Wherever possible I have tried to provide links to bookshop.org. A few of the books mentioned are only available at Amazon. If you would prefer to shop elsewhere, I would recommend Blackwell’s, which has free shipping to the States and great customer service.

1. Lokko on her own writing, in an interview with Madame Architect: “And you know, I could never crack the US market. When my agent first approached American publishers, I think somebody who was racially ambiguous was very difficult to sell. We’re talking twenty years ago, though, and things have changed. By the time reading tastes in the States caught up, I had moved back into architecture. But one of my favorites is a book called An Absolute Deception — and please note that I don’t make up the titles, my publisher does!”

2. I intend to re-read some Jilly Cooper before Rivals graces our small screens. If you’re interested in reading along with me, or would like me to post about it—please drop me a line!

3. This is a reference to The Gentlemen on Netflix, which I found to be the perfect Spring romp. I hope everyone has plans to watch it!