Transcript / LoLT: Morgan Richter Recommends Batman and Two New Books — 23 August 2024

This is a transcription of LoLT: Morgan Richter Recommends Batman and Two New Books — 23 August 2024

[cheerful music]

Melissa: Coming up, a hardboiled thriller set in sunny LA.

David: A coming-of-age story set in 1970s Japan.

Melissa: Plus, our distraction of the week. I’m Mel.

David: I’m Dave. This is the library of lost time.

Melissa: lWe have an exciting lineup today! I’m talking about the new mystery novel ‘The Divide’ by Morgan Richter, and later, she’ll be our guest to share a Distraction of the Week.

Melissa: I think of Morgan as ‘my Duran Duran pal Morgan.’ I met her on Twitter about 10 years ago, while I was lurking on the edges of the Duran Duran fandom. She wrote a series of essays called ‘Duranalysis’ in which she does a deep-dive into Duran Duran’s music videos. They’re the perfect combination of affection, irreverence, and insight. Morgan is the person you wished sat next to in the back of class, trying to make you laugh with her running commentary — and then when the teacher called on her to make her look stupid, she had the right answer ready to go.

Melissa: So, Morgan was my Duran Duran pal — and then I found out she’s written a handful of novels AND she has deep experience in the entertainment world, including Talk Soup, one of the greatest TV shows of all time.

Melissa: So let’s talk about her new book ‘The Divide.’ This is a sun-drenched, neo-noir mystery set in modern Los Angeles.

Melissa: When the story opens, we meet Jenny. She’s a wannabe actress whose one big shot at fame decades ago fizzled out. Now she uses her empathy and intuition to work as a psychic-slash-life-coach. She works out of a vaguely crappy space she refers to as her clinic doing tarot readings and palmistry. Jenny is the narrator, and her voice has a nice gender-swapped, hard-boiled detective vibe. I liked her immediately because she’s well-intentioned but also a bit beaten down. Example: She says her workspace ‘smelled like failed hopes.’

Melissa: What Jenny lacks in real psychic abilities, she makes up for with stellar people-reading skills. One day, a woman shows up without an appointment. She tries to sell Jenny some BS about reaching out to her mother in the spirit realm, but Jenny clocks her as a cop. When the cop questions her psychic abilities, Jenny says this:

‘…You consider yourself a star in your field. You’re arrogant about your abilities and your accomplishments, but you have reason to be. Your coworkers don’t like you much, but you don’t lose sleep over that, because you don’t like them either… you’re smarter than them. You dress better than them… The spirit realm doesn’t exist for you. Under usual circumstances, you’d never bother with someone like me, but today you’re here in your professional capacity with the LAPD… Will that do?’

Melissa: Her reading is dead-on, but she could never have anticipated the rest. The cop is there on a murder investigation. The director of Jenny’s first and only film has been killed. His ex-wife is the prime suspect, and she’s gone missing. Weirdly, the ex-wife looks remarkably like our heroine Jenny. And the cops think the two women are one and the same. So Jenny does the only reasonable thing — she sets off on a quirky, dangerous adventure to solve the murder and clear her name.

Melissa: I’m not the only one who enjoyed this book. The Wall Street Journal said it ‘starts as an offbeat mystery and turns into an emotional tour de force.’

Melissa: This story has all you could want from a mystery thriller: an amateur sleuth you root for, an inside peek at the art world, a prestige actress-turned-wellness guru, and surprising twists that get a little weird. Plus, it’s very, very LA in the best way. A perfect book to end your summer reading. It’s The Divide by Morgan Richter.

David: Yoko Ogawa is a Japanese author who has won every major Japanese literary award, if we can believe Penguin Random House. You might know her from 2019′s -The Memory Police,’ which was a finalist for both the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award.

David: She has an old book out. She wrote a book in 2005 that has just been translated and released in English. It’s called ‘Mina’s Matchbox.’

David: The story is narrated by Tomoko, a Japanese girl who grew up in the 70s. Her father dies suddenly, so her mother sends her to live with an aunt for a while. The aunt is rich and eccentric. She has a house with seventeen rooms, a sprawling garden, and a pygmy hippopotamus. There’s a dashing, charming, and mysterious uncle. He runs a soft drink company. And there’s a cousin – Mina, who’s just a little older than Tomoko. A grandmother lives in the house. There’s an 83-year-old housekeeper and a gardener.

David: The family, of course, has secrets.

David: The entire book is told as a flashback, from the perspective of an adult Tomoko looking back 30 years, remembering what it’s like to be a child. That bit, and the pygmy hippo and the huge house, and the tone of the writing — which is just a bit formal — all worked together to give me a very strong ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ vibe.

David: The reviews for this book described it as ‘hypnotic’ and ‘bittersweet.’ The New York Times Book Review called it, ‘Effervescent.’ If you’d like to get lost in a big house in Japan with some secrets to unveil, this sounds like an excellent place to go. This is ‘Mina’s Matchbox’ by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder.

David: And now, our Distraction of the Week.

Melissa: Visit strongsenseofplace.com/library for more on the books we talked about today and details to help you get started with Batman comics.

David: Thanks for joining us on the library of last time. Remember to visit your local library and your independent bookstore to lose some time yourself.

Melissa: Stay curious. We’ll talk to you soon.

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Top image courtesy of Waldemar/Unsplash.