PLEASE, adv., int. I’ve been trying to teach the toddler to say “please” when he shouts “MORE BLUEBERRIES” at me, or his dad, or anyone in the general vicinity who might have access to blueberries. For a while he found it easier to say in American Sign Language, usually as more of a belly rub than the sign’s normal location at chest height, but he has recently started saying it aloud in English.
After several weeks of happily saying it when prompted, he finally asked what it meant. (My child!)
I told him, “It means ‘I’m asking nicely.’”
Here’s the longer version. As a verb, “to please” means “to give pleasure,” or to satisfy, or to be agreeable. “Please” as a one-word courtesy dates to the 1770s and is probably a shortening of “please you,” in which “it” is dropped, meaning “may it be agreeable to you.” It might be helpful to think of French “s’il vous plaît” here, if it please you. English speakers still sometimes use this formation without “it,” but it’s a little formal or old-fashioned: “please God” (in the sense of “God willing,” rather than the direct address of “Please, God, help us win this football game”), or “please Your Hono(u)r.”
We don’t say “please Your Grace” very often these days, so sometimes English speakers guess that “more blueberries, please” is a shortening of “if you please.” (I did.) You might notice that “you” has shifted from object to subject; “please” is versatile like that. “If you please” is more or less “if you like” or “if you are inclined to,” which is a courtesy, it’s just that in the lineage, it’s more like the aunt than the mom. Still related, but not 100% responsible for. (Sometimes moms get eclipsed and kind of disappear behind their kids, so I hear.)
Anyway, the most important thing about the word “please,” even more important than the extra blueberries it could net you, or how very crucial it is in certain romance novel scenes, is that its middle vowel sound is - just - so - good - for - singing.
And I will add, lest you worry that my child’s manners went unrewarded: obviously I gave him the blueberries. Please.
In Capital-R Romance, but in English, here’s novelist and critic Brandon Taylor writing about his experience reading all 20 of Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart novels for the London Review of Books. It’s a beautifully written piece of criticism.
Before I even arrived at Taylor’s paragraph about reading La Débâcle while bombs fell on Gaza, I was thinking to myself “The Zola novels I read were astounding, but I don't think I have the heart to read more.” What makes Zola such a great writer—empathy, witness, impactful prose—is also what makes the books so heartbreaking. And there is the troubling dimension of biological/class determinism, which Taylor discusses.
Zola is often very exciting, though. Taylor gives him credit, but I just wanted to reiterate that even though these novels usually end badly (very badly) for the characters, they are propulsive reads. For me, Le Ventre de Paris was the first time, at the age of 18, where I read something in French and stayed up late because I was so engrossed. It only occurred to me later that it hadn’t felt like homework, which it was. I just wanted to know what happened. And Germinal was the first time I read something in French that made me absolutely bawl.
For what it’s worth, I don’t hate Nana as much as Taylor does, but I don’t remember it any particular scenes from it the way I can for Le Ventre de Paris, Germinal, L'Assommoir, or L'Œuvre, which are the other Rougon-Macquart novels I’ve read.
In small-r romance, I only finished one book because my kid got sick and missed a few days of daycare (he’s better now, don’t worry). Here it is:
Winter of the Owl (m/m, both cis and gay, fantasy) by Iris Foxglove. Speaking as a dweller of a frozen wasteland (Massachusetts), truly the only way to make winter bearable is to spend the entire season ensconced in an ultra-luxury nest of pillows and blankets built by someone utterly devoted to you, who will tend the hearth and bring you food and orgasms. Periodically you (hapless bookish type whose only survival skill is being good at languages; no comment) and your lover (giant bear-hunting lumberjack) might briefly go outside to admire the pristine snow. You’ll find these forays enjoyable because, as a fantasy romance protagonist, you will never have to skid your poorly equipped sedan through grey-brown icy slush to commute to work. Anyway, this book is very kinky—dominance and submission are part of the biological worldbuilding—and I thought it was a lot of fun, but there’s discussion of suicide, murder, and abuse, so be warned.
The annual Trans Rights Readathon just concluded, and March 31st is the international Trans Day of Visibility, so I wanted to spotlight some works by trans authors that I’ve reviewed previously. Winter of the Owl, above, has cis main characters, but Iris Foxglove is the pen name of a co-writing duo, one of whom is trans.
The links in this list go to the issues of Word Suitcase where I reviewed these books; I trust you can find your way to your library or preferred bookshop. This isn’t a comprehensive list by any means, just a few recommendations I wanted to mention again.
Alyson Greaves’s delightfully charming, unputdownable contemporary romance Show Girl, in which protagonist Alex has to dress up as a floor model at a computer expo for Reasons, and discovers her own transness—and that she’s in love with her boss—in the process
Al Hess’s sci-fi romance World Running Down, starring a trans man and an android on a madcap adventure across the retrofuturistic, post-apocalyptic Utah desert—in a broken-down old van and with a bunch of fugitive sex workers
K. R. Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma’s lovely, magical winter solstice novella Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night, in which a woman and her nonbinary metamour search for their missing boyfriend
Penny Aimes’s swoony, kinky contemporary For the Love of April French
TJ Alexander’s delicious slowburn Chef’s Kiss
CL Polk’s masterpiece magical noir novella Even Though I Knew the End
Anita Kelly’s heartfelt, sexy contemporary Love & Other Disasters
Xiran Jay Zhao’s bonkers science-fantasy retelling of China’s first female emperor Iron Widow
Rien Gray’s Arthurian-legend-inspired sapphic fantasy novelettes Valerin the Fair and Martis the Brazen and their sexy thriller Double Exposure
In things that are neither Romance nor romance, I also read spy thrillers Real Tigers (novel) and The List (novella) by Mick Herron and Call for the Dead by John le Carré. More on these later, maybe.
And I read this 1984 essay “Permission to narrate” by Edward Said, which is of course brilliant, but also bleak, because it’s forty years old and things are worse for Palestinians. I don’t know what the answer is, but I know it’s not bombs and famine.
That’s all for this week. I’ll be back in your inbox on April 14.