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Welcome back to Insider Pix, where we uncover what entertainment and culture insiders are watching, reading, and listening to! Next up:
Francesca McDonnell Capossela
Francesca McDonnell Capossela is a queer Irish American author living in Brooklyn. Her debut novel, Trouble the Living, about mothers and daughters, emigration, and the Troubles in Ireland, is out now. When she’s not writing, she hosts literary trivia events around NYC.
Introducing: Bookstore Pix
In addition to being an author, Francesca is a cheerleader for independent bookstores. In partnership with Pix, her new newsletter—Bookstore Pix—brings you inside a bookstore to learn what the booksellers there are reading and recommending. The first send will hit inboxes tomorrow! For more of Francesca’s bookseller recommendations, join her Shelf Talk community!
Francesca’s 5 Picks
5-star-worthy book you’d recommend to anyone?
It seems impossible that a novel could be a stunning social critique, an addictive page-turner, an epic love story, and a devastating work of art, and yet…Chain Gang All-Stars does it all. It changed me as a person, for the better.
Best TV show you’ve watched recently?
I was worried that the second season of Deadloch would disappoint, because how can you follow up perfection?! But it stayed just as funny, fresh, and wildly inventive. If you like your murder mysteries hilarious, outrageous, and atmospheric, I highly recommend giving it a try.
Best movie you’ve watched recently?
The last movie I saw in theaters was Wake Up Dead Man, which I really enjoyed. I showed up for Andrew Scott, but I was really impressed with Josh O’Connor (I know I’m late to the party). I also appreciated the complexity of the film’s treatment of religion and Bridget Everett’s cameo. I’m also desperate to see The Sheep Detectives soon, to find out what everyone has been crying about.
A hidden gem you wish more people knew about?
Sarah Waters is one of our greatest living writers and not enough people have read her. Each of her six novels is a wonder of richly-researched historical fiction, usually centering on lesbian life (but straight people, you’re missing out if you’re not reading them!). They are page-turners and deep character studies and odes to London, and I genuinely come away from her work feeling lucky to be alive at the same time as her.
What are you listening to lately?
I’m not a big podcast listener because most of my listening time is devoted to audiobooks (I just finished and loved Where Sleeping Girls Lie). Music-wise, I’ve been enjoying the new Rostam album.
Pix: What LGBTQ+ book do you wish more people were talking about?
FMC: With all the Heated Rivalry mania, I NEED everyone to understand how perfect a romance You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian is. 1960s New York. A gay journalist; a closeted baseball player who is on an epic strike-out streak…it’s a book that tackles failure and grief so gracefully, and yet it feels like sunshine in book form.
Pix: What two books would you put next to your novel Trouble the Living in a bookstore display for the perfect back-to-back reading experience?
FMC: I love this question! I’d pick Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, which was one of the first books to open my eyes to the role women played in the violence of the Troubles and which hugely influenced the characters of Bríd and Aoife. And then I’d put Chloe Michelle Howarth’s Sunburn, for a gorgeous meditation on first queer love in a small Irish town. I think my character, Bernie, would absolutely see herself in Lucy.
Pix: What's the most memorable recommendation a bookseller has ever given you?
FMC: When my wife and I got married last August, we had a “love poetry reading” with our closest friends and family at our favorite upstate bookstore, Blue Heron Books. We created a list of dozens of our favorite love poems and asked our guests to choose one to read. Ahead of the actual event, the owner of Blue Heron, Jean, helped us choose some, including Carol Ann Duffy’s Valentine, which is about giving a beloved an onion as a token of affection.