A review by katdid
Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

4.0

But I know what it means to crave what you're not. To want to sew up that rift because it's exhausting to hold it open. Sometimes you just need to be someone else, someone who doesn't care about anything at all. I know I do. I want emptiness but I can't have it.

This has been on my radar for a few years, but it was exactly what I did not need to be reading right now. So it is probably testament to how good it is that I (mostly) enjoyed it anyway. I felt like the protagonist Della and I were a lot alike, except my current obsession is more specifically with authenticity. I imagined the setting as Portland, and then - because certain details, like the fact that Della was a Professor (or called herself one?), put me in mind of this one guy I was recently dating - as New Orleans, which was probably inaccurate (I have no personal experience of New Orleans) but I liked thinking that Della's scene was there, because that scene was nonsense that masked all the very real shit going on underneath.