Mixtapes for Hookers

Three things that remind me of fall:

1) Primitive People, Francine Prose’s wonderfully acidic novel about the haute bourgeoisie of the Hudson Valley as viewed through the eyes of their Haitian au pair. Like some of Prose’s other novels–Hunters and Gatherers and Household Saints, especially–its depictions of life in New York State make you love the characters (some of them, anyway) while at the same time filling you with intense dread. It is a wonderful, wonderful novel, one which I first read one October during high school. (My introduction to Prose was through Household Saints, which I read because I knew about the movie adaptation starring two of my favorite people in the world, Lili Taylor and Tracey Ullman.)

Specifically, I remember the sensation of reading Primitive People in the car, as my dad drove us to a flea market in Raynham, Massachusetts. The leaves were changing, the book was great, and it’s one of the few moments of my teenage years that I actually have vivid, happy memories of.

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