Jennifer Down - Bodies of Light

There's something convincing about Jennifer Down's writing - across the many of her short stories that I've read (and which might be her strongest form, or at least my favourite of hers), that lovely debut novel Our Magic Hour and now Bodies of Light. I don't know exactly how she achieves it, but everything she writes feels like it comes from a place of knowing - not direct lived experience necessarily, but a meaningful emotional or psychological understanding nonetheless. 

Completely unshowy but with a style that's recognisable (at the level of both sentences and set pieces and motifs), Down is a wonderful writer - which is just as well given the heaviness of her subject here, and how many ways a novel like this could have gone wrong (but Bodies of Light never does) in depicting the sheer level of trauma experienced by its central character and its lifelong effects. I read the first few pages on a train and found it so affecting that I nearly had to stop reading - and it doesn't let up from there. 

It's not trauma porn, and neither does it descend into anything adjacent to inspiration porn; Maggie / Josie / Holly is rendered with empathy and complexity and the structural forces shaping her life - the broken 'care' system for children, the institutions and cultures that enable abuses of power and sexual violence, the damage done by misogynistic mindsets and beliefs about women and mothers - laid out with righteous anger. The whole novel is brutal, intimate, compelling, moving. 

The Fall Guy

The unquestionable charisma of Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt (the latter a touch dimmed compared to usual) can only take you so far. The Fall Guy doesn't take itself too seriously, it's got some fun actors in secondary roles, and it's self aware - although not with any particular coherence - but it's not as fun as it should be.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

I'd had the impression this was quite well reviewed, but if that's true, expectations must have been very low. Although, thinking about it, it's hard to say how the movie could've been actually good - what tone that would have required, if nothing else.

In The Loop

Holds up over time I reckon.

(previously)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

This movie certainly has a vibe.

Rachel Kushner - Creation Lake

There was a moment while reading Creation Lake where I felt that hard-to-describe feeling in my stomach that only comes when reading something especially enjoyable and interesting at the same time - almost always literary fiction, which is less about any intrinsic hierarchy of worth and more about its nature as a genre. The feeling or sensation is hard to describe, but it's a bit stirred-up, a bit excited, a feeling of pleasure. 

Neither the spy plot nor the big ideas about humanity and civilisation felt out of balance - that they're woven so well together has a fair bit to do with the novel's voice, Sadie Smith's harsh judgements and decisive observations rubbing up interestingly with the occasional hints of a less self-contained inner self, and the way that Bruno's emails and the rural French setting eventually leave her unmoored.

In the end I felt this was more 'very good' than towards 'great' - but books as simultaneously grippingly readable and intellectually substantial (not to mention, enjoyable) as this one don't come along that often.

Tom Greenwell & Chris Bonnor - Waiting for Gonski: How Australia Failed its Schools

Things that this book reminded me about:

• What makes Australia extraordinary, and not in a good way, isn't the extremely high rate of public funding to private schools per se, but the lack of any reciprocal public obligations accepted by those schools as a result
• The achievement / outcomes gap between public and private schools is almost entirely attributable to peer effects
• The immense power of the vested interests of the status quo - combined with the huge blind spots that many carry about the influence of privilege - has done huge harm to attempts to enact evidence-based reform post (and for the matter pre-) the first Gonski report
• What a difference genuinely needs-based funding would make across the whole education system
• The social justice imperative of focusing on school funding and school education policy more broadly.

Lucas Mann - Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances

I found it a tiny bit annoying at times, but overall I appreciated this book. And I couldn't swear that the moments where I found it grating didn't reflect more on me than it.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - Woodland

Warmly welcoming, Woodland is my favourite Gillian Welch album since the flurry of those first four classics Revival, Hell Among the Yearlings, Time (The Revelator) and Soul Journey ... the long gaps between records since then - from Soul Journey (2003) to The Harrow & The Harvest (2011) and then All the Good Times (2020), with Woodland coming relatively quickly now - have added to the sense that the music Welch (and Rawlings) makes is somehow timeless, almost as if she's the vessel or the channel rather than an active creator, an impression that of course does her a huge disservice while also speaking to the quality of the music itself. 

This one's got a bit more texture to it compared to most - more instrumentation, and as a result a touch more production - but it has the same air as all of her others as having always already been there yet arriving fully present in the now. It really sings.

Kelly Link - Magic for Beginners

So, so good. All of these stories are interesting and most of them have something more than that - a particular intrigue. Particular stand outs: the title story (I've read it before), "Stone Animals", "Some Zombie Contingency Plans", "Lull", as much for their feel and the way they linger as for anything else. It's trite but there really is something of the magician to Link.

"Magritte" (Art Gallery of NSW)

Dream-like has always been the first way to describe Magritte's work, and maybe it remains the best. He's certainly among the oldest of my old favourites, and if the jolt of his art has been dulled a bit by familiarity, time and changes in my own sensibilities, it still holds plenty of charge regardless.

"La condition humaine", 1933

"L'empire des lumières", 1954

"L'enfance d'Icare", 1960

Nobody Wants This season 1

It's charming and peppy; kind of silly but not one-dimensional. Honestly, it's mostly Kristen Bell's presence that sold it for me.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Interesting and sympathetic depiction of 'radical' eco-activism, structured as a procedural action-drama.

Slow Horses season 4

Still good in all the same ways, and manages to delve into back stories and personal lives in a way that doesn't detract and even adds to the intrigue.

Miranda Lambert - Postcards from Texas

First few listens, I had Postcards from Texas clocked as median Miranda Lambert - nice but overly familiar, the sound a return to the polished sheen she settled into a few records back, the tempo mostly mid-, the melodies much like others she's offered before (tracks 2-4: "Dammit Randy" the type of ballad she does well but she's done it before (it plays as a less soaring, 15-years-on "Love Song"), "Looking Back on Luckenbach" the type of song that everyone's done before, "Santa Fe" having almost exactly the same verse as Pistol Annies' "Best Years of My Life" but far less dynamic). 

It gets better with repeated plays though - she's such a strong songwriter and singer that the songs come through more in their own right even when their packaging isn't at first particularly distinctive. And even though they're not all-timers amidst her excellent back catalogue, numbers like "Armadillo", "Dammit Randy", "January Heart", "Run" and "Alimony" have more than a sprinkling of what it is that's made Lambert such a stand-out across her career as a whole.

Trap

Fine as a diversion.

The Wild Robot

The director describes this film in terms of Monet meeting Miyazaki and well it's not that. However, it is well done - the story's moving, the action and details maintain interest, and the animation does have some lovely moments.

(w/ L)

The Great seasons 1 & 2

For a show with such a distinct vibe, it's surprisingly difficult to pin down exactly what it is about The Great that makes it so enjoyable. It's something about the way its over the top absurdity coexists with such recognisable (if often base) impulses and motivations, along with the tart humour it finds at every turn. 

All the characters are grotesque with the partial exception of Catherine herself - although, particularly in this second season, the show suggests that her extraordinary will and her determination to impose it on Russia itself has a monstrous element - yet still on some level relatable, and season 2 successfully develops most of its main characters and relationships to make them sympathetic. Plus there are some fun additions, in their own right, for how they illuminate the main players' motivations, and as pot stirrers - particularly the Swedish monarchs and Catherine's mother. Aunt Elizabeth remains maybe the one genuinely somewhat heroic figure.

(season 1 previously)

Orville Peck - Stampede

There's a lot of fun to be had across this hugely enjoyable country record, entirely made up of duets (or, in some cases, larger-group confabs) that are either covers or co-writes. Peck proves a versatile collaborator and singer, with a diverse array of styles on display and the voices and sounds of the 'guest' artists tending to be dominant, while Peck offers a level of croon that ranges from 'full Roy Orbison' to 'barely at all' from song to song. 

One of Stampede's pleasures is the many ways in which it's queer, along with its traditional-ish country sounds, and that's upfront with the first song, "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other" - with no less than Willie Nelson - which is as tuneful as it is tongue in cheek. In different ways, a particularly macho take on "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" with Sir Elton himself (one of the album's weaker moments as it happens), the energised Kylie duet "Midnight Ride", a team-up with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway on "Papa Was a Rodeo" (which was always already a country song) and no doubt others.

There's a whole heap of songs that stand out for one reason or another - more that do than don't - although I feel like Peck, or his record label, knew what a rouser he had on his hands with his Travelling Wilburys-ish take on "Rhinestone Cowboy" judging by its placement as the closer. The ones with Margo Price and Mickey Guyton (both great, especially the one with Price) both would've sounded perfectly at home on their own albums, the one with Nathaniel Rateliff sounds a lot like Bruce Springsteen, the one with Allison Russell sounds like an Allison Russell song but with a different type of edge, the one with Teddy Swims is soulful-as. And I haven't even mentioned "The Hurtin' Kind", with Midland, possibly my favourite of the lot.

Looking at Art with Alex Katz

This book has been on my bedside table for months - over a year probably - and I've dipped into it regularly, for the bursts of great art yes, and even more so for Katz's short, opinionated, craft-driven words about it. Whether or not I agree, or even have any kind of technical frame of reference for understanding what he says, each precis (or digression) illuminates not only the piece - and the artist - in question but also, as the title promises, ways of looking at art in general.

"Sci-Fi: Mythologies Transformed" (Science Gallery Melbourne)

Asian, First Nations, women's and queer intersections with and re-visionings of science fiction.

(w/ Jade)

Beachwood Sparks - Across the River of Stars

Nice enough but kind of bland.

Helen Oyeyemi - Parasol Against the Axe

Parasol Against the Axe is a puzzling, deliberately disjointed book that demands close reading to make sense of it on any level - including the most basic, to grasp the action of what is happening, never mind the deeper, nested dimensions of what it's about. So was it worth the effort? I'm not entirely sure, but reading it was never less than pleasurable, its voice isn't quite like any I've encountered before, and both the stories it tells and what passes for its central characters - Hero Tojosoa, Dorothea Gilmartin, and the city of Prague and its various avatars - are distinctive and sharply sidelong.

Rosali - Bite Down

Pretty nice and in many ways a bit of a throwback to various early 2000s indie-folk/country acts - at different points reminding me of the Dearhunters, the Last Town Chorus, that almost randomly acquired 'Between the Lines' compilation and (more recently) Nadia Reid. First two songs "On Tonight" and "Rewind" are especially immediate, and strong.

Lucy Crehan - Cleverlands

At this point it feels safe to say that education is an enduring interest.

(previous read)

House of the Dragon seasons 1 & 2

This show is entirely watchable, and works in a mode of modern fantasy in many ways first defined by the ASOIAF books - political, military and individual machinations with realpolitik and power at their centre, and magic woven into the backdrop rather than foregrounded. Even here, while dragons are depicted as both source and symbol of magic in this 200 years prior to Game of Thrones Westeros, they're primarily treated as being like any other resource and source of power, albeit an overpowered one (to me they don't really register as characters in their own right).

There's an article that diagnoses the problem with the later seasons of Game of Thrones as being that the show's storytelling shifted from being primarily sociological to primarily psychological; House of the Dragon is probably more evenly balanced across its first two seasons. I'm not sure if that's related to how slowly its events move, building up towards fullscale war rather than focusing mostly on the battles themselves. There's still some intrigue in where it's going, although probably more so in how it gets there, and to a lesser extent what it has to say about power and society, and individual choice.

(previously, season 1)

Johnny Blue Skies (Sturgill Simpson) - Passage du Desir

So relaxed-feeling and at home in its own country music skin that you could almost miss how well put together these songs are. They slip by easily, but they've got a heft that keeps them away 'easy listening'.

Deb Olin Unferth - Wait Till You See Me Dance

I don't know to what extent she was a trailblazer and influence on others vs being simply one among a loose group of other in similar vein, but the problem with this collection (which I'd been keen to track down on the strength of the title story) is that the stories in it too exactly exemplify a strain of lit fic that was very present about 10 to 15 or 20 years ago without being distinctive among them in any particular way. So it's kind of over familiar and kind of dull even though a number of them are actually of some quality.

Kelly Link - Stranger Things Happen

Kelly Link's stories nearly always make you want to work out what's happened in them, which doesn't tend to be straightforward even on the level of basic plot and action. More often than not that's accompanied by a sense that even once the puzzle of the action of the story has been solved (more or less), there's another layer to what's going on in them - so that what they're really 'about' has multiple oblique, interlinked layers.  

This was her first collection and the first I read, a while back. I appreciated it more this time, having better learned how to read her since. Interesting also to see some recurring motifs and patterns, some still reappearing in her most recent stories.

"The Girl Detective" stood out and I found myself wondering about its emotional core (I haven't verified this but my sense is that each of her stories has one). Is is that the girl detective is looking for her mother? Or is it that the narrator is looking for that which the girl detective is (which includes, without only being, the person who is always looking for their mother)? Or something else altogether?

Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer

It's a delightful surprise that My Light, My Destroyer is so marvellous - cosmic, electronically-inflected rock/pop/etc that doesn't shy away from either a clear hook or an ambient interlude. "Hard Drive" was magical but of the kind that felt like a one-off; it turns out that Jenkins has plenty more up her sleeve. This whole album feels like a dream, or maybe more accurately like everyday life wrapped in something dream-like.

(An Overview on Phenomenal Nature)

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Great fun - by turns blaring, shouty, fuzzy and melodic (and sometimes all of those at once).

Kelly Link - White Cat, Black Dog

Kelly Link has got her claws into me now. These wily, elegant stories always play fair but are never predictable. In them, one thing happens after another, each sentence says what it means, yet what it all means is puzzling unless you really pay attention and make an effort to put it all together afterwards. Each one takes a fairy tale as its starting point and the familiarity of the stories embedded in the source tales - whether or not one is familiar with the specific fairy tale itself - contributes to the uncanny, slipping feel of Link's takes on them, something that's probably true of all her fiction but in particular relief given the overt links to those foundational folk stories and narratives of the ones in White Cat, Black Dog. Most notable for me are "Prince Hat Underground" (the second time recently I've run into 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon') and "Skinder's Veil", both particularly multi-layered, and the relatively more straightforward "The White Road" and "The Game of Smash and Recovery".

Camera Obscura - Look to the East, Look to the West

It's like they never went away.

Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown

This is greatness. Dummy was released 30 years ago and time has revealed it to be a truly great album, and Portishead and Roseland NYC Live too have retained their aura all these years on. I assumed they were done, the occasional solo side project or guest appearance notwithstanding, and then came Third, a marvel I hadn't anticipated in any way (a bit after that I saw them live, a genuine highlight). And now, more than another decade on, this solo album, which is equivalent in quality to anything of Gibbons' that's come before it without being in anyway a retreading of old ground. It's one of those records that feels genreless (there are folk elements, and electronic ones, but it feels inadequate to describe Lives Outgrown by reference to terms like those), by turns hushed and stormy, quietly dramatic while perfectly controlled.

Hellenic Museum

Bits and pieces with connections to Greek (or Hellenic) culture - a historical survey, other ancient/classical items, an exhibition about Lord Byron's role in the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire, a small series of Bill Henson photographs with ancient artifacts ("Oneiroi") and a bunch of 'self-portrait as goddess' textile doll/sculptures by Adrienne Doig. Plus an AI-enabled encounter with an 'Oracle' and three striking 'well behaved women' painted by Loretta Lizzio on display outside.

(w/ Hayley)

NGV x 2

A couple of recent visits:

Pharaoh

I've always been distantly intrigued by ancient Egypt. Probably a lot of it's down to western exoticisation, but still. When I think about the specific landmarks in my personal history, the number is very small and I couldn't say that all of them even particularly marked me: an early computer game that somehow made it on to my dad's work computer; Pratchett's Pyramids; a few different encounters at MONA and especially "Kryptos"; and most recently Kelly Link's "Valley of the Girls". Anyway, it was enough for me to visit this exhibition, which was - for me - mildly inherently intriguing and had a bit of a wow factor at times, but didn't leave much of an impression.

Grace Crowley & Ralph Balson

I wasn't really in the zone to absorb this one properly, though the colours were appealing and it was a bit interesting seeing the different modernist (abstract) art styles washing through their work over the decades.

Nina Sanadze

I liked these - monuments, sculpture, and public space.

Others

A bit of time in familiar galleries at both the NGV International and Australia, although the former is much more static. Time with those old friends: the Rothko and de Chirico especially. And a new one - Tim Maguire, "Light fall I-VIII" (2011), cropped, magnified images of flowers and fruit.

Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Super readable and written with a style and fluidity that makes it easy to understand why so many people have liked it. It's entertaining and I wanted to know where it was going, but the treatment of the characters and themes ultimately felt overly simple.

It felt YA-adjacent, which isn't a criticism on its own terms, but didn't cohere with the apparent ambitions of Tomorrow to say something meaningful about 'adult' relationships over a lifecourse at least up to middle ageish.

Atomic Blonde

Oddly it's James McAvoy's performance that's most stuck with me from the previous viewing but perhaps that's a function of how completely Charlize Theron embodies and creates the hyper cool mood.

Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch

A brief, beguiling collection of songs that sound like they escaped from the 60s and arrived mostly intact but with just a trace of their time travelling passage remaining. I see I used that same word, beguiling, when talking about her On Your Own Love Again but it's the one that comes to mind - these songs wrap you up, mesmerise, whisper, seduce. Yet there's nothing twee about them. Instead, they stand strongly in their own lines, insisting on their self-ness. I like it a lot.

Tana French - The Hunter

Another good one, continuing the 'Irish Western' conceit of The Searcher complete with the prospect of gold in the hills and centring both Trey and Lena Dunne alongside transplanted Chicago cop Cal Hooper, which is a good choice. The depiction of Ardnakelty and its wily, slippery community is the highlight, embodied especially in Cal's neighbour Mart - French is very good on the unspoken communication and codes of rural (semi-remote) village life and the dangers it poses to those who step outside accepted behaviour, without ever slipping into faux-gothic mode. 

I could've done without the sustained dramatic irony of Trey and Cal working at cross purposes for much of the book, but it did have the effect of highlighting the way that personal 'codes' can drive choices and behaviours, potentially tragically - and some of the later twists were satisfying surprises, especially the revelation of the murderer, which was a nice thematic contrast and complement to The Searcher's resolution.

English Teacher - This Could Be Texas

This is a blast and a stand-out, defying easy description while being immediately catchy in its melding of sounds and styles. The strongest through-line is a kind of contemporary take on post-punk that's apparent in the rhythms, choppy guitar, sing-song vocal bits and general energy, but filtered through layers of successive indie and general art-pop-accessible-weirdo vibes, not the least among them Life Without Buildings (always a touchstone) and especially, in that case, on "Broken Biscuits" and "I'm Not Crying, You're Crying" which both feel touched by a bit of genius to me. 

There's peaks and anthems all the way through This Could Be Texas, the relatively conventional pleasures of storming choruses (exhibit A, "The World's Biggest Paving Slab") and massive crescendos (including huge closer "Albert Road") mixed with more jagged and unpredictable turns, guitars doing things that stretch a bit in the noise direction in moments, and - towards the end - stretching in a different way towards dream-pop melody ("You Blister My Paint"). 

Mitski - The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We

I've been listening to this short record on and off for the better part of 9 months and basically it's good, sinuous and sulkily melodic, but for whatever reason (timing, probably) it just hasn't grabbed me like her previous ones did.

Frances Hardinge - A Face Like Glass

Creativity to burn and layered in a way that transcends the all-too-obvious central metaphor. I would read more by Hardinge and am impressed by how much is crammed into this single, stand alone novel.

Rebecca Solnit - The Faraway Nearby

The Faraway Nearby is certainly about things, but just what those things are isn't so easily said. 

The stories we tell ourselves and which shape our lives, most obviously - a trite subject nowadays but explored by Solnit with great deftness and grace, in cascading sections that offer their insights in part through the paths they follow to reach their conclusions.

Solnit's difficult relationship with her mother, and with herself, and how this is brought into a different light by her mother's old age and mental deterioration.

The nature of the self, and its relationship to story and physical world. 

Illness.

Iceland.

It's a marvellous, beautiful book.

Dune: Part One & Part Two

One thing you can say for both these films, and maybe especially the second one - they have a vibe. They work as spectacle, which is to say that the visuals are spectacular and coherent with the tone and substance of the film as a whole (emotionally, narratively, thematically), so these movies unquestionably work on that level. Despite that though, and for all of the hefty thematic throughlines - colonialism and empire, religion and cultism, white saviourism, and their intersections - I can't shake a faint feeling of dissatisfaction. I'm not sure whether that's because these films partially (and deliberately) deny us the pleasures of conventional closure, there's a thinness in their story and characterisation, or both.

(Part One previously)

Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood

There are some nice songs that stand out on Tigers Blood - "3 Sisters", "Evil Spawn", "Right Back To It", "Crowbar", "365" - and there are some nice-sounding songs that don't. The sound is nice - cleanly metropolitan Americana. But, like Saint Cloud (which it seems everyone also loved) albeit stronger, I'm finding it overall a bit nondescript, 'country' music for people who maybe are more wired for pop-rock and what used to be called alternative ... but with enough of a quality to it that maybe it'll grow on me.

Wednesday - Rat Saw God

Proper rock that whines and crashes (and sometimes twangs), covers a bunch of ground and reminds me in glimpses of all kinds of outfits from the 90s through to the 2020s (in its vibe it's not a million miles away from Big Thief's Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe You) in ways that make it feel of a lineage without being derivative. "Bull Believer" especially is immense.

Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert

Once I remembered to actually pay attention to the songs and the music, and maybe got my ear back in for Dylan a bit, this turned out to have plenty to offer - the 'acoustic' and 'electric' halves equally. Not life-changing, but good. And a bit of a way back to some ways of listening to music that I've neglected more recently.

Tana French - The Searcher

Another page turner from Tana French, though a slower burn than her others that I've read. It's the combination of the mystery, the investigation, and the character interactions and setting that make it so readable. It's subtle, believable and drenched in rural Irish atmosphere.

Katie Pruitt - Mantras

Expectations was a real one and I still listen to it from time to time. Three years on, Mantras feels a tiny bit less distinctive, like some of the elements that made Pruitt such a stand-out have been sanded down for a glossier package - it's subtle but still. Despite that, it's a strong album, its airy sounding country-rock-pop going down easily and the songs themselves sturdy. 

The ones I like more tend to be those in which she leans into the electric guitar - especially "White Lies, White Jesus and You", also "Worst Case Scenario" even if (and honestly partly because) it sounds like it could've been part of the soundtrack of any given high school movie pretty much in the last 25 years.

Maggie Rogers - Don't Forget Me

"It Was Coming All Along" is a real charmer, one of the best songs I've heard in ages - sound, mood and melody in perfect marriage. The rest of Don't Forget Me isn't near that level, but it never drags and the overall Fleetwood Mac / Haim-y vibe is super pleasant.

Kacey Musgraves - Deeper Well

I like everything about Kacey Musgraves but this one's not all that distinctive and another step down from what was already the relative lull of star-crossed.

Rhiannon Giddens - You're the One

On this one, from last year, Giddens sounds notably like she's having fun, like there's joy underneath this music. It's good, like seemingly everything she touches.

3 Body Problem season 1

Pretty good - serious enough, spectacular enough, unpredictably plotty enough, human enough.

Lev Grossman - The Magicians

Was thinking I might re-read the series but got distracted after just this one.

(last time)

Kelly Link - Get in Trouble

Kelly Link has been a slow burn for me. When I first read her, I was misled by the genre elements and underestimated how attentively her stories need to be read. Now I've learned, taught particularly by "Magic for Beginners" and how it seems to show its hand while a whole deeper layer is playing out underneath and becomes apparent only when you really look closely. 

In Get in Trouble, there's destabilisation in every story. These stories are unpredictable, and demand that you follow them without knowing where they're going. Often, important aspects of plot, setting or character are introduced early in ways that are deliberately impossible to make sense of without the context that comes from reading on; more than one story found me flipping back to the beginning to work out just what had happened after I came to its end. The trick is often discerning the straightforward (but only straightforward once found) line of events or motivation that is craftily obscured beneath the fantastic detail. There's always an intimation of darkness and the possibility of horror - but the horror is rarely realised, or at least not in the ways that conventional narrative leads us to expect, and never in ways that fail to serve a larger thematic purpose.

"Two Houses" stood out; also "Valley of the Girls" (which I've read before); and, with more ambivalence on my part, "Light".

Reading about Get in Trouble also led me to this interview with Link - 

There’s a writer, Howard Waldrop, who says that all writers, no matter when they are setting their story, have a personal timeframe; often childhood or adolescence or a moment in life which was traumatic or emotionally full of wonder, and so, and often when they write they draw on this landscape, those feelings, that moment in time, in order to frame how people interact, even if they’re setting stuff in the future or the past. What you want is for something to feel lived in.

and -

... seeking out the work and genres which are pleasurable to you, and when you’re a writer and you’re drawing from those sources, one of things that entails is thinking closely about what’s drawing you.

Genre’s strength is that the patterns genre depends on are sturdy ones. Because of this, they have great staying power. Also because of this, the patterns are conservative. They tap into symbols and correlations that come out of cultural consensus. When writers organize stories around patterns, especially when there’s a death, or a danger, or a bad person, there will inevitably be a metaphor at work.