Even if you have zero interest in golf, you’re going to want to tee up for Chris Bohjalian’s The Amateur. The novel follows Mira Winston, an 18-year-old golf prodigy whose drive tears through a practice net at 150 miles per hour, killing a 17-year-old caddy at a ritzy Westchester County country club.
Styled as a memoir Mira writes decades later, it chronicles how the apparent freak accident changes the trajectory of her life: The incoming Yale freshman never makes it to New Haven or wants to pick up a club again; a yearslong affair with a much-older married man comes to light; and when she goes to trial, questions arise about whether it was really an accident at all. Oh, and there’s an 11th-hour twist that has some calling it Bohjalian’s most satisfying work yet — high praise for The Flight Attendant author.
We got in touch with Bohjalian to find out what he’s reading and how he spends his downtime.
Q: What’s the one place everyone needs to visit?
Bohjalian: I love Paris, Florence, and NYC as much as anyone — but I adore Yerevan, Armenia. How can you not fall in love with a city that has streets named after poets, composers, and novelists? One that’s dotted with parks and sculptures, and boasts a “square” with fountains that dance in the evening to the magic of [composer] Aram Khachaturian? One with magnificent views of Mount Ararat? Also, the food rocks.
Q: What’s one unpopular opinion you have?
Bohjalian: Keep your desk clean and make your bed every morning.
Q: What’s your favorite unapologetic indulgence?
Bohjalian: My time on my bike. I ride roughly 3,500 miles a summer, usually five days a week. And while it’s critical to my work as a writer — I solve so many character arcs or problematic scenes while I ride — the fact remains it is an indulgence of sorts, because it means I am (by design) off-radar for three or four hours most afternoons.
Q: If you could be the world’s leading expert on one thing, what would it be?
Bohjalian: Magical thinking. I live in a world of crossing sidewalk lines with my right foot, biking one mile more than the previous year, only putting down a book when I have finished the first paragraph on the left-side page, and always putting my right toes down first when I climb out of bed in the morning. In The Office, Michael Scott says, “I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.” Well. I’m wildly stitious.
Q: If you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one thing, what would it be?
Bohjalian: If I wanted to live, it would be smoothies made from five to seven fruits and vegetables and protein powder. It’s what my wife and I have for lunch everyday. But I would never say no to bucatini with a fantastic pesto and pecorino cheese.
Q: What’s one thing that makes you laugh without fail?
Bohjalian: John Mulaney’s 2023 standup special about his drug abuse and recovery, Baby J — especially when (forgive the irony) I’ve popped an edible. Or two.
Q: What’s the last thing you read that you can’t stop thinking about?
Bohjalian: Two novels from the spring have stuck with me: Jung Yun’s All the World Can Hold is the best novel I have read about 9/11, because it is set far from the two towers, on a cruise ship in the Atlantic that sets sail from Boston on September 16, 2001. Everyone is aware of the horrors, and it magnificently captures the sense of disbelief, fear, feigned normalcy, and desire to have a “story” about where we all were. Also, it has the best jokes ever about the old TV series The Love Boat. The other novel is Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, which chronicles how a kind and giving schoolteacher goes off the rails in 2024.
Meanwhile, on the internet…
Forget TV remotes and throw pillows. Hotel rooms have another germ trap that’s likely grosser than you realize — and it’s even harder to avoid.
According to The New York Times, you only need these four dress silhouettes to never feel over- or underdressed again. Consider our closets purged.
If you were — how do we put this — obsessed with those ’90s-era stick-on earrings, prepare yourself: A similar trend is coming for a new part of your body. Can we agree to bring back HitClips next?