I am Punished By My TBR: An Ethel Cain-Inspired Reading List
By Features Editor Alice Simon
After a slow and tortuous two-year wait, Ethel Cain’s sophomore album is finally looming closer and closer. Slated for release on the 8th of January, Perverts seems to be a step away from Preacher’s Daughter both stylistically and musically. Fans have been bugging Cain and begging for American Teenager Pt. 2 and, in a response to a Tumblr post, this is what the singer had to say:
This response might put a lot of people off this record (certainly not me, as a self-proclaimed Ethel connoisseur), which is why, in the lead-up to her new album, I offer you a reading list made specifically for those of you who just love to be annoying and pretentious about her music. Enjoy being the life of the party (please stay away from the AUX cord). As an extra treat, most of the books on this list stay within the 300 page mark, and yes, I did that for all of you iPad babies out there, don’t look away, I’m talking to you.
If you like “Punish”, you should read Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
‘Only God knows, only God would believe
That I was an angel, but they made me leave’
Rebecca might just be one of the best books of all time (if you can ignore the casual racism throughout). Who hasn’t been fourteen and married off to a thirty-something year old man whose wife’s ghost makes his life unbearable? No one? If that’s not enough to convince you, how about we sprinkle in a homoerotic relationship between said ghost and the housekeeper who’s riddled with anger issues, and that should do the job.
Although the themes in “Punish” aren’t specific to Rebecca’s narrative, there’s something about the atmosphere of the song that makes it feel unsettling and melancholic. I almost imagine it as the dead wife in Rebecca singing it from the underworld, making sure her husband is forever tortured by her voice. I love women’s rights, but more specifically, women’s wrongs!
If you like “Sun Bleached Flies”, you should read I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
‘Sun bleached flies sitting in the windowsill
Waiting for the day they escape’
Yes, every single author on this list is a woman. No, I’m not a misandrist (wink-wink). I swear I don’t do it on purpose, but without fail, every single book I pick up has a focus on females and is written by women. Oh well!
This might be the most accurate comparison on my list, considering the plot of I Who Have Never Known Men is quite literally about a group of women trying to escape an underground bunker. They have no idea how they’ve gotten there or what is waiting for them outside, and the only men they know are the guards watching them every day. Filled with philosophical streams of consciousness about the state of humanity and what it means to be a woman, it provides the same exact feeling that Cain’s line delivery in “Sun Bleached Flies” does; ‘God loves you, but not enough to save you’.
If you like Hard Times, you should read My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
“I was too young to notice
That some types of love could be bad”
Trigger Warnings: sexual abuse, paedophilia
This book changed my life in many ways, so I’ll keep recommending it in the hopes that it’ll do the same for other people. I read it during one particularly dreadful and sleepless night (maybe not my brightest idea), and it left me staring at the ceiling for two hours afterwards. If I’d listened to “Hard Times” after that I’m pretty sure I would have had to have been dragged to the asylum.
My Dark Vanessa isn’t talked about nearly enough, and surprisingly, neither is “Hard Times”! I consider the latter to be one of the saddest and most gut–wrenching songs on Preacher’s Daughter, and it tackles some of the same themes My Dark Vanessa does. The novel explores the relationship between a high-school student and her teacher, and we follow our protagonist into her thirties as she deals with the PTSD from being groomed at a young age. Not enough is said about the long-lasting effects of trauma, and I believe that both Cain and Russell explore the way in which memories get muddier with time in very effective ways. Please be wary of the trigger warning above before reading.
If you like “God’s Country”, you should read Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
‘You close your eyes and cry to me
Don’t sink in me with your dog teeth’
We’re slowly getting into Ethel Cain superfan territory… If you know this song, congratulations, how are SSRIs treating you? How is religious guilt that has been eating away at you? Do you wish you could bear the curse of immortality within your bones every day forevermore? Then you’ve come to the right place!
If there was ever a time for vampiric self-reflection narratives to become relevant, it is definitely now. Every time I log onto Twitter (I refuse to call it X, sue me), I see wave after wave of self-pitying monologues and general hopelessness about the state of the world. If that sounds appealing to you, read this. If you’re tired of the ‘I’m just a girl’ feminism of it all and want to actually get a taste of what modern feminism should look like; you’ve come to the right place.
God’s Country focuses more on the vampiric tendencies of religious imagery, which are definitely prevalent in Kohda’s work, so if you want to be an even more annoying Ethel Cain fan, please listen and read.
If you like “Ptolomea”, you should read A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers
“I am the face
Of love's rage”
A controversial book and, perhaps, a controversial song. As part of my final-year dissertation in college, I had the opportunity to interview Chelsea G. Summers, the author of this book, so forgive me if I come across as a bit biased towards it. A Certain Hunger is a masterful exercise in unlikable and unreliable narrators, as it follows a food critic turned serial killer as she writes her memoir from the confines of her prison cell. As a cheeky twist, our main character delights in making wonderful meals out of her victims’ flesh… need I say more?
I associate this novel with “Ptolomea” specifically because of the screaming at the end of the track, as it perfectly embodies our main character’s anger issues. Although I’ve seen reviewers (on Goodreads, so maybe it doesn’t count?) call A Certain Hunger misogynistic, I think it suffers from the same issue that My Year of Rest and Relaxation deals with. Newer readers, I believe, can be uncomfortable with unlikeable main characters, as they find it hard to ‘relate’ to them in any capacity. I couldn’t agree less. I am staring at my empty plate that I licked clean screaming more! More scary and insufferable women, please!
If you like “Unpunishable”, you should read Bunny by Mona Awad
“He’s mean, i’m meaner
My baby says that he’s not afraid of that”
Two years after reading it, this book still feels like a fever dream. I can tell you I loved it, but please don’t ask me for any specific details. All I can say is that if you read fanfiction on AO3 when you were twelve; this is for you. However, if you’re someone who looks for consistency within the plot in a book, I’m so very sorry. I attach Bunny to “Unpunishable” because of some of the more erotic themes in it, which are deliciously mixed in with horror elements, much like Cain’s lyricism.
If you’re up for a wild ride, and you don’t mind being confused out of your mind for 90% of the book, let this narrative puzzle you again and again, and then some more.
