Come

• Mercifully, Jessica Zhan Mei Yu’s debut novel, But The Girl, is effervescent on the page.
• As the narrator says,
  I had a sadomasochistic fascination with English: it hurt me, and it gave me acute pleasure.
• I had a sadomasochistic fascination with English: it hurt me, and it gave me acute pleasure.

Telling it slant

• This self-awareness of movement against expectations infuses the book’s unapologetic over-sharing through the chatty, first-person narration with a sense of doubt and uncertainty.
• It’s a refreshing commitment to self-critique and a refusal of foreclosure.
• Read more:
  In Daisy & Woolf, Michelle Cahill revisits a modernist classic to write a story of her own

Homage to Sylvia Plath

• This theme of tribute, disappointment, critique and conversation – of holding Plath close – continues as verse and refrain throughout the novel.
• For instance, Clementine, a fellow artist in residence in Scotland, attempts to paint a portrait of the narrator over a portrait of Plath.
• This probing of Plath’s work continues, as the narrator retrospectively charts her growth towards a less hagiographic and more open-eyed apprehension of Plath.
• Read more:
  Sylvia Plath's famous collection Ariel is far darker than she envisaged

Cultural cringe and unstable ‘home’

• There are the expected responses of shame and cultural cringe at Australia’s provincialism.
• But they are complicated by the unstable category of “home”, where “home” is not just Australia, but also Malaysia.
• Sometimes I wished my parents had immigrated somewhere else; being a child of immigrants always made your birth country feel so random and unnecessary.
• This particular positioning of the self also plays out in the way the female Asian body is perceived and possessed.
• Read more:
  André Dao's brilliant debut novel explores his grandfather's ten-year detention without trial by the Vietnamese government

A love letter

• This novel is also ultimately a love letter, especially to the narrator’s formidable Ah Ma, a former maid, now “a matriarch demanding the best of the best for her and for her alone”.
• It is also a love letter to the narrator’s parents, Ma and Ikanyu – an exploration of all that is inherited, all that is suffered and all that is owed.
• “To hit you is to love you,” the narrator is told after being smacked by her father when she calls her mother “a grouch”.

• BOSTON, July 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Burns & Levinson attorneys Kelly Ballentine , Bryan Natale , and Brooke Penrose have been selected for inclusion in the inaugural 2023 Lawdragon 500 X: The Next Generation.
• According to Lawdragon, the attorneys on the list "have blown down the walls of private practice, amassing courtroom victories, leading deals and protecting IP and civil rights."
• Ballentine serves on the firm's Women's Working Group and as a mentor in Burns & Levinson's Mentorship Program.
• She was recently named a 2023 "Up & Coming Lawyer" by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly was selected for the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts 2023 Women's Leadership Initiative.

• Credits: Blue Canyon Technologies/NASA
  The ‘Baby Come Back’ mission, Rocket Lab’s 39th Electron launch, is scheduled to deploy from Pad A at Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand during a launch window that opens July 14, 2023 UTC.
• Rocket Lab is also planning to conduct a marine recovery of Electron’s first stage as part of this mission.
• Rocket Lab’s recovery team will retrieve Electron using a customized vessel and transport the stage back to Rocket Lab’s production complex for analysis.
• Rocket Lab has three launch pads at two launch sites, including two launch pads at a private orbital launch site located in New Zealand and a third launch pad in Virginia.

• "Stepping into the realm of beauty is a groundbreaking moment set to transform the industry as we know it.
• With an unrivalled track record in revolutionizing the sex toy market, LELO is now poised to redefine the beauty world.
• After two decades of pushing boundaries and setting new standards, we are ready to revolutionize the very concept of beauty on a global scale," says Luka Matutinović, LELO CMO.
• LELO MAKEUP™ will be available on lelobeauty.com and lelo.com ; Amazon stores and specialized beauty stores such as Sephora, Cult Beauty, and FeelUnique.