New essay at Write or Die, and Cosmic Tantrum named a Best Debut Book of 2025 (So Far)
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Considering the show now, I’m struck by how often their relationship seems codependent. Rory doesn’t know what to say when her first boyfriend tells her he loves her. She tells him she needs to think about it, and he asks if she needs to “go home and discuss it with your mother?” After moving into her dorm, Rory can’t cope with the thought of spending the night away from Lorelai, who is now twenty minutes away in Stars Hollow. Lorelai enables her by agreeing to come back and spends the night in Rory’s dorm. Despite having other surface-level friendships, they are each other’s only real friend.
But Big and Little Edie take it many steps further.
I saw Grey Gardens for the first time in a very different place in my life, when I was closer to Lorelai’s age, and it hit me like a cautionary tale. I was partly charmed—the outfits! the camp!—but also aghast, fascinated. Not just at the fact of two people living in a decrepit mansion overrun with feral cats and raccoons. Not just at the unbelievable clutter and dead lightbulbs and cat piss, or the hot plates in the one main room with the twin beds. It was the way these women talk to each other, how each one tries to win the narrative of their lives for the cameramen.
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Full essay here at Write or Die magazine.
Cosmic Tantrum made it onto Debutiful’s list of the Best Debut Books of 2025 (So Far)! Full list and brief remarks here.