Fiction Faves

Nov 15

Great short story collections and novels we could not put down. Is there fiction you love? Tell us!

Hala Alyan, The Arsonist’ City. Riveting story about life in Lebanon, California and Brooklyn, told from multiple points of view. The author, a clinical psychologist, inhabits her characters’ psyches with such depth, you almost feel as if you are reading multiple memoirs.

Mateo Askaripour. Black Buck. Fun, unnerving, story about what it’s like to be young, Black, male and in sales at a (somewhat) sleazy start-up.

Rachel Beanland, Florence Adler Swims Forever. Historical novels, based on a few truths, about what happens to a family before and after a beloved daughter drowns.

Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half. This book is fabulous. Told from the points of view of twin Black girls, one of whom abandons her darker-skinned sister in pursuit of a life as a white woman, you will find yourself rooting for both women to triumph.

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Jefferson’s Sons. Gripping, young adult novel that takes you deep inside the live of of Thomas Jefferson’s mistress, Sally Hemmings, and the children they had together on his planation.

Jill Ciment, The Body in Question. Middle aged-woman leaves her aging husband to be sequestered on a jury, with unexpected results. One of the best books we’ve read about marriage and serving on a jury.

Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

Riveting novel about a mother and son escaping from a book-loving, murderous Mexican drug dealer.. One of the most cinematic novels we’ve read,

Rachel Cusk, Outline

Rachel’s trilogy Outline, Transit and Kudos, available on Audible, is extraordinary to listen to. Cusk is a brilliant storyteller and to hear these stories read out loud is an exquisite pleasure. (Reading them simultaneously is equally wonderful.) The ending of Kudos is breathtaking. For an interesting Q&A between Cusk and Alexandra Schwartz, click here. You can listen to Cusk read a short excerpt from her novel Transit here.

Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji. A young man’s difficult journey to be true to himself, when most of the people who love him would rather he didn’t.

Nathan Englander, Kaddish.com

As painful and laugh-your-ass-off-hilarious as Phillip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint and American Pastoral, Nathan Englander’s new novel, Kaddish.com is provocative, occasionally erotic, sad, moving, disturbing and ultimately terrific.

Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Connections

Greg Gaines, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. Fun, mind-blowing science fiction.

Frances Ha, If I Had Your Face.

Fierce, gripping and unnerving first novel about four women and their stressful lives in plastic-surgery obsessed South Korea. Great line: “Most people have no capacity for comprehending true darkness, and then they try to fix it anyway.”

Matt Haig, The Midnight Library.

Katherine Heiny, Early Morning Riser.

Lily King, Writers & Lovers

The most delicious novel about what it is like to be a writer, waitress, girlfriend and damaged daughter trying to finish writing a book in Boston. Great lines include: “Marriage is the polar opposite of a fairy tale,” my mother said. And “It’s a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.”

Sanae Lemoin, The Margot Affair. Literally delicious story (wonderful food details) about the life of a teenage girl in Paris, the product of a long-standing relationship between a proper French politician father and his mistress, a wildly-self-absorbed actress. Ultimately, a story about mothers and daughters and what we do for love.

Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers. One of the best novels we’ve ever read about Chicago, AIDS, love, friendship, and making peace with the people who love you and sometimes betray you.

Toni Morrison, God Help the Child

Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through. Oh boy, what a good book. We could not put this down.

Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet

Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age

Sally Rooney, Normal People

Terrific novel about what it is like to be young, smart, university-bound and in love in Ireland. Closely observed romance between a woman with a penchant for S&M and the man who loves her.