Literary Vice

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The Audition: Pretty weird

Katie Kitamura’s The Audition reminded me a bit of Elizabeth Strout in style – declarative, descriptive sentences with little flash or flair – and a bit of Sally Rooney in the weird plot presented as just normal things. In this case there are two versions of the plot with two different connections among the same characters all exploring the same themes: living with the consequences of our…

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The Favorites: Get it on audiobook!

I have no idea if Layne Fargo’s The Favorites would be any good as a book-book that you read, but it is a delight as an audiobook. With a cast of character voices to bring distinction to the… cast of characters that open each chapter, the audio version is particularly delightful. Following skating dance partners through their years competing for Olympic glory the book is mostly one of romance…

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The Drowned: Skip it

Sean O’Brien won the Booker and now any book you pick up of his is like “this guy won the Booker,” and so you think you’re going to be getting an absolute gem. And sure, The Drowned was well written in that its atmospheric and well paced and writing that is good enough not to be noticed, but also it was about too many things and with characters that (I guess because it’s part of a series?) have…

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Heart the Lover: Unexpected

I expected Lily King’s Heart the Lover to be a light romance. Following the college romance of Jordan and Sam and then Jordan and Yash, the book offers up a reading that is on its face that of falling in love, being in love, and heartbreak. With scenes of staying up late to play ridiculous card games, it brought this reader back to my own years of many (many) hours of Settlers of Catan, or nights…

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Yesteryear: Divisive?

I mentioned to my colleagues that I had just finished reading Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear and one of them asked whether I’d liked it because it was ‘divisive.’ And I can see it. The book follows Natalie, Caleb and their children as they farm in the backwoods of Idaho in the 2020s. (It’s tempting to put caveats around much of that sentence: the farm was purchased at great expense by Caleb’s…

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Stone Yard Devotional: Mice, mice, forgiveness

Oh but Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional is fantastic. Simple story really – woman goes to a convent for a few weeks to take a rest from the State Of The World and doesn’t leave. While she’s there a few things happen: bones of a former nun are found and returned, a woman from her childhood whom she wronged by action and inaction, Helen, visits; a mouse plague besieges the convent and…

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Flashlight: And I thought I had family drama

It took me nine weeks and three recalls from the library to finish Susan Choi’s Flashlight and it’s my fault, I know. My excuses are feeble – how many times can I claim divorce as a distraction from fiction? just the once? lol – and made more pathetic by the quality of the book, which is: excellent. There is the beautiful writing – and it is – and the core mystery of the book that begins with…

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Under the Same Stars: Stand Up

I remembered liking Libba Bray from a hundred years ago when I read Going Bovine but on reading that review it turns out that book was just “okay,” and so is Under the Same Stars: just okay. In this case a three-part time frame set around the same loosely connected family and a quasi-mystery. The mystery: two girls disappear in a German forest during WWII presumed dead. The loosely connected…

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The Guardian and the Thief

Who knew a book so heartbreaking could be so suspenseful. Maybe there are lots of examples? Well here is one: Megha Majumdar’s The Guardian and the Thief. Set in the near-future of India where the climate catastrophe has brought famine and social/political unrest we follow two families as they try – in their unique ways – to escape the conditions that keep them hungry and suffering. A terrific…

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The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating: You didn't know snails could be this interesting

I forget who suggested I read Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, but whoever you are, remind me please, because it’s so surprisingly delightful. Non-fiction following Bailey’s year spent in bed with a mystery disease and her close – oh so close – observation of a snail. That’s it – narrow in scope but so wide in interest. Like there are a trillion facts about snails that I…

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A Marriage At Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck; or, what is wrong with me

There must be something funny in my subconscious that it just keeps picking books about marriage, or divorce, or the complications of marriage or or – but it’s not that I’m seeking these books out. More that the ones that find might right now are… all of a theme. Call it the universe helping me work through it all. Anyway, Sophie Elmhirt’s non-fiction A Marriage At Sea: A True Story of Love,…

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Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: In which I try to convince myself this vampire book is something more than a vampire book

Victoria Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is the kind of book you will see on racks promising it will be an absorbing read (and it sort of is) and that is also literary (I’m less convinced) and also important or thematically rich (not really). But if you want a bit of a romp through lesbian vampires who are also complex because they Hunger (and at what point does hunger erase the…

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Flesh: Weird and great

It’s hard to describe the narrative style of David Szalay’s Flesh, except maybe to say it’s unsettling? Other reviews describe it as ‘sparse,’ which I guess is a nod to the matter-of-fact descriptions and the abrupt changes to our protagonist, István’s, life. Like between two paragraphs he murders a man (accidentally?) and then in the gap between chapters goes to prison or war or or or. I…

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Necessary Edits

Dear Suzanne Collins, What were you thinking? Maybe you were thinking that writing a prequel to the Hunger Games was a necessary extension of its literary universe. That you wanted, in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, to understand the motivations of the villain in the Hunger Games universe (Coriolanus Snow) and you thought giving us an epic 500+ page deep dive into his history would…

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Awake: A Memoir

You might be forgiven for thinking it a tad masochistic to read Awake: A Memoir which is, among other things, about the journey through divorce, at a time when I am doing the same. But! Hear me out. This is a very bad book, and there’s nothing misery loves more than silently judging something for being terrible (or in this case, publicly judging). Jen Hatmaker writes Awake in the years after she…

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When Will There Be Good News? (That's the book title, but also)

Did I choose Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News for its title? Maybe. Because don’t we all want to know? When. Will. There. Be. Good. News. Until that day we can read charming mysteries with well drawn characters and (what’s the opposite of graphic?) engrossing plots. Jackson Brodie is a decent detective, but I prefer his counterpart (and why isn’t she the #main detective?) Louise…

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The Correspondent: The courage to connect

I know I’m late in praising Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent. It’s on a million best-of lists and many of you have recommended it to me. What can I say. I was busy reading romantacy novels and separating from my soon-to-be-ex-husband (whee!). Fun fun. But actually go get The Correspondent. It is fun (or at least in its formal elements) and helpful. Epistolary (that is to say, written in…