Really loved "The Right Book..." - I feel like I need more of your book recs (especially stuff you can't put down, I'm having a hard time tearing myself away from fanfiction for actual books lately. I'm going to try "In the Woods.")
OH BOY LADY, you’re in for it now!! Tana french is beautiful and wrenching and character driven and I will A++ her but you should also be reading:
Annihilation - SO DISTURBING! Body horror! Post-humanism! Everyone is a woman!! Gave me nightmares that didn’t stop haunting me when I woke up. That was supposed to sound like a good thing. The narrator fascinates me.
How to Breathe Underwater - Upsetting! Cathartic! Short stories that take a long time to digest! Hones in on religion, sex, and especially on close, interpersonal relationships and the power dynamics that inform them. Also mostly about women, and by a woman.
Boy Snow Bird - Beautiful retelling of Snow White, kind of? But so much more complex, with threads about racism, passing, love, gender identity… just lovely. Magical Realism is my jam. Helen Oyeyemi is hit and miss for me, but this was a big hit.
Wool - What a page turner! Are there people who haven’t read this? Perfectly done world building, great characters, exciting plot.
Sharp Objects - the Gillian Flynn book that isn’t Gone Girl. Less of a page turner, but I liked it more. Disturbing. Dark. I HAVE A TYPE OKAY???
Machine of Death - short stories, so easy to read, all very different from each other because they’re written by different people. Black humor in book form. Touching at times, even!
Runners up/ older books: The Waves, The Poisonwood Bible, The Tiger’s Wife, Beloved, Giliad, Atonement
None of this is really fanfic-like but I think you might enjoy some of it. If you’re into intense, unreliable narrators, lush descriptive writing focused on women, and disturbing topics!
