Category: Fiction

(by David Mitchell) I first read Slade House back in April 2016, which was probably not the best timing: this is definitely better as a spooky season read than as a springtime read, especially because the action of the book takes place in late October at nine-year intervals, beginning in 1979 and ending in 2015.…

(by Jonathan Ames) When this book opens we find our narrator (Happy Doll, an ex-Navy guy, ex-cop, and current “security specialist”) in a doctor’s office in Mexico at 2 am with a bullet in his shoulder. If you read the previous book in this series (this is number three), you’ll probably remember the things that…

(by Charlie N. Holmberg) This book is the fourth one in the Whimbrel House series and I started reading it because I was on a train and wanted something plot-heavy and engrossing, and I already had it on the Kindle app on my phone. It was definitely the right book at the right moment for…

(by Laura Kay) Well this was the sapphic rom-com I didn’t know I needed. I started reading this on vacation because a) it was the pick for Pride book club at work b) I had it on the Kindle app and c) I tried to pack the book for nonfiction book club, but it’s a…

(by Matt Haig) I’d kind of been meaning to read this for ages, but I wasn’t sure if it would be good or overly trite/sentimental. As it turns out, I ended up feeling like it was both of those things at different points. It isn’t a spoiler to say that Nora, this book’s protagonist, tries…

(by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal) I’d been vaguely meaning to read this book since 2011 (!), when my then-boyfriend read it. More recently, Nina MacLaughlin’s mention of it in Summer Solstice (which I read this June) finally prompted me to get it from the library, and my interest was further piqued when someone…

(by Paul Auster) Detective stories are generally about a protagonist figuring something out: a detective solving a crime, catching a criminal, figuring out the “how” or “why” of some mysterious event. But the three novellas in The New York Trilogy aren’t that kind of detective story: indeed, only one of them features a protagonist who…

(by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson) Each of the four sections of this novel is a memory piece, the story of the narrator’s relationship with someone who was once in her life but isn’t anymore (two lovers, a friend, her now-dead mother). Based on the story’s timeline, it’s clear that the virus the narrator…

(by Georges Perec, translated by David Bellos) As David Bellos explains in his introduction, “Around 1968, a French computer company set itself the challenge of finding artists willing to have a go at using the machines that it made.” In this case, Perec “accepted the challenge to write as a computer functions,” and this delightful…

(by Arkady Martine) I picked this one up randomly at the library and am glad I did: this turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable read for me. One of the epigraphs is a quote from this New Yorker article by Alice Gregory about the architect Luis Barragán, and I’d recommend reading the article as…