What happens when teenagers keep dark secrets from their loved ones? Will this repression of the truth lead to a violent blow up? What Comes After, the debut novel by Joanne Tompkins, is a story that unfolds from these two questions. The story begins with a shocking murder suicide of two high school students in… Continue reading What Comes After by Joanne Tompkins
Category: Fiction
The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
In his new novel, The Committed, novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen returns to his nameless narrator from his 2015 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer. Fresh from his adventures abroad as a Viet Cong spy, our narrator is now going by the name Vo Danh (“Nameless”), and has travelled to Paris from Indonesia with his blood brother,… Continue reading The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood burst onto the scene with her bestselling memoir Priestdaddy, a humorous and raunchy reflection on growing up in a very unique family with a Catholic priest for a father. This year she released her sophomore effort, No One is Talking About This, a novel that explores the inner life of a woman obsessed… Continue reading No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Dantiel W. Moniz’s debut story collection Milk Blood Heat is the rare debut the strikes a perfect note with every story, all of which coalesce to an elemental and stunning symphony. The stories mostly center around black women and girls living in the Jacksonville area, and many stories integrate the three title images of milk,… Continue reading Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed is an ambitious exploration of desire in all its forms. We meet our narrator, Rachel, in a state of intense repression. She has restricted her eating to the barest minimum, i.e. salads without dressing, small yogurts, etc., while also working out obsessively, in an attempt to burn all of the calories… Continue reading Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom is the second novel by Yaa Gyasi, who burst onto the scene a couple of years ago with her brilliant and celebrated historical fiction novel, Homegoing, which followed several generations of a Ghanian family experiencing slavery in Europe and America. Gyaasi’s sophomore novel has a narrower focus than Homegoing, which spanned decades and… Continue reading Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Torrey Peters’ buzzy new novel, Detransition, Baby, reclaims the rare phenomenon of detransition, a tool used by transphobes to question the legitimacy of transitioning in the first place. Peters’ novel includes a character, named Ames, who has detransitioned, not because he had made a mistake transitioning to living as a female, or because he doesn’t… Continue reading Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Memorial by Bryan Washington
Memorial, the debut novel from Bryan Washington, begins with a fracturing that becomes the center of the book’s emotional landscape. The novel begins with Mike, a young chef living in the Third Ward in Houston with his boyfriend Benson, jetting off to Japan to be with his estranged father, who has received a fatal cancer… Continue reading Memorial by Bryan Washington
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
“Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you”, are the first lines of the diary that has washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox on the coast of an island in British Columbia,… Continue reading A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
In one of 2020’s buzziest new releases, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, novelist V.E. Schwab offers a modern take on the Faustian bargain, when the titular heroine disobeys advice to “Never pray to the gods that answer after dark.” Born in 1691 in a tiny village in France, Adeline LaRue quickly becomes disenchanted with the… Continue reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab