Purchase a copy for yourself here! Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, originally published in Japan in 1994, has become available to the English speaking world by way of Stephen Snyder’s recent translation. This novel is a richly textured indictment of authoritarianism and anphilosophical meditation on the nature of memory. Through simple allegorical device, Ogawa creates… Continue reading The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Tag: bookblog
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Purchase a copy for yourself here! Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Midnight’s Children, first published almost 40 years ago in 1981, is a novel that is always worth revisiting, but feels especially relevant in the current political era. The novel tells the story of the life of Saleem Sinai, a boy who is born at… Continue reading Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield
Purchase a copy for yourself here! Salt Slow is the debut story collection from Julia Armfield, one that blends nature and magical realism with dazzling results. The stories are chiefly concerned with the bodies of young women, and explore both autonomy and human connection. Amongst Armfield’s collection of curiosities is a woman whose girlfriend returns… Continue reading Salt Slow by Julia Armfield
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman
Purchase a copy for yourself here! Ducks, Newburyport is the most recent novel from Lucy Ellman, and one of the strangest literary experiences I’ve had in recent years. The novel is 1,020 pages of a single sentence inner monologue, punctuated with commas and the introductory phrase, “the fact that”. The narrator is an Ohio housewife,… Continue reading Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman
What is Missing by Michael Frank
Purchase a copy for yourself here! What is Missing is the first novel from Michael Frank, whose debut memoir, The Mighty Franks, was released in 2017 to wide critical acclaim. The novel centers around three characters whose lives first intersect in Italy, when the recently widowed translator, Costanza, meets a son and father duo that… Continue reading What is Missing by Michael Frank
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Purchase a copy for yourself here! Kiley Reid’s debut novel, Such a Fun Age, is concerned with the rise of “woke” culture, a self obsessive tendency of privileged white liberals to perform progressive ideals of racial and gender equality. The novel is told from the perspectives of two women, one of whom is Alix, a… Continue reading Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
If You Want to Make God Laugh by Bianca Marais
Purchase a copy for yourself here! If You Want to Make God Laugh is Bianca Marais’ sophomore novel, and it is an exploration of three South African women negotiating motherhood and trauma, whose lives interact in a variety of explosive ways. The novel begins with Zodwa, a seventeen year old girl living in an impoverished… Continue reading If You Want to Make God Laugh by Bianca Marais
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Purchase a copy for yourself here! Jacqueline Woodson, author of the National Book Award-winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, revisits the concerns that animate many of her young adult novels, chief among them being an exploration of what it means to be a young black woman in America, in her recent novel, Red at the Bone.… Continue reading Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum
Purchase a copy for yourself here! Emily Nussbaum is a critic who had been writing about television as an art form years before virtually anyone else considered it one, when it was still a point of pride for intellectuals to not have a TV set in their home. Her recent essay collection, I Like to… Continue reading I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum
On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Purchase a copy for yourself here! On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is the first novel from the poet Ocean Vuong, a hybrid memoir and epistolary novel. It is narrated by Little Dog, a boy who shares a great deal with his author. The book is addressed to the narrator’s illiterate mother, whose education ended in… Continue reading On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong