TBR: Mothers and Other Fictional Characters by Nicole Graev Lipson

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

  

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Mothers and Other Fictional Characters explores the world’s strange and relentless desire to reduce women to stock characters, and how easy it is to find ourselves complicit in this process, until we no longer know what parts of us are real. I mine this territory by writing as intimately and honestly as I possibly can about the ways fiction has infiltrated my life—as a girl, a young adult, a mother, and a woman at middle age—and by searching the work of my literary foremothers for clues to truer ways of being. In some ways, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is as much about the subversive power of reading as it is about womanhood.  

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

My whole purpose in writing this book was to break boundaries! The boundaries imposed on women to keep us in our place, the boundaries between the surface stories we tell about ourselves and the messier truths below, the boundaries between our genuine selves and the selves we’ve been conditioned to project.

 

To crack through these boundaries, I knew I had to be as honest about my experiences and internal weather as possible, which often led me into territory considered taboo, especially for women. In one essay, I write about my brief but utterly destabilizing extramarital attraction to a younger man when I hit middle age. In another, I explore the tension of being both an introvert and a mother of three, and my recurring urges to flee my family for solitude; and in another, I write about the difficult chemistry between me and my middle child, whose temperament is so different than mine.

 

These are all things we as women aren’t supposed to feel or admit to. We aren’t supposed to lust after other men when we are happily married; we aren’t supposed to fantasize about abandoning our family; and we aren’t supposed to talk honestly about the difficult aspects of our relationships with our children. But these urges and desires and complexities are precisely what make us human. I’ve tried to show in my book that when a woman stifles her own complexity, she stifles her humanity—which I’d argue, in a patriarchal culture, is precisely the point. In her beautiful blurb, Kelly McMasters describes Mothers and Other Fictional Characters as an “urgent searchlight, shining across the most complicated parts of existing as a multidimensional woman in a binary world.” I love this description so much. This is precisely what I longed to do on every page.

In terms of courage, I have my children to thank for this. Becoming a mother magnified all of the concerns and injustices that had always consumed me, because having children made the stakes more urgent than ever. It was one thing, say, for our culture’s misogynistic beauty standards to turn me against my own body, but the thought of my daughters one day despising their own perfect bodies, or of my son suppressing his tender spirit to adhere to masculine norms, pulled me to the page in whole new way.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

One of the high points has been the incredible creative community writing and publishing this book helped me find. I began the writing process in a very solitary way—it was just me and a vision and the page, and this could often feel scary and lonely. But over time, working on the book became a portal to incredible friendships and connections with other writers and aspiring authors, both here in Boston where I live, and elsewhere--thanks to the internet, online writing groups, and conferences. I’ve drawn so much comfort and inspiration from these relationships.

 

I wouldn’t necessarily call this a “low,” but one challenge I grappled with was navigating writing about loved ones. My story is so rooted in domestic life and the nuances of family relationships, and it was impossible to tell such a story without conjuring the people who animate the landscape of my daily life: my husband, my children, my parents, and my dearest friends. I wished so often that there were a single hard and fast rule I could follow to ensure I would handle this flawlessly, but really, I just had to feel my way through, making sure at every turn that I’d rendered the people in my life with truthfulness, compassion and kindness. I don’t mean a saccharine or glossed-over sort of kindness, but rather a spirit of deep regard for the humanity, complexity, and struggles of others. I don’t think what we as humans most deeply yearn for is to be seen as perfect. I think we yearn to be seen in all of our complexity and imperfection, and loved nonetheless. It was this type of love that guided my choices on the page.  

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I’ve recommended Brenda Ueland’s totally charming craft book If You Want to Write to so many fellow writers and aspiring authors over the years. It’s frank, big-hearted and full of helpful wisdom. Ueland wrote the book in 1938, which is miraculous to me because her insights feel so modern. You’ll have to excuse the dated universal male pronouns in my favorite quote from the book, which is: “Everybody is original if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his true self, and not from the self he thinks he should be.”

 

This is such simple but profound advice. I know firsthand how easy it is to default to writing from a place of should, which in the end is a pretty dreary place to write from. While I was working on Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, pushing past should to write from a place of what is—in all its messiness and weirdness and beauty and splendor—made the writing process far more interesting and unexpected than it would otherwise have been. And I’m hopeful that this openness of spirit shows up in the writing.  

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

As a bookworm and former high school English teacher, I knew that my encounters with literature would be an important part of the book. From the start, there were some writers I knew I’d focus on—like Kate Chopin and Adrienne Rich—because their influence has been so central to my life. But otherwise, the process of weaving in literature was very organic, and I was often surprised by the connections that emerged between my reading life and whatever lived experience I was writing about: Philip Roth shows up in an essay about raising a son. Gwendolyn Brooks shows up in an essay about trying to decide what do with my unused frozen embryos. Michel de Montaigne shows up in an essay about my love for my closest friend Sara. I wasn’t aware how much these writers had shaped my world view until they showed up unannounced in my work!

 

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

 

I want readers to know that I wrote the book for them. Over coffee recently, a novelist friend of mine mentioned that he never thinks about his audience when writing. “The moment I picture a reader,” he said, “I start doubting myself, ruining the entire process.” While I was working on Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, my feelings toward my own imagined readers could not have been more different. I wrote with an awareness that my words—like any writer’s words—were only half the story, a tale lying dormant until another human stepped in to give it pulse and meaning. My greatest hope for the book is that it helps readers feel seen, understood, and a little less alone.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

 

I love this question! I had to go back through the book to jog my memory, and a few tasty things do appear in its pages, including cherry wine, birthday cake, mint chocolate chip ice cream, cheese fondue, tostones, hamburgers, macaroni, Runts, lasagna, canned soup, potato chips. It’s dawning on me that I may need to see a nutritionist.

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://nicolegraevlipson.com/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/p/books/mothers-and-other-fictional-characters-a-memoir-in-essays-nicole-graev-lipson/21565078?ean=9781797228563

 

READ AN EXCERPT, “Macho Baby”: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/22506-macho-baby

 

 

 

TBR: Locomotive Cathedral by Brandel France de Bravo

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

 

Locomotive Cathedral is a collection of poems and short essays that explore resilience in the face of climate change and a global pandemic, race, and the concept of a self, all the while celebrating breath as “baptism on repeat.” Whether inspired by 12^th century Buddhist mind training slogans or the one-footed crow, René, who visits me daily, the poems grapple with the tension between the speaker’s resistance to change and her acceptance of it as transformation.

 

Which poem/s did you most enjoy writing? Why?

 

Looking for prompts in a 12^th century Buddhist text comprised of 59 “slogans” or aphorisms was a challenge and source of joy. These slogans which aim to help us cultivate mindfulness and compassion, and diminish “self-grasping,” can be wise, funny, and without commentary from scholars, rather puzzling. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed using them as a starting line for poems, not knowing where the finish might be. I’ve linked to the audio of one of them, published in print-only in Conduit magazine: “Slogan 38, Don’t Seek Others’ Pain as the Limbs of Your Own Happiness.” The slogan, which has a slightly surreal title, is simply cautioning against schadenfreude. I decided to seize on the title as an opportunity to talk about the ways in which we/I take pleasure in others’ difficulty or failings, while taking the limbs of the title literally. “Just / look at my backstroke! I'm a water wheel / catching your fall, grinding you into bread.” This poem is one of several in Locomotive Cathedral in which the “I” of the speaker is at a remove from Brandel-the-author (or is it?). It’s a persona poem but the person speaking is unknown to the reader or has never been previously introduced.

 

And which poem/s gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

Locomotive Cathedral contains a number of poems where the “I” of the speaker and the writer are the same, poems replete with autobiography. In these poems, I had to decide what level of honesty and detail was necessary to elevate the writing above storytelling, journaling, sentimentality, or confession which serves to unburden the writer but may be of little benefit to the reader.

 

How did you find the title of your book?  

 

With difficulty! I submitted the book to contests, including the Backwaters Press contest (an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press), where I was awarded “honorable mention” and publication, under various titles. Early on, my manuscript’s title was Take and Give, which alludes to a Tibetan Buddhist practice (tonglen) of breathing in someone’s suffering and using the exhale to send out the antidote to that suffering. Later on, I started submitting the manuscript as either Locomotive Cathedral, or Regard Yourself as a Verb. The latter was the title my manuscript bore when judge Hilda Raz selected it in the Backwaters contest. Raz and/or the readers mentioned in their comments that they didn’t think the title was the best fit for the collection. The University of Nebraska Press was happy to have me swap out Regard Yourself as a Verb for Locomotive Cathedral, which they felt was going to be easier to develop cover art for.

 

The title Locomotive Cathedral comes from an essay in the collection called “Now You Don’t See It, Now You Do,” which is loosely about my distrust of narrative and linearity:

 

Take a tragedy, a system, a movement, a moment and give it an ending. Give it a terminus in history. Build a station around it. Let it be a locomotive cathedral of steel and glass. Let it be a monument to meaning with marble statuary, a fountain, and geraniums.

 

My friend, the wonderful poet Jennifer Martelli, is the person who suggested Locomotive Cathedral as a title, and I immediately realized that this combination of words in many ways captures the tension the book seeks to mine: between the very human desire for stasis and eternity as symbolized by the “cathedral” (and in some ways, by poetry), and the perpetual motion of transformation. The “locomotive” of the title stands in for the wondrous churn of change and exchange that defines companionship, marriage, and ceding our place on earth. Locomotive Cathedral opens with a quote from the founder of modern chemistry, Antoine Lavoiser that says: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” The book closes with a poem about my one-footed crow, the last line of which is: “Not dying, but molting.”

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/the-backwaters-press/9781496240088/locomotive-cathedral/

 

BUY THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: Bookshop.org

 

LISTEN TO A POEM: https://www.conduit.org/audio (Recording is the third one down.)

 

 

 

TBR: Deep Water, Dark Horizons by Suzanne Hudson

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

It’s a compilation, an abridged body of work, mostly short fiction—plus a few novel excerpts and a couple of essays. Subject matter ranges from the absurdly comical to the dark and despairing, with hope woven throughout. The publisher moved fast to get it out ahead of the February 2025 Truman Capote prize.

 

Which story did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

“The Fall of the Nixon Administration” is the story I had the most fun writing, because the characters are so outrageous, eccentric and self-deluded. One in particular has the filthiest mouth and says over-the-top nasty, perverted things, purely for shock value. It’s liberating to write what you’d not dare to actually say out loud. Or would I? That story was so much bawdy fun that it grew into a comic novel (of the same title).  Note: it’s about a crazy dysfunctional family, not literally about Nixon, but set in 1974.

 

The most trouble? Well, since I dedicated the title story to my late brother, Wilson, who died of acute myeloid leukemia soon after working on beach cleanup after the Deep Water Horizon oil disaster, I needed the character based on him, Gary, to be drawn with care. I wouldn’t say it was “trouble” but I tried to be very mindful about it, and that was emotionally hard for me.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Because I was informed about being the recipient of the Capote prize in November of 2024, and the award was to be presented to me at the end of February of 2025, the window for production was ridiculously small, requiring something like a miracle to get ‘er done. Since all of the work was previously published, editing wasn’t an issue (with a few exceptions), but design and all of the complexities related to that was . . . a challenge. The award itself was the high throughout the process. Those editorial exceptions—stories written back in the 1970s—were the lows, as looking at older work can be—was—mortifying and had to be carved up some—um, a lot. My Lord, the adverbs!

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

I’ve gotta go with that tired old saw, “write what you know.” And to steal from my husband, Joe Formichella, “If you can quit writing, do so.” A true writer can’t NOT write.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

How bad some of those old stories were! I hadn’t looked at them in ages, was in my 20s when I wrote them. I was surprised that I was glad I stepped away from writing for around 25 years (until 1999), because I was in dire need of life experience in order to have something to say.

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

 

I never hesitate to let readers know that my stuff ain’t for everybody. It’s pitch dark, with cockroaches skittering around the underbelly, mostly about folks living in the margins. It deals with domestic violence, depression, addiction, molestation, racism, all that mess that festers under the scab of southern culture. But I have fun, too! And I hope the funny comes across, even in the form of LOL.

 

*****

 

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER:

http://livingstonpress.uwa.edu/  

 

BUY THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

 https://livingstonpress.uwa.edu/Deep%20Water.htm 

 

TBR: Voices in the Air by Kasia Jaronczyk

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

On April 30, 1982, two women and their families hijack a Polish passenger plane flying from Breslau to Warsaw in a bold attempt to escape Martial Law in Communist Poland and find safety in West Berlin. Inspired by real events, Voices in the Air is told from the point of view of four women hijackers: a cotton spinner, whose husband wants to avoid a long prison sentence, a schoolteacher with a sick daughter, a pregnant fourteen-year-old who has visions of the Virgin Mary, an ambitious young filmmaker, and a stewardess in love with the married pilot. Will they find happiness beyond the Iron Curtain or was the hijacking not worth the risk?

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

 

I had the most fun creating the character of Ania, the flight attendant. I immediately loved her irreverent, provocative voice, especially in her interactions with her inhibited and rural cousin, but underneath that bravado was a woman desperately in love with a married man and willing to do anything to be with him. After the hijacking I felt great sympathy for her stubborn belief, in spite of everyone, that her daughter will one day be able to respond to her and communicate.

 

And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I struggled with writing about Julia (the filmmaker) the most. I knew that she would be a witness to the hijacking, and that years later she would interview the women involved, but I didn’t know what her story would be. I felt that I already had all the perspectives I needed in the other female characters, until I realized that Julia would have a daughter Zuza who was, in a way, “hijacked” by her grandmother who acted like she was her mother. Julia would have to decide between Zuza and her chance to stay in the West. Julia’s story also required the most research, as the movie industry in Communist Poland was an involved process, complicated by the many levels of censorship involved. The themes of ambiguous morality,  censorship and self-censorship became very important in the novel.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Before I wrote Voices in the Air I had published a short story collection Lemons (Mansfield Press, 2017), edited an anthology of Polish-Canadian short stories, Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction (Guernica Editions, 2017), and wrote another novel, which remains unpublished. I spent a long time querying that first novel, and after receiving no offers, I gave up on it. In the meantime, I wrote Voices in the Air, and again, I had a few full requests from agents, but ultimately it was rejected. I was growing very frustrated and depressed because nobody seemed to want my novels. I switched gears and queried small presses in Canada and some in the US, which one can do without an agent, and with which I’ve had good luck before. I eventually received two offers of publication and accepted one. Palimpsest Press publishes great poetry and stylistically innovative novels, and Aimee Parent Dunn is an amazing editor. A big positive of publishing with a small press is that the author has more influence on the book design, cover and interior, which I appreciate very much.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write first, edit later - the first draft is a bad draft. This lets you actually finish your work without letting the inner critic sabotage the process.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

   

Sometimes during writing your mind spontaneously comes up with an unexpected and yet perfect solution to a problem, or a connection, or something that happens that you know is just right. It is a magical moment and feels amazing. The creative process is hard work; you are consciously inventing characters or a plot, choosing between different possibilities, following different paths that might lead nowhere. And then, all of a sudden, you receive this surprising revelation like a gift from the writing gods.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Titles can be so difficult – they need to indicate what the book is about, the tone of the work, the genre, but at the same time they can’t be too obvious, too obscure, or misleading. The choice becomes even more complicated when the novel in question is written about a different time and culture and the title needs to be more explanatory that it would have been if it were published in the same country and language. Certain phrases and words can have different connotations and be less obvious to a different audience.

 

I had a running list of titles, including Escape to the West; Flight over the Iron Curtain; Escape to Western Paradise; Hijacked to the West, but they all seemed too obvious and too general, plus they implied an action/adventure/thriller genre, which might attract readers who would be disappointed to find out it is a literary novel told from a female perspective.

 

I then came up with Women Hijackers, (which actually would have worked better in Polish, as a single word Hijackers in the feminine form), and finally, The Wives of Hijackers, which seemed an intriguing, sellable title, but perhaps a too gaudy. Air Partisans was too mysterious.

 

It was my writer friends who suggested Voices in the Air. I feel like this title indicates a literary novel, it may be too subtle, but it encompasses the female voices, the plot, the themes of the novel, as well as its unconventional structure which includes documentary film-style interviews with the hijackers. It also evokes a feeling of loss, an echo, and regret, which reflect the mood of the novel.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Voices in the Air is a nostalgic book for me, as it takes place in Poland, where I was born and lived until I was 14 years old, so of course I mention Polish dishes that I particularly love. One of them is pickle soup, made with kosher pickles and cream, and bigos, a thick sauerkraut and cabbage stew with meat, sausages and wild mushrooms. I recommend them both; they are delicious and not that difficult to make. Here are the recipes:

 

https://www.thekitchn.com/polish-pickle-soup-recipe-23628556

 

https://www.polishyourkitchen.com/polish-hunters-stew-bigos/

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://kasiajaronczyk.weebly.com

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://palimpsestpress.ca

 

ORDER A COPY OF THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/voices-in-the-air-kasia-jaronczyk/

 

 

 

 

TBR: Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop by Paula Whyman

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Bad Naturalist is a memoir about my attempts to restore native meadows on a mountain in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, about the obstacles I encountered, the (many) mistakes I made, the failures—and a few successes—and the discoveries I made along the way.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

Hahaha, courage? Maybe it was foolishness! For me, writing a book-length memoir was something I hadn’t done before, and I was a bit of a reluctant memoirist in that I didn’t feel comfortable focusing on myself. The only way for me to do that was with humor, which is how I like to write anyway. I needed to feel free to make fun of myself. So if there is a “boundary” that I crossed, it’s that apparently it’s somewhat unusual for there to be humor in nature writing. And I wanted to bring nature, um, down to earth...for people like me.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Well, for one thing, selling my book on proposal was an incredible high point and so different from the process I was used to, since my first book was fiction. I’ll also say that there has been a lot of interest in this book, which I really appreciate! I think the low point was when I was trying to figure out how to write the book, as if there was some special rule of approach, a key to writing memoir--and not exactly a traditional memoir, but one that tells a story not just about me, but about the natural world--a key that I didn’t possess because I hadn’t done it before. (There is no key, and every book is different. Heavy sigh.) But I guess it worked it out in the end?

  

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write about what you’re curious about -- that interest and passion will come through in the writing, and your enthusiasm is contagious. Don’t worry about writing what you “know”—but get to know it, so that your reader can get to know it, too.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

  

That I got it done! I was doing the work and the research on the mountain at the same time that I was writing about it. Both the project and the writing involved a lot of uncertainty, a lot of waiting, a lot of trial and error. I never knew what was going to happen on the mountain or if it would happen when I needed it to happen, so I hardly ever knew whether I’d be able to write about the aspect I was hoping to write about, particularly in time for my deadline. The exciting part for me was often the surprise of seeing what did happen—what grew in a place, what new interconnections I found. I took those surprises in the field and brought them to my writing desk, where I teased out further connections when I sat down to write. I was also intent on finding ways to describe plants and insects and birds that I hope are entertaining and accessible, to describe elements of the natural world so that an interested novice like me would be able to envision and connect with them, and I was often surprised by the ideas that occurred to me, like comparing a flower to a weird swim cap my grandmother used to wear. Where did that even come from?

 

Who is your ideal reader?

 

People who are curious and interested in reading about encounters with the natural world that are written with a sense of humor; armchair travelers who would enjoy reading about an adventurous endeavor that doesn’t always go right! I think the book will prove inspiring for those who are drawn to take on an ambitious project in an area that’s totally new to them; for those interested in trying something completely new in mid-life; and for readers who like the idea of reading about someone else’s foibles and failures, watching someone else mess up in what is still a hopeful story.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Oh gosh, there are actually a lot; there are a number of food plants that grow on the mountain that I mention in the book, including paw-paws, persimmon, cherries, blackberries, wineberries, and black raspberries. Starting in the 1830s, the apple was one of the most important crops grown in this part of Virginia, and, as I describe in the book, the mountaintop was covered with apple orchards for more than 100 years.

 

I’m always looking for apple pie recipes to impress the fam on Thanksgiving. This year, on a whim, I tried a new one, and it was a hit. This apple-cranberry-orange pie, which incorporates caramelized apples, was in the Food section of the Washington Post shortly before the holiday. I modified it a little to make it gluten-free, substituting cornstarch for flour when I made the filling, and I used a gluten-free crust. And, to keep it dairy-free, I used Earth Balance instead of butter and almond milk instead of cream. It won kudos all around (even without the butter)!

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:

https://paulawhyman.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:

Politics & Prose Bookstore: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781643262178

Or

Bookshop.org:  https://bookshop.org/p/books/bad-naturalist-one-woman-s-ecological-education-on-a-wild-virginia-mountaintop-paula-whyman/21471113?ean=9781643262178

 READ AN EXCERPT, "Paradise in Progress: On Creating a Natural Refuge in the Blue Ridge Mountains": https://lithub.com/paradise-in-progress-on-creating-a-natural-refuge-in-the-blue-ridge-mountains

SUBSCRIBE TO THE FREE, MONTHLY BAD NATURALIST NEWSLETTER: https://badnaturalistnewsletter.beehiiv.com

 

 

 

2024: Best Books (I Read)

Time for my annual list, along with the accompanying list of caveats: these are, simply put, the best books I read over the course of the year. I try to narrow things down to 10ish books, which is awfully hard. I definitely read (and ADORE!) books by my writer friends, but I try to keep those books off this list. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: ALL lists are subjective. In my personal definition of “best,” I mean some magical alchemy of this book at this time that hit me this way. The order is chronological, so don’t spend time parsing out why one book is first, another last. Also, I had to eliminate some VERY EXCELLENT books to keep my list tidy, and YES, I feel terrible about doing so.

 

THE GUEST by Emma Cline

I pretty much spent the entire year recommending this dark and suspenseful book about an aging “party girl” who needs to find a way to get through a week in the Hamptons now that she has nowhere to live. Crashing parties, making bad decisions, meeting the wrong people, a phone she doesn’t fix…this book isn’t for everyone, as the reader needs some tolerance of characters you’d like to shake sense into. But this book I succeeds extraordinarily at carrying suspense until (literally) the very last word on the page. (And beyond, honestly; I thought about the ending for days.) I could never get enough of Cline’s nuanced—and tart—observations about socio-economic class and girls/women. This book is one of two on this list that earned a place on my Favorite Books bookshelf…which is saying a lot, as that shelf is jam-packed!

  

I AM ONE OF YOU FOREVER by Fred Chappell

Fred Chappell was a beloved North Carolina author, and this book—about growing up in western, rural NC—is possibly his most beloved book. Not exactly a novel, not exactly a collection of stories or essays, reading this book is like listening to a master storyteller weave tales about way back, carrying your mind to a time and place you can’t imagine actually existed even as you utterly believe it did. Flirting with magical realism, using an episodic structure which may not appeal to everyone—but persevere and you’ll be rewarded by delightful humor and insights into human nature. If you’re  a writer, here’s a master class in dialogue. Not to sound obsessed with last words and final lines, but when I mentioned on social media that I was reading this book, at least a dozen people commented that the last line is perfect. They’re right!

 

JAMES by Percival Everett

There should be more awards so this book can win them all. A novel in conversation with Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—but don’t stress if you haven’t read Twain or if it’s been a while because James (aka Jim, the runaway slave in Huck Finn) is his own man here, with his own agenda and agency. This book is smart in every possible way, written with an understated writing style that’s never show-offy, only perfect. Some hard, awful things happen in this book, as one would expect given the subject matter (so be warned), and that understated writing serves to make them all seem more awful. (A master class in writing about trauma.) This book absolutely must be in any conversation about The Great American Novel.

 

EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU by Celeste Ng

Lots of levels to this novel, which I picked up at a used book sale. At first I thought I was getting a juicy story about family dysfunction in the 70s Midwest, complete with a missing girl, but the book expands to ponder secrets and love and women’s roles and racism. Don’t let the five (!) points of view scare you—Ng handles them all with panache. I was utterly immersed in this novel.

  

TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis

I admit that I’m a horrible person for wondering why Charles Portis rated a volume of Collected Works in the Library of America series. I mean, come on! The True Grit guy…really? Then I read this book, and now I know. What a stunner! Great voice, clear vision, funny as hell, so much plot (but not too much), awesome characters down to the minor folks. I hadn’t seen the movie before reading the book (I know…what’s wrong with me?), so then I watched the Jeff Bridges version. That movie gets 5/5 stars for sure, but the book gets 10/5. My husband wearied of my saying, “Well, that scene is much funnier in the book.”

 

LESS by Andrew Sean Greer

I read this on my birthday, which is perfect because at its core, it’s a book about age/aging and love/loving, though it’s also a sparkling, funny book about a writer on a crazy book tour where everything goes wrong, trying to outrun his broken heart. This book won the Pulitzer, which surely is a minor miracle—not because it didn’t deserve the honor, but because those committees are always so Serious & Important. Good for them for finding Serious & Important in the guise of funny and charming.

 

RULES OF CIVILITY by Amor Towles

Anyone who’s been following my lists knows I’m a sucker for this plotline: “girl comes to New York City to work in publishing.” So how could I not love this novel set in 1938 about a working class girl with gumption and sass who charms her way through Manhattan, first in the typing pool before eventually becoming an editor, all the while running with a glamorous crowd? I’m not saying this is the most literary novel ever written, but I found it literary enough with appealing characters. I know Amor Towles is a wildly popular writer, and I certainly understand why.

 

LIGHT YEARS by James Salter

One of those books that writers are always insisting writers should read. I listened to this sage advice and bought the book…so long ago that my copy contains a bookmark that refers to the bookstore in the World Trade Center. (!) All these years later I’ve finally cracked it open to read, and wow! The first paragraph caught me, promising an extraordinary book ahead. While the plot (such as it is) seems basic—the story of a marriage—this book’s ambition is to capture life in all its seasons and complications, which it does exquisitely. Yes, it’s episodic—yes, there’s a weird lack of transitions—yes, I found myself wondering if this book would survive the gauntlet of agents and marketing departments today—yes, this book requires close and careful attention. Yes, this book went straight onto my Favorite Books bookshelf.

 

THE LINE OF BEAUTY by Alan Hollinghurst

Oh, the power of the New York Times Book Review and its list of the 100 best books of the 21^st century. Somehow I had never heard of Alan Hollinghurst, which surprised me as I like to think I’ve at least heard of everything and everyone! (I haven’t, but as I said, I like to think I have.) So, off to the library to check this out, in every sense of the word. I found the going slow at first—too many characters; set in 1980s London, so I lacked a frame of reference for many allusions; the pace felt leisurely aka tediously slow. And yet. Such smart sentences! Such depth of character! I persevered, and about 2/3 of the way through I encountered a brilliant and hilarious chapter (summer holiday in France, if you’ve read the book), followed by another brilliant and even more hilarious chapter (party with Margaret Thatcher), and I was ALL IN to the end, which was so brilliant and perfect that I sobbed. So, I returned the book to the library and bought a duplicate hardback edition from AbeBooks so I could have my own copy forever.

 

TRANSIT by Rachel Cusk

And, again, the power of the New York Times Book Review and its list of the 100 best books of the 21^st century which also included Rachel Cusk. I have heard of her, but I realized that I perpetually confuse her with Rachel Kushner, whose work I’ve read and not connected with. So, I thought I should see what’s what with this other Rachel. Oh, goodness—lots! Zero confusion now! (To be clear, this isn’t the book that was on the NYTBR list, but this is the book the library had.) I found myself admiring the autofictional feel of this novel—the second in a series about a recently divorced writer/mom living in modern Britain, basically getting through modern life (in this book, moving into a new [and awful] flat). But beyond those concrete concerns, the book ponders movement and “transit” in a brainy, thinky way that creates an elegant arc. One of those deceptive writing styles that feels so natural, that’s actually hard AF to pull off.

 

Three endnotes:

 

For my short story book club, I did a presentation on the Irish writer William Trevor, whose stories are stealthily devastating. If you’re not familiar with his work, here are three that will turn you into a fan:

“A Choice of Butchers”

“After Rain”

“A Day”

 ~~~

I have a standing free-flow writing date on Thursday afternoons, and I start each session by reading poetry (a strategy I highly recommend). Here are the books that kept me company throughout 2024 (to be transparent, these are writers I know IRL). If you’re looking for more poetry in your life, I suggest starting here:

 

CHARM OFFENSIVE by Ross White

WHIPSAW by Suzanne Frischkorn

BORN BACKWARDS by Tanya Olson

IF IN SOME CATACLYSM by Anna Leahy

A LITTLE BUMP IN THE EARTH by Tyree Daye

~~~

Finally, I'll indulge myself and mention some recently published novels/story collections/essays by friends that I absolutely ADORED:

 

SEX ROMP GONE WRONG by Julia Ridley Smith

A SEASON OF PERFECT HAPPINESS by Maribeth Fischer

OUR KIND OF GAME by Joanna Copeland

MISS SOUTHEAST by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

THE MARY YEARS by Julie Marie Wade

GREENWOOD by Mark Morrow

~~~

 

Hope your 2025 is filled with good books and a Favorite Books bookshelf that expands an inch or two or ten!

 

 

On Hiatus

My author interview series is on hiatus until January 2025. Keep an eye out for my annual list of "Best Books (I Read) in 2024."