Another Country

The Stranger's Child

Alan Hollinghurst

I haven't read any of Hollinghurst previous novels, but I've been told they involve contemporary gay men having lots of sex, and therefore you may not feel comfortable reading them on the subway. At his Bookcourt reading for "The Stranger's Child," he used the phrase "uncharacteristically restrained" in response to a question about the lack of detailed action on the pages of this book. But there is plenty going on between the chapters and sections and after a while that becomes the point.

You Think That's Bad

Jim Shepard

The most frequent comment I see about Jim Shepard's writing is that he attacks such a wide variety of worlds, in terms of places and places in time. It seems to go against the "write what you know" commandment passed down to aspiring writers, except each story feels convincingly accurate; he is apparently able to research well and therefore know more than the average person.

Invisible

Paul Auster

By writing about myself in the first person, I had smothered myself and made myself invisible, had made it impossible for me to find the thing I was looking for. I needed to separate myself from myself…

Paul Auster is one of those writers where most likely you’ve read The New York Trilogy, if you’ve read anything, and nothing quite compares to that.

Let the Great World Spin

Colum McCann

I was drawn to this book based on its setting in 1970s New York City, specifically set around the day Philippe Petit made his World Trade Center tightrope walk; curiously the tightrope interludes in the book felt mostly unnecessary and distracting. The shorter sections that only have the tightrope connection to tie them with the rest of the book hence feel entirely disconnected.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis

I picked up All the King's Horses as a break from this and found that a longer narrative really hit the spot. Afterward I decided to finish up the stories in the section I was reading here and come back to the rest of the collection later, only to discover somewhat disappointingly that there were just a handful until that next break. But I'm sticking to the plan.

Pretty Monsters

Kelly Link

It's almost exactly four years since I read most of Link's Stranger Things Happen, and I experienced similar hit-and-miss responses to these stories. Sometimes the concept of the story is more entertaining than the execution, and the writing is often too simplistic and almost juvenile, though I discovered after finishing the last story that this a YA book. I guess that's why all the stories are focused on younger people!

Bats or Swallows

Teri Vlassopoulos

I've known Teri for years via the zine world, and it's exciting to see her first book published. These stories are largely melancholy, lined with the poignancy of deaths and disappointments. They feel open-ended, most likely because the characters without fail need to reach a point of internal conclusion rather than exacting any kind of influence on the world around them.

Girls to the Front

Sara Marcus

I became aware of riot grrrl late, mostly from a distance through zines and records. I can still conjure some sadness that Huggy Bear actually played a show in northern Connecticut, but on a Tuesday night when there was no way I could go. What I experienced influenced me greatly, but I never felt like I was a part of the movement in the political sense. There was a lot that I didn't know about the origins and history. I'm glad this book exists now, though it doesn't feel like the "definitive" record it claims to be.

Between the Acts

Virginia Woolf

Jacob's Room is maybe my favorite Woolf novel, with its dark look at WWI and the futility of life; this novel shows England just before its entry into WWII, in a village hours outside of London, where a fragmented family is hosting a pageant on the grounds of their modest .