For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] The shortest novels I have read tend to follow one of two trajectories: a steady build towards a climactic event, or regular shifts between calm and upset. Tiffany Clarke Harrison’s debut novel Blue Hour is of the latter variety, keeping you poised for disaster with the turn of every page. The multi-ethnic photographer who … Read more
[ad_1] Despite what its title suggests, Soraya Palmer’s debut novel, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, does not limit its focus to the title character. Instead, it encompasses the family she helped create. A mysteriously knowledgeable narrator fills in some of the gaps with information about Beatrice, and her husband Nigel, … Read more
[ad_1] J.K. Chukwu’s debut, The Unfortunates, is so much more than a novel. It is visual art, emotional plea, nostalgia bomb, and bildungsroman all wrapped up in one. While the powerful themes explored in the novel can and will resonate in some way with anyone, this story particularly speaks to the isolation Black students often … Read more
[ad_1] The highest highs and the lowest lows of life often lead us down the path of memory. The destination? The single decision that set us on the road to our current reality. Sometimes, we are baffled by our own good fortune at forming incredible friendships, dwelling in a town or city where we thrive, … Read more
[ad_1] The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken, is a meditation on living, conveyed fragmentally, through a series of numbered statements given by workers—some of whom are human while others are humanoid artificial intelligence—on a space vessel called the Six Thousand Ship. While … Read more
[ad_1] If an aspiring storyteller were to pick up Haruki Murakami’s Novelist as a Vocation, translated by Philip Gabriel & Ted Goossen, expecting a step-by-step guide to putting a novel together, they may well be disappointed. However, what Murakami’s memoir does offer is certainly of equal value. It is one novelist looking back over his … Read more
[ad_1] Each of the seven stories in Samanta Schweblin’s collection Seven Empty Houses engages with the subject of significant absence in ways that are distinct, while fitting easily beneath the same thematic umbrella. Characters search for missing people, objects, and pieces of themselves. Certain losses documented in these stories can never be recouped, yet each … Read more
[ad_1] In her insightful and ambitious debut novel, Habilis, Alyssa Quinn takes us on a destabilizing journey through the experiences of several beings by means of a single, muddled existence, illustrating the connectedness of all life and challenging the notion of a discoverable, and inherently meaningful, point of human origin. Through techniques and analyses both … Read more
[ad_1] It is a truth universally acknowledged that the undead do not blush. Or at the very least, it should be. In her novel Reluctant Immortals, Gwendolyn Kiste gifts her undead characters the ability to flush in both pleasure and embarrassment, among other markers of liveliness, despite regular reminders that within their bodies are hearts … Read more
[ad_1] In Lulu Wang’s film The Farewell—the story of Billi, a young Chinese-American woman who returns to China after several years to spend time with her dying grandmother, who remains ignorant of her own condition—there is a scene between Billi and her uncle in which he explains the difference in their perspectives. Billi believes the … Read more