This month, I’m pointing the lens at experimental fiction, with all the permutations that the label implies. These are books that push boundaries when it comes to plot, point of view, form, language, and in some cases, even typography.
Fall is here, and it’s the perfect season to curl up with a great thriller. Even more perfect if that thriller is written with a deep literary sensibility and an eagle eye on world events.
Such a book is Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. Set in the seemingly idyllic environs of New Zealand, it is a tragic story of how idealism can be too easily coopted.
August is a great time for a road trip. In a few days, my partner and I will saddle up the ol’ Prius and ride off into our own summer adventure.
Literary road trips come in as many varieties as there are lines on the highway. From dark and apocalyptic to wondrous and awe-inspiring to breezy and carefree, a good journey read is the best traveling companion.
Black History Month is not just a celebration of Black achievement and Black joy, it is a time of reckoning and reflection on the ongoing echoes of America’s painful past.
In Perceval Everett’s stinging dark comedy, The Trees, that past is laid as bare and bloody as the open wound that it still is. Part social justice polemic, part revenge horror, part buddy-cop procedural, it is a searing indictment of institutionalized racism in America.
