MISINTERPRETATION – Ledia Xhoga

Booker 101 Quick & Dirty Monday!

MISINTERPRETATION: Ledia Xhoga
Tin House : 3 September 2024 (US) (unless otherwise noted, I’m reading the US edition)
Daunt Books: 6 May 2025 (UK)
Page Count: 287

First line: I was fifteen minutes late and his phone number was out of service.

Blurbed by:

Jennifer Croft – (With the author Olga Tokarczuk, she was awarded the 2018 Booker International Prize for her translation of FLIGHTS)

Idra Novey – (Numerous awards, no Booker nominations.)

Maisy Card  — (Numerous awards, no Booker nominations. Her THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILYwas my top read of 2020)

Elizabeth Gaffney – (Numerous awards, no Booker nominations.)

Tom Grimes – (Numerous awards, no Booker nominations.  I think, but could be wrong, he was Xhoga’s advisor during her MFA.)

Ledia Xhoga (pronounced Joga) was born and raised in Albania. She worked in publishing in New York prior to going to Texas for her MFA.  She currently lives in Brooklyn. This is her first novel.

Booker 101 “Don’t Judge a Book…” Wednesdays

I think we finally have one of the longlist selections where I prefer the UK cover.  The Daunt Books Publishing cover of Xhoga’s MISINTERPRETATION is more appealing than the Tin House version, though I appreciate what Tin House was trying to do.

The UK version captures the narrators paranoia and descent into madness in the font and the way it’s fall down the side of the page. (This is similar to what is attempted on the US cover, but the differences in font make all the difference.)  The shade of purple is the shade I imagine her mystery hyacinths are. Those flowers are important aspects to the novel, in particular in building the “thriller” aspect, which the rest of the cover heavily leans into with the magnifying glass over the New York skyline. As the narrator serves as both prey fleeing and the predator prowling the New York streets, this choice nails that “thriller” vibe.

The US version went an entirely different way, moving away from the “thriller” aspect and more into the gothic.  A seemingly female hand (the clothing choice a nod to the coat Billy gives the narrator that she gives to Leyla) holds an ornate, vintage mirror that is reflecting a human-looking big cat with stripes.  Per the cover art description, it’s a tiger.  Now, the Cheshire cat does show up in the text, and Alfred is seeing hybrid animals, but I think this reflection in particular references a scene near the end with a panther.  But that reflection isn’t of a panther. Panthers don’t have stripes.  Panthers also aren’t in Albania. But you know what is – the critically endangered Balkan lynx.  Is that what is supposed to be on the cover? The panther is a reflection of the narrator in the text. Was the panther in the text originally a Balkan lynx? Or is it really supposed to reflect Alfred’s fragmented hybrids? (Considering the artist being Anton Vierietin, I think that might be the point. I don’t like it – his visions are not her’s.)

I’m not sure that either cover would cause me to pick the book up for further inspection.  And while I think the Tin House version is on the right track, it falls short. Because of that, I’d likely pick the UK version.

What about you?  Which one is your favorite?

“You’re misinterpreting your emotions.” (58)

“Old ghosts were everywhere and proved more helpful than the rare street signs.” (160)

Booker loves a unnamed and unreliable narrator, and they have one in Ledia Xhoga’s Misinterpretation. (This is the Creation Lake of this longlist, I believe.)  The novel is set primarily in New York, with a brief 50-page trip to Albania. It has some thriller vibes and some gothic vibes, but it’s not squarely either. And I think that’s part of the point. There’s a lot of fragments in the novel, including Alfred’s face, caused by the narrator’s lived experiences and trauma and the stories she carries for those she translates for; she’s become a vessel for the pain and horrors of others, and it begins to flow outward.

As a former immigration attorney, the themes of the immigrant experience in America, including visa overstays, Anna saying she once thought Billy had married the unnamed narrator to get her a greencard, and the fear of being removed silencing victims, stood out to me as some of the stronger snapshots of time, place, and people. It’s likely what I appreciated the most from the novel because of how honestly it is depicted.

The unnamed narrator becomes a predator when she begins stalking Rakan, who is in turn stalking Leyla. Upon returning from Albania, the roles have reverses; she has become the prey.  Billy leaving her to her own devices during these moments was one of the many times I said “he is not the one for you.”  (I didn’t like Billy. Not in the slightest. But for what it’s worth, I don’t really like our “Clara” – the only name given to the narrator is the “joke” name bestowed upon based upon some man who had been obsessed with her mother.)

The novel deals with displacement, trauma, identity, immigration, self-preservation, domesticity, and motherhood (she doesn’t want to become a mother.  Billy wants a family.  She ignores those conversations). I think it’s an interesting novel that isn’t necessarily as polished as I would like – but I’m apt to believe that was intentional – first narration and madness? It’s not meant to be polished.

The longlist is feeling pretty global this year, and I am appreciating that.

LOVE FORMS – Claire Adam

“I’m recalling this as best I can, you understand. The truth is that I only remember impressions – images, sounds, feelings.” (9)

Claire Adam’s Love Forms started out strong – a first-person narrative with a lyricism to the storytelling that I enjoyed.  It didn’t last. On page 11, she writes: “In the darkness, the fallen coconuts all around us glimmered like skulls.” I never recovered. Was it Adam who gave me this impossibility or Dawn Bishop, our unreliable narrator trying to make her story of being smuggled to another country as a teen to give birth to the child she placed for adoption sound flowery?  And that’s a theme throughout the novel – real pretty imagery that just is just off. If intentional, Adam could have done a better job of showing that it’s Dawn who is painting the pictures that raised my eyebrows.  And if intentional, why?  What purpose would it serve? We already know we can’t trust what she’s saying.

This rambling, stumbling story takes us  from a pregnant 16-year-old in 1980 to a 58-year-old divorcee questioning her choices and thinking about her baby girl.  “She just drifts in and out of my thoughts, the way that a breeze might pass through a room.” (44) In between this search for the child she placed for adoption, is a geopolitical drama of time and place for Trinidad and Tobago that nearly fades into the backdrop of the family saga, guilt, and trauma Dawn suffered when she was smuggled into Venezuela for four months, to live with strangers, birth a child, and be sent home like nothing happened.  “You were the lion. I didn’t realize it back then,” she tells her father when she returns home as an adult. (223)

Full of emotion but with unrealized potential, Love Forms didn’t do it for me. I know some folks have already questioned its inclusion in the longlist and wonder if SJP’s involvement should have made it ineligible for consideration. As for me, I think  there are other novels that would have easily fit in this Booker slot – Mottley’s The Girls Who Grew Big being one.  (Mottley’s use of language is a thing of art.)

Right now, this sits at the bottom of my ratings.

*As part of my Booker 101, I’ve been posting on instagram three times per book. Today is the final thoughts, which I always share here. Below are the previous entries for this book.

Booker 101 “Don’t Judge a Book…” Wednesdays

The UK and US covers for Adam’s LOVE FORMS are both beautiful, but this is the year I seem to be liking the US covers more.

The UK cover features bright colors and a dated font that is reminiscent of 70s-80s romance novels.  The jungle of flowers on the ocean blue is indicative of the wildness and beauty of Trinidad and Tobago. It’s okay, but it doesn’t really do much for me.

The US cover is striking with artistic green and the corner of the ocean with the citrus fruit in the center. The citrus fruit works because the Bishop family owns and operates Bishop Fruit Juices – they are wealthy because of the fruit they grow.  Other than that, however, fruit doesn’t show up as much as I feel like it could.  Don’t get me wrong – this cover is lovely, but I’d have replaced the citrus fruit with a similarly drawn little brown dog.  Dogs, especially the knee-high brown one, are frequently on the pages.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I didn’t like this book.  I did, however, find the cover striking as a work of art, just not as the cover to this novel.

Booker 101 Quick & Dirty Monday!

LOVE FORMS: Claire Adam
Hogarth : 29 July 2025 (US)
Faber & Faber: 19 June 2025 (UK)
Page Count: 271

First line: It was my father who made the arrangements.

Blurbed by:

Charmaine Wilkerson – (No Booker nominations – I’m a huge fan though)

Sara Collins – (No Booker nominations – 2024 Booker judge)

Monique Roffey – (Numerous literary awards – no Booker nominations)

Claire Kilroy – (Numerous literary awards – no Booker nominations)

Romesh Gunesekera – (Shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize for REEF – 2024 International Booker Prize judge)

Maria Keyes – (Numerous literary awards – no Booker nominations)

Denis deCaires Narain – ( Senior Lecturer and reader in postcolonial studies – not an author)

LOVE FORMS is Claire Adam’s second novel.  Her first, GOLDEN CHILD, was published by current Booker judge Sarah Jessica Parker’s SJP for Hogarth. Adam was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago and currently lives in London.

PEOPLE LIKE US – Jason Mott

“Even love has been known to decimate.”

“Yes sir, yes ma’am, my daughter’s birth made everyone in that room into better storytellers.”

“Fuck the red, the white, and the goddamned blue. Fuck it all. I need air. And fuck anybody that wants me to stay in a place that does nothing but suffocate me. I have no home, when you get down to it.”

“I’m trying to get Stephen King to blurb one of my debut authors’ books, and anytime you’re dealing with the Stephen King Industrial Complex, it requires three blood oaths, a fatted calf, an altar, and everything else I’ve got. The Obamas don’t ask for as much blood as SKIC!”

I think that the comparison between Percival Everett and Jason Mott is an easy one because of shared themes of Black trauma in America and the surprising humor that emerges in the sharp and clever writing. I loved The Trees, and Mott’s People Like Us (Dutton 2025) is in that same vein, though Mott and Everett are very different in their storytelling.

People Like Us is metafiction. Despite redacting his name throughout the novel, Mott does name himself at the end. (The various redactions cracked me up. As did the Not Toni Morrison character.) The author’s note at the beginning, which may be one of the best author notes in existence, lets the reader know that a lot of what happens in People Like Us actually happened.  Throughout the novel, Mott blends fiction with reality – centered around gun violence in America, Black trauma, and his own daughter’s death by suicide.  And all the while, a man named Remus is stalking him with intentions of murder. It’s intimate and playful, cheeky and devastating.

The novel is written in blood and tears – you can taste the salt and iron on the pages.  You can hear the thud thud of a heartbeat, the bang of a gun, the soft sounds of someone inhaling and exhaling, and laughter.  Above all, the laughter. People Like Us reads like a fever dream, and it is almost voyeuristic the way he lets readers in.  But I’m glad he did.

Read this book.

FLESH – David Szalay

“The first daffodils arrive in a hostile world.” (162)

If Camus’s The Stranger had a baby with Melville’s Bartleby, you’d get Szalay’s Istvan. Unlike Bartleby, who prefers not to, Istvan’s response is “okay.” He goes through life letting things happen to him, around him, with him. The novel opens with a bang – a 42-year-old woman sexually assaults a fifteen-year-old. (Though it’s not how it is written, Istvan is a victim.) We’re not even 40 pages in before he’s fallen in love with her, there’s a titty fuck (something I never thought I’d see detailed in a Booker book), her husband’s dead and Istvan has been arrested.

What Szalay does with time is dizzying, thrusting the reader ahead without a road map and leaving it up to the reader to piece together when and where we are. “Fuck you. Figure it out,” is how it comes off. Honestly, that’s the best part of the novel – Szalay isn’t going to hold your hand.

Istvan is entirely unlikable, but he’s supposed to be. The novel is entirely from his POV.  Until it isn’t.  That’s where the novel fails. When Helen and Thomas get POVS, it gets sloppy and loses its punch. It’s clearly not unintentional, but the result diminishes what Szalay had been building.

Things worth mentioning:

How many cigarettes are smoked in this novel. It’s almost every page.
Tommy playing Horatio – the loyal friend and scholar – in a play that no one gives a damn about.
The fact a fox causes the accident – a nod to tricksters/shapeshifters?
 Istvan collecting expensive watches – especially considering how Szalay thrusts us around without a timepiece.


The role seasons play when it comes to Istvan’s emotions, particularly fall.

Are the increased blank pages after the accident intentional or a publishing error/necessity? It showed the most emotion we’d gotten from Istvan, and the blank pages read like the emotions/moment were deleted. I can appreciate it for what it is and how it’s done, but it’s not my favorite.

SLANTING TOWARDS THE SEA – Lidija Hilje

Current installment of Tommi Reads the World – we’re still in the C’s!!!

Country: Croatia
Title: Slanting Towards the Sea
Author: Lidija Hilge
Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 2025

“Back home, all things slant towards the sea.”

“I can’t remember the last time someone said I had potential. But the thing about potential is that it doesn’t go away. If you fail to realize it, you don’t simply lose it. Instead, it sediments inside you, like tar or asbestos, slowly releasing its poison.”

“Now it’s just a relic of old times, a forgotten little figurine on a shelf. It’s just a doll, within a doll, but there should be two more dolls instead her. I lost them, somewhere, sometime. Now, it’s as hollow as I am, and we stare at each other in mutual understanding.”

Slanting Towards the Sea is a love story in a world where love doesn’t win, where love hurts, where you don’t ride off into the sunset. Ivona divorced her husband, Vlaho, nine years ago. She’s remained stagnant since. He marries her friend, has two kids, and they have a triangle of a relationship. She takes what she can get from this man who is her world and his wife and kids.

The novel alternates between the past and present, showing the reader what caused the break. Who caused the break. And what secrets remain hidden. Since the divorce, she’s lived with her father, a man she’s had a complicated relationship with. She cares for him and is trying to save his dream for him.  But it’s not her dream. She doesn’t want it. And it doesn’t make financial sense. She loves Lovorun, the family estate, the olive trees are a part of her, but she doesn’t want to open a hotel, doesn’t want to run a hotel, and they don’t have the money to open it. Pushing back against her father and brother nearly tears her apart, but she’s already shelved the life she wanted when she learned she couldn’t have children.  She manages to stand firm and convinces them they have to sell.  Enter Asier – the investor looking to buy Lovorun. She thinks maybe after nine years, she can move on, find another love, be touched. She thinks the triangle can become a square, and all hell breaks loose.

Slanting Towards the Sea is heavy with ache. I couldn’t put it down because I needed it to break, to give way, to find release. It does, by the end, but it’s not satisfying. I wanted Ivona to choose herself, and she does, but not fully. Never fully. Both Croatia and Vlaho have a hold on her that won’t quit.

Read this book.

THE CONVENIENCE STORE BY THE SEA – Sonoko Machida

I recently read The Second Chance Convenience Store, and that library hold came in with The Convenience Store by the Sea by Sonoko Machida (translated by Bruno Navasky, Putnam 2025). The first was a Korean convenience store that served as the setting to unfold a story about a mysterious man as told through several interconnected stories centered around the convenience store.  The Convenience Store by the Sea is set in Tenderness, a convenience store in the tourist town of Mojiko, Japan. Through several interconnected stories, a story about the enigmatic brothers unfolds. It’s hard not to compare the two works.

The Convenience Store by the Sea seems more geared to young adults – as reflected in the writing style and subject matters of the stories. My favorite story is “A Soft Egg Porridge for a Hard Old Man.” It’s about a man struggling with his wife seemingly not wanting to spend time with him.  He’s lonely and feels unmoored. He ends up agreeing to serve as a boy’s grandfather so they can compete in a three-legged competition at field day.  The miscommunication is cleared up with his wife, and the boy and his family become part of theirs. “A Melancholy Strawberry Parfait” is my second favorite. It deals with mean teenage girls, overbearing mothers, dreams, making new friends, cancer, and sweet treats.

It’s a cute book, but it lacks some of the warmth of The Second Chance Convenience Store. Both are heartwarming and quick reads, and beyond the framework, they are very different.  I would recommend them both, but if you only want to read one story about a convenience store, I’d recommend The Second Chance Convenience Store.

THE GIRLS WHO GREW BIG – Leila Mottley

“Momma raised me right till she refused to raise me at all.” 

“They wanted us to be anything but what we were.”

“’Cause hundreds  of years ago, some pirate ship sunk and spilled treasures all over the bottom of our sea and now the water shines emerald green for us and if that don’t make us treasures too, I don’t know what does. So even when we havin’ a hard time, you just remember the world gon’ send you some treasures when you need it most, even if it takes hundreds of years to see ‘em shine.”

Leila Mottley was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize with Nightcrawling, and her 2025 release, The Girls Who Grew Big (Knopf 2025) made my prediction list but didn’t make the actual long list.  (It should have. Swap Love Forms for this. What Mottley does with language is such a gift.)

Much like Nightcrawling, The Girls Who Grew Big deals with an unsavory subject matter – teenage pregnancy and teens who choose to get pregnant and choose to raise their children.  Their choices are not “socially acceptable,” and the book is not a teachable moment against childhood pregnancy; it’s raw and jagged, this story of near feral girls not yet women, but it’s one of the most beautiful books about sisterhood and found families I’ve read. These girls are pushed to the outskirts of society; shunned, judged, and abandoned by their families, they find support and strength in each other.

Sectioned in trimesters and told from the POV of Simone (leader of the Girls), Emory (raised by her racist grandparents and Simone’s brother’s baby mama), and Adela (rich, biracial girl from Indiana with aspirations of being on the Olympic swim team sent to Florida to stay with her paternal grandmother, have the baby, and return like nothing happened – her mother wouldn’t let her have an abortion).  It’s Adela who breaks the Girls. Adela who gets broken. Adela who helps put pieces back together.

The sandy grit from the Florida beach is in the pages, in the words, in your mouth.  The Girls Who Grew Big is something special.  And so is Mottley.

Read this book.

FLASHLIGHT – Susan Choi

“In one hand he holds a flashlight which is not necessary, in the other hand he holds Louisa’s hand which is also not necessary.” (3)

“Up and down with their flashlights: one carries the flashlight, the other carries the gun.” (378)

Susan Choi’s Flashlight (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2025) is next up in the Booker longlist. This novel, a family saga laced with trauma, identity, geopolitical drama, mystery and slices of history, ticks a lot of boxes for what I enjoy in a story. Add Choi’s storytelling talent, and it’s likely this will be my favorite of the longlist. (I do so love a slow burn of a family saga!)

The novel opens when Louisa is 9. She and her Japanese-born Korean father are in Japan where he is teaching. They are walking the shore. Her mother is sick and did not join them. This is the last time she sees her father, and her memories of what happened that night, on the shore, are locked up tight. The reader then gets her father’s back story (Seok turned Hiroshi turned Serk turned The Crab), which is heavy on the conflict between being a Korean in Japan, calling his Japanese name something he only puts on when he’s outside “like a coat.” We also get Anne’s backstory. The youngest of seven and just eager to get out, she winds up becoming involved with a married professor. He and his wife adopt the child she carries, and she continues on a solitude path. Anne and Serk eventually meet when he comes to the US. They get married and Louisa is born. It’s a pretty volatile marriage, and there remains a lot of disconnect between the couple.

Anne’s sections are beautiful and achingly crafted. She’s a woman at odds with her choices and her body.  And Louisa is positively awful to her, just like Serk had been.  Justice for Anne.  Lousia’s sections are equally well defined and powerful. She’s marked by the trauma of losing her father that night and an inability to address the loss in a healthy, productive way. Generational trauma from both of her parents taint her choices throughout her life.

Serk’s sections are less formed, just as much a shell of the man as he is at those points. With Choi’s talents, I imagine this is intentional and not just hollow writing. The pain and trauma he endures, the loss of time and memory, is captured in these stripped-down, seemingly underdeveloped sections.

Tobias, the son Anne had at 19, and Ji-hoon (AKA The Fisherman) have sections that serve clear and exact purposes – they serve as info dumps and provide context, especially as it relates to the geopolitical climate and the “based on actual events” abductions of Japanese by North Korea.

Some things worth further discussion – Holden, Lousia’s cat and her reaction to learning it had disappeared, the pronunciation of Kang (oh man even at the end, I hated Louisa who seemed she could only show her mother love by being dismissive and angry), and of course, the many uses of flashlights throughout (Serk’s EVERREADY we open with that shows up again, the child psychologist’s flashlight that Lousia steals, the flashlights searching for Louisa and Serk, the red plastic flashlight at the hostel used to summon a ghost, the flashlight at Daniel’s worksite, and the flashlight (and gun) carried by security agents patrolling. (Did I miss any!?!?)  The line that made me cry? “They threw me out of the boat, and I swam.”  IYKYK.  Justice for Anne.

Read this book!

THE SECOND CHANCE CONVENIENCE STORE – Kim Ho-Yeon

If you’re looking for a slim, comfortable little novella that is reminiscent of the heart hug I get from Backman, try Kim Ho-Yeon’s The Second Chance Convenience Store. (Translated by Janet Hong, Originally published in South Korea 2021; English translation published by Harper Perennial 2025). It’s full of warmth and humor, found families, and second chances. The story unfolds in a series of interlocking chapters with different POVs, and it’s delightful.

The novel opens with Mrs. Yeom Yeong-sook, the owner of a convenience store that her son wants her to sell, realizing she’s lost her wallet. A man calls her because he’s found the wallet at Seoul Station, and she goes to meet him. Dokgo is homeless, unkempt, smells bad, and stutters. To thank him for finding her wallet, Mrs. Yeong-sook offers for him to come by her store whenever he wants and get a lunch box.  He starts coming every day, eventually winning over the staff and the customers.  She eventually hires him to work the night shift.

As the stories unfold and Dokgo helps every he encounters, he starts to get better and his memory starts to return. From failed careers to alcoholism to writer’s block and family drama, Dokgo is a listening ear and a voice of reason. He heralds in second chances, wiping the dust off so folks can see it was always there.

Then Mrs. Yeong-sook’s greedy son hires a detective to find out who Dokgo really is and what his loss of memory is really hiding.  Will Dokgo also get a second chance?

The Second Chance Convenience Store is a quick and sweet read.

THE ORIGINAL – Nell Stevens

“Everything done for the second time is a copy of when it was done for the first time, and an attempt to bring back something lost.”

Nell Stevens The Original (W.W. Norton & Company 2025) is a delicious, queer historical fiction, laced in a Victorian gothic tradition that rendered it un-put-down-able.

As a young girl, Grace is sent to her uncle’s sprawling estate where much of her time is spent keeping out of the way and waiting for madness to come. As both her parents were committed (the final straw was fornicating in public), she assumes her madness could reveal itself at any time. The family has been cursed by a long dead relative, and the heirs are dying. After twelve years and presumed lost at sea, her cousin returns after her uncle’s death for his inheritance. But is it really Charles or an imposter?

Graces knows a lot about imposters. She’s a fraudster herself, painting copies of notable works and turning them for a profit. Cursed with prosopagnosia, Grace is unable to recognize and/or remember faces, even of those she loves. She, therefore, cannot look at Charles to determine if he is real or a “copy.” One thing is certain, he knows things that only Charles, or someone extremely close to him, would know.

An investigation into the potential fraud is launched, with Grace believing him to be her cousin at times and an imposter at times. Sometimes he proves himself an ally, sometimes an enemy. He certainly keeps her on her toes. He is the only one who knows that she loves women, much like he loves men. He also knows about the paintings – Charles has known about the paintings since the first replica she made. (A replica that tossed the family on its head as the original had been burned and then it showed back up, like a ghost.)

While a bit predictable as it unfolds, this is certainly worth a read.