“It is a known fact that some people grow to be old, while others become birds or panthers or beasts. Some people even turn into rivers.” “It is a known fact that the queens who refuse their destiny are haunted. Rejection turns itself inward, a bullet to the heart of said queen, and unleashes, perContinue reading “PRETEND YOU’RE DEAD AND I CARRY YOU – Julián Delgado Lopera”
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THE BOOK OF CHUCK – Latoya Watkins
“And I try to record the scent of outdoors and flowers and dust and lavender and old tears so I can carry it with me.” After reading Latoya Watkins’s Perish, I stated that it wasn’t for me, writing “There are definite echoes of Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston, but it is much more ragged, rawContinue reading “THE BOOK OF CHUCK – Latoya Watkins”
A TENDER AGE – A Tender Age
“You think you can die only once. What luck, if that’s true. I was eleven years old, and I thought I knew everything.” Chang-Rae Lee’s A Tender Age (Riverhead 2026) should have captured my attention a bit more than it did. I tend to love bildungsromans, and a novel about a Korean kid growing upContinue reading “A TENDER AGE – A Tender Age”
BEGINNING MIDDLE END – Valeria Luiselli
“This was a story with a mother and a daughter and a beginning. And the story, it turned out, was about everything that we reinvented after that.” This year’s Booker list is extremely male-centric, which infuriates me because it’s not like the pool of eligible candidates was devoid of books that center women. I continueContinue reading “BEGINNING MIDDLE END – Valeria Luiselli”
SWITZY – Emma Cline
“You’re the boss, applesauce – lights out.” “Do no harm – hadn’t he done only a little?” Emma Cline’s Switzy is the last of the Booker longlist for me, and much like the rest of the longlist, it deals with loneliness, memory, and a rewriting of the past. David Hastings has Alzheimer’s disease, and heContinue reading “SWITZY – Emma Cline”
THE DISAPPEARERS – Marlon James
“Yes, there will be violence. Yes, there will be tenderness. Yes, there will be rape.” “Me tired of this. Me tired of running. Me tired of fighting, too.” “We covering our tracks so good that even we can’t find the way back home.” “So him just abracadabra and vanish or somebody disappear him?” “This isContinue reading “THE DISAPPEARERS – Marlon James”
THE SECRET LIVES OF MURDERERS’s WIVES – Elizabeth Arnott
“Don’t feel bad. A housewife can’t solve a murder,” he says gently. “Not even one like you.” I really expected to like Elizabeth Arnott’s The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives (Berkley 2026). The premise is fantastic: three former wives of serial killers work together to catch a killer that is terrorizing California in 1966. DespiteContinue reading “THE SECRET LIVES OF MURDERERS’s WIVES – Elizabeth Arnott”
SAID THE DEAD – Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s Said the Dead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 9/22/026 – a huge thanks to the publisher for the galley copy) is one of my top reads of the year. I have to assume it wasn’t submitted for Booker consideration, likely due to the genre-blurring elements that lean heavily into nonfiction, because I can’tContinue reading “SAID THE DEAD – Doireann Ní Ghríofa”
MAY WE FEED THE KING – Rebecca Perry
“In this way, my work has sustained me when people could not.” “My house had been holding its breath for a long time.” “No, he will not come when called. He is no dog.” Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize before being longlisted for the Booker; there isContinue reading “MAY WE FEED THE KING – Rebecca Perry”
THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT – Chloe Aridjis
“No more tricks, no more abracadabra, no more misdirection or uncertainty, no more seeing things one way when most people saw them another.” “My mother didn’t mention him, I didn’t mention him, but there he sat in the room with us.” “…she didn’t believe in blank pages…” Right now, Chloe Aridjis’s The Shadow of theContinue reading “THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT – Chloe Aridjis”
