The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Michael Glenny

5/5 stars

What's it about? The devil and his entourage descend on Moscow and wreak havoc. Margarita becomes entangled in Satan’s doings in order to save her beloved master, who’s devoted his life to writing a book about Pontius Pilate. Bulgakov pokes at the elitists of 1920s Russia in a satire that delivers a very good time.

How’d I find it? A long ago boyfriend once encouraged me to read this book, and I carried this copy around with me for at least ten years before finally cracking the cover. And I’m so glad I did.

Who will enjoy this book? If you appreciate Kundera or Kafka, you’ll want to give this a try.

What stood out? The Master and Margarita is ripe with absurdity and humor; I particularly enjoyed the nude vampire performing chores and Satan’s ball, not least because Margarita leans fully into her new witchiness. The chapters on Pontius Pilate and the execution of Jesus contain spellbinding writing that will linger with the reader and get one on Margarita’s side all the more.

Which line made me feel something? I laughed out loud at this exclamation of Margarita’s, which loses its strangeness in later translations: “Hurray for the cream!” It’s up to you to read that chapter and enjoy it just as much.

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken

5/5 stars

What's it about? An undead woman processes her losses, both physical (her body is literally falling apart) and otherwise, in an apocalyptic reality. A beautiful elegy to existence as we know it.

How’d I find it? My favorite bookfluencer turned me on to this read.

Who will enjoy this book? For my fellow lovers of zombie lore, It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over will scratch the itch.

What stood out? An existential zombie book that clocks in at a mere 120 pages? Count me in. De Marcken’s small masterpiece swings for the big questions—what is existence and why does it matter?—while probing the minor mysteries, like our species’ obsession with naming. You know you’re in for something special when the book starts off with this energy: “I lost my left arm today.”

Which line made me feel something? “Things in rows and ranks are mournful. Trees planted to pulp. Soldiers or their gravestones. Multiplicity and order reveal sameness and variation. The limitations of our individuality. That we can be felled.”

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? The reliable East City Bookshop recommended McConagy’s first novel Migrations, a book I devoured in record time, so I am always excited to see this Australian author’s name on a new cover.

Why not 3 or more stars? How I wanted to love Wild Dark Shore. I find mesmerizing the powerful and complicated women of McConagy’s novels, as well as the sensuality of her writing. The scaffolding simply shows too much in this one, and the unconvincing shifts in voice, chapter breaks, and melodramatic schlock (“it doesn’t matter where I end and she begins”) kept my eyes rolling.

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky

4/5 stars

What's it about? A patch of land beside a lake in the Brandenburg hills outside Berlin hosts human encounters over the course of a century. A book about time, brutality, and the geologic strata of history.

How’d I find it? The book club at Lost Avenue Books picked Visitation for its most recent discussion. Next up: Loop by Brenda Lozano, translated by Annie McDermott.

Who will enjoy this book? Reading Visitation recalls watching Zone of Interest for the first time. If you enjoyed Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, pick this one up.

What stood out? The title suits this book perfectly, as the Holocaust haunts the property where Visitation takes place. Erpenbeck embeds the relative mundanity of human concerns within the grander scope of geologic time, an effect that neuters the book’s horror. Chapters in legalese, items in a home described with their prices, dizzying repetitions of family trees—devices that unsettle and send a shudder through the reader. It’s uncomfortable yet exhilarating.

Which line made me feel something? From “The Visitor,” the chapter I most enjoyed: “She wonders whether the sentences go out looking for people to utter them or whether it’s just the opposite and the sentences simply wait for someone to come along and make use of them, and at the same time she wonders if she really doesn’t have anything better to do than wonder about such things…”

Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm

4/5 stars

What's it about? I don’t quite know how to describe Malina: a love story, a rallying cry against fascism and patriarchy, a collage, an excavation of language’s limitations. Or, a writer loves Malina, her live-in partner, and Ivan, a chance encounter that became an affair, and navigates the discontent created by history and violent men. It’s an exhilarating ride.

How’d I find it? This was the most recent book club pick at the excellently curated Lost Avenue Books. Given my answer to the last question, you can imagine the lively discussion.

Who will enjoy this book? If you dug Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, you’ll want to read this.

What stood out? I admit, I was not won over by the first section of the novel, “Happy with Ivan,” in which the narrator moons over a younger man who lives a few doors down. The section part, “The Third Man,” changed my mind, launching a sequence of delirious dreams about the narrator’s father intercut with conversations with Malina. These pages are brutal, overwhelming, and intense, and Malina morphs into a threat, a malevolent presence. Bachmann evokes deportation, incest, war, rape, and sexism in raw, surreal ways. I couldn’t put it down.

Which line made me feel something? In a section formatted as a local paper’s interview with the writer: “I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression.”

The Clasp by Sloane Crosley

3/5 stars

What's it about? College friends Nate, Kezia, and Victor reunite at a wedding, where down-on-his-luck Victor becomes convinced that he might be able to locate the titular necklace of Guy de Maupassant’s short story. A cleverly written, low stakes read.

How’d I find it? A pal once recommended Crosley’s work to me, and I found this copy at Powell’s on a weekday browsing the fiction shelves.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Marcy Dermansky and Lily King might like this one.

What stood out? The Clasp has much going for it: wedding hijinks, a mystery, a toe’s dip into the fashion world, and a trip to France in the third act. Crosley brings to the page wit and an eye for detail that make her sentences shine. See below.

Which line made me feel something? “Parisians were glamorously tattered and superior down to their tile grout. In New York, at least Kezia could go home, knowing that the most elegant person she passed that day was also pulling sweatpants out of her pajama drawer.”

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes

4/5 stars

What's it about? Anna and Tom are young expats in Berlin, proud of the life they’ve created until they suddenly…aren’t. A searing commentary on modern, work-from-home culture.

How’d I find it? The team at Solid State Books thought I would like this one, and, as always, they were right.

Who will enjoy this book? Millennial freelancers and account execs, this will hit close to home.

What stood out? Latronico has crafted a novel that captures the past ten years like no other I’ve read. The fixation on ambition, codependence in partnership, the meaningless markers of contentment—all utterly contemporary as Anna and Tom sink into their feeds and gentrify their neighborhood. Who needs dialogue when you’ve got grade A malaise?

Which line made me feel something? While the chapter in which Anna and Tom delve into activism certainly feels the most cringeworthy, this description of screen addiction horrified me: “It was like walking through the world’s most hectic street market on cocaine. It was like channel-hopping an entire wall of TV sets. It was like telepathically tuning into the thoughts of a stadium packed with people. But really it wasn’t like anything else, because it was new.”

Vigil by George Saunders

3/5 stars

What's it about? Jill “Doll” Blaine spends the afterlife providing comfort to the soon-to-be dead, but K. J. Boone, an unrepentant oil executive, proves a tricky case. Whimsical and oh so didactic.

How’d I find it? I picked up this copy at Octavia Books in New Orleans. I highly recommend their sturdy branded mugs as well.

Who will enjoy this book? Though no one writes like Saunders, the themes might remind one of Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible or Atavists.

What stood out? Spending time with Jill as she tries to shepherd Boone into the next phase of existence includes unbidden memories of her life, passages in which quotation marks signal forgotten language and preoccupations. The tension between Jill’s mission and her longing for her human past provide the novel’s most interesting tension, but the heavy-handedness of its climate change message and attempts to evoke God overpower this element.

Which line made me feel something? Saunders uses the concept of inevitability to drum up empathy for his less likable characters: “…what looked to him like choices had been so severely delimited in advance by the mind, body, and disposition thrust upon him that the whole game amounted to a sort of lavish jailing.”

Exit Zero by Marie-Helene Bertino

3/5 stars

What's it about? The twelve strange stories capture endings—of lives, of relationships, of expectations. Vampires, balloon messengers, and even haunted peaches populate Bertino’s reality.

How’d I find it? A dear friend recommended Bertino’s novel Beautyland, so I picked up these stories as well.

Who will enjoy this book? If you liked Out There by Kate Folk or Karen Russell’s Orange World, you’ll want to pick this up.

What stood out? Exit Zero is ripe with ingenuity. A woman inherits a unicorn after her estranged father dies. Another finds herself hopelessly trapped in an episode of Cheers. The sky rains ex-lovers. The title story and “The Night Gardener” are standouts.

Which line made me feel something? From “Flowers and Their Meanings:” “I think of my friend’s daughters peering out from the webbed shade of the screen door. The aluminum sneeze when it snaps back, the cheap, measly circumstances that trap them.”

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

5/5 stars

What's it about? On his fourteenth birthday, John debates the state of his soul as an awakening slowly overtakes him. A masterpiece work of history, faith, and family.

How’d I find it? All of Baldwin is required reading, but I found this particular paperback at a library sale. That pulp paper still smells delicious.

Who will enjoy this book? If you liked William Faulkner’s Light in August or Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, you’ll appreciate Go Tell It on the Mountain.

What stood out? I love how Baldwin builds momentum in a scene, especially if it involves a service at Temple of the Fire Baptized (see below). The religious setting of the novel brings into relief its other themes, including the complexity of family and the impossibility of salvation for people of color in a racist America. A book one will want to revisit.

Which line made me feel something? “Someone moved a chair a little to give them room, the rhythm paused, the singing stopped, only the pounding feet and the clapping hands were heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the tambourines began again, and the voices rose again, and the music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgment.”