Overstaying by Ariane Koch, translated by Damion Searls

4/5 stars

What's it about? The narrator lives in her childhood home alone and can’t quite rouse herself to leave the small town where she grew up. She becomes fascinated by a visitor and invites him to stay, and before long the visitor consumes her whole existence. Funny, trippy, and endlessly strange.

How’d I find it? I love this influencer for translated book recs. She knows what’s up.

Who will enjoy this book? Overstaying embraces absurdity and tension in the manner of Samanta Schweblin. In fact, the fluidity of interiors reminds me of Seven Empty Houses.

What stood out? The narrator’s sense of humor makes this bizarre tale more fun than creepy, quite a feat when the visitor with his furry “brushfingers” mutates and evolves the longer he lingers. Overstaying fills inertia with small horrors (how I loved the sentient vacuum cleaners) and completes its sense of claustrophobia with short, choppy chapters. Koch pulls off an immersive mirage of a book.

Which line made me feel something? This tidbit had me laughing out loud: “It’s all the same to me whether or not he’s planning to poison the neighbor children. They’re all right, because they’re small, but then again they’re not that small; now that I think about it, they have chubby thighs.”

Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith

5/5 stars

What's it about? Isabel goes to work at the public library in Portland, nurses an impossible crush, and attends a party. Those are the happenings in this trim, satisfying novel that captures perfectly an ambivalent twentysomething circa 2010.

How’d I find it? The staff picks at Powell’s rarely steer me wrong.

Who will enjoy this book? The library link and worry about climate change in Glaciers make this reader suspect that Jenny Offill was heavily inspired by Smith’s work in writing Weather. Either way, the two books pair nicely. For another read that takes place over one day, try A Simple Man by Christopher Isherwood.

What stood out? Smith nails time to the wall, writing into a moment when rising sea levels and the war in Iraq joined the search for intimacy as prime concerns for young adults. Glaciers presents a tiny time capsule, made all the more potent by Isabel’s nostalgia and need to preserve the past as well as the possible. The novel ends with a circle of partygoers swapping stories; it’s an elegant departure from the focus on the individual and sticks its landing.

Which line made me feel something? This bit of banter between Isabel and her friend Leon: “Who darns socks? Girls nobody tells stories about.”

The Blue Mimes by Sara Daniele Rivera

3/5 stars

What's it about? Rivera’s debut book of poetry gathers meditations on language, the uncertainty of our times, and the nature of grief.

How’d I find it? I picked up this collection while browsing the poetry shelves at Powell’s.

Who will enjoy this book? The Blue Mimes recalls Ocean Vuong’s Time Is a Mother in its descriptions of losing a parent and the link between loss and heritage.

What stood out? Rivera writes in both English and Spanish; the mingling of language challenges us to find the right words for experience using the accumulations of our personal histories. The Blue Mimes fails the “wound” test, but Rivera’s plays with abstraction and form make for interesting reading.

Which line made me feel something? This description of holding a newborn from “The House It Is”: “You were astonished by her smallness, held her in two hands the way you would hold and funnel birdseed.”

Sun City by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal

3/5 stars

What's it about? The residents of the Berkeley Arms in St. Petersburg, Florida squabble, fret, and weather the realities of aging and retirement in this trim, breezy novel.

How’d I find it? This came in the mail as the monthly selection of the NYRB Classics Book Club.

Who will enjoy this book? Sun City tackles the humor and distress of older adulthood à la Helene Tursten (without the murder).

What stood out? The novel shifts between the perspectives of its many characters, lending depth to the daily humdrum of life. I was particularly drawn to the formidable Mrs. Rubinstein, whose sharp tongue and sway over her retirement community make her a delight to accompany, and Linda, an adored employee of the Berkeley Arms whose boyfriend impatiently awaits the next coming of Jesus.

Which line made me feel something? “Afterward, Miss Frey thought she had been lost, but sometimes even then she would secretly indulge a wonder and a daydream that had to do with the beauty of emptiness and extinction.”

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

1/5 stars

How’d I find it? This anguished cover has been haunting me from bestseller tables for years, but it wasn’t until a friend gave me her copy that I considered reading it. And I’m glad she did, because I have thoughts.

Why not 3 or more stars? Four tidily diverse men meet in college, make mistakes, fall in love, and somehow all achieve incredible success in their respective professions. A Little Life is set in a fantasy world in which people receive everything they ever wanted, including permission to avoid their issues indefinitely and to damage those who support and enable them. The most extreme of these examples is Jude St. Francis (oh, I will get to the names in this book in a moment), whose youth is so brutal that even this cynical reader couldn’t decide whether to feel irritation or pity when Jude gets to sniveling. Jude’s horrific backstory proves not enough for Yanagihara; the story freedives through its last hundred pages to a truly punishing level of bleakness. A Little Life doesn’t earn its hefty page count, weighed down with clunky imagery and sloppy rephrasings that read as if written by early AI. Speaking of AI, the names in this book! Citizen van Straaten? Andy Contractor? Millicent Stein-Hernandez? So bad that I bet you can’t guess which one I made up.

Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer

5/5 stars

What's it about? At long last it’s here—and it’s real good. In this prequel to the Southern Reach series, we return to the Forgotten Coast at three points in its history: twenty years before Area X, eighteen months before Area X, and at the start of Central’s first expedition (in a section narrated by Lowry, its only survivor). Absolution introduces Old Jim, the piano player at the village bar, and lifts the curtain on Central’s nefarious dealings that brought about Area X. VanderMeer cranks up the horror in this installment; “Dead Town,” the book’s first section, will ruin white rabbits for you.

How’d I find it? I couldn’t wait for the release of Absolution. In fact, I attended the book launch at Powell’s and asked VanderMeer if this book would be as weird as Dead Astronauts. “Weird, but in a different way,” he said. Indeed—I haven’t read anything quite like Absolution.

Who will enjoy this book? Lovers of Alex Garland, who directed the film adaptation of Annihilation, the first book of the series, will appreciate the creepiness and tension in VanderMeer’s work.

What stood out? The book’s three sections read like linked novellas, each with a distinct perspective on the mystery of Area X. I came away wanting to revisit the whole series (a massive feat for a prequel) to see how the reveals influenced my appreciation of the other books. Absolution is all momentum and culminates in Lowry’s account of the first expedition, a foulmouthed, drug-addled rant that leaves the reader as twitchy and anxious as Lowry himself. VanderMeer keeps his readers in the palm of his hand, and it’s a wild ride, even knowing how the story ends.

Which line made me feel something? “Worse, because too often there was so little emotion there, or the emotion flared up again raw, and then banked almost into ash, and wasn’t that awful? Wasn’t that the wrong kind of oblivion? While thinking, If you cut someone out of your life that way, hadn’t you become, for a time, a kind of monster? DIdn’t that deserve the ash?”

The Suicides by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? I mention the NYRB Classics Book Club enough for it to be the obvious source.

Why not 3 or more stars? A reporter investigates a story on the nature of suicide, haunted by the realization that he’s approaching the same age at which his father took his own life. Written in 1969, this circular and dark novel proves to be a tough read thanks to the narrator’s constant mistreatment of women and generally obnoxious company. Photographer Marcela offers an interesting foil, and I would have preferred to read a whole book about her.

On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara Haveland

4/5 stars

What's it about? Tara Selter wakes up every morning to November 18th, and nothing she tries ever seems to propel her out of the time trap. A trim, melancholic novel on the mystery of existence.

How’d I find it? I read an excerpt from this novel in Harper’s had to pick up a copy to read the rest.

Who will enjoy this book? This blends the dreaminess of Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, the enigma of Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly, and the domestic focus of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

What stood out? This book is the first in a series of seven, and I appreciated its metaphysical musings in the form of Tara’s daily journal. We enter the story on her 122nd iteration of November 18th and follow as she tries to lure her confounded husband to her aide, develops an obsession with the night sky, and logs how her continued presence diminishes the resources of the day. On the Calculation of Volume is about time in such a way that you feel time while reading it.

Which line made me feel something? “The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences.”

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

4/5 stars

What's it about? Bounty hunter Rick Deckard wants a real animal, and to get one, he needs to “retire” as many androids as possible and collect the spoils. When Rick is tasked with eliminating a group of Nexus-6 androids, he begins to question the nature of the soul.

How’d I find it? I credit the shelves of Powell’s. This cover caught my eye.

Who will enjoy this book? I mean, if you enjoyed Blade Runner…

What stood out? Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has the noir undercurrents of a Chandler novel, while trudging through the miseries of nuclear aftermath. Tiny twists abound. Through it all, the characters interrogate the larger questions, which makes this novel ambitious beyond its carefully plotted intrigue. Extra points for sticking the landing.

Which line made me feel something? “Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed.”

The Rest Is Silence by Augusto Monterroso, translated by Aaron Kerner

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? The NYRB Classics Book Club, of course.

Why not 3 or more stars? This takedown of Mexico’s literary elite comes in the form of a collection of ephemera about the self-important (and fictional) critic Eduardo Torres, darling of the town of San Blas. The book’s wry humor (including excerpts from Torres’ vacuous writing) excels, but the gag tires out early.