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 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 in 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.”

Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer

3/5 stars

What's it about? in VanderMeer’s first novel, Nicolas meets the seemingly omniscient bioneer Quinn, setting off a chain of events that will affect the lives of his twin sister Nicola and Shadrach, her former lover. A gruesome thriller of beauty.

How’d I find it? I was strolling the shelves at Greedy Reads in Remington and picked up this copy.

Who will enjoy this book? This is Philip K. Dick mixed with Cronenberg body horror. You’ll like it, I swear!

What stood out? As I do in all my reviews of his work, I must praise VanderMeer’s gorgeous writing; his descriptions make even the grotesque seem sumptuous. The five stories that follow the novel round out VanderMeer’s world-building, and I can say I enjoyed the stories all the more for having already spent many pages in Veniss, corrupt city of the future.

Which line made me feel something? From the story “Detectives and Cadavers:” “I walked until I could hear it clearly: a chorus of reed-thin voices that reminded me of whale-song, of wind through hollow glass.”

Waiting for the Fear by Oguz Atay, translated by Ralph Hubbell

3/5 stars

What's it about? In this eerie collection, the stories of Turkish writer Oguz Atay catch folks in disturbing situations, such as discovering the desiccated body of an ex in the attic or receiving a threat in an alien language.

How’d I find it? I must credit the NYRB Classics Book Club for this find.

Who will enjoy this book? If you like the stories of Samanta Schweblin or Anna Kavan, Waiting for the Fear will be right up your alley.

What stood out? Atay favors an imperious tone that brightens these dark tales. The speakers and protagonists of the stories in Waiting for the Fear react to strangeness in manic and paranoid ways. Take, for example, the advice columnist of “Not Yes Not No” who composes a deranged reply to a lovelorn man lacking in letter writing skills: “How can someone so pitiful feel such self-confidence?”

Which line made me feel something? From the title story: “The moon incident had gotten me thinking that I used to dislike nature, but now I wondered if I’d always sort of liked it. I wondered if at some point, because of the trees, the grass or insects that can’t fly, I’d begun in fact to love it.”

The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey

3/5 stars

What's it about? Catherine Lacey dissects the end of her marriage through a hybrid work in two parts: a memoir detailing the breakup’s aftermath and an uneasy novella about two old friends, whose relationships have both ended, reconnecting despite suspicious activity next door.

How’d I find it? We all know how much I adored The Biography of X. If Catherine Lacey writes it, I want to read it.

Who will enjoy this book? While I didn’t care for Lisa Halliday’s Asymmetry, those who did might like the oblique structure of The Möbius Book.

What stood out? Catherine Lacey knows how to put a book together. I don’t doubt that the personal nature of the content made this a taxing book to write, and she approaches that subject matter (loss, grief) with innovation in form. “Husband left wife,” she seems to say. “Here’s the cliché I survived, and the fiction that came from it.” The Möbius Book can be read in either direction (starting with the novella or the memoir piece). I found the novella a more interesting approach.

Which line made me feel something? Some of Lacey’s anguish hit close to home: “Haven’t you ever tried to love or take care of someone despite being given ample reason that they cannot or do not want to receive your love or care? A faith it could go differently. An amnesia of how it’s gone. Haroula thought for a moment, very still, then handed me a half orb of orange. No, she said. Why would I do that?”

Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich, translated by Howard Curtis

3/5 stars

What's it about? Leo Gazarra, perpetually drunk, aimless, remembers at the end of a terrible day that it’s his thirtieth birthday. Thus begins his affair with the unpredictable Arianna. A melancholic novel that makes of Rome an indifferent mistress.

How’d I find it? The staff recommendations shelf at Powell’s has the goods.

Who will enjoy this book? As André Aciman’s introduction to this edition aptly observes, Last Summer in the City is an ideal companion read for Fellini’s La Dolce Vita or Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty. In terms of tone, think Catcher in the Rye in the style of Bret Easton Ellis.

What stood out? A former resident of Rome, I relished following Leo around the city, meeting folks at the Spanish steps, having far too many drinks at a piazza trattorias, and lazily peering into shop windows. Rome seems to hit people in a particular way, and the characters of this novel all want to escape, burdened by the city’s history and their need for frivolity. Everyone, it would seem, is “at the end of their tether.” Calligarich captures that feeling, and Last Summer in the City marinates in futility, culminating in a last act that ramps up the melodrama. Leo, for his part, knows how to find relief: he takes to the sea.

Which line made me feel something? Leo’s best friend, Graziano, kept me smiling: “We found ourselves in a cloister enclosed by columns carved from boulders. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘More rocks.’”