Tilt by Emma Pattee

3/5 stars

What's it about? When the Big One hits Portland, Annie happens to be nine months pregnant and grumpily shopping in Ikea. As she makes her way across the destroyed city searching for her husband, Annie examines her life’s joys and disappointments and vows to make a change.

How’d I find it? A coworker recommended this local read, and I picked up a copy for our staff library.

Who will enjoy this book? I read in a review of this book that Death Valley by Melissa Broder is an excellent readalike. I agree.

What stood out? Who doesn’t love a disaster story? Following Annie during an earthquake through the city where I live made for an exciting read and sparked thought spirals about escape plans. Tilt is told through Annie addressing her unborn child, a choice that propels Annie’s personal reckoning amidst the horror around her.

Which line made me feel something? Reality TV in the zeitgeist always makes me feel something. Take the last text Annie gets from her mother: “Just tired now, gonna watch The Bachelor”.

My Murder by Katie Williams

3/5 stars

What's it about? Lou returns to her life as a mother, wife, and professional hugger, chosen to be resurrected as a clone after being murdered by serial killer Edward Early. As Lou struggles to connect with her life, she learns through a support group for Early’s victims that her murder may actually be unsolved.

How’d I find it? After enjoying Tell the Machine Goodnight so much, I had to pick up more of Williams’ books.

Who will enjoy this book? This had the feel of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones for adults. Or Black Mirror in novel form.

What stood out? The vaguely near future of My Murder contains novelties that are an apt setting for a government human replication program: real life avatars called “skins” that can disguise one’s identity, intensely real VR games (one that allows players to experience the murders or murdering, for example), self-driving vehicles. This reality is eerily close to ours, which makes the ethical implications of a society that continues to harm women all the more visceral.

Which line made me feel something? This bit of text from the chapter “Unhappiness:” “The fear was shapeless, so I gave it shapes. It was a lake, and I was under its water. It was a floor, and I was under its boards. It was a mouth, and I was under its tongue.”

An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector, translated by Stefan Tobler

3/5 stars

What's it about? Lóri, a reclusive teacher, undergoes a transformation to embrace life and love under the tutelage of philosophy professor Ulisses. An introspective, romantic awakening.

How’d I find it? I recently went to Portugal and have been amassing works originally written in Portuguese to keep the vacation going. This book was a recent pick by Catherine Lacey’s Irregular Book Club.

Who will enjoy this book? If you enjoyed the feel of The Lover by Marguerite Duras or the 2009 film An Education, you might like this one.

What stood out? This being my first taste of Lispector’s work, I admit that I struggled to spend so many pages in the company of tedious Lóri. She may be on a journey to find joy, but this reader was rooting for her to shed some gender binaries. Why are we listening to Ulisses? That said, the writing is outstanding, and I understand why people worship at the altar of Lispector. I shall try another!

Which line made me feel something? “The heart must present itself alone to the Nothing and alone beat out in silence its palpitations in the shadows. You can only sense your own heart in your ears. When it presents itself completely naked, it’s not even communication, it’s submission. For we were only made for the little silence, not for the silence of the stars.”

The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt

3/5 stars

What's it about? In these haunting and witty tales, Samantha Hunt plays with the unexplainable: a woman transforming into a doe at night, falling in love with a weapon, and unwieldy clones as procreation.

How’d I find it? Every year, I place on my TBR the selections in Electric Lit’s 15 Best Short Story Collections, and at long last, I’m getting around to this pick from 2017.

Who will enjoy this book? If you liked Marie-Helene Bertino’s 2025 collection Exit Zero, you’ll want to read The Dark Dark.

What stood out? Standouts for me were the first and last stories, “The Story Of” and “The Story of Of,” in which a woman struggling with infertility replicates herself and faces the repercussions. The structure and playfulness were utterly charming, and the stories manage to deliver without the need to explain their magic. I also enjoyed the frantic mother in “A Love Story,” who made me giggle multiple times. For example…

Which line made me feel something? “It can be hard to tell with men, whether they are actually here or not. Especially a man with a smartphone.”

Dayspring by Anthony Oliveira

3/5 stars

What's it about? In this hybrid work of poetry, memoir, and gospel, Oliveira proffers a biblical retelling from the perspective of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Let me tell you: Jesus is horny.

How’d I find it? The staff recommendations shelf at Powell’s strikes again!

Who will enjoy this book? Those who relished On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong will appreciate Dayspring’s sensuality and Oliveira’s way with language.

What stood out? Dayspring is an ambitious book, inventing its form as it spools out in fragments of existing texts, Bible verse, poems, and prose. The story follows no clear chronology, but that matters little—Dayspring deals in mysteries greater than time. Oliveira explores faith, fate, and identity in a gritty love story haunted by intolerance and violence. Our speaker moons over a charming and unabashedly queer Jesus character (whose dialogue is printed in a commanding red), knowing that his inevitable death makes a future impossible. The many sex scenes read real, though phrases like “god’s seed” and “your liquid communion” veer into corny territory. Oliveira includes no references to explain the many allusions to history, mythology, religion, and pop culture that pepper his pages. You get it or you don’t.

Which line made me feel something? “I know how horrible it is to have history notice you out of the corner of its eye”

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

3/5 stars

What's it about? Silvie and her parents are spending their holiday participating in an experiential anthropology class on Iron Age Britons, her dad’s all-consuming obsession. As Silvie grapples with the daily struggle of survival amidst the feckless students, she reflects on the violence within her strange family.

How’d I find it? While visiting a dear friend, I wandered into The Bookmark Bookstore in downtown Oakland. So many treasures!

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Fernanda Melchor’s outstanding Hurricane Season might like this one.

What stood out? Sarah Moss deftly builds dread into her story, and while the tension doesn’t quite deliver, we can sense the dark thoughts lingering in her prose. Silvie’s mother, who resigns herself to domesticity and silence, piqued my interest in future installments about this family.

Which line made me feel something? “Of course, that was the whole point of the re-enactment, that we ourselves became the ghosts, learning to walk the land as they walked it two thousand years ago, to tend our fire as they tended theirs and hope that some of their thoughts, their way of understanding the world, would follow the dance of muscle and bone.”

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

3/5 stars

What's it about? The erratic and brilliant Cassandra Edwards abandons her thesis at Berkeley to sabotage her twin sister’s surprise wedding, but Cassie’s unhappiness soon overpowers the homecoming. A coming-of-age novel about self-acceptance and family.

How’d I find it? I can’t miss the opportunity to stock up when New York Review Books has a sale.

Who will enjoy this book? Baker renders in minute detail the family ranch, the detached father with a glass of brandy glued to his hand, and the prim grandmother who just wants a proper wedding. Her insular domestic world recalls Anne Tyler.

What stood out? The book is broken into three parts, a middle section from sister Judith’s perspective sandwiched between two excursions through Cassie’s glorious mind. Cassie is an annihilating force, unable to admit her own desires and move forward in life. I enjoyed wallowing in her delusion, improved as they are by the character’s wit and curiosity.

Which line made me feel something? The twins drink far too much their first night back together: “Morning’s a side effect. I can’t acknowledge it until it scalds my eyeballs.”

Poems by Ben Mazer

3/5 stars

What's it about? An utterly useless question for a book entitled Poems.

How’d I find it? I once came across a tidbit from Mazer’s poem “The Double” in some article or essay now forgotten and became an instant fan.

Who will enjoy this book? Mazer’s work reminds me of Peter Gizzi’s and Chris Tonelli’s, poets you should explore if you like what you read here.

What stood out? Ben Mazer possesses such a strange, self-assured style that commands the page without apology. Poems contains rhyme, ekphrasis, elegies, and—why not—a ten-page piece in all caps. The language is often so unexpected that one has to reread, try another poem, then come back, and isn’t that what we all want from good poetry? Lines you can sink your teeth into?

Which line made me feel something? The poem “Stieglitz” (a riff on the 1893 photograph Winter — Fifth Avenue) dazzled me, but since it’s too short to spare an excerpt, I leave you with this line from “The Double,” which never fails to knock me on my tush: “The white picket fence is and always has been intense.”

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.”

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.”