Chantal Aida Gordon's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I started Lone Women needing to know, with every fiber of my being, what's in that steamer trunk?? And I appreciate that Victor LaValle gives us the big reveal by page 80-something. 

Knowing this secret only makes this book more exciting and scarier. That said, don't skip ahead. And don't read the author's acknowledgments until you've finished the book because they contain some spoilers.

As if being a lone Black woman moving onto a Montana claim purchased sight unseen in 1915 isn't terrifying enough, there's also banditry and bone-whistling winds. But I was also deeply moved by the alliance between the titular "lone women." Not to mention one of the most incredible and shocking reconciliations I've ever read.

The ending is hard-fought and immensely satisfying, too.

I love a gloriously self-destructive woman protagonist. Maria has, as they say, “everything,” a perfect fiancé, a comfortable Brooklyn life, and an almost-finished dissertation. So why does she become obsessed with a poet she barely knows, to the point of stalking? 

While reading this book, I kept saying, “Don’t do it,” while also thinking, “Yes, open the door, yes, get on the train.” Maria’s escalating acts made me gasp. Searing satire about 1990s biracial culture, vivid flashbacks to Stanford, and heartbreaking revelations about the Jonestown massacre only add to this story’s richness. 

But what makes it so meaningful to me is how Danzy Senna defies my careless labeling of “self-destructive” and instead shows us one person’s compelling, complicated, very human reasons for pursuing a new life.

I’ll start by saying this: I read the last 25 pages of this book while hiding out in the bathroom because I was supposed to be preparing for a get-together—that I was co-hosting.

Just to give you a sense of the explosive, irresistible conclusion that this book lays the groundwork for, from page 1. The character sketches got in my veins, from the members of the guerilla gardening group (the narrator makes connections between personal growth and growing plants that I still think about often) to the billionaire villain.

In fact, the latter is so meticulously drawn by Eleanor Catton that it defies the tropes we’re used to, making him viscerally terrifying.