I wrote a novel whose characters fight to survive depression, grief, loss, and abuse. Though itâs got a sense of humor, it gets dark. People ask, why read a book like that when real life is dark enough? Because we donât just read to escapefrom the worldâwe read to understandit. Fiction can help explain the awful things we might witness or experience or hear about. It can also help us feel less alone in our own sadness and grief. Without darkness, light is meaningless. Without pain, we have no use for hope. Who wants to live in a world without hope?
Robert Stone was very much a product of his generation, which he immortalized in A Flag for Sunrise, Dog Soldiers, and a half dozen other novels. A master of dialogue and emotional intensity, he had no betters and few equals, and saw with startling clarity the darkness and flaws that motivate not just individuals but entire societies. This richly imagined and painfully wrought collection of stories hit me like a dangerous narcotic, leaving me breathless, wounded, and desperate for more.
The stories collected in Bear and His Daughter span nearly thirty years - 1969 to the present - and they explore, acutely and powerfully, the humanity that unites us. In "Miserere," a widowed librarian with an unspeakable secret undertakes an unusual and grisly role in the anti-abortion crusade. "Under the Pitons" is the harrowing story of a reluctant participant in a drug-running scheme and the grim and unexpected consequences of his involvement. The title story is a riveting account of the tangled lines that weave together the relationship of a father and his grown daughter.
Thereâs so much of dystopian fiction written these daysâand for good reasonâbut Hall led the pack with this 2007 book, which shares DNA with The Handmaidâs Tale and Children of Men. Read now, it feels not just more timely, somehow, but also more possible. The world is in disarray after âthe collapse,â with food and power rationed for a populace that numbs itself with drugs between meaningless and oppressive factory shifts. The brutal Authority has seized control of womenâs bodies, enforcing compulsory contraception and a pregnancy lottery. When the nameless narrator sets out to find a cadre of womenâthe army of the titleârumored to be living outside the reaches of the Authority, Hall nurtures our hope like a wounded bird even as she hurtles us inexorably toward disaster.
The world has changed. War rages in South America and China, and Britain - now entirely dependent on the US for food and energy - is run by an omnipresent dictatorship known simply as The Authority. Assets and weapons have been seized, every movement is monitored and women are compulsorily fitted with contraceptive devices. This is Sister's story of her attempt to escape the repressive regime. From the confines of her Lancaster prison cell she tells of her such for The Carhullan Army, a quasi-mythical commune of 'unofficial' women rumoured to be living in a remote part of Cumbria...
Seeker: As societies grow increasingly fragmented, hopelessness, nihilism, division, and despair are on the rise. But there is another wayâa way of mystery and magic, of wholeness and transformation. Do you dare take the first step? Our path is not for the faint-hearted, but for seekers of ancient truths...
This isnât just a book, itâs a magic trickâand Iâm not sure how Flanagan pulls it off. Writing about the prisoners of war forced by Japanese soldiers to build the Thai-Burma Railway during World War II, he pulls no punches in his depictions of human cruelty, and readers will feel every single one. As he renders misery and starvation in relentless focus, the subject matter is pitch black⊠and yet, by bridging the story to the present, when the survivors and their captors are trying to live normal lives beneath the weight of their history and their actions, Flanagan turns this from a litany of human suffering into something far more complex and interesting. Black magic, maybe, but magic just the same.
Forever after, there were for them only two sorts of men: the men who were on the Line, and the rest of humanity, who were not.
In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.
This is a story about the many forms of love and death, ofâŠ
I could recommend this book for the writing, which is remarkableâlayered and incisive and beautifulâor for the plotting, which is dense and chaotic in all the best ways, even as Veselka displays the patience of a confident master. Or for the multitude of richly drawn, intriguing characters and how they move around the country and one another. As they wander from Alaska to Seattle to New England in search of a family secretâand in search of themselvesâVeselka brings readers along on their quest as she slowly reveals the mystery of a dysfunctional family dynamic and the systems that create so many others like it.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE âą A wildly original, cross-country novel that subverts a long tradition of family narratives and casts new light on the mythologiesânational, individual, and collectiveâthat drive and define us.
On the day of their estranged fatherâs wedding, half sisters Cheyenne and Livy set off to claim their inheritance. Itâs been years since the two have seen each other. Cheyenne is newly back in Seattle, crashing with Livy after a failed marriage and a series of personal and professional dead ends. Livy works refinishing boats, her resentment against her freeloading sister growing as she tamps down dreams ofâŠ
My Year of Casual Acquaintances
by
Ruth F. Stevens,
When Marâs husband divorces her, she reacts by abandoning everything in her past: her home, her friends, even her name. Though it's not easy starting over, sheâs ready for new adventuresâas long as she can keep things casual. Each month, Mar goes from one acquaintance to the next: a fellowâŠ
Like Holbertâs other novels, Lonesome Animals and The Hour of Lead, this one is populated by unusual characters, teems with senseless violence, and is rendered in a voice as compelling as it is unique. Set near the Grand Coulee Dam, Whiskey is about two part-Native American brothers, Andre and Smoker, who set out to find Smokerâs daughter, Bird, when sheâs taken by a religious zealot. But the madcap plot is just one-third of a bigger story about the brothers and their destructive parents, Peg and Pork, and their collective collisions with alcoholism, marriage, the law, and one another. Though Whiskey belongs on the top shelf, expect it to burn going down. I wish Iâd written it.
Whiskey burns pleasantly as it goes down, but has a lasting, powerful effect.
Brothers Andre and Smoker were raised in a cauldron of their parentsâ failed marriage and appetite for destruction, and find themselves in the same straits as adultsânavigating not only their own marriages, but also their parentsâ frequent collision with the law and one another. The family lives in Electric City, Washington, just a few miles south of the Colville Indian Reservation. Fiercely loyal and just plain fierce, theyâre bound by a series of darkly comedic and hauntingly violent events: domestic trouble; religious fanaticism; benders punctuated with pausesâŠ
Washed-up boxer Lewis Yaw makes ends meet as a fishing guide in Disappointment, Oregon. Though heâs lived a life of violence, he doesnât understand real strength until he meets Janey, who can see good in even the most damaged thingsâincluding him. When she gives birth to their daughter, Grayling, Lewis worries heâll mess her up as badly as his father did him. But he also sees a chance to right the wrongs of the past.
By high school, Gray has become his apprentice guide, sparring partner, and pride and joyâLewis is as close to happiness as he ever thought possible. When tragedy strikes, he canât break free of his past, leaving Gray to fight to save the only thing she has left: herself.
India Muerte and the Ship of the Dead
by
Set Sytes,
After a night of misadventure, a roguish street lad from Mexico Island wakes up aboard a legendary ship crewed by skeletons. In search of the father heâs never metâa great mound of treasure would be nice, tooâIndia sails the fantastical Caribbean on the Ship of the Dead, exploring the colonialâŠ