I’m a novelist whose debut, City of a Thousand Gates, follows the lives of over thirty characters as they collide and intersect in modern-day Jerusalem and the West Bank. In order to develop the skills and techniques necessary to make such a large cast of characters feel cohesive—and have their storylines intersect plausibly—I read obsessively from the novel-in-stories form. As I found, many of these books existed in a grey area between the novel and the short story. Personally, I consider grey areas to be the most exciting to explore. By examining how fiction writers created brilliantly interconnected short stories, I was inspired to create an ambitious, sweeping novel with a diverse cast of characters.
Hamid, a college student, has entered Israeli territory illegally for work. Rushing past soldiers, he bumps into Vera, a German journalist headed to Jerusalem to cover the story of Salem, a Palestinian boy beaten into a coma by a group of revenge-seeking Israeli teenagers. On her way to the hospital, Vera runs in front of a car that barely avoids hitting her. The driver is Ido, a new father traveling with his American wife and their baby. Ido is distracted by thoughts of a young Jewish girl murdered by a terrorist who infiltrated her settlement. Ori, a nineteen-year-old soldier from a nearby settlement, is guarding the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem through which Samar—Hamid’s professor—must pass.
This book changed the way I think about setting. Although it might be considered more of a story cycle than a novel, what makes Lost in the City a novel in my mind is the presence of the city where it is set: Washington, D.C. By depicting the joy and pain of its residents, Jones paints a portrait of the city where he was born and raised. My own novel is largely set in the beguiling, complex location of modern-day Jerusalem. I was inspired by Jones—who himself was inspired by Joyce’s Dubliners—to think about the force of place when depicting the discordant harmonies of life happening in overlapping communities.
“Original and arresting….[Jones’s] stories will touch chords of empathy and recognition in all readers.” —Washington Post
“These 14 stories of African-American life…affirm humanity as only good literature can.” —Los Angeles Times
A magnificent collection of short fiction focusing on the lives of African-American men and women in Washington, D.C., Lost in the City is the book that first brought author Edward P. Jones to national attention. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and numerous other honors for his novel The Known World, Jones made his literary debut with these powerful tales of ordinary people who…
Talk about expansive, sweeping novels! Homegoing is a novel in the form of a family tree. Beginning in a West African village in the 18th century, the narrative splits into two branches, emerging from two Black women whose lives are distinctly shaped by the slave trade. Each chapter is a story from a subsequent generation, eventually bringing us to the present day. My own novel is often described as “ambitious,” and I am certain that reading Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel made me a more ambitious writer. If you’re looking for a book that spans generations and continents, this is the one for you.
Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife. The consequences of their fate reverberate through the generations that follow. Taking us from the Gold Coast of Africa to the cotton-picking plantations of Mississippi; from the missionary schools of Ghana to the dive bars of Harlem, spanning three continents and seven generations, Yaa Gyasi has written a miraculous novel - the intimate, gripping story of a brilliantly vivid cast of characters and through their lives the very story of America itself.…
Hemingway can be a challenge for me—reading him, I sometimes feel I’m standing in front of a closed-door—so I rolled my eyes a bit when a mentor of mine suggested that this short story collection might help me with my own work. But boy, did I stand corrected. Through short stories and fragmentary vignettes, Hemingway paints a deeply interior portrait of a man trying to return from war. It directly inspired me to include short, emotionally intense interstitial chapters to break up the longer, meatier chapters of my novel.
A Vintage Classics edition of the early collection of short fiction that first established Ernest Hemingway's reputation, including several of his most loved stories
Ernest Hemingway, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, did more to change the style of fiction in English than any other writer of his time with his economical prose and terse, declarative sentences that conceal more than they reveal. In Our Time, published in 1925, was the collection that first drew the world's attention to Hemingway. Besides revealing his versatility as a writer and throwing fascinating light on the themes of his major…
Published in 2018, There There is the most recent book on this list. I read at a time when I was struggling to wrangle dozens of characters’ storylines into a novel that would have a sense of culmination. This book appeared in my life just when I needed it. Orange’s debut is a masterclass in the art of collision, as characters from one story begin to shape other storylines. Like all great climaxes, the one in There There is at once unforeseeable and inevitable.
** Shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award **
One of Barack Obama's best books of 2018, the New York Times bestselling novel about contemporary America from a bold new Native American voice
'A thunderclap' Marlon James 'Astonishing' Margaret Atwood, via Twitter 'Pure soaring beauty' Colm Toibin
Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and hoping to reconnect with her estranged family. That's why she is there. Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle's death, while Edwin is looking for his true father and Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance.
What connects all the stories in this collection is the titular Olive, a gruff yet good-hearted middle-aged woman living in Crosby, Maine. Although she appears in every story, the strength of her presence varies greatly—sometimes, she is a main character, other times, she’s a barely visible background character. But always she is present, like a thread tying together the lives of a disparate set of characters from rural Maine.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Oprah’s Book Club pick Olive, Again
“Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her.”—USA Today
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post Book World • USA Today • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Seattle Post-Intelligencer • People • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Plain Dealer • The Atlantic • Rocky Mountain News • Library Journal
As a trauma therapist and dedicated researcher, I love uncovering valuable insights within lesser-known books. There are hidden gems, free from the pressure of commercial success, crafted by authors deeply committed to research, understanding, and the art of writing itself. Their dedication resonates with me, as I believe in the profound value of information and the power of critical thinking. Through my own book, Traumatization and Its Aftermath, I aim to emphasize that psychological concepts often lose their depth in translation and my mission is spreading awareness and fostering a deeper understanding of trauma and its intricate facets. With that idea in mind, I chose these five titles.
A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.
The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster of symptoms to be tamed, but instead best understood as development gone off course, away from growth and towards (only) survival.
This book prompts a profound shift in perception, inviting to view trauma as an intricate and diverse experience, a point of view that ultimately leads to sharper treatment and, hopefully, more healing. It encourages a transition from asking, "What happened to you?" to the deeper question, "What is your relationship with what happened to you?"
Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders
The book is comprehensive, bold, and practical-a much-needed resource for the assessment and treatment of trauma. Instead of the traditional focus on the overall importance of healing, Traumatization and its Aftermath decodes why some people don't heal as easily as others, analyzes the various failures of diagnosis, and explains how to make therapeutic interventions truly effective.
This book offers a systemic deep dive into traumatization that clarifies myths and misinformation about the entire spectrum of trauma and provides both clinicians and non-clinicians with the right level of validation, preventive measures, conceptualization methodology, assessment tools, and healing facts that have not…
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