Iām a sucker for unlikeable. A charged word thatās sometimes used about protagonists but mostly only about female protagonists. When they donāt fit a template. When they are imperfect. When they push back. When they are too emotional or too distant or too interior or too driven or too obsessed or too mean or too nice or too smart or not smart enough. The protagonists in these novels are flawedāperiod. But flawed is complex and perfect is simple and simple is boring and no one wants to read a boring novel.
Moshfeghās narrator declares in the bookās very first paragraph: āI hated almost everything,ā and states soon after that she is āugly, disgusting, unfit for this world.ā
Completely preoccupied with her bodyāthe way it looks as well as its functions, which are depicted in great detailāshe is trapped in her small existence with no thought of escape until the introduction of a mysterious stranger and the unfurling of a crime.
But the crime plot becomes background to the finely wrought character study: a self-absorbed and obsessive woman on the brink of self-discovery and independence.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and chosen by David Sedaris as his recommended book for his Fall 2016 tour.
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes-a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so toā¦
āI wonder how I would have to behave, how many changes I would have to make, to tip myself over the edge into this endless abyss of perm.ā
Millie is a temp and she wants to find a permanent job. Or so she says. Her real goal? āIt should be easier to feel good.ā Millie is snarky, sometimes bordering on cruel, recounts minutiae, revels in loneliness, and savors her own dark side. She knows she wants to be a better version of herself but only needs to find her way.
The New Me masterfully paints the frustration brought on by the inevitable passage of time and being unable to see a tangible change in oneself.
When sixteen-year-old Ashlee Sutton's home life falls apart, she is beset by a rare mental illness that makes her believe she's clairvoyant. While most people scoff at her, she begins demonstrating an uncanny knack for sometimes predicting the future, using what could either be pure luck or something more remarkable.ā¦
Marieāa young mother with a young childāis trying to make her way in the brutal restaurant industry toward a more settled life but is constantly battling her own self-destructive tendencies.
āI ask my memory, why did I take each next step?ā she says near the beginning of the book, but readers feel that each next, disastrous step seems almost pre-ordained.Love Me Back is an unflinching and hyper-interior deep dive into why people are sometimes their own worst enemy.
"Sharp and dangerous and breathtaking.... A defiant story about a young woman choosing the life and motherhood that is best for her, without apology.ā āRoxane Gay, bestselling author of Bad Feminist
Marie is a waitress at an upscale Dallas steakhouse, attuned to the appetites of her patrons and gifted at hiding her private struggle as a young single mother behind an easy smile and a crisp white apron. Itās a world of long hours and late nights, and Marie often gives in to self-destructive impulses, losing herself in a tangle of bodies and urgent highs as her desire for obliterationā¦
āThe story starts atā¦the point perhaps at which I became aware of my inability to feel any feelings beyond those set to music by the Walt Disney Company,ā Claire, the narrator ofI Love You but Iāve Chosen Darkness admits on the novelās very first page.
And so weāre primed when she does what is probably considered by many to be the most monstrous thing a woman can do: she leaves her child. Interspersed with sections about family history and old letters that shed light on complicated dynamics, the book moves us through Claireās journey as she pushes back against the expectations of marriage and motherhood in search of her own, individualized definition.
A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse-one woman's furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex, and motherhood.
Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. a) As much as I ever did. b) Not quite as much now. c) Not so much now. d) Not at all. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiraling caseā¦
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Mariaā¦
Joan abandons her life and moves across the country on a quest to find a stranger from her past, convinced it will help her find peace.
In a savagely honest style, Animalrecounts Joanās affairs, family history, a traumatic incident from her youth, and a gaping emptiness within herself that sheās desperate to understand. āIf someone asked me to describe myself in a single word, depravedis the one I would use.ā
Depraved, sure. Maybe. But itās impossible to be angry at her because sheās so candid about what sheās doing and why. The prose itself is fresh and stark and haunting.
From Lisa Taddeo, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller and global phenomenon Three Women, comes an āintoxicatingā (Entertainment Weekly), āfearlessā (Los Angeles Times), and āexplosiveā (People) novel about āwhat happens when women are pushed beyond the brink, and what comes after the reckoningā (Esquire).
Joan has spent a lifetime enduring the cruelties of men. But when one of them commits a shocking act of violence in front of her, she flees New York City in search of Alice, the only person alive who can help her make sense of her past. In the sweltering hills above Los Angeles,ā¦
Eager to get married, Virginia Carey lands a job as an operator at a police tip line, where she thinks finding a husband will be easy. But just as her plans begin to fall into place, she answers a call from a mysterious woman who provides a tip about four bodies on a remote local beach. The caller also gives details on sordid parties attended by law enforcement officers, and on the strange fetishes of cops she has been involved with. Then comes an explosive tip: itās a police officer who is responsible for the killings.
Virginia realizes that the key to solving the case is ultimately in her hands and that the tip line will reveal the truthāas long as she is willing to hear it.
In this spine-tingling, atmospheric ānail-biter of a novelā (Shelf Awareness), a woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at an alleged haunted houseāthe same place where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago.
Few in sleepy Sumnerās Mills have stumbled across the Octagon Houseā¦
After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are takenā¦