100 books like American Fever

I heard Anna Burns read the first few pages of this book on a podcast just before her Booker win. The timber of her voice, the Irish accent, the nameless characters (first brother, second uncle, middle sister), and the seeming lack of punctuation turned her words into a kind of motor, filling her tiny body with a power incongruous with her size. It was so powerful that I ordered the book immediately. And it turns out that even on the page, the voice is everything.

Propulsive is an understatement; reading it is like being strapped into a carnival ride. It was driving and relentless, and I loved it from beginning to end. 

I read this book in graduate school at the University of Washington, where Robinson had also been a graduate student. What struck me so forcefully was how the father is killed off in a train wreck at the beginning of the novel to usher in the exploration of the female life of generations of women.

No work before made me see how a male character and tradition can marginalize female life. This novel encouraged me to focus on my mother and sisters in my own writing.

Franny and Zooey are the two youngest siblings in the Glass family. Originally, “Franny” was published as a short story and “Zooey” as a novella, both of them being published later in one book.

In “Franny”, the protagonist visits her college boyfriend who speaks about his experiences in great detail. But Franny increasingly becomes disenchanted with the ideals of accomplishment he speaks about.

The way “Zooey” opens is memorable: he is reading a letter from his brother Buddy who has written about their eldest brother Seymour’s suicide many years ago. Meanwhile, Franny has entered a state of distress. The book then focuses on Zooey trying to help her.

I love that the story centers around these siblings, living and dead and away, and that despite past tragedies there is hope. 

Bunny is an American teenager in Azerbaijan. Her father is a diplomat. She grows up in a world where oil is everything, listening to the language of the adults around her as some want their share of the profits reaped by this energy source while (a few) others point out the inequities in this industry and its potential long-term effects on the world.

What is fascinating as well is how she herself becomes part of this same world when she is an adult, almost as if she cannot help but be subsumed by the vast structure of the oil industry.

This is pure, classic fantasy with dragons and wizards. Full of magic and gripping action scenes, including aerial battles between dragons, this is also a beautifully written coming-of-age story.

Le Guin’s world building is utterly believable; there are tense moments of human doubt and despair, evil antagonists, and a story that has kept me turning the pages for years – even though I know what is going to happen. Another example of top class, classic fantasy that offers more on each reading. 

Musashi is the first Asian superhero I read.

It’s about a young guy, Takezo” looking for adventure in war and ends up nearly killed, confused, and lost. He finds rebirth in discipline and study with a mysterious monk who starts him on his study of the ways of the sword. He goes on a quest to master the sword and ways of Buddhist truth, a quest where we watch this village kid become “Musashi.”

Its fight scenes are among the best I’ve ever read. And while the feeling of the story being propaganda lurks in the back of the mind (like every Hollywood action film), this was the very first novel that I read cover to cover.

Waylaid is a bawdy coming-of-age novel about a Chinese American teenage boy working in his parents’ seedy motel – a vibrating bed kind of place – in New Jersey.

He broods about how to lose his virginity. He learns about the adult world from the patrons: Johns, sex workers, the families kicked out of their homes, and the rest of the down and out of American life. I gravitated to Waylaid because it isn’t wholesome yet doesn’t fall into the spirals of toxicity of a Bukowski poem.

It speaks to how sex is used to distract us from the working-class problems all around us, many of which our young are well aware of, but still holds onto this little flame of hope that even in such dark and down-and-out spots, we can find light.

This book kept me turning the pages well into the night.

The Rev Jack Brooks moves to a new parish for a fresh start with her teenage daughter but they have barely unpacked when strange things begin to happen.

The book is well-paced with clever use of local superstitions which gives the story a supernatural feel. There is a looming threat to the main protagonist which builds the unease till the explosive end.

I fell off the Ewan McEwan wagon for several years. 

Why? His sentences are gorgeous and impeccable but sometimes his plots seemed glitchy to me or his research was too in your face. But, Lessons! It’s one of those books that has so much of the world in it, while at the same time the characters are deep, vivid, flawed (yes, indeed), and the scenes intense and unforgettable. 

The clarity of his thinking and his understanding of politics, the eras we’ve lived through, the confusion of emotions we suffer from, and the way people fail each other as well as show up—I clutch this book to my heart.  

Prepare to cry! That’s my advice.

It is a beautiful story about childhood friends, Poppy and Rune, who are fated to be together. But circumstances break them apart, and when teenager Rune returns, Poppy has a secret – she has a terminal diagnosis.

This isn’t strictly a romance because the ending isn’t a traditional happy ever after. But it is bursting with love and all the strength that a gripping love story brings. I loved it.

It’s a book that makes you look at life and feel grateful again. To really remember how powerful we all are and can be when we harness our true meaning of loving ourselves and each other.

It is breathtakingly beautiful and will stay with you a long time after turning the final page.