The most recommended literary fiction

I loved everything about this book, from the story arc to Alison McGhee's turn of phrase and use of language.

Her descriptions of people and scenes range from hilarious to tear-inducing, with a side of quirky.

The best thing, though, is the story itself, Clara going back to the place she was never going back to, and dealing not only with her mother's dementia but with the things that made her leave town in the first place.

In this story, the dog is named Dog and he died before the story begins. The blue ceramic urn with his ashes is one of the very few things her mother kept for her – a talisman.

Soul-searching, gripping, and so very well written, this is one of my favorite books of this century. 

I loved this very emotional read. I loved the characters, the writing, and the story. The romance is steamy yet tasteful—extremely beautiful.

This is another book that gave me all the feels, but another story that left me feeling happy with the ending rather than feeling like I was left wanting more.

When we first discovered Tony Hillerman’s books, we nearly lost a whole summer’s fieldwork because we couldn’t stop reading them. In our opinion, no fiction author has better captured both the haunting physical beauty and cultural traditions of the Navajo Nation. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the tribal police is more pragmatic than his fellow officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, who bring a more spiritual side to their work. The Blessing Way is the first of this long-running series, which is being carried on by Anne Hillerman. In this first book, the police find a corpse so far out in the desert and so wrapped in mystery as to shake even Leaphorn’s belief that everything has a rational explanation. Hillerman inspired us to try writing mystery novels of our own, although we don’t pretend to have achieved his level of mastery.  

For a more traditional take on fantasy, Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria is lovely and immersive, a fascinating new world worthy of Ursula Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.

Reportedly, she created Olondria from a combination of regions in Turkey and North Africa, and it feels absolutely fresh and instantly powerful. A teenage merchant becomes haunted by the ghost of a young girl and must find a way to put her to rest.

But the story is really about the power of books and stories and language itself. It’s a love letter to adventure and open seas, harbors, and alleys, and snowy mountains in the distance.

Ms. Samatar holds several advanced degrees in language and literature, including Arabic and various African dialects, and you can feel the joy of her verbal artistry dancing on the page.

Stranger is not to be missed.

This is another interactive, choose-your-path zombie book that I discovered after I’d published Infected. It’s off-the-wall zany. You play as a stuffed bunny who wields a chainsaw in the apocalypse. If most zombie stories are caused by viral pandemics these days, then Zombocalypse Now must be the resultant lucid fever dream. If you like nonsequiturs, this is the zombie book for you. 

The primary setting is a hunting club in New York’s Adirondack Mountains that caters to rich and powerful men who secretly call themselves the Lost Boys.

Evie grew up nearby, and now, as an art restorer living in Paris, is remembering traumatic experiences involving club members. She returns to her childhood home to settle the matter and the action begins. The plot is multi-layered and the true nature of the characters is often a mystery, all of which appeals to me.

I also like the accuracy of the Adirondack setting (it’s where I grew up) and how the club itself captures the spirit of the areas Great Camps. But a favorite aspect is the fact that the author, a man like myself, so obviously detests the toxic masculinity of the Lost Boys. I applaud that.

I read somewhere that Franz Kafka would laugh so loud when writing his stories that he woke up his neighbors. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I get it. It’s not what is commonly thought of when someone talks about Kafka’s stories. I mean, his name has come to mean a certain style. “Kafkaesque” is used to describe stories that are absurd, nightmarish, offensive, and heavy with bureaucratic pretentiousness and deceit.

Where is the humor? Oh, it’s there. I think sometimes readers get caught up in the horror and bizarreness of it all that they miss the subtle, absurdist, dark, and very dry humor dripping in all these stories in this collection.

Fitzgerald’s mastery of the English language is beautiful to behold. This book is one of the most eloquent expositions of the control of his prose while at the same time confronting his greatest weakness in life: an inability to find happiness and true love that loves him back. Set on the French Riviera, Tender is the Night is honest and painful. It’s an insight into Fitzgerald’s melancholy world of excess.

This is both fantastic to be a part of and tragic. The tragedy and the beauty are juxtaposed in the most fantastic way–this makes this book one of my favorite romances. I read this book for pure enjoyment. Each sentence makes me smile with its beauty and its profundity. 

It is a novel about a foundling girl growing up in Victorian London, scrabbling to make a living while under the gloom of a hidden secret in her past that seems like it will snatch any happiness she finds away at any moment.

I almost didn’t like it because it was so unrelentingly harsh, but the historical accuracy and quality writing (and a tiny bit of hope at the end) had me filing it away as a very memorable and well-written historical novel. 

This is not as good as the brilliant Less, for which Greer had won the Pulitzer, but it is nevertheless a riveting, bitter-sweet ramble through the aging, gay, mildly successful novelist Arthur Less’ affairs and absurdities, foibles, and fears.

Writing about the middle-aged heterosexual man and his loves and losses has never been an easy task: only a few writers, like the underrated Italo Svevo, have managed to carry it off. But writing about a middle-aged homosexual man’s loves and losses is probably even more difficult: after all, a sizeable chunk of readers are heterosexual.

Greer managed it so brilliantly in Less and convincingly in Less is Lost that even staid heterosexual readers like me were entertained, moved, and captivated. This is a funny novel about, as a reviewer put it, “the absurdity of the human condition and its wistful beauty.”