The response was amazing and I am really exited to share them with you today. And without further ado...
The TNBBC Author Series: Top Reads of 2013
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| Ryan W Bradley |
A true surprise. Tanzer somehow manages to be very sci-fi and very Tanzer at the same time. The result is unlike anything you've ever read in the science fiction genre or among Tanzer's catalog.
Life Cycle by Dena Rash Guzman
Every poem in this book is worth re-reading again and again. You know a writer's special when you finish reading their work and your first thought is "I want more."
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
This book is so in my wheelhouse, how did I ever miss it? An editor I'm working with on my Alaska-themed story collection recommended it to me and I was instantly in love with the writing.
Ryan W. Bradley is the author of four chapbooks, a story collection, a novel, and two poetry collections, as well as a collaborative poetry collection written with David Tomaloff. His novella, WINTERSWIM will be released in December 2014. He has a shiny new website: ryanwbradley.com
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| Mark R Brand |
1) George Saunders’ Tenth of December (2013)
If I had to pick a favorite, and I don’t like to, but if I had to, this would be it for me for the year. Not only does every story in this collection swing for the fences, but it had my favorite short story of the year (“The Semplica Girl Diaries”) in it, as well. I got to interview Saunders last winter, and he’s just as charming, witty, unpretentious, and brilliant as his fiction. If you only read one thing this year, read Tenth of December.
Despite its dull premise, Cain (who also wrote Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice) managed here to write one of the most sharply mimetic female protagonists I’ve ever seen. Mildred, the down-to-earth and likable lead, is saddled with an exceptionally gifted daughter named Veda, with whom she has a turbulent relationship. Set in the tail end of the Great Depression, when economic hard times dragged into the better part of an entire decade (sound familiar?), I found this, and the novel’s eponymous main character, impossible not to like.
I was certain—absolutely certain—that this book was going to suck. After all: I AM a gamer dork from the late 1980’s, and I didn’t think any dopey parody of it was going to be able to tell me anything about those years and growing up at that time that I didn’t already know. I was so wonderfully, hilariously wrong. This book (and I read the audiobook version, narrated by Wil Wheaton of all people), had me laughing and smiling and giving myself unselfconscious air high-fives from almost page one. It also has a remarkably poignant dystopian message about net neutrality and the commodification of leisure. Highly, highly recommended for anyone who grew up in the 80’s. This book is like a little energon cube of fun.
Mark R. Brand is the author of the novels Red Ivy Afternoon (2006), Life After Sleep (2011), The Damnation of Memory (2011), and the collection Long Live Us. He is a two-time Independent Publisher Book Award winner and is the creator and host of the video podcast series Breakfast With the Author (available on iTunes). He teaches English at Wilbur Wright College, and is currently
completing his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
completing his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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| Giano Cromley |
Tomorrowland by Joseph Bates
Curbside Splendor Publishing
The stories in Tomorrowlandare surprising and inventive, shot through with humor and wit, but never at the expense of its characters. As the title would suggest, the stories frequently take place in the near or distant future, but the irony is that Tomorrowland is all about the past. In "Mirrorverse" a husband uses a Multiverse Spectrometer to relive his failed marriage. In the title story, a man surveys the soon-to-be-demolished remains of a futuristic theme park, only to be haunted by the mannequin family that resides there. And in "Boardwalk Elvis" an Elvis impersonator has the worst professional day of his career as he suffers for his art. The characters in Tomorrowland seem to be trapped in the past, wondering how the future they'd once imagined ended up looking like this.
Loose Leaves Publishing
The Fiery Alphabettells the story of Daniela Messo, raised by her father to be a mathematical prodigy in eighteenth-century Rome. Repudiated by a fearful church hierarchy, Daniela eventually takes up with a mysterious mystic, Giuseppe Balsamo, and the pair barnstorm eastward across Europe, in search of a higher truth. Told in an epistolary fashion, I had no idea what to expect when I cracked this book and I found myself continually surprised and delighted by Daniela's adventures, right up to the last page.
Switchgrass Books
Author Ben Tanzer brings his unique voice to the science fiction genre and the results are great. Orphansfollows the story of young father Norrin Radd, as he tries to support his family in a future where jobs and money are nearly impossible to come by if you weren't born into the right family. The future in Orphans is dark, so don't be fooled when I tell you this novel is also really funny. Ultimately, though, we see the cost exacted when people are put in positions where they'll do whatever it takes to make a better life for their families.
Giano Cromley's first novel, The Last Good Halloween, was released this fall. His writing has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Literal Latte, and The Bygone Bureau, among others. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council. He teaches English at Kennedy-King College and lives on Chicago's South Side with his wife and two dogs.
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| Tod Davies |
Since I'm elbow deep in the writing of Jam Today Too: The Revolution Will Not Be Catered, the second in the Jam Today cookbook/memoir series, needless to say, I spend my evenings noodling over other people's food writings. Which I love. And the three that I seemed to love the most this year are, unusually for me, two that came out in the last few months, and, not unusual for me, one classic that's hard to find unless you haunt thrift stores (I do).
First: A Bushel's Worth: An Ecobiography, by Kayann Short (Torrey House Press).
Man, I love those cookbook/farming memoirs. And Kayann, who is descended from farm families, writes lovingly and practically about her own life on a farm, hard at work and play with her partner John, just north of Boulder, Colorado. This book actually brought tears to my eyes with its descriptions of their travails and triumphs. And you need to read about the transport of an entire farm building from property being turned, inevitably, into tract housing...to Kayann's farm that is defending against its own disappearance into the same black hole. Funny, practical, and ultimately moving.
Man, I love those cookbook/farming memoirs. And Kayann, who is descended from farm families, writes lovingly and practically about her own life on a farm, hard at work and play with her partner John, just north of Boulder, Colorado. This book actually brought tears to my eyes with its descriptions of their travails and triumphs. And you need to read about the transport of an entire farm building from property being turned, inevitably, into tract housing...to Kayann's farm that is defending against its own disappearance into the same black hole. Funny, practical, and ultimately moving.
Utterly charming. A postmodern book about pie by a poet who makes a mean crust. The cheerfully mad descriptions and the excellent recipes/tips make this the world's great gift book. The illustrations are terrific too.
Back in the late 1960s, Time-Life published about a gazillion volumes of a series about foods of the world, and enlisted just about every great food writer of the period to help (M.F.K. Fisher! James Beard! Craig Claiborne!). But the best of the lot (and that's saying a bundle) is this one, by Joseph Wechsberg, who wrote the classic Blue Trout and Black Truffles. Absolutely amazing photography, evocative and classic, but that's just the icing on the cake of Wechsberg's precise and loving prose. I found this in a thrift store for 50 cents, which as you know, for a thrift store addict is ecstasy. What a find!
Tod Davies, editorial director of indie Exterminating Angel Press, is also the author of Snotty Saves the Day and Lily the Silent, both from The History of Arcadia series, and the cooking memoirs Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking With What You've Got and Jam Today Too: The Revolution Will Not Be Catered (June 2014). Unsurprisingly, her attitude toward publishing is the same as her attitude toward literature, cooking, and, come to think of it, life in general: it's all about working with the best of what you have to find new ways of looking and new ways of being. Find her and EAP at www.exterminatingangel.com.
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| Heather Fowler |
Satantangoby László Krasznahorkai
translated by George Szirtes
New Directions Press, 2012
This translation from Hungarian of Krasznahorkai’s work was recommended to me by a colleague as a peerless psychological novel. In many ways, it is exquisite, bringing to life a dark tale with apocalyptic intent via a long-form work that reads at once like a fable and a stylistically Eurocentric classic. It’s a gorgeous effort in understanding human motivations—one that explores human pride, eccentricities, and desire via a surreal filter. Transcendent. Another excellent New Directions release.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007
After engaging with hundreds of pages of Atwood’s poetry this year, I ordered this, her most recent release, and was struck by the beauty of her concision, her ability to construct visual landscapes replete with their emotional savagery—year after year. While Atwood is most frequently discussed as a fiction writer, it is her poetry I love with a burning love, feeling her poetics influence all her genres—and this book shows a masterful use of white space and imagery. Any book that causes me to shed actual tears has a great chance at landing at my top of the year selections. This did. In addition, it includes a CD of the author reading the poems. This feels like a private, unexpected and intimate treasure.
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Small Beer Press, 2012
As a short story fanatic, one who enjoys magical realism, literary traditional, feminist, and experimental work—this collection blew me away. Each piece is informed by its language, performs its own sacred act upon the reader. I reviewed this book in ABR regarding its use of eroticism, but this book does far more. Seldom do I read a collection with such an array of generative impulses and narrative styles—and the wildly creative originality of Johnson’s voice and style, as well as the beatifically executed text, made this a clear favorite in 2013.
Heather Fowler is the author of Suspended Heart, People with Holes, and This Time, While We’re Awake. Her new book Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness, an illustrated collaborative collection with visual artist Pablo Vision releases from Queens Ferry Press in 2014. Please visit her website at www.heatherfowlerwrites.com
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| Kim Henderson |
The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories, ed. Theodore W. Goossen.
This semester, I chose stories from this collection to teach in my fiction workshop. My goal was to discover new work, rather than automatically selecting what I knew well. I sat down to see what the anthology had to offer, fighting my urge to start with the Murakami story I knew would be great. Hours later, I still had not emerged from the book. I blinked at the now dark room turned unfamiliar by the stories that had just jarred me out of any reading rut. I haven't had quite that experience since I read my first fiction anthology as an undergraduate. There is such a range of stories in this book. "Toddler-Hunting" by Kono Taeko will leave you feeling a bit scarred, a bit sick, a bit mesmerized; "The Peony Garden" by Nagai Kafu feels like Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" (but maybe better?), like a mountain of a story lies beneath what we are shown; many of the stories feel like novels in their breadth and scope. But I think what stunned me into getting lost in this book is that many of the endings are messy and unresolved, that these stories mimic life all too uncomfortably--there is no urge to tidy up here. This anthology showed me something new, or something I'd forgotten about.
I had read Mary Miller's chapbook of short-short stories, Paper and Tassels, in the Rose Metal Press anthology They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, but did not retain the author's name. Then at The Letters Festival in Atlanta this November, I heard her read from her upcoming novel about an evangelical family hoping to chase the apocalypse across the U.S. Afterward, I bought a copy of Big World.
You could get into a fight with your significant other, check into a cheap motel, and sit down with a fifth of whiskey, a pack of cigarettes, the movie Blue Valentine, and a copy of Big World, and have the best of bleak evenings, replete with relationships that have overstayed their welcome, beautiful yet self-destructive and indifferent girls and women, lots of bad decisions, and a general lack of satisfaction from characters who aren't willing or able to muster up whatever it takes to try to change. Miller knows exactly what to put on the page and what to leave off. What she chooses not to include keeps you thinking about these characters who are all too quick with a harsh, wry remark, who learned long ago to guard their deepest truths.
I may not have come across this book had my old professor (Daniel Mueller) not gotten in touch with me recently. I am so glad he did, and that I got a copy of his new book. This collection of stories is wonderfully daring, direct, brutal, and beautifully written. Mueller's sentences alone are admirable enough, but these characters and the unflinching honesty with which they are written take the collection to the next level. Also, the endings often push the stories into unexpected places--characters are turned inside out during the beginning and middle of the story, but at the end, a scalpel is taken to their hearts as Mueller reveals the complicated, unnamable intricacies that drive them. Some of these stories could easily find themselves in The Best American Short Stories anthology, and they deserve that wide a readership.
Kim Henderson is the author of The Kind of Girl, which won the Seventh Annual Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Contest. Her stories have appeared in Tin House, H_NGM_N, Cutbank, River Styx, Chamber Four, The Southeast Review, New South, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband on a mountain in Southern California, where she chairs the Creative Writing program at Idyllwild Arts Academy.
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| David David Katzman |
The Man Without Qualities is a Modernist masterpiece. An expansive book of ideas yet an intimate view into Austrian society, circa 1913. The writing (in translation from German) is erudite and sophisticated. The view into the psychology of the numerous characters is rich and insightful. The overall critique of both Austrian and human civilization is profound and sharp.
The Last Novel is a quick, easy, charming, sad, profound, surprising, humorous, angry, erudite, critical, clever, bitter, energetic, thought-provoking, challenging, heavy, light, experimental non-novel. An impossible to categorize work, The Last Novel is such a fast read that you've no excuse for not giving it a try.
What a wonderful book. Part essay, part travelogue with a smattering of fiction, it's an indescribable blend of humor, sadness, quirk and love.
David David Katzman has published two novels, Death by Zamboni, an absurdist satire, and A Greater Monster, a multimedia psychedelic fairytale, which won a gold medal as “Outstanding Book of the Year” in the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards and was a Finalist in the Fantasy genre of the 2012 Indie Excellence Awards. In 2013, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography published an illustrated collection of his letters entitled The Kickstarter Letters. He has performed as an actor and improviser throughout Chicago and has been interviewed by numerous bloggers.
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| Kathe Koja |
My three books this year are variations on a theme:
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, A.L. Rowse
DOCTOR FAUSTUS, Christopher Marlowe
Research can be a lot of things: a compunctious duty, a heavy slog - or a dance. 2013 is my year of Dancing with Marlowe, most definitely a dance in the dark, as I collaborated with an actor (Steve Xander Carson) and a writer (Carter Scholz) on, first, an immersive performance of Marlowe's evil-haunted FAUSTUS, and (in progress) a fictional examination of Marlowe as poet and spy.
These tangoes were masterfully enabled by the steely work of Charles Nicholl, who investigates, then obliterates, the received wisdom on the death of Marlowe (stabbed in a sordid brawl in a crappy tavern? Not so much); and the panoramic, emotionally perspicacious A.L. Rowse's view of Marlowe in the context of his world and his work.
And the man himself, in glitter of his wit and the chill of his vision, threw open the doors to Hell itself, with doomed and clever John Faustus its victim and our guide. Never has poetry been so delicious, so ferocious, never has the darkness been so - well, say it - fun. Watch your step, let's go! https://vimeo.com/79721391
Kathe Koja's novels include THE MERCURY WALTZ (forthcoming January 2014), UNDER THE POPPY, THE CIPHER, SKIN, BUDDHA BOY, and HEADLONG. Her work has been optioned for film and adapted for performance. Her company Loudermilk Productions creates site-specific, immersive events. http://www.kathekoja.com/ (and FB and Twitter).
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| Lavinia Ludlow |
In fast-paced flash fiction, location often takes the backburner; however, when Burrow Press recently released 15 Views Volume II: Corridor, location took center stage. In 15 Views, thirty writers deconstruct the stereotypes associated with two of Florida’s most misrepresented cities, Orlando and Tampa, by presenting honest, intimate, and fleeting glimpses of the local human condition. These stories are not postcard snapshots of resort beachfronts or Epcot Center, but drama-laden accounts of shattered dreams, inescapable poverty, and atrocious violence. Full review here
Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker
The Palace of Wasted Footsteps by Cary Holladay
Courtney Elizabeth Mauk's second novel, Orion's Daughters, will be published by Engine Books in May. Her work has appeared in The Literary Review, PANK, Wigleaf, and Five Chapters, among other venues. She is author of the novel Spark (Engine Books, 2012) and teaches at the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop and Juilliard. More information can be found at www.courtneymauk.com.
#2: S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
#3: Gulp by Mary Roach
Caleb J. Ross has a BA in English Literature and creative writing from Emporia State University. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared widely, both online and in print. He is the author of five books of fiction and is the creator of The Burning Books Channel, a YouTube channel featuring humorous book reviews, literary skits, writing advice, and rants. Visit his official page at http://www.calebjross.com.
Laura van den Berg's Isle of Youth is the best story collection of the year, no offense to George Saunders. Maybe you read and loved her last collection? There's even more to love here.
Mary Miller's novel, The Last Days of California, is my most recent read here. The book comes out in January. Mary Miller has maybe the most sure voice I know of, like she knows exactly who she is on the page.
Maile Meloy's books for children were the most fun I had this year, especially her first, The Apothecary. The sequel, The Apprentices, is also great, but I miss the voice of the first. Meloy has some amazing books for adults, too. But these changed the course of my reading this summer and sent me on a binge of children's/young adults' books that convinced me YA has it figured out.
We the Animals by Justin Torres
Near feral in its intense bursts of family instability.
The Temple of Air by Patricia Ann McNair
What it means to live, and mostly cope, with things missing in our lives, hands, parents, children, breasts, love, that are at times violently taken from us, and other times more subtly so.
Ben Tanzer is the author of the books My Father's House and You Can Make Him Like You, as well as, the forthcoming Orphans and Lost in Space, among others. Ben also oversees Publicity and Content Strategy at Curbside Splendor and day to day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life. He can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life the center of his growing lifestyle empire.
Lavinia Ludlow is a musician and writer currently residing on the West Coast. Her debut novel alt.punk can be purchased through major online retailers as well as Casperian Books’ website. Recently, her sophomore novel Single Stroke Seven was signed to Casperian Books as well. Follow her reviews, news, and other tidbits over at: http://ludlowlavinia.wordpress.com/
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| Courtney Elizabeth Mauk |
The Revolution of Every Day by Cari Luna
My favorite book of 2013. Luna creates her characters with such empathy, and they had me completely hooked. Plus, the premise is right up my alley: squatters in the Lower East Side in the mid-1990s, doing battle with the city. I moved to NYC less than a decade later and yet so much had changed. The New York in this book is both foreign and familiar, and I fell deep inside. I didn’t want to leave, not for one second.
When the bodies of four young women were found along a stretch of Long Island beach in 2010, the emphasis in the media was on whether or not a serial killer was on the loose. The victims themselves, all four involved in online prostitution, became footnotes. In this book, Kokler gives the women names; he traces the trajectory of their lives; he wonders about the circumstances of their deaths; and he makes us care for them deeply.
Holladay is a writer who should be more widely read—her stories are odd and dark and funny and not quite like anything else. I first read her O. Henry-winning story “Merry-Go-Sorry” in college, and it has stuck with me—haunted isn’t too hyperbolic a word. I don’t know why I didn’t get my hands on this collection sooner.
Courtney Elizabeth Mauk's second novel, Orion's Daughters, will be published by Engine Books in May. Her work has appeared in The Literary Review, PANK, Wigleaf, and Five Chapters, among other venues. She is author of the novel Spark (Engine Books, 2012) and teaches at the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop and Juilliard. More information can be found at www.courtneymauk.com.
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| Kathleen Rooney |
At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinksyby Bridget Lowe (Carnegie Mellon University
This book of poems is a total page-turner, and one of the ways that Lowe makes you want to turn the pages is by interweaving several series throughout the book, including ones on the actress Sean Young, on Victor: the Wild Boy of Aveyron, and, of course, on the Russian dancer Nijinsky. Learned without being pretentious, witty without being cheaply clever, she’s a master of the leitmotif and these seemingly disparate pieces end up cohering into a beautifully unified whole.
Over here http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/246196#articleat the Poetry Foundation web site, I have 2,178 words about what a brilliant book this is (and you don’t have to take my word for it; it was up for the National Book Award). But in a sentence: this collection, a decade in the making, is about its author’s brother’s suicide—“A hole is nothing / but what remains around it”—a subject he handles with anger, sorrow, and perhaps most effectively humor.
A book of poems in five sections that mixes lineated pieces with prose ones, this collection follows its protagonist who “refuses to keep things / classy” as she traipses through a landscape that seems part Soviet and part American. Intoxicating in its wordplay—sometimes “j” is “babushkaed” and other times she “feels the gore ball bouncing up against her sternum in time to the special broadcasts”—the book looks at what it means and how it feels to be a citizen in a time beset by lowgrade terror and highgrade absurdity.
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and a founding member of Poems While You Wait . She is the author of six books of poetry and nonfiction, including Robinson Alone (Gold Wake Press, 2012) and the critical study Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America. Her debut novel, O, Democracy!, is forthcoming from Fifth Star Press in Spring 2014.
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| Caleb J Ross |
#1: The Cost of Living by Rob Roberge
I’ve been a fan of Rob Roberge since 2006 when my college professor, Amy Sage Webb, gifted a signed copy of More than They Could Chew. I was immediately hooked. Reading The Cost of Living, published about 7 years after my initial introduction to the man’s work, was such an exciting experience. I hadn’t been that entranced by a book since 2012’s #1 choice, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. And I don’t just mean an intellectually satisfying experience. I mean physically.
Like most people, I came to S. by way of a quick and easy seduction. In terms of eye candy, S. is a book like none other. In fact, I made an initial reactions video about the bookafter having read only 60 pages, not necessarily because I was confident that the book would ultimately satisfy, but because the book’s unique visual storytelling component--margin notes, multiple readers, postcards and photos and other such trinkets actually stuffed within the pages--warranted a few minutes of geeking out.
Truthfully, the book ultimately didn’t deliver on its storytelling promise quite like I had hoped it would. But no matter. S. is such a unique execution, and as I mention during my full-length S. review video, still has some substantial storytelling merit meaning it deserves to be on this list.
#3: Gulp by Mary RoachI learned from this book that fecal transplants exist. Yes, a fecal transplant is exactly what it sounds like. Also, that Budweiser, according to Sue Langstaff, a sensory consultant to the brewing industry for twenty-plus years, is “an extremely well-made beer. It’s clean, it’s refreshing.” Though I won’t bring up the idea that beer drinkers don’t necessarily want “clean” and “refreshing,” I was taken aback perhaps simply by the defense of Budweiser. I just never hear that.
Caleb J. Ross has a BA in English Literature and creative writing from Emporia State University. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared widely, both online and in print. He is the author of five books of fiction and is the creator of The Burning Books Channel, a YouTube channel featuring humorous book reviews, literary skits, writing advice, and rants. Visit his official page at http://www.calebjross.com.
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| Matt Rowan |
By George Saunders
Of Tenth of December, Mary Karr recently noted: "The title story may be the best American story since Hemingway's 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' or O'Connor's 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find.'"
I wholeheartedly agree. Tenth of December is a truly remarkable read.
But before I get to my gushing, I should make clear It's a short story collection (as are all of my top three favorites of the year). Its characters inhabit the strange worlds of Saundersian syntax and aberrant (but still within reach) settings, characters who are often flawed but redeemable. Characters whose tales often reach a pivotal point of choice, and the redemption or calamity that ensues based on these choices (The first story, "Victory Lap," manages to encompass the choices of three characters simultaneously).
I've joked that most of these stories were originally published a good several years (and in one case, as far back as 1996) in various magazines before they were brought together in this collection. Yet if there's anything to be said for collage, I think this book should stand a testament to that. The themes of each story play off each other well, combining elements that are cheerful and comic while often presenting something dark and unsettling at the very same time. I was disappointed Tenth of December didn't ultimately get selected winner of the National Book Award, but it's impressive that a short story writer (and almost exclusively a short story writer) found his book among the finalists at all, so I'm glad for that. It might usher in a new era, in which collections are given their due alongside the more highly regarded novel.
By Lindsay Hunter
Lindsay Hunter is another author who understands the value of voice in her fiction. I like character. I like the idea of people telling me things that are inherently biased, and therefore truthful. You don't imagine most of Hunter's characters are giving you the entirety of the situation, whatever it is. It's nice to think that they aren't worlds unto themselves and there are things outside of their understanding, which is tacitly understood. In Don't Kiss Me there are countless examples of characters with their litany of flaws, sometimes falling into the camp of the depraved. There's a woman who has a relationship with a child of 10 in "My Boyfriend Del" -- and in which Hunter really walks the fine line between a believable situation and one that's utterly outlandish and absurd (it's balanced very well). There's a family of mutants living in a post-apocalyptic world in "After." There's a very Lindsay Hunter take on pulp detective fiction in "Our Man." And there's so much more to keep your attention, so much intensity to each piece featured. Most of the stories are very short, but one of Lindsay Hunter's great gifts is she can say so much with so few lines.
Rob Walsh
This book truly feels like it came from another place in time, maybe another planet, but also another place in time. Like belonging to a strange Gothic era of another race elsewhere in the galaxy, say for example. The story "The Seven Seas" -- allusions in it to the collection's title -- is a tremendous, delirious take on the pirate and a pirate's life. Walsh's work is absurd in the tradition, I believe, of writers like Beckett and Walser, with a bit of the fabulism of the Brothers Grimm for good measure. He takes you to dark places, places in which people's motivations are more obviously self-serving, if there's sense in them at all to be found. It's a really good example of the kind of work you see coming from smaller presses, work that might not make the cut at a larger publishing house but through no fault of its own quality.
Matt Rowan is author of Why God Why. He lives in Chicago. See more of him at literaryequations.blogspot.com.
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| Matt Salesses |
I'm cheating a little here. I've got one book that came out this year, one that will come out in January, and one that came out a while ago, but it's sequel came out this year (so I'm fudging by including both!).
Laura van den Berg's Isle of Youth is the best story collection of the year, no offense to George Saunders. Maybe you read and loved her last collection? There's even more to love here.
Mary Miller's novel, The Last Days of California, is my most recent read here. The book comes out in January. Mary Miller has maybe the most sure voice I know of, like she knows exactly who she is on the page.
Maile Meloy's books for children were the most fun I had this year, especially her first, The Apothecary. The sequel, The Apprentices, is also great, but I miss the voice of the first. Meloy has some amazing books for adults, too. But these changed the course of my reading this summer and sent me on a binge of children's/young adults' books that convinced me YA has it figured out.
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| Andrew F Sullivan |
Don’t Kiss Me by Lindsay Hunter
“See, we had seen Dee, we’d seen her a lot, but back then we had our eyes on all the girls, and over time it got to be hard to see how losing one was such a tragedy.”
I read this while driving back to Canada from South Carolina this summer. Driving through America is like travelling through the phases of an empire, the rings around the cities giving away to decay and abandonment as you travel from one metropolis to another. Hunter’s stories seem to inhabit these desiccated circles, her characters’ voices chipped and scuffed by time and smoke and hurt. They live. There’s spittle stuck to the pages and blood underlining certain words. Not all of it is mine. Every story in here is another accident waiting to happen.
Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan
“We pass the torch of life for one another like runners in the night. I WILL forever be reaching for you. PLEASE keep reaching for me. Please.”
Authentic is a bullshit word used to sell yogurt and the garbage I found in my attic on Etsy. It’s a word that gets thrown out a lot with this book, but I don’t think McClanahan is making any claims about the “authentic” nature of his experiences. Human might be a better word, but that still carries the scent of bullshit on its wings. Terrifyingly, cripplingly human—I will use those adverbs to describe this book. The horror. It reminded me a lot of Harry Crews’ A Childhood, so McClanahan is doing something right. This is probably the book I will give to people who won’t realize they truly needed it until they are finished.
The Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss
“And so many sons dead, and buildings burned and cities cindered. And these fields where bodies lay mounded for the hogs to root. And the blood-stained lockets of lovers clasped in cold hands. Entire towns were diminished. And no longer did anyone care, on either side to fight any further. Yet the war continued—“
A fever dream of America, a great suffering rendered into vicious, stunning prose. Technically it came out last November, but I didn’t get around to it until the spring. I annoyed a lot of people over the last few months talking about this book. This is one of my favourite books of the year because I want more Robert Kloss, more seas of buffalo, more abandoned expeditions, more gators rising to devour children in the middle of the night. I am selfish like that. This is a book I will return to again and again because the stories are still open wounds, unstaunched.
RIP Mud Luscious Press.
I read this while driving back to Canada from South Carolina this summer. Driving through America is like travelling through the phases of an empire, the rings around the cities giving away to decay and abandonment as you travel from one metropolis to another. Hunter’s stories seem to inhabit these desiccated circles, her characters’ voices chipped and scuffed by time and smoke and hurt. They live. There’s spittle stuck to the pages and blood underlining certain words. Not all of it is mine. Every story in here is another accident waiting to happen.
“We pass the torch of life for one another like runners in the night. I WILL forever be reaching for you. PLEASE keep reaching for me. Please.”
Authentic is a bullshit word used to sell yogurt and the garbage I found in my attic on Etsy. It’s a word that gets thrown out a lot with this book, but I don’t think McClanahan is making any claims about the “authentic” nature of his experiences. Human might be a better word, but that still carries the scent of bullshit on its wings. Terrifyingly, cripplingly human—I will use those adverbs to describe this book. The horror. It reminded me a lot of Harry Crews’ A Childhood, so McClanahan is doing something right. This is probably the book I will give to people who won’t realize they truly needed it until they are finished.
“And so many sons dead, and buildings burned and cities cindered. And these fields where bodies lay mounded for the hogs to root. And the blood-stained lockets of lovers clasped in cold hands. Entire towns were diminished. And no longer did anyone care, on either side to fight any further. Yet the war continued—“
A fever dream of America, a great suffering rendered into vicious, stunning prose. Technically it came out last November, but I didn’t get around to it until the spring. I annoyed a lot of people over the last few months talking about this book. This is one of my favourite books of the year because I want more Robert Kloss, more seas of buffalo, more abandoned expeditions, more gators rising to devour children in the middle of the night. I am selfish like that. This is a book I will return to again and again because the stories are still open wounds, unstaunched.
RIP Mud Luscious Press.
Andrew F. Sullivan is the author of All We Want is Everything (ARP Books, 2013), one of The Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2013. You can find him at www.andrewfsullivan.com
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| Ben Tanzer |
Near feral in its intense bursts of family instability.
Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children by Dave Newman
Newman knows true.
What it means to live, and mostly cope, with things missing in our lives, hands, parents, children, breasts, love, that are at times violently taken from us, and other times more subtly so.
Ben Tanzer is the author of the books My Father's House and You Can Make Him Like You, as well as, the forthcoming Orphans and Lost in Space, among others. Ben also oversees Publicity and Content Strategy at Curbside Splendor and day to day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life. He can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life the center of his growing lifestyle empire.
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Holy end of the year lists, huh?! Thanks again to each and every author who submitted their favorite reads, and I hope they haven't crushed your TBR piles too badly. Oh screw it, yes, yes I hope they did! I hope their lists made you rush out of the house in your new slippers and christmas pj's in a mad attempt to get them all.....
I look forward to watching what these authors are reading (and writing) in 2014! Happy holidays, everyone!
