A round up of recent books I recommend for your fall reading:
Trust by Hernan Diaz blew me away. Trust is about money and power, who has it, how they got it, how they keep it. It’s an ingeniously constructed historical novel about a Wall Street businessman and his wife in the years leading up to the Great Depression. The structure is clever: Trust is told through four manuscripts--a novel-within-the-novel, an unfinished manuscript, a memoir, and a diary-- all telling different versions of the same story.
The Kingdoms of Savannah by George Dawes Green hits all my faves: decaying mansions and homeless camps, southern gothic thrills, family squabbles and old money. Fast paced, cinematic, reads like a movie treatment. Morgana, the matriarch, both shockingly cruel and generous, is an especially memorable character.
Tracy Flick Can't Win by Tom Perrotta I’m a fan of Perrotta’s darkly comic fiction— humorous yet humane, and always entertaining. This sequel to his novel, Election, has his usual pitch-perfect dialogue and satirical wit. Reading like a writer tidbit here: Perrotta does interesting things with point of view in this novel. Events that include a group of characters—meetings and parties for example— are relayed in separate scenes, in different characters’ points of view, with short scenes and one-page chapters.
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad remains one of my favorite books. So I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her latest novel. Set from the 1990s to the 2030s, The Candy House follows a constellation of characters as they grapple with a revolutionary technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—a device that allows people to upload and share their memories. In linked narratives, we follow the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decade, and in an array of styles—from omniscient to first person plural to second person, an epistolary chapter, and a chapter of tweets. This is a cerebral novel with speculative, sci-fi elements. It is intriguing and intellectually challenging, but I did miss the emotionally moving inner lives of characters that made Goon Squad so wonderful. This novel will feed your brain more than your heart.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Another literary speculative novel! Interconnected stories occur across different timelines, starting in the past and spanning into the future from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later. I loved Mandel’s Station Eleven, and I liked this one a lot.
French Braid by Anne Tyler The beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning and best-selling author writes once again about a Baltimore family across several generations. I've read every novel by Tyler, who somehow manages to write tenderly about hardship and estrangement without turning sentimental. My favorite Anne Tyler remains Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
The Book of Mother, a novel by the French writer Violaine Huisman, translated by Leslie Camhi, depicts a charismatic, unstable woman through her daughter's eyes. Lyrical and moving.
NSFW by Isabel Kaplan. This debut novel, set during 2012, follows the protagonist as she returns to her hometown of Los Angeles after graduating from Harvard. She decides she’d like to work in television and through a family connection, lands a job as an assistant at a network. This is an "office" novel. If you've ever wondered what it's like to work in television, this novel gives you a taste of the striving. The title NSFW refers to "not safe (or suitable) for work," used to warn someone that an email or website contains inappropriate content (think pornography or profanity). So, yes, there's a "Me Too" theme running through this novel, as the character grapples with harassment of others and herself in a male-dominated workplace.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. As the New York Times puts it, this novel is "a love letter to the Literary Gamer." I don't know a lot about video games, but I learned a great deal about gaming in this novel. It’s about two friends who contend with the fame, joy, and tragedy that comes with success after they enter the world of video game design.