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“Forgiving the Angel: Four Stories for Franz Kafka ,” by Jay Cantor (Knopf) Rachel Cantor, author of “A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World” (Melville House) And yet never at the expense of its heart. The book is daring, strange, and emotionally complex. The novel has everything I want a novel to have-an undeniably singular voice, an unabashed search for meaning amidst the detritus of daily life, and a paper-thin veil between that narrative voice and the reader (possibly even the writer). Very early in 2014 a friend pressed Jenny Offill's “Dept. of Speculation” by Jenny Offill (Vintage Contemporaries) Scott Cheshire, author of “High as the Horses’ Bridles” (Henry Holt & Co.) Black has a skill few possess, and I look forward to what she writes next. What comes next after infidelity? Youth and aging, responsibility and betrayal, tenderness, creativity and the unavoidable fact that we never stop changing, make this a compulsive, revelatory read. Using scalpel precision to pare back the painful beauty of a long marriage, Black’s prose is frequently breathtaking. One of my favorite novels of this year was “Life Drawing” by Robin Black. “Life Drawing,” by Robin Black (Random House) Jessie Burton, author of “The Miniaturist” (Ecco) Expertly balancing diesel-burnt dialogue with lyrical descriptions of an untamable seascape, Keller rips the carapace away from one of the great ironies of our time: the pure testosterone necessary to the dirty work of modern life is best kept in its own Mariana Trench, out of sight, out of mind, and half-drowned in debt. Set on the frigid, rock studded lobster coast of northern Maine, Keller’s depiction of a three-way surf-and-turf war between stressed out, economically cornered independent fishermen and transnational seafood purveyors reads like one-part redneck soap opera, one-part literary murder mystery. “Of Sea and Cloud,” by Jon Keller (Tyrus Books)
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Malcolm Brooks, author of “Painted Horses” (Grove Press) It’s a devastating glimpse into vapidity and evil – and one very randy Nazi’s attempts to seduce the commandant’s wife.
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His return to Auschwitz is wrenching, a portrayal of hell that is haunting and human and, yes, absurd.
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I’m a big fan of Amis, especially such masterpieces as “Time’s Arrow” and “The Information,” and I found this one jaw-droppingly good - even by the very high bar I set for Amis. “The Zone of Interest,” by Martin Amis (Knopf) A deeply beautiful book.Ĭhris Bohjalian, author of “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands” (Doubleday) Somehow, even the darkest poems in this collection left me feeling hopeful and less alone. Never in my life have I read such complex meditations on loss, love and mortality. I always love Louise Glück’s poems, and her compassionate and heartbreaking new collection, “Faithful and Virtuous Night,” has stayed with me every day since I read it. “Faithful and Virtuous Night,” by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Molly Antopol, author of “The UnAmericans” (W.W. And the book manages to achieve all that it does by putting the hardcore issues of felt life at its narrative center-namely, the universal longing for love, our desire to be, our need to belong. The novel is the literary equivalent of “Citizen Kane” in the way that it evokes a time and place that is both real and imagined, familiar and strange, every day yet magical. I am all the better for having read David Grand’s masterful novel “Mount Terminus,” which is a reimagining of the origins of Hollywood. “Mount Terminus,” by David Grand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Jeffery Renard Allen, author of “Song of the Shank” (Graywolf Press) But then I read Claudia Rankine's “Citizen,” which I found to be moving, stunning, and formally innovative-in short, a masterwork. Had you asked me before November, I would have said my favorite book was “Fourth of July Creek” by Smith Henderson. “Citizen,” by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf Press) Rabih Alameddine, author of “An Unnecessary Woman” (Grove Press) It’s a vivid gem of a book, with a devastating denouement that haunted me long after I turned the final page. King evocatively reimagines a love triangle between Mead and two colleagues (one her current, second husband and the other her eventual third) as they grapple with jealousy, greed, loneliness, fame, resentment, sexual tension, and an increasing sense of foreboding. I was wholly captivated by Lily King’s “Euphoria,” drawn from the life of Margaret Mead, specifically a few fraught months in 1933 when she worked with indigenous tribes in the jungles of New Guinea. “Euphoria,” by Lily King (Atlantic Monthly Press) Karen Abbott, author of “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy” (Harper)