Property Of
When your father died last winter, I drove there as fast as I could. I even ran the only stoplight in town, bumped the cattle guard, passed the knot in the tree that looked like a pickle—till I made it inside your mother’s house, and there you were, with your perfect little baby face against…
Sooner or Later Everthing Falls into the Sea: Cuentos
In Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea, Sarah Pinsker proves her worth in salt as a human dictionary. In this short story collection, published by Small Beer Press (who are also the lovely owners of my favorite local bookstore, Book Moon), Pinsker made me take a hard look in the mirror. I had…
Commonwealth: Novela
Ann Patchett does it again. Other Patchett books I’ve enjoyed: Bel Canto and the Dutch House. I always read Patchett in conversation with Elizabeth Strout, whose Burgess Boys was what attracted me to reading more books that were literary thrillers (if you can call this book that).
On Lighthouses: Novela
On Lighthouses by Jazmina Barrera: A meditative exploration of using metaphor to describe a private interior self, by way of lighthouses.
Geek Love: Novela
Quite possibly one of the best books I have ever read, and I don’t take that lightly. Geek Love, a masterpiece by Katherine Dunn, is dark, disturbing, perfectly dystopian. Dunn’s novel surrounds the dynamic of a fiercely competitive family who love each other so much it’s destined to come to a violent end.
Normal People: Novela
I read this book in Dublin, when I was terribly lonely and missing my son like crazy. I read it on the train. I read it on daily walks to the Muji store (actually, I found it at a bookshop next to it). Sally Rooney’s voice makes you feel implicit: what an incredible young writer.…
What Nature Called Her
Today, before I checked my phone, email, or got dressed, I made a nest by piling pillows up to the corners of my bed, propped my laptop against a blanket on my legs. I opened up an old Word document and began to write, well—not write, but edit a story I’ve been stuck on for…
We Have Lived in the Castle
What do I remember? The spine of a proud oak in my backyard next to a shrub with red berries. I’d dig for arrowheads in the dirt, old nails, pennies of a certain decade. One Christmas we were told to play outside. We looked on in horror as my mom locked the door. My sisters…
On Palaces
I spent last night writing a bad poem and the morning hours reading the Ice Palace from front to cover in bed under my electric blanket. It was surprisingly heartbreaking—who would have thought I’d be so struck by a doomed love story between two eleven-year-old Scandinavian girls?
