Literary treats - recommend great reads

Got my eye on THE LAST OF HER KIND next but maybe need to properly finish THE VULNERABLES first.

there's a lightness to her writing that's somewhat reminiscent of Kundera but less bullshit

The Last of Her Kind is more dense though, but very rewarding

I also really enjoyed the Bowen when I read it last week. Would also recommend his v creepy Play For Today Robin Redbreast.

i've been meaning to check and see if Robin Redbreast was on Britbox.

The Girls is unusual because they sell it as a thriller on the back of the new reprint but it was all the mundane details of their home/shop/craft fairs/etc that delighted me. i love people who have an eye for those details.

Bowen? Elizabeth Bowen?

My wife is a huge Nunez fan, glad to see the love.

Our next couples read is Jackie Collins’ Chances, the first Lucky Santangelo book.

Thanks so much for all the comments on Nunez books---local library has two, yay. The only SN thing I've read is a mention of her and Sontag's son going on a double date with Sontag and a guy whose name I'm blanking on.
Speaking of The Girls and the library, yall might go by yours and take a look at Emma Cline's novel of the same title, a middle-aged woman's memoir of the early teen time she got involved with a Manson type, who seems a bit generic*, but it really is about The Girls, and Cline, then in her 20s, draws on and distills flashback-is-now earlyteengirlverse, with no show-off Creative Writing Special EFX. Also credible modulation of narrator's voice to present day, seeing herself as geezer seen that way as well by some kids on a bad path: pressure of that emitting these memories in an unwelcome, compulsively vivid clarity, which just keeps rolling along, for not too long, via alternating timelines.
Cline also gets that crispy cuspy Kali sunshine grid of The Crying Of Lot 49, Dog Soldiers, Wolf In White Van (esp, when narrator goes outside, even down the street), and the best parts of Devil House.
*But also brings the Dennis Wilson-Terry Melcher hybrid: I could practically smell the cologne and other aids.

Also the narrator's remembered takes on her struggling parents and others, filtered now by her own age and experience---but teen girlhood refuses to be upstaged.

Thanks, been interested in Emma Cline and even have a copy of THE GIRLS but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

"Bowen? Elizabeth Bowen?"

no, the book i posted above. also titled The Girls.

Today I noticed that not one but two branches of the NYPL selected THE VULNERABLES for reading groups early next month

There's not one but two Sigrid Nunez adaptations at this year's NYFF, wow. Also I finally started making a dent in THE LAST OF HER KIND, thanks for the recommendation.

I read Sara Mesa's "Un Amor" last week and it satisfies all five of the thread's Treat Criteria.

Anita Loos is great.

So is George S. Schuyler. Or at least Black No More

Diana Wynne Jones thought its aimed at children, transcends a bit though.

Thanks to this thread I just finished Last Of Her Kind. My mom went to Radcliffe in 1968, and was fully in with all kinds of radical organisations, and went through many of the schisms and changes described, so it was pretty cool to feel like I was back in that time, with her, in a way

The end felt.. patched together a bit? Strange because for the first, say, 2/3 I was just utterly under Nunez's spell

This probably shows how little modern fiction I read but it's pretty wild to realise about halfway through a book that every single male character who shows up is either irritating or actively harmful, and in either case sort of represents a speed bump, or grudging necessity, or at the very best a refuge from reality. Yet despite their kind of marginality, they have an outsize influence - maddening to see this obviously incredibly perceptive, sensitive narrator just kind of railroaded into all kinds of poor situations mainly by men

(and of course not just her.. many/most of the women she knows as well)

Hi, if you're still interested my fave I've read this year:
black tickets by jayne anne phillips and the moviegoer by walker percy
Both poetic type fiction set in the USA south

THE MOVIEGOER is awesome, as is THE LAST GENTLEMAN. Maybe don't read any of his other novels, but some essays instead.

i need more jayne anne phillips in my life. idiotpills, this is an excellent collection of southern stuff that i recently finished. came out in 2009. great stories.

https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalbook.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Peelle-cover-e1553095402417.jpg?fit=427%2C650&ssl=1

I read Sara Mesa's "Un Amor" last week and it satisfies all five of the thread's Treat Criteria.

intriguing, will be reading that

About halfway through THE LAST OF HER KIND. Dense and a different voice from her most recent three but incredible so far

As you already reported upthread iirc

Joseph, The Hole In The Zero (science fiction)

*phew* finished. Guess I will either read the autobiographical A FEATHER ON THE BREATH OF GOD (which title apparently comes from Hildegard of Bingen) or else the shorter MITZ.

People seems to think the last three are autofiction presumably because the narrator's voice is apparently really close to her actuall speaking voice but only her very first novel could be reaonsably classified as such.

Joseph, _The Hole In The Zero_ (science fiction)

Read the first section, the one about her dad, of A FEATHER ON THE BREATH OF GOD. So far so good.

I see that The Hole in the Zero is on 4nn4's 4rch1v3 a.k.a. book soulseek

People seems to think the last three are autofiction presumably because the narrator's voice is apparently really close to her actuall speaking voice but only her very first novel could be reaonsably classified as such.

yeah, I think the clever construction of The Friend actually goes a long way to show that it's not autofiction

debut surely draws on her experiences but at the same time I'm pretty confident a big part of it's very fictional (let me know what you think of the final part/chapter which iirc is about an affair)

Okay, will do. This seems to be another short one.

Anything you wanna say about it?

Not much. I can't be objective, and the book can't be summarized.

Trivia: possibly the first usage of the word "quark" in a novel.

Think you'll find Joyce used it first in Finnegans Wake.

Okay, will do. This seems to be another short one.

So you think the affair in the last chapter is pure fiction?

Well, probably inspired by something real. But yeah, seems pretty made up to me. I don't know though!

Makes for a great read

Based on interviews I’ve read I assume most of it is basically true. One interview she went as far as to say something to the effect that you’d be surprised at which parts are true and which parts are invented. She gave as an example of something she had to invent her mother’s trip home when the war ended.

On to the next one I guess until I run out of steam, either MITZ or maybe FOR ROUENNA.

i'd recommend "deadwood" by pete dexter, especially if you've watched the show - it has a lot of the same characters/historical figures but they are characterized and emphasized very differently. it is over 300 pages but not by much (about 350 iirc) and funny and grimy and sad.

i can't believe i read Paris Trout by Pete Dexter in 1988! it doesn't seem that long ago. that's a great book. God's Pocket is really good too. I read Paris Trout after reading about Pete and Tex Cobb almost getting beaten to death in South Philly. it's a scary story! i was living in Philly at the time. one of the scariest moments in my Philly life was walking around a corner and almost running right into Tex Cobb. he scared the shit out of me. his face was so frightening.

Dexter began writing fiction after a life-changing 1981 incident in the Devil's Pocket, neighborhood in South Philadelphia, in which a mob of locals armed with baseball bats beat him severely. The perpetrators were upset by Dexter's recent column about a murder involving a drug deal-gone-wrong, published on December 9, 1981, in the Philadelphia Daily News.

"A couple of weeks ago, a kid named Buddy Lego was found dead in Cobbs Creek," wrote Dexter. "It was a Sunday afternoon. He was from the neighborhood, a good athlete, a nice kid. Stoned all the time. The kind of kid you think you could have saved."

The kid's mother called Dexter, nearly hysterical. How, she cried, could he write that her dead son was a drug user? Lego's brother, Tommy, the night bartender at Dougherty's, was also on the phone, screaming at the then-38-year-old columnist, demanding a retraction.

Dexter went to Dougherty's bar to talk to Tommy Lego, having told Lego he would not be publishing a retraction. In the bar, Dexter was blindsided by two blows to the jaw, splintering and breaking teeth. Later, Dexter returned with a friend, heavyweight prizefighter Randall "Tex" Cobb. In the ensuing fight outside the bar in the street, Cobb's arm was broken and Dexter was hospitalized with several injuries, including a broken back, pelvis, brain damage and dental devastation. Cobb's injuries cost him a shot at WBA heavyweight champion Mike Weaver.

Tex Cobb! that's crazy you saw him just walkin around.

holy hell how have I not read Annie Proulx till now

“the Half Skinned Steer” fwiw

are her novels this intense??

will check out "deadwood" and pete dexter, thanks!

xp james: do MITZ!

‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ by William Maxwell

Heard about it on Backlisted & finally read it this week. Just finished (its quite short) and am uncharacteristically considering an immediate re-read

I don’t know if I’ve every read anything that is this, idk, almost-perfect? He’s so succinct but the emotional weight of everything he writes about in this story is so immense.

10/10 somehow feels too cliched lol

anyway recommend without hesitation to all & sundry

Tremendous book. Agree with everything you said.

Can also recommend *Time Will Darken It*, which has the same sense of economy and control. What a writer. Blows my mind that he only wrote one other novel in the 32 years between *Time Will Darken It* and *So Long, See You Tomorrow*.

Also, more people need the middle name 'Keepers'.

i am def going to try seek out more from him, for sure - my library has his short story collection, i will try to find Time Will Darken It also

I read Sara Mesa's "Un Amor" last week and it satisfies all five of the thread's Treat Criteria.

this was enjoyable if quite dark and somewhat frustrating

will check out ‘So Long, See You Tomorrow’ by William Maxwell

Great thread idea!

I have to say that my reading life has been immensely enriched by the existence of I Love Books and all its contributors. Finding good books used to be much more hit-and-miss, but now my 'hit' rate is over 90% and I have a long list of titles and authors to explore. Thanks, y'all.