I’ve often thought there should be a one-year waiting period before deeming a book “favorite.” On a shorter timeline, a favorite for me is a book with a handful of images or bits of language that truly stick. The stickiest book I read in 2014 is the short story collection, “American Innovations” by Rivka Galchen. In the title story, a woman sprouts a third breast, and the revelation is delightfully casual: “You look sideways pregnant.” “Once an Empire” features a disturbing description of a sofa, an ironing board, a fork and the accumulated junk of a life walking out on their owner. In “The Lost Order, “ the narrator says towards the end of a marital argument, “I language along.” It’s a perfect turn of phrase: a Raymond Carver story in three words.
“Men Explain Things to Me,” by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books)
“Feminism,” writes Rebecca Solnit in her essay “Pandora’s Box and the Voluntary Police Force,” “is an endeavor to change something very old, widespread, and deeply rooted in many, perhaps most, cultures around the world, innumerable institutions, and most households on Earth—and in our minds, where it all begins and ends.” This collection of seven essays—most previously published only online—maps some of Solnit’s prolific, dedicated, and hopeful work on what begins and ends in the mind. Her deft, clear language gathers up violence against women, global wealth inequity, rape culture, and everyday sexism and tells us frankly what they are and how we must continue working to dismantle the systems that harm us.
“The Last Illusion,” by Porochista Khakpour (Bloomsbury USA)
The wait was long but now we have the very best 9/11 novel in Khakpour’s “The Last Illusion.” In beautiful. emotionally charged and funny prose, Khakpour blends Iranian folk tale with New York end-of-the-world narrative. Her project, not unlike Rushdie’s, is to unify and illuminate the known world.There’s truth to both views, but it’s hardly the whole truth. Yes, much of the nonfiction written for the Internet could be better thought-out and could do with a few more passes under an editorial eye, but the Web is also a place where new and established publications can run literary essays too quirky or esoteric or just plain too long for print.
Here are few of the essays that captured my fancy this year. I make no pretensions to the definitive; no one could read everything of merit published online, and some of these appeared in print form as well. Because I’m a literary critic, I tend to gravitate toward pieces about books, writers and culture, which of course leaves vast expanses of territory uncovered. I also tend to prize stylish writing, criticism and ideas over feature reporting on weighty subjects — but not always. Besides, the best essays can give us a new perspective on the most familiar and seeming mundane themes. One thing I attest to: Each of these essays, in one way or another, left my mind and heart a little richer.
“Mansplanation Nation” by Heather Havrilesky, for BookForum
The brilliant and blithely scathing Havrilesky (onetime Salon TV critic) surveys the past two decades of America’s nonfiction bestsellers and finds them filled with “fake self-assurance—and testosterone.”She told him she’d meet him in New York — at the Plaza, no less — only if he made it snow because a woman who lived in the sultry heat of the Florida Keys deserved some snow if she was flying so far for an affair. The night she arrived, snow did indeed begin to fall, reminding her of that song Snow-Miser, Heat-Miser, from some long ago Christmas movie, and she almost sang it to him, but changed her mind because she didn’t really know him well enough for that, did she?
Ann Hood’s many novels include “The Obituary Writer,” “The Red Thread” and, most recently, “An Italian Wife”
“Orwell’s World” by Robert Butler for Intelligent Life
George Orwell has become an icon of the modern writer as necessary truth-teller. This excellent piece of biographical criticism explains why and how.She’ll be easy to forget until one dull dock of a Christmas night your wife will forget an ingredient and send you into an afterthought of drizzle to the nuclear twilight of a convenience mart where at the stacks of broth you’ll scan for low-sodium chicken, low-sodium chicken, low-sodium chicken. You’ll be stopped at a red light on some nowhereville road when thoughts of her will assail you — at home there’ll be people waiting for broth, aunts in special earrings, the Heat-Miser on mute singing about who’s not here — but maybe the moon is rising over an open field, maybe something about the moon, the drizzle, the earrings, activates her silhouette against your mind, forcing you to realize you’ve forgotten her every day since you met, until the light clicks green and you lurch forward, the way she used to say “darling.”
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novel “2 a.m. at the Cat’s Pajamas” and the story collection “Safe as Houses”
“The Original ‘Gone Girl’: On Daphne du Maurier and Her ‘Rebecca’” by Carrie Frye, for the Gawker Review of Books
As short-lived as a mayfly, the much-mourned GARB proved its mettle by offering one of today’s most delightful critics on one of yesterday’s most delightful novelists and the unconventional life behind her most famous book.“You two have been purveying this Mr. Heat Miser/Mr. Snow Miser schtick for a long time,” the lawyer said, regarding the brothers, his clients, from his perch behind the large oak desk, custom built with the monies he had earned during his years of representing them in all aspects of their careers, through the ups and downs that go with being the faces of a vertically integrated entertainment empire, not to mention their multiple marriages, all of which involved complicated prenups, and subsequent divorces. “I don’t need to mention, it being pretty obvious, that neither of you is getting any younger, so I think, when we get done signing the contracts for your usual seasonal engagements, perhaps we should begin to discuss the matter of — I don’t want to be indelicate here, because, God willing, you’ll both live forever — estate planning.”
Seth Greenwald’s new novel, “I Regret Everything: A Love Story,” will be published in February by Europa Editions
William Trevor once called himself “a story writer who happens to write novels.” There are not many writers who dedicate their lifelong careers to writing both stories and novels, and Jane Gardam happens to be one of them. The author of many novels, including the unforgettable Old Filth trilogy, she is also a master storyteller. In fact, she prefers short stories to novels! One of the books I enjoyed in 2014 is “The Stories of Jane Gardam.” “I must learn when to stop. That is what short stories teach you,” Gardam wrote in her introduction. One wishes a brilliant mind like Gardam would never stop: what curious lives she’s shown us in these stories.
“Ways of Going Home,” by Alejandro Zambra (translated by Megan McDowell) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
To describe the plot of “Ways of Going Home,” which unpacks somewhat like a Matryoshka doll, might make it sound meta or cutesy, which it is not. But like much of Zambra’s work it is concerned with how we turn our lives into fiction, memory or personal myth. “Ways of Going Home” also explores the lonelinesses of childhood and the dissolve we all make from child to adult, sometimes imperceptible and sometimes all too felt. Zambra has one of the most vivid and humane written voices I’ve ever encountered; the intimacy he creates on a page is as remarkable as it is mesmerizing.
I’ve often thought there should be a one-year waiting period before deeming a book “favorite.” On a shorter timeline, a favorite for me is a book with a handful of images or bits of language that truly stick. The stickiest book I read in 2014 is the short story collection, “American Innovations” by Rivka Galchen. In the title story, a woman sprouts a third breast, and the revelation is delightfully casual: “You look sideways pregnant.” “Once an Empire” features a disturbing description of a sofa, an ironing board, a fork and the accumulated junk of a life walking out on their owner. In “The Lost Order, “ the narrator says towards the end of a marital argument, “I language along.” It’s a perfect turn of phrase: a Raymond Carver story in three words.
“Men Explain Things to Me,” by Rebecca Solnit (Haymarket Books)
“Feminism,” writes Rebecca Solnit in her essay “Pandora’s Box and the Voluntary Police Force,” “is an endeavor to change something very old, widespread, and deeply rooted in many, perhaps most, cultures around the world, innumerable institutions, and most households on Earth—and in our minds, where it all begins and ends.” This collection of seven essays—most previously published only online—maps some of Solnit’s prolific, dedicated, and hopeful work on what begins and ends in the mind. Her deft, clear language gathers up violence against women, global wealth inequity, rape culture, and everyday sexism and tells us frankly what they are and how we must continue working to dismantle the systems that harm us.
“The Last Illusion,” by Porochista Khakpour (Bloomsbury USA)
The wait was long but now we have the very best 9/11 novel in Khakpour’s “The Last Illusion.” In beautiful. emotionally charged and funny prose, Khakpour blends Iranian folk tale with New York end-of-the-world narrative. Her project, not unlike Rushdie’s, is to unify and illuminate the known world.There’s truth to both views, but it’s hardly the whole truth. Yes, much of the nonfiction written for the Internet could be better thought-out and could do with a few more passes under an editorial eye, but the Web is also a place where new and established publications can run literary essays too quirky or esoteric or just plain too long for print.
Here are few of the essays that captured my fancy this year. I make no pretensions to the definitive; no one could read everything of merit published online, and some of these appeared in print form as well. Because I’m a literary critic, I tend to gravitate toward pieces about books, writers and culture, which of course leaves vast expanses of territory uncovered. I also tend to prize stylish writing, criticism and ideas over feature reporting on weighty subjects — but not always. Besides, the best essays can give us a new perspective on the most familiar and seeming mundane themes. One thing I attest to: Each of these essays, in one way or another, left my mind and heart a little richer.
“Mansplanation Nation” by Heather Havrilesky, for BookForum
The brilliant and blithely scathing Havrilesky (onetime Salon TV critic) surveys the past two decades of America’s nonfiction bestsellers and finds them filled with “fake self-assurance—and testosterone.”She told him she’d meet him in New York — at the Plaza, no less — only if he made it snow because a woman who lived in the sultry heat of the Florida Keys deserved some snow if she was flying so far for an affair. The night she arrived, snow did indeed begin to fall, reminding her of that song Snow-Miser, Heat-Miser, from some long ago Christmas movie, and she almost sang it to him, but changed her mind because she didn’t really know him well enough for that, did she?
Ann Hood’s many novels include “The Obituary Writer,” “The Red Thread” and, most recently, “An Italian Wife”
“Orwell’s World” by Robert Butler for Intelligent Life
George Orwell has become an icon of the modern writer as necessary truth-teller. This excellent piece of biographical criticism explains why and how.She’ll be easy to forget until one dull dock of a Christmas night your wife will forget an ingredient and send you into an afterthought of drizzle to the nuclear twilight of a convenience mart where at the stacks of broth you’ll scan for low-sodium chicken, low-sodium chicken, low-sodium chicken. You’ll be stopped at a red light on some nowhereville road when thoughts of her will assail you — at home there’ll be people waiting for broth, aunts in special earrings, the Heat-Miser on mute singing about who’s not here — but maybe the moon is rising over an open field, maybe something about the moon, the drizzle, the earrings, activates her silhouette against your mind, forcing you to realize you’ve forgotten her every day since you met, until the light clicks green and you lurch forward, the way she used to say “darling.”
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novel “2 a.m. at the Cat’s Pajamas” and the story collection “Safe as Houses”
“The Original ‘Gone Girl’: On Daphne du Maurier and Her ‘Rebecca’” by Carrie Frye, for the Gawker Review of Books
As short-lived as a mayfly, the much-mourned GARB proved its mettle by offering one of today’s most delightful critics on one of yesterday’s most delightful novelists and the unconventional life behind her most famous book.“You two have been purveying this Mr. Heat Miser/Mr. Snow Miser schtick for a long time,” the lawyer said, regarding the brothers, his clients, from his perch behind the large oak desk, custom built with the monies he had earned during his years of representing them in all aspects of their careers, through the ups and downs that go with being the faces of a vertically integrated entertainment empire, not to mention their multiple marriages, all of which involved complicated prenups, and subsequent divorces. “I don’t need to mention, it being pretty obvious, that neither of you is getting any younger, so I think, when we get done signing the contracts for your usual seasonal engagements, perhaps we should begin to discuss the matter of — I don’t want to be indelicate here, because, God willing, you’ll both live forever — estate planning.”
Seth Greenwald’s new novel, “I Regret Everything: A Love Story,” will be published in February by Europa Editions
William Trevor once called himself “a story writer who happens to write novels.” There are not many writers who dedicate their lifelong careers to writing both stories and novels, and Jane Gardam happens to be one of them. The author of many novels, including the unforgettable Old Filth trilogy, she is also a master storyteller. In fact, she prefers short stories to novels! One of the books I enjoyed in 2014 is “The Stories of Jane Gardam.” “I must learn when to stop. That is what short stories teach you,” Gardam wrote in her introduction. One wishes a brilliant mind like Gardam would never stop: what curious lives she’s shown us in these stories.
“Ways of Going Home,” by Alejandro Zambra (translated by Megan McDowell) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
To describe the plot of “Ways of Going Home,” which unpacks somewhat like a Matryoshka doll, might make it sound meta or cutesy, which it is not. But like much of Zambra’s work it is concerned with how we turn our lives into fiction, memory or personal myth. “Ways of Going Home” also explores the lonelinesses of childhood and the dissolve we all make from child to adult, sometimes imperceptible and sometimes all too felt. Zambra has one of the most vivid and humane written voices I’ve ever encountered; the intimacy he creates on a page is as remarkable as it is mesmerizing.
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