Everybody loves a flowchart!

Sometimes you just don't know what you want to read so we came up with a flowchart to help.

Or do you prefer GIF-advisory?

I want a book that makes me...

Check out Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran to feel like laughing with your bestie, until something embarrassing happens.

I want a book that makes me...

Check out Little Heaven by Nick Cutter (the new king of horror, IMHO). Also, The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood to feel all the mortal terror.

I want a book that makes me...

Check out Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Leger, and Normal by Warren Ellis to think all the thinks.

Get carried away with historical fiction

Us Conductors by Sean Michaels

A couple of months ago Clara Rockmore was featured as the Google Doodle and it got me thinking about this book and how easy it is to get so swept up in historical fiction that you either A) forget that it's fiction, or B) forget that the characters in the fictional account were actually real, or perhaps some combination of A and B resulting in completely losing your grip on reality and slipping through the looking glass. Hasn't that happened to you? Anyway, historical fiction can be powerful stuff, approach with caution.

Winner of the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Us Conductors is the captivating fictional account of real Russian scientist, spy, and inventor of the theremin, Lev Termen (Leon Theremin) and his muse, electronic music pioneer Clara Rockmore. The story, told through correspondence and flashbacks, speculates about Termen's unrequieted love for Rockmore, and the circumstances surrounding his return to the Soviet Union. Once I finished this beautiful book I couldn't let the story go,  so I immersed myself in YouTube videos and audio recordings of Lev and Clara playing the theremin. Clara Rockmore was a classical violin prodigy from Lithuania. Suffering from tendonitis she was forced to give up her beloved instrument, but was later introduced by Termen to his invention: an electronic musical instrument controlled by gesture. She helped refine the instrument, and defined it as an art form, becoming its most prominent performer. I've included a couple of the videos to pique your curiosity.

The Anchoress 
by Robyn Cadwallader

The Anchoress is the fictional account of a (probably fictional) anchoress in 1255 named Sarah. What's an anchoress? Good question! Until a patron recommended this book to me, I admit that I didn't have a clue. Then I did some googling. In Medieval Europe, an anchorite was a religious recluse, someone who would lock themselves away, denying themselves all but the very minimum required for survival. They felt that through complete solitude and denial of all earthly pleasures they were "hanging on the cross with Christ". They would be enclosed for the rest of their lives in a tiny cell adjoined to a church and were a symbol of piety and a source of comfort for their communities, living out their days in contemplative prayer. Author Robyn Cadwallader takes the reader into Sarah's time and culture, her tiny cell, and delves deep into her mind and motivations.

An anchorites' cell in England

In an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald the author describes a point in her PhD research into the life of Saint Margaret: "I came across this word 'anchoress', wondered what it was, started to read a bit more and was absolutely horrified, fascinated, really thought it was just a terrible, terrible thing," she says. "I just kept reading and in a way, it wasn't essential to the thesis, but I was so fascinated by it that I just kept reading." That's what I'm talking about.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/interview-robyn-cadwallader-author-of-the-anchoress-20150207-1342fx.html#ixzz47EGOu3XA

Looking for more? Check out Thomas Mallon's recent, well-reviewed Finale: A Novel of The Reagan Years, or The Revenant by Michael Punke (I could go on all day). You'll enjoy exploring the real people or events behind these marvelous fictional tales as much as the tales themselves.

Authors, R.I.P.

It’s an odd thing to say, and I don’t feel entirely comfortable saying it, but you could do a lot worse for book recommendations than the obituary page of any major newspaper. It’s hard admitting that the best thing a writer could do to get my attention is to stop writing forever, but there it is. Obituaries have introduced me to Leonard Michaels, to Muriel Spark and Beryl Bainbridge. In fact, it’s possible the New York Times obituary page has done more to populate my bookshelf than the Book Review.

Obituaries seem tailor-made to get you to start reading, including as they do not only titles but an author’s biography, their place in history, the general reception of their work, their interests and controversies, who they influenced and who influenced them. And if a writer isn’t winning awards or publishing now, or if they never wrote an instant-classic, it can be hard to stumble across them. Some writers retire, some simply go where the zeitgeist does not, and it takes an article buried in a newspaper’s obituary file to raise a flag. On October 2, 1891 New Yorkers read this over breakfast, and undoubtedly some had their curiosity piqued:

“There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines. Yet forty years ago the appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event, not only throughout his own country, but so far as the English-speaking race extended.”

Obituaries are also useful for recommendations even if the writer is already world famous. Harper Lee’s obituary appeared in February this year. You may have already read To Kill a Mockingbird, but the Times obituary references William Dean Howells, Flannery O’Connor, and Truman Capote. It quotes Lee as saying, “In other words, all I want to be is the Jane Austen of South Alabama.” To understand that you’d have to go read Jane Austen. (This week the Times published obituaries on Arnold Wesker, a playwright, and James Cross Giblin, a children’s author.)

Gore Vidal called Truman Capote’s death “a good career move.” Snark aside, the author’s death is an important step in the life of her work. While a writer lives, she can take a pencil to any of her words, but after death, her work is cast and set. For the uninitiated reader stumbling upon an obituary, however, that work is only just beginning to grow and blossom.

So, if you’re looking for a good book: 1.) ask a librarian; 2.) read the obits. That might be where your librarian is getting their recommendations from in the first place.

New non-fiction audio books to take for a listen

This week we're recommending two marvelous audio books by two inimitable women, read in their own uncommon voices:

M Train by Patti Smith

This lyrical memoir by a creative and fascinating woman is an ode to reading, traveling, staying in to watch detective dramas on TV, writing, memory, and coffee--cup after cup of black coffee--all narrated in her warm and familiar New Jersey accent.

Experiencing this book feels like contemplating the contents of a treasured box of mementos: letters, journals, beloved books, photographs, and all of those items we squirrel away, imbued with so many memories. It's less linear than Just Kids, and makes for fantastic listening.

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell is a crazy funny writer of American history, and her voice is weirdly wonderful. Vowell deftly weaves present into past, and her digressions to marvel at the many absurd manifestations of nostalgia throughout our history, including some particularly humorous observations at Colonial Williamsburg, make for laugh-out-loud listening.

The Marquis de Lafayette was the first American celebrity. In New York in 1824, a crowd of 80,000 adoring Americans greeted the return of the beloved French hero of the American Revolutionary War. At a contentious period in American politics, the civil war already looming, Americans welcomed the reminder of the ideals and bravery of the generation past that Lafayette's return brought. Vowell tells the story of how Lafayette came to be America's favorite Frenchman, and follows his journey to the Revolution and back, and the impact he had on a young country.

Hard Candy and a BIG Apple

In a fit of new-book-smell induced panic I decided to take on these two very different New York City novels at once: First, the pure candy that is Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll, and then the gigantic, satisfying, 900+ page City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg. Delicious, both.

When Meghan Abbott mentions Gillian Flynn on your jacket copy you have officially arrived at cool-girl-table-adjacent. Luckiest Girl Alive, a novel of tooth and nail deception and social climbing into New York society will appeal to fans of (naturally) Meghan Abbott, Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, and the rest of the table. This makes for good tawdry listening while tidying up and doing other unglamorous activities. I recommend getting the audiobook.

Readers will also enjoy Confessions by Kanae Minato, A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison, and Disclaimer by Renee Knight. Hopefully this little jawbreaker didn't spoil your appetite for City on Fire.

City on Fire is set in New York City in the 70s and part epistolary, with snippets of letters, interviews, and zines, so already  it's well on its way to my "all time favorite books list". Hallberg is a magician with words--there is a passage on page 53 in which he describes the "audible fizz" one hears when the potential for a moment is irretrievably lost. I had to go back and re-read it, twice. Multiple narratives in authentic voices from wealthy heiresses and young gay men, to cops and cultish punk squatters converge over the "muchness", as Hallberg puts it, of New York, in his debut novel revolving around an unsolved shooting and the terrifying blackout in July of 1977.

This book is huge, both in terms of size and the $2 million price paid to publish it. It is THE book of fall.

The best of fiction lately, and (hopefully) good to come

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
by Alexandra Kleeman

If you're like me you've also been hoping Miranda July and Amelia Gray would get together and collaborate on a remake of Single White Female (the very 90s thriller starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh). Except this version has Don DeLillo as script editor, turning it into the story of a woman, referred to only as A, having an existential crisis in a "Wally", an invasive species of chain megastore clearly designed by Ayn Rand. Wally shoppers are warned that "weakness thrives on help". A's roommate, "B", has gradually become more her than her, absorbing A's boyfriend (you guessed it) "C" in the process. After misplacing C altogether, A ventures to Wally to find a product--not unlike a crowbar--to make her feel more like herself and is directed to the veal. What follows is an experience with a cult, The Church of the Conjoined Eater, that is so surreal it's almost too real. Kleeman's nightmarish descriptions of commercials for cosmetics and Kandy Kakes, a truly nauseating sounding chemical confection, and awful reality television are marvelously, deliciously satisfying, and dare I say, Kafkaesque. Fans of White Noise and Threats, and critics of consumerism who also consume, will devour every weird bite of this and beg for more.

"He who sits next to me, may we eat as one." --mantra: The Church of the Conjoined Eater--

Fates and Furies

by Lauren Groff

So these three librarians walk into a bar...sorry, there's no punchline--that's just how book club starts. A few of us recently discussed Fates and Furies at Portrait House and unanimously declared Lauren Groff to be wise beyond her years; her prose seems to come from a much more mature pen.
Part one, Fates, concerns itself with the rich and charmed life of playwright Lotto Satterwhite. In part two, Furies, we learn of his wife Mathilde's story, revealing much more about Lotto. 

I admit to getting the audiobook of this one (which still somehow feels like cheating even though it's totally NOT) and while I think I missed some of Groff's inventive sentence structure in the text, I also feel I got more out of Lotto's plays included in the latter portion of the Fates. For those of us with the print version the plays felt cumbersome and unnecessary, but the audio performance of the included portions of plays flowed right along with the story.

Far more than a marriage novel, the premise is theatrical and the characters are larger than life in the same way. A not to miss performance!

Passing along the recommendation of fellow book-clubbers, (of the non-violent sort in case you were just now picturing a group of people clubbing books) I am now halfway through The Green Road by Anne Enright and utterly riveted by this Irish family saga--what some might say is the mother of all family sagas (ha ha)--following 30 years in the lives of Rosaleen Madigan and her four far-flung children. I try not to give halfway done recommendations too often but Ellen and Beth promise me that I will love it, and so will you.

Address any complaints to them.

Right now I have high hopes for:

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

Claire Watkins has channeled her experience of growing up in the Mojave Desert into a literary vision of a wrecked near-future California. I'm especially looking forward to her reportedly disquieting descriptions of the landscape of spooky dunes.

Check out her NPR interview here.

Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg

Longlisted for the 2015 Booker, this highly regarded debut tragic novel is currently taunting me from the coffee table, waiting for me to finish up with The Green Road.

Be warned: I'm told it's really tragic.

Noir with a twist, and war with a side of humor: not-to-miss new fiction from two Vietnamese American authors

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

"...for who but a man with two minds could understand a man with no face?"

A top contender for my "Best of 2015" award, which if you are keeping track you know that list also includes The Tusk That Did The Damage and A Little Life, among others, The Sympathizer is dark humor at its finest, and an expert portrayal of the duality in the life of a man "with two minds": that of Vietnamese, and American, that of a secret agent of the Viet Cong and officer in the South Vietnamese Army.

The novel is written as a jail cell confession by a double-agent returned to Vietnam after years in the United states, during which time he worked on a film about the Vietnam War by "The Auteur", a character that seems to be based on Oliver Stone. From Mr. Nguyen's interview on NPR: "I remember sitting and watching Platoon in a movie theater, and when the Vietnamese were shot, people would cheer. I was like, "Wait, that's weird, who am I supposed to identify with at this moment?" Nguyen adroitly weaves wry humor through his grim account of a war told from different sides.

Dragonfish by Vu Tran

Dragonfish is a gritty noir thriller complete with a chain-smoking, flawed, corruptible detective chasing the ghost of the woman who left him through the Vietnamese underworld in Las Vegas.

Suzy, haunted by memories of her time spent in a refugee camp in Malaysia after the fall of Saigon, disappears from her life and tumultuous marriage to Robert, a hard drinking, hard-boiled detective.

Forecast: weird and wild, women of fantasy and sci-fi

I just want to give you a little heads up about a few upcoming books you'll want to know about:

Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson

A new story collection from Nalo Hopkinson who brings us funny, smart, fresh fantasy and sci-fi influenced by her Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American roots. If you like Nnendi Okorafor, Octavia Butler or Ursula K. LeGuin, you need to check out Nalo Hopkinson. I recommend Sister Mine to get started with her.

A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan

I know you just returned The Gracekeepers so you're thinking "Another Kirsty Logan so soon?" Yes.

A Portable Shelter is an illustrated collection of short stories in the same Scottish folklore inspired, sea drenched vein as The Gracekeepers, sure to be just as enchanting.

Alice by Christina Henry

Due to hit shelves in early August, this re-imagining of Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice in Wonderland sounds creepy and dark, surreal of course, and quite promising.

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

You guys!

HEY YOU GUYS!

*Jumping up and down*

A new Margaret Atwood novel you guys!

If you loved her dystopian novels A Handmaid's Tale, and the Maddaddam Trilogy, get ready to be as excited as I am right now.

Company Town by Madeline Ashby

New from science fiction imprint Tor, and not due to be released until April 2016, Company Town is the story of Hwa, the last "organic" person left in her community. Also, there's a serial killer on the loose. I love a good sci-fi/thriller, don't you?

Radiance by Catherynne Valente

A "decopunk" title, also from Tor. Decopunk?! I assume this means there is a logical progression in science fiction from the Victorian-infused steampunk, to early 20th century art deco inspired technology to form the sub-genre decopunk. I'm picturing Fritz Lang's 1929 film, Woman in the Moon and I'm totally OK with that.

"OMG"

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

A comic, apocalyptic, time-travelling, magical love story by Io9's editor in chief?

Yes please!

Keep an eye out for this one in January, 2016.

Need a beach read? Take a dip in these novels set on, in, or near the water

(But keep the books out of the water. It's bad for them!)

The Gracekeepers
Kirsty Logan

Scottish author Kirsty Logan's folklore-inspired dystopian future fantasy about a world mostly submerged in the sea is atmospheric and captivating. Land is scarce and there are two classes of people: landlockers who are the wealthier landowners, and damplings who make their lives at sea, essentially working for the landlockers and suffering their scorn. Callanish is something of an other in this equation--a landlocker who is considered an outsider for reasons we find out as her story develops. She is a gracekeeper, one who performs "restings" (ritual sea burial) and maintains a "graceyard" (think graveyard, only wetter). Callanish's lonely, hungry and damp existence is forever altered one day when a dampling circus ship arrives at her graceyard for an impromptu resting after one of their acrobats drowns.  She becomes fascinated by North, the circus's bear girl, and the feeling is mutual. Told from multiple viewpoints, Callanish's and North's stories unfold and intertwine as Logan creates a surprisingly believable, completely haunting and enchanting future world shaped by a rising sea.

This is an oddball recommendation from me; I hate the circus and I don't typically go in for fantasy. I find the cute nomenclature a bit heavy handed and cringe-worthy to be honest. I mean, are dystopias created by committee? Do the arbiters of the future sit down together and say "OK, we need to place everybody left after [insert whatever humanity crippling event, crisis, plague here] into two categories, preferably with goofy names implying how single-minded and one-dimensional society will be"? In this case I forgave it because this book was just so darn compelling I could hardly put it down to come up for air. Ahem.

Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness
Jennifer Tseng

Lifelong islander Mayumi Saito is a librarian and an unhappily married mother. Hers is a small, quiet world interrupted when she becomes fixated on a shy 17 year old male patron at her library, eventually striking up a secret affair with him and also a friendship with his mother. Her obsessions with mother and son drastically alter her carefully ordered life. Mayumi's narrative is a confessional, but she isn't apologizing for anything. Her peculiarities and wry observations on people and life make for a highly engaging read.

A little note on the text: I love Europa Editions and get pretty excited when a new one comes in. There is something about the sturdy matte paperbacks with flaps, uniform title text and pretty cover designs, and I haven't met one I didn't like.

The Shore
Sara Taylor

Sara Taylor's debut novel The Shore starts off with a bang! The first chapter seriously  knocked me out of my seat and I nearly called off sick to finish the book that morning (just kidding, Library!) There is a complicated family tree in the front of the book for reference, which I admit I flipped to a few times to orient myself. The narratives moving around over a 150 year span seem disconnected at first, sharing only geography and the loose associations of multiple generations of two Eastern Shore families. Powerful and affecting, this is an intense multi-generational family saga if there ever was one (my favorite), so I couldn't be happier. This novel was so well-crafted I could hardly believe this was a first. Five stars and two thumbs way up.

Sibling Revelry!

This week is all about siblings in recent literary fiction. Why? Because I've read a lot of these lately and they've been really good. These books will all make you laugh and cry, just like how it is hanging out with your siblings. I myself was an only child until 17, and now I'm the proud eldest of 8. Sure, it's complicated, but what family isn't? I also come from a long line of large families and often find myself drawn to stories in which sibling relationships feature prominently. So, if you also liked Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, check these out:

The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer

Ann Packer totally nails the siblings' voices and respective roles in their family dynamic, the multiple perspective narrative well employed to this effect. She introduces us to four distinct, authentic siblings: Robert, Rachel, Ryan, and James.  The siblings each tell the story of the tumultuous return of the youngest, James, one by one, from oldest to youngest. They explore their shared past and individually fraught relationships with their distant mother Penny. If this family isn't your family, you at least knew them growing up. They lived on your block, you rode bikes with them. You remember serious Robert, destined to follow in his father's footsteps, protective and concerned Rachel, sensitive Ryan, and "perpetual motion machine" James. It's uncanny.

All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews

Elfrieda and Yolandi are closely knit sisters raised in a conservative Mennonite community in Canada. Elf has achieved fame and success as a concert pianist but suffers from the suicidal tendencies that eventually claimed the life of their father and several other family members. Yoli's life a "mess" by contrast, the darkly comic (yes, comic) novel follows her struggle to keep her sister alive through multiple suicide attempts, and to process her own grief, coming to terms with life without her big sister and hero. I know what you're thinking. "But Natalie, this is a book about suicide. Is it really super funny?" It is, you guys. It is super funny, and super, super sad. The bond between the sisters is unbreakable and their love for each other profound. The looming specter of death is met with a sort of fatalist humor that one with a genetic claim to any condition might feel.

The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O'Neill

There are shades of Hal Hartley's Henry Fool, one of my all time favorite movies, in this quirky and dark (yes, Quirkyanddark is my middle name--it's a family name) story about co-dependent and dysfunctional brother-sister twins  growing up stunted and making dubious decisions as they stumble boldly and awkwardly into adulthood, their lives becoming tabloid fodder. Offbeat and philosophical, Nicholas and Nouschka Tremblay, are the twin offspring of oft-imprisoned Quebec celebrity, the "French-Canadian Serge Gainsbourg", Étienne Tremblay. Nouschka finds herself growing up and faced with the prospect living without her brother as he begins to get into trouble.

Adult Onset by Ann-Marie Macdonald

"Fiction is not the opposite of truth"--Mary-Rose MacKinnon--

This book wasn't so much about the relationship between siblings but I felt I had to include it because the bond between Mary-Rose and her siblings acted as a sort of anchoring mechanism for our narrator, offsetting her paranoia as she grapples with motherhood and the life of an at-home parent bringing up memories and fears of her own childhood trauma. Memory can be an unreliable narrator, but our siblings knew us when and will always remind us of who we really are.

The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma

This book was really the inspiration for a post about sibling relationships. An outstanding debut, The Fishermen follows four young brothers in this "Cain and Abel-esque" tale set in Akure, Nigeria.

Declaring themselves fishermen, brothers Ikenna, Boja, Benjamin, and Obembe skip school to go fishing in a dangerous nearby river but after an encounter with the town's madman they seemingly succumb one by one to his violent prophecy. Gripping and brutal, balanced with humor and warmth, the brothers are pitch perfect and the fracturing family will break your heart.

A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Clare Mitchell

Overheard at the library:
"Natalie said it really picks up after the first suicide." --Kerry P--

(It's funny 'cuz it's true.) This book takes a bit to really get rolling but given a chance this darkly comic tale of a suicide pact between sisters is certainly worth your attention. Written as a sort of joint suicide note/memoir/confessional penned by the three childless Alter sisters, this is a  marvelously witty multi-generational family saga about the "Alter curse,"from late 19th century Germany to New York's Upper West Side today, loosely inspired by the life of the German-Jewish scientist who invented Chlorine gas.

The Grim Reader: harrowing new fiction that's totally worth it

Sometimes a book comes along that is so outstanding, so marvelously written, that I want to tell everybody to read it, except that it is so profoundly disturbing that I find it impossible to casually recommend. I want to gush "I just read this incredibly depressing book that you might hate but should read it anyway!" but we aren't supposed to shout in the library so instead I have been saving up my recent upsetting favorites for a special post on the bleak and the beautiful. Be warned: these are not feel-good stories with happy endings. These are only "beach reads" if you plan to do a lot of weeping alone on the beach. These are books that will disturb and challenge you, make you cry and cringe and think.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara*

To be perfectly honest, I don't know very many people who will take on A Little Life, fewer still who will finish it. It's big, and the face on the cover isn't exactly selling a happy ending. Midway through the 720 page book, fully 350 pages of serious investment, the reader has already endured what could be a full-length novel, chock-full of anguish, with another 370 pages to go. You might look up, completely exhausted at this point, and say to yourself "I don't think I can go on" much like the marathon runner at mile 18, or Jude St. Francis, the central character of Yanagihara's beautiful and painful epic second novel. "...but I have to know what happens" whispers the undaunted reader, and dives right back in. Readers will be so emotionally connected to Jude, and by page 350 so completely in love with him, that they will soldier on and reap the rewards, for this is a beautiful and terrible saga about friendship and secrets. Dark and deeply upsetting, Jude's tormented past is gradually revealed as his adult life is profoundly affected at every stage by both physical and emotional scars. While the book ostensibly centers on the adult lives of four friends living in New York City, the character we come to know inside and out is Jude, the trauma he has suffered, and how that trauma affects his adult relationships.
The author will push readers to their limits; she is bringing truth, and the truth hurts. Brutal? Yes. Difficult? Disturbing? Oh, yes. Challenging? Yes, indeed, and very worth your while.

* Loyal blog readers may recall that Hanya Yanagihara's debut novel, The People in the Trees, was nominated for a 2015 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award by none other than us, your Richmond Public Library bloggers/book nominators, so we might be a little partial to her work. Sadly, she did not make their shortlist this time but I expect to see big things for her in the future. Keep an eye on the blog for our 2016 nominations coming soon!

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

A recommendation for this book might have to come with a disclaimer about graphic content: Read only with a strong stomach for graphic, clinical descriptions of the physical horrors wrought by torture, lack of clean water and sanitation, and starvation. Especially starvation. I have to admit, as have other reviewers, that the surgery scene (you'll know what I'm referring to when you get there) had me skimming ahead with one eye closed. Oh boy, does this Man Booker prize-winning, short-listed for just about everything (including the aforementioned IMPAC award), novel get vivid. Dorrigo Evans is an Australian doctor and survivor of the Thailand Burma Death Railway POW camp haunted by a love affair with his uncle's wife. The novel moves around in time and perspective, shifting between narratives of survivor and captor. Beautiful, complex, and utterly horrific, this is a love story as much as it is a war story, and a fine example of detailed character study. Flanagan's actors are authentic, complicated, and flawed, and you will feel for each and every one of them. Read it, just maybe don't read it right before going to bed.

Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum

Hausfrau, which is the German word for housewife, is the narrative of Anna Benz, American ex-pat, wife of Otto Benz, mother to three children, and serial cheater. Anna Benz is not a likable character. In fact, she's so unimprinted upon she's barely a character at all. However, one does not read literary fiction for likable characters. What one does look for in literary characters is depth, purpose, and truth, even if the character is a shallow, feckless liar. Anna is the physical manifestation of ennui. She leaves a trail of it in her wake, glimmering like the slime trail of a slug. Anna's apathy and self-absorption is total, and the reader is given little of her life before her marriage and subsequent affairs save for a few brief mentions of a willful blankness and malleability that could be quite interesting were it more developed, so that when her lies do "spin out of control" as the jacket copy promises it's not the least bit surprising. It feels like there is a statement in there somewhere about society's impossible expectations of women, that no matter what path women choose, be it career, motherhood, or some combination of everything, they are still not doing it right or not doing enough. Anna is urged to take on a hobby, to do something with herself outside of the home (besides the affairs of course, which she keeps a secret), to find something pleasurable or worthwhile, to learn German (she lives in Switzerland). Even her attempts to learn German end up being examined and criticized: "But she can't speak Schweizerdeutsch" to her husband's frustration. Nobody really knows Anna, except (maybe) the reader. Anna doesn't want to talk about her "hobby" with anyone; she lies to her Jungian analyst, eludes her few friends, and keeps her family at a distance. Throughout the story Anna emphasizes her own need for superficiality and secrecy, the right to define herself by her own terms, but after the inevitable plot turn her behavior appears to be more of an addiction than a hobby, thus removing the chief actor's only agency and the most interesting thing about her in the process. So what's the point? Is Anna just screwing with us all along? I liked this book but was frustrated by the final act. I wanted for her to own her decisions, which I suppose was the point after all. I ended up making the same unnecessary demands of Anna Benz, setting the same unrealistic standards for her, measuring her worth using my own yardstick, just like everyone else in her life does. Touché, Essbaum.

Aquarium by David Vann

Reading this book qualifies as a workout. It made me scrunch up on the edge of my seat, pace around the room, and squirm like crazy. It begins with foreboding, Vann weaving a sense of dread into every sentence without giving anything away. You don't know why you're so anxious for Caitlin but you are. You feel the tension in the eerie calm of the aquarium where she spends her afternoons waiting for her mother to get off work and the relationship she begins with a kindly old man there. In some ways, the young girl at the center of this grim, tense novel feels unrealistic; she's both naïve and wise, she seems alternately far too young and far too old for a lot of her behavior. But what 12-year-old doesn't seem that way much of the time? She's almost too real, which makes the psychological abuse she endures all the more terrifying. Caitlin's mother was traumatized as a child and through a very tense, agonizing chapter subjects her daughter to a reenactment of the nightmare that deprived her of a childhood as a twisted sort of lesson in empathy. At one point I just couldn't bear it anymore and I practically threw the book down, let out a "NOPE", only to run back to it moments later once I recovered. Without giving away too much about the ending I'll just say I didn't totally buy it, but after the agony Vann inflicts on Caitlin and the reader it was a relief to finally exhale. Overall Aquarium is suspenseful and scary, a finely crafted, tightly wound study in what goes on behind closed doors and the legacy of abuse.

Read-alikes* for movie lovers

*That's librarian-ese for recommending books one might also like based upon their favorites. For another fine piece of reader's advisory I recommend this article from Bustle: "14 Books from Wes Anderson movies we wish were real", complete with real life read-alikes! I too wish I could read all the fake books from Wes Anderson movies.

Since I wrote recently about books I wished were movies, I thought I would take this week to mention movies I wish I could read as books. Have you ever experienced that? The feeling that a movie was so amazing that surely it must be a really great book, too? And then searching for the book only to discover that it was not inspired by one at all?
(You know, sometimes it's hard to come up with good blog themes week after week. Coming soon: "Novels about Ikea I read in the past year". There were several.)
Here's a list of books to keep you busy reading while you wait for the movie to start:

Speaking of Wes Anderson...

Fans of Wes Anderson's films will find a lot to love in Bellweather Rhapsody, a darkly funny charmer about a haunted old hotel, a music competition, thwarted promise, ambition, and young love. This is the kind of book you'll want to create a mix-tape soundtrack for. I think there might even be a role for Bill Murray in this murky, quirky tale of teenage musicians.

If the hilarious adventures of neurotic, hapless romantic male protagonists like those in Woody Allen's films appeal to you, you are sure to love the books of Jonathan Ames. Both writers understand well that there is humor to be found in pain.

How about The Babadook! This limited release Australian import about a boy and his mother getting wrapped up in a demented picture book was totally terrifying. As a lifelong devotee to the genre I can say that truly good, really scary horror films are rare. But when they do get to you with more than cheap startles and shaky cameras, or senseless splatter, when they really manage to get under your skin and follow you home, make you turn on every light in the house and look under the beds? That's what keeps horror fans coming back. A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans is a super creepy psychological thriller about a new father afraid to hold his newborn son that hits a lot of the same haunting notes as The Babadook. A Turn of the Screw by Henry James will also get your creepy kid thrill on, if in a more proper late-Victorian English nanny story gone horribly awry kind of way. Highly recommended for folks who get that sometimes kids can be creepy.

Haruki Murakami and David Lynch both have great taste in music and a fondness for showing us dreamlike, earnest young people caught up in the surreal and nightmarish underbellies of seemingly ordinary settings. Anybody with a healthy fear and suspicion of bucolic small towns and suburban landscapes will surely enjoy both.

This scene? With the beetles?! Totally Murakami.

More Bill Murray! In Broken Flowers, aging Don Johnston tracks down his former lovers after he gets an anonymous letter claiming that he has a son.  In F: a novel, Arthur Friedland suddenly abandons his three young sons after taking them to see a hypnotist. The boys each grow up to be frauds in their own ways and struggle with their father's attempts to reconnect. Both works focus on the relationship between fathers and sons. Lovingly translated from the original German by Carol Janeway, F is not to be missed.

Both are adventure tales involving archaeology and obsession; Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark fans will get completely sucked into the The Lost City of Z, "the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century".

Careful with that, dude. It's cursed.

It Follows just opened and is getting some rave reviews probably because, as I mentioned above, excellent horror movies are surprising. Dire consequence is stalking teenagers in It Follows, and a nasty STD stalks teenagers in Black Hole, a graphic novel by Charles Burns, turning them into genetic mutants.