2015 in Books

Thoughts on what I read in 2015...

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
I was completely hooked on this novel from the very beginning. The story opens with Arthur Leander playing King Lear onstage, where he suffers a heart attack and dies immediately. At the same time, a swift and deadly flu has hit the city, and Jeevan, the man who tried in vain to save the actor, barricades himself in his brother’s apartment and watches the city empty. The highways are clogged with cars, the internet goes dark, the lights flicker off. Within days, this illness eliminates most of the earth’s population.

So how can a novel about the apocalypse -- the utter collapse of civilization after a swift and devastating outbreak of the “Georgia Flu” -- provide such a cozy and, yes, lovely reading experience? Because I picked this up on New Year’s Day and couldn’t put it down, even though I, too, am growing rather weary of dystopian literature. Dystopian novels are a dime a dozen these days.

But this one is different, somehow. This novel seems to be more about the ways in which people are basically good, about how we take care of each other. And there’s Shakespeare and a traveling symphony in this post-apocalyptic world.

More importantly, Emily St. John Mandel is a gorgeous writer. Her characters are well drawn, and her plotting works so well. The structure of this novel goes back and forth in time, before and after “the collapse,” showing us the ways in which the characters interact and their fates intersect until years afterward. And this is a writer who pays close attention to craft; I loved the sheer beauty of her prose. And despite the subject, this is a beautiful novel. It blurred the edges of reality for me for a day or two, but it delivered everything I love in a reading experience.

Redeployment, by Phil Klay
These stories are moving, unsettling, darkly humorous, honest, raw. I was especially interested in stories that depicted the Marines struggling to adjust to life back in the United States, but all of them touched a chord. Not for the faint of heart, but recommended anyway.

Mink River, by Brian Doyle (my favorite of the year)
I know I love a lot of books, but I don’t remember the last time I loved a book this much. Anything I can say about it will fall short. I found myself actually copying entire chapters longhand just to immerse myself in the flow of the sentences.This book represents everything I believe about the power of stories, about human connection, about love. It gave me everything I want in a reading experience.

Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion, by Sara Miles
This one will go on the shelf with Nadia Bolz-Weber, Anne Lamott, and Lauren F. Winner. I really enjoyed it, and appreciate the message that we don’t get to be Christians alone. To “feed, heal, help.” To do something, to be willing to work with people who are different from you, who might not believe the same things, who might even scare you a little. At the same time, she doesn’t come across as preachy to me, just earnest, and she is one of those writers who makes me feel like there is still room for all of us (including me, as messy and imperfect as I am) at the table.

I'll Give You The Sun, by Jandy Nelson
I’ve been mightily disappointed by most of the YA fiction I’ve read in the last year, so I’ve been sort of resistant to picking up more of it. And I was very glad that most of them were library books. But something about this book called me to lift it from the shelf at the Elliott Bay Book Company and buy it in hardcover, and that was absolutely the right choice. I’m just sad that I’m never again going to experience reading this book for the first time. I loved the characters -- both Noah and Jude, of course, but really everyone, even the characters I didn’t find particularly likable at first; I love that they all get to be complex and do terrible things to each other even when (or because) they love each other. (This is not true of some of the high school kids, but something I’ve learned in writing workshops is that not every character in a novel needs to be developed. We don’t have that kind of time.) I loved the structure, the way Noah tells the story of “before” and Jude tells the story of “after” until their stories find each other. And I love Jandy Nelson’s ecstatic prose. She writes like I imagine Noah paints and Jude sculpts. My perspective might be a bit clouded by my immediate post-reading euphoria, but I just loved this.

When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka
Otsuka’s lovely prose conveys so much in such a slim volume; spare, yes, but deceptively so, as powerful as it is understated. I read this in two sittings, and I think it will linger.

History of the Rain, by Niall Williams
I’m trying to convince my friend Kyanne that I love Irish literature not ONLY because I have an attraction to books in which everyone dies after suffering unspeakable tragedy, so I want her to read this one. (Ahem!) While I admit I cried throughout much of the last fifty or so pages, this book is just pure delight, start to finish. Ruth Swain is one of my new favorite narrators. I love her, I love her voice, I love her family and all their stories, I love the characters, I love the rain, I love the humor, I love the heartbreak. I read this book with a pen in my hand so I could underline my favorite passages, and at times it seemed like I was underlining something on every page. Wonderful. I finished this book and literally just wanted to hug it.

Cartwheel, by Jennifer duBois
I picked this up thinking I was in for something fast and indulgent -- a fun mystery, based on the Amanda Knox case. And it was fast and fun, but it was also so smartly written, and I loved what duBois wrote in her author’s note: “I’ve come to appreciate how entirely my view of writing and reading fiction is based on a single moral premise: that the act of imagining the experiences of fictional people develops our sense of empathy, as well as our sense of humility, in regarding the experiences of real ones.” Yes.

Black Boy, by Richard Wright
Full disclosure: This review is based only on Part One, Southern Night. This is what we’ve included in our curriculum for the past decade or so; the second section, The Horror and the Glory, might be a bit much for ninth graders.

Anyway, I’ve had this book on my shelf for over a decade now -- ever since we decided to incorporate Black Boy into our curriculum. But I didn’t teach ninth grade, so while I always meant to read this, I just never did. Well, this year, I’m teaching ninth grade. And while other teachers have gradually replaced this with The Secret Life of Bees, I thought I could do better than only teaching a book about black people written by a white person. So I read this. And while I don’t think we necessarily need to throw out The Secret Life of Bees, I think it would be a mistake to get rid of Black Boy, even if we only teach chunks of it. It reads so much more quickly than I imagined. It’s engaging and powerful and devastating. And I wish I’d read this before I taught Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man to my IB juniors years ago! (I love Ellison’s novel, and as a work of literature I think that one surpasses Wright’s work, but this would have provided a good foundation for my own study of it.)

Lila, by Marilynne Robinson
What I wrote in March: This afternoon the sight of cherry trees blooming against a heavily overcast sky after a sudden rainstorm just about took my breath away. It was such a simple, beautiful moment, and it made me ache. That tiny, ordinary moment captured a bit of what it feels like to read Marilynne Robinson’s prose, and this was definitely true of her latest novel. Had I read this on its own without the context of Gilead and Home, I might have given this four stars, but all three Gilead novels just make the others even more beautiful. I don’t even know how to write about them. Reading all three have them has just been a completely exquisite experience for me. They are, somehow, the truest books I’ve ever read -- not the happiest, but they do make me so grateful just to be in the world and experience being a messy human being in need of a little grace.

The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, by David Remnick
This is an excellent biography. Truly. That said, I don’t normally pick up books like this for pleasure, and this one took me a long time -- not because it’s dry or difficult, but because it was something I picked up here and there, reading a bit at a time. (Although I read the last 150 or so pages all at once, because I actually found it too exciting and moving to put down -- again, this is not what I expected from a big fat biography of an American president.) It is not a story of Obama’s presidency -- it’s far too early for that -- but it’s an incredibly compelling portrait of Obama himself set against a backdrop of American history. Meticulously researched and written, and an excellent companion piece to Dreams From my Father.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan
The love story is the least interesting part of this novel, which is based on the author’s father’s experience on the Thai-Burma death railway in 1943, but even in the moments when I felt pulled out of the narrative I can’t give this less than five stars because it’s otherwise everything I love in a novel -- characters who seem to be one certain thing until the author shifts our perspective, gorgeous sentences, and an exploration of the ways in which human beings treat each other. Our capacity for savagery, our capacity for goodness -- and what that even means. Harrowing, yes, but beautiful all the same. After the first fifty pages I hardly came up for air.

All the Bright Places, by Jennifer Nivens
I know a lot of people love this, and I’m sure many of the YA books I’ve loved are guilty of the same sins that annoyed me in this one. That said, this book had me rolling my eyes in the beginning and cringing at the (predictable) end -- although I did find myself enjoying it throughout a good part of the middle. It just seemed a bit too precious and heavy-handed overall, and I felt like I was watching an After School Special.

Fourth of July Creek, by Smith Henderson
So I loved this. It drew me in right away -- a social worker carrying the burdens of his own demons, a paranoid survivalist and his eleven-year-old son hiding in the mountains of Montana, dysfunctional families, deeply good people, the worst of humanity, and blurred lines between them -- I could not put this down.

This is not, by any means, a feel-good novel; at the same time, it didn’t leave me gutted, although the subject matter can be tough to take. Part of my response is no doubt grounded in my deep love of my home state, a place this author clearly gets. But also, it’s just damn good writing. Beautiful and true characterization (no seriously, I know these people), beautiful and true sentences, a gripping plot, and plenty of questions with no easy answers. More than worth the price of the hardcover -- I’ll want this one to last.

Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard, by Laura Bates
Five stars for the subject, which I LOVED. But the author was so self-congratulatory (I find it kind of obnoxious when someone refers to their own work as “groundbreaking” -- shouldn’t that come from someone else?) and I found her tone really off-putting throughout the book, which doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. A compelling story about reading Shakespeare with the toughest prison populations? A biography of Larry Newton? A memoir? The story could have been great, and I really loved Larry Newton but felt his story was short-changed so the author could bring the focus back to herself.

Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story, by David Levithan
I liked Tiny Cooper in Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and I like musical theater, but I think this is really a book for only the most devoted fans of both. There were a few lovely, charming, funny, poignant moments, but mostly I found myself feeling glad this was such a short, quick read so I could take it back to the library and move on to something I really wanted to read.

The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch
This memoir is everything I love about language and storytelling. At times I was underlining something on practically every page. It blazes.

A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara
When I read The People in the Trees last year I came away with the conclusion that Yanagihara is a brilliant writer but that I wouldn’t necessarily rush to pick up another of her books. However, when I read the description of A Little Life I changed my mind -- I can’t resist stories that follow a group of friends throughout the rest of their adult lives. I knew it would be dark, but I suspected it might also be beautiful. And it is both. Honestly, the misery in this book is relentless -- think of every horror a human being can inflict on another, and you will probably find it in this book, as well as a few you’d never considered. But there are also transcendent moments of warmth, love, and beauty. I think that’s the point.

And unlike The People in the Trees, there are characters in this book that I deeply loved. Jude, the protagonist, is someone I loved from the beginning and continued to love despite his own tragic belief that he is utterly unworthy of it, from anyone.

It’s a devastating book. It is. But somehow, against all odds, it manages to be redemptive. It absolutely consumed me while I was reading it (I read the last 200 pages in one day) and I suspect it will stay with me for a long time. Yanagihara’s first novel had that effect as well, but this one is different -- she still takes her readers into terribly dark places, but she doesn’t leave us there.

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, by Jon Krakauer
This book is going to make a lot of people angry -- good. It needs to.

I’ve found all of Krakauer’s books interesting; this one is important. Read it. Shit needs to change.

Sweetland, by Michael Crummey
Absolutely beautiful book about the cost of clinging to the past in the face of change. The characters are pure gold, and I was sad for this book to end.

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
A couple of these essays deserve five stars, but I wonder if this book overall would be a bit better if Jamison had waited a couple of decades to write it. (In other words, I feel like she’s trying to be Joan Didion, but she’s not quite there yet.)

The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins
This was a fairly entertaining read, and a quick one, but it was only okay. That I didn’t like the characters was not the problem; I don’t need characters to be likable in order for me to enjoy a book. But if I don’t like them, I want them to be a little more complex than any of the characters in this book. I also thought the writing itself was noticeably clunky. And while I enjoyed the overall plot well enough, I thought it was pretty predictable, and I thought the “twists” with Megan’s character were ridiculous -- they didn’t add any depth to her at all.

Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, by Rachel Held Evans
Someday I want to meet Rachel Held Evans so I can inform her that we actually are kindred spirits and should be best friends.

Okay, but seriously, I’ve enjoyed all of her writing. This resonates the most so far. She articulates so much of what I feel so deeply -- I found myself thinking, "THIS is why I can still go to church, even though it’s a mess, even though I’m a mess, even though I’m not convinced there’s a place for me there.” I deeply appreciate her honesty, her doubt, and, ultimately, her love.

And really, isn’t this why we read? To know we’re not alone?

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, by Eimar McBride
This is obviously not a book for everyone -- one learns from the first page that reading it as a traditional novel isn’t going to work. The only way to do it is to relax into the language and let it carry you along, and once you’re in, the story emerges. McBride’s story of a girl’s coming-of-age, her brother’s brain tumor, her mother’s fierce and judgmental Catholicism, and the sexual abuse she suffers at the hands of her uncle and, later, other men, is raw and painful -- and the prose is perhaps the only way this story can be told. It’s not an easy read, but it is powerful, and once I was immersed in the language, I read this book in two sittings.

Yes, Please, by Amy Poehler
I really loved about half of this book, and I spent the other half feeling like I was just trying to get through it until I found the good parts again. Fun overall, and about what I expected.

There's Something I Want You to Do, by Charles Baxter
I do love a good short story collection. I always think it’s going to be something I’ll pick up intermittently when I’m reading other things, but the best ones propel me straight through. This book is like that.

These stories each stand solidly alone on their own merit, but they’re meant to be read together. The characters slip in and out of each other’s lives, and while it’s not quite a novel in stories, I do appreciate the way the book ultimately reveals their interconnectedness and their beautiful and flawed humanity.

Independence Day, by Richard Ford
I went back and reread my review for The Sportswriter, and it more or less applies here, too. Why do I love these novels? I don’t particularly like or relate to Frank Bascombe and I kind of feel like a bad feminist for reading these, but I do love them. Reading them is like curling up with my favorite blanket. I love the meditations on ordinary life in America. Some of it is so dependent on the context, and some of it transcends that context. At any rate, I’ll keep following Frank Bascombe until Richard Ford stops writing him.

Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine
Here is how you read this book: In one sitting. Let it take your breath. Be uncomfortable. Refuse to look away. Read it again.

Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee
Okay: This book in no way diminished my love for TKAM. My world isn’t shattered. I am not clutching my pearls.

First of all, I’m leaving the publishing controversy (should it have been published? Was Harper Lee taken advantage of? etc.) entirely out of this review, because I think that’s an entirely different conversation. But also, I’m not quite sure how to review this; it seems a little unfair to review it as a novel if it’s true that this was really a draft. I definitely didn’t read it as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird -- more of a companion piece. Strictly as a text, it’s messy, and there’s hardly any plot (although that’s not necessarily a problem for me; plot isn’t always the most important thing, and it’s not here). I think Lee’s editors were spot-on when they suggested the approach that eventually became our beloved Mockingbird.

I loved the flashbacks, for the most part, and Lee’s voice comes through in the characterization. I think this book shows us a writer who is practicing her craft, and we see that much more fully realized in the book that actually did become a classic. However, this book adds layers that I appreciate, even if I struggle with them.

I appreciate this reflection on the novel as much as any I've read.)

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
If you only choose one book to read this year, make it this one. This is required reading.

What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt
Oh, I loved this. I devoured it in three sittings. (Two of these were on an airplane, so I had the luxury of just letting myself become immersed in the prose and the story with no other obligations or distractions -- so lovely.) I loved The Blazing World so I thought I’d probably enjoy it, and many things I loved about that novel are true of this one as well, but it turned out to be a much different book than I thought it would be. I won’t write about that here because I so enjoyed having the book unfold the way it did for me; I’m glad I didn’t know more about it when I picked it up. It’s just so, so good.

Adult Onset, by Ann-Marie MacDonald
I absolutely loved Ann-Marie MacDonald’s first two novels, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one (especially after positive reviews from both Sarah Waters and Emma Donoghue). Sadly, I was terribly disappointed. It almost physically pains me to give any book of hers two stars, but if it hadn’t been Ann-Marie MacDonald I’m not sure I would have kept reading after the first third of the book. It fell totally flat for me. There were some lovely moments, and some poignant ones, but if I hadn’t have had absolute faith that there would be at least a few glimpses of the author I love I’m not sure I’d have noticed them.

The Plover, by Brian Doyle
Magic. Everything Brian Doyle writes is magic. I didn’t think I could love this as much as I loved Mink River, but I did. His sentences, his characters, all of it. Read Mink River first, if you haven’t (that will always be my favorite) and then read this one, and then seek out every single sentence Brian Doyle has ever written. (He has so many fabulous pieces in The Sun -- that’s where I first encountered his writing and fell so deeply in love.)

Stone Mattresses: Nine Tales, by Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood still has it -- these stories are dark, funny, sharp, insightful, solidly entertaining, and deeply satisfying.

Delicious Foods, by James Hannaham
I think I’d have finished this in two days if I hadn’t chosen to read it during one of the busiest times of year for me. This book opens with the shocking image of young Eddie driving from the deep south to St. Cloud, Minnesota, and all we know is that he has “escaped” from a farm -- but not without having his hands severed at the wrist. The farm is Delicious Foods, which holds its “employees” as prisoners in a horrifying example of modern-day slavery. From then the story winds backwards, and we watch it unfold from long before Eddie’s birth. The story is dark, to be sure, but also compelling and surprising -- and Hannaham tackles so much human darkness with such a fresh voice. The story’s key players are Eddie, his mother Darlene, and “Scotty” -- the crack cocaine that literally narrates chapters of the novel. The ending read a little sloppy to me, but overall, I found it a powerful, engaging novel.

The Long and Faraway Gone, by Lou Berney
This delivered exactly what I was in the mood for during my last days of summer when I'm stressed with school planning and in the mood for a little escapism. Not incredibly believable, and not great literature, but a really fun and satisfying mystery, which I need a few times a year. It's exactly the kind of book I could just curl up with and read in one sitting. (That didn't happen, but that's just life. I did read most of this in 24 hours, though.)

Call Me Home, by Megan Kruse
This is a book about loneliness and beauty and family and place and what grounds us there, about all the ways we hurt and find our fumbling way back to each other. I loved this so much and Megan Kruse is so good.

In a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware
This book read pretty much exactly like The Girl on the Train -- that is to say, kind of a fun afternoon read (I read this in a couple of sittings, in less than 24 hours, and once in awhile my brain just needs a book like this), but Ruth Ware is no Tana French. The writing is pretty clunky, the characters are all ridiculous, and the big surprise is not remotely surprising.

Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People, by Nadia Bolz-Weber
This is one of those books I will pretty much recommend to anyone who breathes oxygen, regardless of how you feel about religion or what you believe.

The Brothers K, by David James Duncan
I can’t believe I’ve never read this -- I can’t believe it hasn’t been on my radar, at least, for much more of my reading life. I LOVED it. I know, I LOVE a lot of books, but I recommend this one wholeheartedly to pretty much anyone who CAN read and has both a heart and a brain to appreciate a cast of unforgettable characters, wonderful sentences, and a completely absorbing story of a complicated, imperfect family as they grow away from and back towards each other. I laughed out loud from start to finish, often at the same time I was openly crying and wondering how this writer would put my heart back together. Spoiler alert: He does.

What We Saw, by Aaron Hartzler
This is a book written to make a point. Five stars for the point it makes; three for the writing because I’m a snob who needs to be moved by language and characterization, and both fell a little flat for me. But while the writing itself wasn’t startlingly original, I still plan to buy a few copies for my classroom. Hartzler makes a powerful and timely statement about rape culture -- if every college-bound student should read Jon Krakauer’s Missoula (they should), then every high school student should read this one. Parents and teachers should read both. These books are not easy reads, but we need to be made angry, we need to wake up, and we need to take a hard look at what we’re willing to deny, excuse, and rationalize, and at what cost.

Did You Ever Have a Family, by Bill Clegg
I would expect to feel gutted by any book that begins with this kind of tragedy -- in the wee hours before her daughter’s wedding, a woman watches her house go up in flames, killing her daughter, her daughter’s fiancé, her boyfriend, and her ex-husband. How is it possible to survive total loss? But the book didn’t gut me. It’s a quiet book about grief, but it’s bigger than that, or it tries to be. It’s also about the often invisible threads that connect us, and, of course, about how complicated families can be. I should have loved it, because this sort of thing is right up my alley, but it veered a bit too close to schmaltzy a few times. Then again, some moments are truly lovely. I can see why it was longlisted for the Booker, but I also see why it didn’t win.

The Heart Goes Last, by Margaret Atwood
It pains me to give a book by Margaret Atwood two stars (and honestly, one of those stars is probably just because it's Margaret Atwood), except that I still kind of had fun reading it, flying through it over a couple of evenings. This book lacks the art that I love in her work, and the ending was a total mess -- but it seemed like she must have had fun writing it. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read it at the same time I taught The Handmaid's Tale, because the contrast between this novel and Atwood at her best was just too obvious.

The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma
Tragic, tender, perfectly paced, beautifully crafted. This novel absolutely deserved its spot on the Booker shortlist.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post, by Emily M. Danforth
I really loved this. The first part of the book moves slowly, but it's actually what made me love it -- Danforth captures so beautifully the essence of my own experiences growing up in Montana, at roughly the same time. If any writer can show you Montana, especially in the summer, I've found her. Add to that the fact that this story is about a gay teenager struggling to be herself in Miles City, Montana -- I'm all in. The other thing Danforth knows is the kind of "Christianity" Cameron comes up against; she writes that really well. And part of the reason she writes it so well is that everyone is human. It would be so easy to make some of these characters into caricatures, but each one, even the ones I wanted to hate, have their moments of humanity and tenderness.

I Refuse, by Per Petterson
I ended up loving this as much as I love Out Stealing Horses, I think. Petterson's sentences are infused with deep melancholy and deep tenderness and the rhythm of his prose is gorgeous, poetic and spare. I wasn't sure the shifting perspectives would work throughout the entire book--it's not merely a case of multiple narrators; Petterson moves from first person to third person as well--but somehow these shifts didn't take me out of the flow of the novel. It's beautiful. He captures relationships so perfectly, and this book quietly broke my heart.

Career of Evil, by Robert Galbraith
By far my favorite of the Cormoran Strike mysteries--I read almost the entire thing in a day, the perfect way to kick off winter break. But that ending...I sincerely hope the next book is ALREADY WRITTEN.

Currently reading:

Purity, by Jonathan Franzen
I am so aware that I am supposed to hate Jonathan Franzen, and I don't necessarily disagree with some of the criticisms of his latest work. But I'm a little weary of reading about Jonathan Franzen, to be honest; the media loves to hate him. But I still think he's a brilliant writer, and I'm finding this book hard to put down.

In the Country, by Mia Alvar
I've only read the first three stories in this collection, but they are excellent, and I have a feeling I'll be widely recommending this book.

Also coming up: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman, and My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer by Christian Wiman. 2016 is off to a solid start.