Dear Sydney, Your overlapping desire for intergenerational drama, a doorstopper, and emotional devastation—combined with your request for something that lasts “like subtle notes from a fine white wine”—immediately made me think of Edward St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels. Technically it's five books but I read them as an omnibus and can't really imagine not reading them in a single volume, tracing the life of the titular Melrose from age five into his fifties. Something about the sharp sun of summer will never not make me think of the shocking intensity of Never Mind and the rollicking devastation of Bad News—and while the Melrose cycle is not exactly easy-going, full as it is of abuses that range from the physical to the emotional to substances aplenty, St. Aubyn's glorious prose makes for a tremendously satisfying read. If you're looking for something a bit less brutal, you might have great luck with Joanna Quinn's The Whalebone Theater, which I picked up on a whim just a few weeks ago and fell straight through. It's a sweeping sibling novel, tracking a brother and sister from their English-countryside childhood through World War II—but the focus is specifically on performance and identity, beginning with the children setting up a theater in the ribcage of a washed-up whale and moving through their time as secret agents in occupied France. It's a well-built novel, the kind of literary fiction I long to dive into. Finally, a curveball: you mention wanting to expand your horizons and I take it from your responses that you are primarily a reader of straightforward literary fiction. If you're willing to indulge something a bit more unsettling, I think you might find Mariana Enriquez's Our Share of Night a good fit as well. Sweeping across decades and continents, it's the story of a father and son trying to outrun the strange cult of their wife/mother's family. There are images of indelible beauty in this book—I often think of an exceptional sequence where a young man watches two older men embrace and feels something unlock in himself—and some really great chills, including perhaps the most ominous closing door in modern literature. It's a great translation from Megan McDowell and a worthy expansion for your shelf! –Drew Broussard, Podcasts Editor |
