October Reads in Review
Two debuts, one big historical novel, two story collections and a craft book
Happy fall, everyone! I’ve got a small cornucopia of books to recommend this month, and it’s hard to find a common theme that links them all. Like these pumpkins, however, each has its own character and distinct appeal, and I hope at least one or two will call out to you.
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
I’ve been curious to read Garth Greenwell’s fiction ever since I read his widely discussed essay, “A Moral Education” in the Yale Review earlier this year and decided to start with his debut from 2016. In recounting the arc of a relationship a white American teacher in Bulgaria has with a Bulgarian man he pays for sex, Greenwell probes the nexus of desire, shame, exploitation, violence, and intimacy. Despite its short length, this is a book best read and absorbed slowly. I especially admired Greenwell’s artful, distilled prose style, which mirrors the care and precision of his moral and psychological interrogation of his narrator.
Luster by Raven Leilani
After reading What Belongs to You, I stumbled upon Greenwell’s essay “On a Sentence by Raven Leilani” in the Sewanee Review, which analyzes a single sentence from Leilani’s 2020 debut novel, Luster. Considering how much I admire Greenwell as a writer of sentences, I immediately sought out the book so I could re-encounter Leilani’s sentence in its full context. Luster tells the story of Edie, a socially isolated young Black woman searching for intimacy and fulfillment as an artist while living in near-constant economic precarity. Against this backdrop, she becomes enmeshed with a white couple experimenting with an open marriage while raising their adopted Black daughter. The characters are richly drawn, and series of deft plot twists drives the novel’s central tensions into steadily deeper emotional territory. The writing is sharp and propulsive; I found myself flying through the book and trying to slow down only because I didn’t want it to be over so quickly. This was one of my favorite novels on the year, and I am eager to read whatever Leilani writes next.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
A writing friend of mine suggested I read Min Jin Lee’s intergenerational historical novel about the immigration experiences of a Korean family in Japan during the mid-twentieth century as a potential model for the historical novel I’m working on about a Slovenian-American immigrant family. It was an excellent recommendation that I now pass on to you. Lee wrote the book over a period of thirty years, including time spent living in Japan. Her patience and thorough research shows in the subtleties and range of her characters’ situations and responses to the discrimination many Korean immigrants experienced in Japan during this time period. The story loosely revolves around Sunja—the character most discussed on the jacket copy—but centers a chapter or more on nearly every member of Sunja’s immediate family and a handful of secondary and tertiary characters via a roving limited third person POV with occasional flashes of omniscience. The book begins in 1910 and ends in 1989 and keeps the reader oriented through the occasional big jumps in time and geography by moving chronology. Despite its nearly 500-page girth, Pachinko is a remarkably brisk and straightforward read with tight chapters, efficient prose, and a great story.
A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley
Brinkley’s debut book of stories from 2019, A Lucky Man, was well-reviewed when it came out, and I can see why: every story feels fully developed and demonstrates a high degree of polish and control. The collection coheres around a nuanced exploration of masculinity via father-son relationships—especially that of a son with absent father—and older brother-younger brother relationships. Most stories take place in crisply drawn Bronx and Brooklyn settings, and all excel within the conventions of contemporary literary realism. My hands-down favorite was the incredible story “J'ouvert, 1996,” though “No More than a Bubble” was not far behind.
Witness by Jamel Brinkley
I read Brinkley’s just-released second collection, Witness, right on the heels of his first and was pleased to find more range and variety in voice and POV, including one story from the perspective of an eight-year-old girl raised by her father and uncle. As in his first collection, Brinkley maintains a strong interest in the internal dynamics of families and the way the past haunts the present, but he also more explicitly explores social issues like the human impact of gentrification, police violence, and medical racism. I especially enjoyed “Blessed Deliverance,” “Barstow Station,” and “Arrows.” The latter incorporates the idea of people who become ghosts because they are "impaled by the arrow” of obsession with the past, and the story’s narrator fears how this family tendency might play out for him and his son as he tries to move both his aging father and his late mother’s rather corporeal ghost out of the house in which he grew up.
Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell
This slim, blessedly unpretentious craft book offers a flat-footed, earnest guide to writing a novel in three drafts, regardless of genre. I happened to read it while I was more focused on short story revisions and found many of Bell’s concrete suggestions, especially in the third, polishing stage, to be relevant and easily adaptable to shorter forms as well. While much of the book is a compilation of many well-known principles and strategies in an easily digestible form, his methods for seeing the project afresh in the late-stages were ones I hadn’t encountered elsewhere. Regardless of what stage of a writing project in which you might be, this is a useful read worth a few hours’ of your time.
As always, thanks for reading, and hope your fall is off to a lovely start!
You do have catholic reading tastes Jules. My oh my but you do. I've just enjoyed reading this month's selective reviews. Have to say the references to the work and positioned point of view of Garth Greenwell flagged a 'Go Back & Re-Read?' signpost for me. I read* his novel, set in and around his life experiences in Bulgaria, when it was short-listed in contention for The Jame Tait Black Prize as few years back. I read* it in the context of what has been an annual re-run of an excellent online course out of The University of Edinburgh's Literary Elite Stable https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/how-to-read-a-novel/1/todo/13264
I'm really interested in your signposts to various pieces of writing by Garth Greenwell. Thanks Jules.
* Read, frankly, more in skim read rather than deep read mode. Found, on this limiting POV, Garth more than a tadge or two unduly self-absorbed.