Cost by Roxana Robinson: This novel, about a family’s upheaval when it becomes apparent that one of its grown sons has become addicted to heroin, reads like a Lifetime movie complete with clunkily interwoven PSA information about heroin. Robinson devotes a good chunk of the novel’s beginning to introducing multiple interesting characters, but the novel drifts away from their concerns and never fully returns. Much of the novel is repetitive. Not recommended.
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Blue Angel by Francine Prose: A creative writing teacher at a small, less-than-impressive liberal arts college becomes enamored of a student’s work, with disastrous results. Prose is tartly hilarious on many levels here, from the pricelessly dreadful short stories the writing students submit for workshop, to her protagonist’s own self-delusional mental whining. Many of the reviews I’ve read on this novel make the mistake of assuming Prose shares her protagonist’s point of view. But while the novel is undoubtedly an indictment of college campus PC police, Prose is far too careful and interesting a writer to stop at so simple a message. She is an emphatic champion of close reading, and a close read of Blue Angel doesn’t let the teacher off so easily. Highly recommended.
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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: What happens when a sacrificial lamb is sent to spend a few weeks summering in a haunted house? Three guesses. A psychological thriller set in a wonderfully bizarre mansion (clearly inspired by the Winchester Mystery House, name-checked in the novel), Jackson’s novel is deeply unsettling and thoroughly absorbing. Highly recommended.
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Notes From No Man’s Land by Eula Biss: Eula Biss’s debut book of essays, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Biss is chiefly concerned with race in America, and has much of interest to say on the subject; as far as style, she has palpably modeled herself on Joan Didion, as of course, any aspiring young essayist should. She is at her best when focusing on large themes and research, made personal by her own life experiences. In “Relations” (which I’ve linked to before), she draws from her own mixed heritage to explore race as social construct. In “Land Mines”, she relates her experiences teaching in New York public schools, and bravely indicts public education as a tool of social control. In “Is This Kansas”, Biss is gobsmacked by the utter lack of social conscience or awareness of privilege in her students at University of Iowa (I particularly enjoyed this piece, having gone to a similar state school myself). In “No Man’s Land”, Biss meditates on America’s pioneer heritage (specifically Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family’s experiences with Indians), and how this history relates to current American fear, territoriality, racism and paranoia.
On the other hand, Biss is at her weakest when attempting to extrapolate her own experiences into some broader, universal meaning, as in “Goodbye to All That”, in which Biss tries to flesh out her own post-college loneliness into some statement about New York City, or in “Letter to Mexico”, in which Biss’s own self-consciousness as a traveler eclipses whatever she is attempting to say about her subject. Still, far more winners here than otherwise. Recommended (and several of the best are available to read in full online; click through links above).
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An Intimate History of Killing by Joanna Bourke: This book is about violence in warfare – specifically, how different people think about, experience, and react to the actual act of killing. Bourke doesn’t even attempt to discuss war itself as a moral good or ill; her focus is strictly on how men and women experience combat. A fascinating look into a rarely broached topic. Highly recommended.
