Mentioned in:
Most Anticipated: The Great Spring 2024 Preview
April
April 2
Women! In! Peril! by Jessie Ren Marshall [F]
For starters, excellent title. This debut short story collection from playwright Marshall spans sex bots and space colonists, wives and divorcĂ©es, prodding at the many meanings of womanhood. Short story master Deesha Philyaw, also taken by the book's title, calls this one "incisive! Provocative! And utterly satisfying!" âSophia M. Stewart
The Audacity by Ryan Chapman [F]
This sophomore effort, after the darkly sublime absurdity of Riots I have Known, trades in the prison industrial complex for the Silicon Valley scam. Chapman has a sharp eye and a sharper wit, and a book billed as a "bracing satire about the implosion of a Theranos-like company, a collapsing marriage, and a billionairesâ 'philanthropy summit'" promises some good, hard laughsâhowever bitter they may beâat the expense of the ĂŒber-rich. âJohn H. Maher
The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso, tr. Leonard Mades [F]
I first learned about this book from an essay in this publication by Zachary Issenberg, who alternatively calls it Donoso's "masterpiece," "a perfect novel," and "the crowning achievement of the gothic horror genre." He recommends going into the book without knowing too much, but describes it as "a story assembled from the gossip of societyâs highs and lows, which revolves and blurs into a series of interlinked nightmares in which people lose their memory, their sex, or even their literal organs." âSMS
Globetrotting ed. Duncan Minshull [NF]
I'm a big walker, so I won't be able to resist this assemblage of 50 writersâincluding Edith Wharton, Katharine Mansfield, Helen Garner, and D.H. Lawrenceârecounting their various journeys by foot, edited by Minshull, the noted walker-writer-anthologist behind The Vintage Book of Walking (2000) and Where My Feet Fall (2022). âSMS
All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld [NF]
Hieronymus Bosch, eat your heart out! The debut book from Rothfeld, nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, celebrates our appetite for excess in all its material, erotic, and gluttonous glory. Covering such disparate subjects from decluttering to David Cronenberg, Rothfeld looks at the dire culturalâand personalâconsequences that come with adopting a minimalist sensibility and denying ourselves pleasure. âDaniella Fishman
A Good Happy Girl by Marissa Higgins [F]
Higgins, a regular contributor here at The Millions, debuts with a novel of a young woman who is drawn into an intense and all-consuming emotional and sexual relationship with a married lesbian couple. Halle Butler heaps on the praise for this one: âSometimes I could not believe how easily this book moved from gross-out sadism into genuine sympathy. Totally surprising, totally compelling. I loved it.â âSMS
City Limits by Megan Kimble [NF]
As a Los Angeleno who is steadily working my way through The Power Broker, this in-depth investigation into the nation's freeways really calls to me. (Did you know Robert Moses couldn't drive?) Kimble channels Caro by locating the human drama behind freeways and failures of urban planning. âSMS
We Loved It All by Lydia Millet [NF]
Planet Earth is a pretty awesome place to be a human, with its beaches and mountains, sunsets and birdsong, creatures great and small. Millet, a creative director at the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, infuses her novels with climate grief and cautions against extinction, and in this nonfiction meditation, she makes a case for a more harmonious coexistence between our species and everybody else in the natural world. If a nostalgic note of âAuld Lang Syneâ trembles in Milletâs title, her personal anecdotes and public examples call for meaningful environmental action from local to global levels. âNathalie op de Beeck
Like Love by Maggie Nelson [NF]
The new book from Nelson, one of the most towering public intellectuals alive today, collects 20 years of her workâincluding essays, profiles, and reviewsâthat cover disparate subjects, from Prince and Kara Walker to motherhood and queerness. For my fellow Bluets heads, this will be essential reading. âSMS
Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, tr. Robin Moger [NF]
Mersal, one of the preeminent poets of the Arabic-speaking world, recovers the life, work, and legacy of the late Egyptian writer Enayat al-Zayyat in this biographical detective story. Mapping the psyche of al-Zayyat, who died by suicide in 1963, alongside her own, Mersal blends literary mystery and memoir to produce a wholly original portrait of two women writers. âSMS
The Letters of Emily Dickinson ed. Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell [NF]
The letters of Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest and most beguiling of American poets, are collected here for the first time in nearly 60 years. Her correspondence not only gives access to her inner life and social world, but reveal her to be quite the prose stylist. "In these letters," says Jericho Brown, "we see the life of a genius unfold." Essential reading for any Dickinson fan. âSMS
April 9
Short War by Lily Meyer [F]
The debut novel from Meyer, a critic and translator, reckons with the United States' political intervention in South America through the stories of two generations: a young couple who meet in 1970s Santiago, and their American-born child spending a semester Buenos Aires. Meyer is a sharp writer and thinker, and a great translator from the Spanish; I'm looking forward to her fiction debut. âSMS
There's Going to Be Trouble by Jen Silverman [F]
Silverman's third novel spins a tale of an American woman named Minnow who is drawn into a love affair with a radical French activistâa romance that, unbeknown to her, mirrors a relationship her own draft-dodging father had against the backdrop of the student movements of the 1960s. Teasing out the intersections of passion and politics, There's Going to Be Trouble is "juicy and spirited" and "crackling with excitement," per Jami Attenberg. âSMS
Table for One by Yun Ko-eun, tr. Lizzie Buehler [F]
I thoroughly enjoyed Yun Ko-eun's 2020 eco-thriller The Disaster Tourist, also translated by Buehler, so I'm excited for her new story collection, which promises her characteristic blend of mundanity and surrealism, all in the name of probingâand poking funâat the isolation and inanity of modern urban life. âSMS
Playboy by Constance Debré, tr. Holly James [NF]
The prequel to the much-lauded Love Me Tender, and the first volume in DebrĂ©'s autobiographical trilogy, Playboy's incisive vignettes explore the author's decision to abandon her marriage and career and pursue the precarious life of a writer, which she once told Chris Kraus was "a bit like Saint Augustine and his conversion." Virginie Despentes is a fan, so I'll be checking this out. âSMS
Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal [NF]
DuVal's sweeping history of Indigenous North America spans a millennium, beginning with the ancient cities that once covered the continent and ending with Native Americans' continued fight for sovereignty. A study of power, violence, and self-governance, Native Nations is an exciting contribution to a new canon of North American history from an Indigenous perspective, perfect for fans of Ned Blackhawk's The Rediscovery of America. âSMS
Personal Score by Ellen van Neerven [NF]
Iâve always been interested in books that drill down on a specific topic in such a way that we also learn something unexpected about the world around us. Australian writer Van Neerven's sports memoir is so much more than that, as they explore the relationship between sports and race, gender, and sexualityâas well as the paradox of playing a colonialist sport on Indigenous lands. Two Dollar Radio, which is renowned for its edgy list, is publishing this book, so I know itâs going to blow my mind. âClaire Kirch
April 16
The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins by Sonny Rollins [NF]
The musings, recollections, and drawings of jazz legend Sonny Rollins are collected in this compilation of his precious notebooks, which he began keeping in 1959, the start of what would become known as his âBridge Years,â during which he would practice at all hours on the Williamsburg Bridge. Rollins chronicles everything from his daily routine to reflections on music theory and the philosophical underpinnings of his artistry. An indispensable look into the mind and interior life of one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of all time. âDF
Henry Henry by Allen Bratton [F]
Brattonâs ambitious debut reboots Shakespeareâs Henriad, landing Hal Lancaster, whoâs in line to be the 17th Duke of Lancaster, in the alcohol-fueled queer party scene of 2014 London. Halâs identity as a gay man complicates his aristocratic lineage, and his dalliances with over-the-hill actor Jack Falstaff and promising romance with one Harry Percy, who shares a name with historyâs Hotspur, will have English majors keeping score. Donât expect a rom-com, though. Halâs fraught relationship with his sexually abusive father, and the fates of two previous gay men from the House of Lancaster, lend gravity to this Bard-inspired take. âNodB
Bitter Water Opera by Nicolette Polek [F]
Graywolf always publishes books that make me gasp in awe and this debut novel, by the author of the entrancing 2020 story collection Imaginary Museums, sounds like itâs going to keep me awake at night as well. Itâs a tale about a young woman whoâs lost her way and writes a letter to a long-dead ballet dancerâwho then visits her, and sets off a string of strange occurrences. âCK
Norma by Sarah Mintz [F]
Mintz's debut novel follows the titular widow as she enjoys her newfound freedom by diving headfirst into her surrounds, both IRL and online. Justin Taylor says, "Three days ago I didnât know Sarah Mintz existed; now I want to know where the hell sheâs been all my reading life. (Canada, apparently.)" âSMS
What Kingdom by Fine GrÄbÞl, tr. Martin Aitken [F]
A woman in a psychiatric ward dreams of "furniture flickering to life," a "chair that greets you," a "bookshelf that can be thrown on like an apron." This sounds like the moving answer to the otherwise puzzling question, "What if the Kantian concept of ding an sich were a novel?" âJHM
Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman [F]
Cotman, the author of three prior collections of speculative short stories, mines the anxieties of Black life across these seven tales, each of them packed with pop culture references and supernatural conceits. Kelly Link calls Cotman's writing "a tonic to ward off drabness and despair." âSMS
Presence by Tracy Cochran [NF]
Last year marked my first earnest attempt at learning to live more mindfully in my day-to-day, so I was thrilled when this book serendipitously found its way into my hands. Cochran, a New York-based meditation teacher and Tibetan Buddhist practitioner of 50 years, delivers 20 psycho-biographical chapters on recognizing the importance of the present, no matter how mundane, frustrating, or fortuitousâbecause ultimately, she says, the present is all we have. âDF
Committed by Suzanne Scanlon [NF]
Scanlon's memoir uses her own experience of mental illness to explore the enduring trope of the "madwoman," mining the work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, and others for insights into the long literary tradition of women in psychological distress. The blurbers for this one immediately caught my eye, among them Natasha Trethewey, Amina Cain, and Clancy Martin, who compares Scanlon's work here to that of Marguerite Duras. âSMS
Unrooted by Erin Zimmerman [NF]
This science memoir explores Zimmerman's journey to botany, a now endangered field. Interwoven with Zimmerman's experiences as a student and a mother is an impassioned argument for botany's continued relevance and importance against the backdrop of climate changeâa perfect read for gardeners, plant lovers, or anyone with an affinity for the natural world. âSMS
April 23
Reboot by Justin Taylor [F]
Extremely online novels, as a rule, have become tiresome. But Taylor has long had a keen eye for subcultural quirks, so it's no surprise that PW's Alan Scherstuhl says that "reading it actually feels like tapping into the internetâs best celeb gossip, fiercest fandom outrages, and wildest conspiratorial rabbit holes." If that's not a recommendation for the Book Twitterâbrained reader in you, what is? âJHM
Divided Island by Daniela Tarazona, tr. Lizzie Davis and Kevin Gerry Dunn [F]
A story of multiple personalities and grief in fragments would be an easy sell even without this nod from Ălvaro Enrigue: "I don't think that there is now, in Mexico, a literary mind more original than Daniela Tarazona's." More original than Mario Bellatin, or Cristina Rivera Garza? This we've gotta see. âJHM
Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other by Danielle Dutton [NF]
Coffee House Press has for years relished its reputation for publishing âexperimentalâ literature, and this collection of short stories and essays about literature and art and the strangeness of our world is right up there with the rest of Coffee Houseâs edgiest releases. Donât be fooled by the simple cover artâDuttonâs work is always formally inventive, refreshingly ambitious, and totally brilliant. âCK
I Just Keep Talking by Nell Irvin Painter [NF]
I first encountered Nell Irvin Painter in graduate school, as I hung out with some Americanists who were her students. Painter was always a dazzling, larger-than-life figure, who just exuded power and brilliance. I am so excited to read this collection of her essays on history, literature, and politics, and how they all intersect. The fact that this collection contains Painterâs artwork is a big bonus. âCK
April 30
Real Americans by Rachel Khong [F]
The latest novel from Khong, the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, explores class dynamics and the illusory American Dream across generations. It starts out with a love affair between an impoverished Chinese American woman from an immigrant family and an East Coast elite from a wealthy family, before moving us along 21 years: 15-year-old Nick knows that his single mother is hiding something that has to do with his biological father and thus, his identity. C Pam Zhang deems this "a book of rare charm," and Andrew Sean Greer calls it "gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft." âCK
The Swans of Harlem by Karen Valby [NF]
Huge thanks to Bebe Neuwirth for putting this book on my radar (she calls it "fantastic") with additional gratitude to Margo Jefferson for sealing the deal (she calls it "riveting"). Valby's group biography of five Black ballerinas who forever transformed the art form at the height of the Civil Rights movement uncovers the rich and hidden history of Black ballet, spotlighting the trailblazers who paved the way for the Misty Copelands of the world. âSMS
Appreciation Post by Tara Ward [NF]
Art historian Ward writes toward an art history of Instagram in Appreciation Post, which posits that the app has profoundly shifted our long-established ways of interacting with images. Packed with cultural critique and close reading, the book synthesizes art history, gender studies, and media studies to illuminate the outsize role that images play in all of our lives. âSMS
May
May 7
Bad Seed by Gabriel Carle, tr. Heather Houde [F]
Carleâs English-language debut contains echoes of Denis Johnsonâs Jesusâs Son and Mariana Enriquezâs gritty short fiction. This story collection haunting but cheeky, grim but hopeful: a student with HIV tries to avoid temptation while working at a bathhouse; an inebriated friend group witnesses San Juan go up in literal flames; a sexually unfulfilled teen drowns out their impulses by binging TV shows. Puerto Rican writer Luis NegrĂłn calls this âan extraordinary literary debut.â âLiv Albright
The Lady Waiting by Magdalena Zyzak [F]
Zyzakâs sophomore novel is a nail-biting delight. When Viva, a young Polish Ă©migrĂ©, has a chance encounter with an enigmatic gallerist named Bobby, Vivaâs life takes a cinematic turn. Turns out, Bobby and her husband have a hidden agendaâthey plan to steal a Vermeer, with Viva as their accomplice. Further complicating things is the inevitable love triangle that develops among them. Victor LaValle calls this âa superb accomplishment," and Percival Everett says, "This novel popsâcosmopolitan, sexy, and funny." âLA
América del Norte by Nicolås Medina Mora [F]
Pitched as a novel that "blends the Latin American traditions of Roberto Bolaño and Fernanda Melchor with the autofiction of U.S. writers like Ben Lerner and Teju Cole," Mora's debut follows a young member of the Mexican elite as he wrestles with questions of race, politics, geography, and immigration. n+1 co-editor Marco Roth calls Mora "the voice of the NAFTA generation, and much more." âSMS
How It Works Out by Myriam Lacroix [F]
LaCroix's debut novel is the latest in a strong early slate of novels for the Overlook Press in 2024, and follows a lesbian couple as their relationship falls to pieces across a number of possible realities. The increasingly fascinating and troubling potentialitiesâB-list feminist celebrity, toxic employer-employee tryst, adopting a street urchin, cannibalism as relationship cureâform a compelling image of a complex relationship in multiversal hypotheticals. âJHM
Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang [F]
Ting's debut novel, which spans two continents and three timelines, follows two gay men in rural Chinaâand, later, New York City's Chinatownâwho frequent the Workers' Cinema, a movie theater where queer men cruise for love. Robert Jones, Jr. praises this one as "the unforgettable work of a patient master," and Jessamine Chan calls it "not just an extraordinary debut, but a future classic." âSMS
First Love by Lilly Dancyger [NF]
Dancyger's essay collection explores the platonic romances that bloom between female friends, giving those bonds the love-story treatment they deserve. Centering each essay around a formative female friendship, and drawing on everything from AnaĂŻs Nin and Sylvia Plath to the "sad girls" of Tumblr, Dancyger probes the myriad meanings and iterations of friendship, love, and womanhood. âSMS
See Loss See Also Love by Yukiko Tominaga [F]
In this impassioned debut, we follow Kyoko, freshly widowed and left to raise her son alone. Through four vignettes, Kyoko must decide how to raise her multiracial son, whether to remarry or stay husbandless, and how to deal with life in the face of loss. Weike Wang describes this one as âimbued with a wealth of wisdom, exploring the languages of love and family.â âDF
The Novices of Lerna by Ăngel Bonomini, tr. Jordan Landsman [F]
The Novices of Lerna is Landsman's translation debut, and what a way to start out: with a work by an Argentine writer in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares whose work has never been translated into English. Judging by the opening of this short story, also translated by Landsman, Bonomini's novel of a mysterious fellowship at a Swiss university populated by doppelgĂ€ngers of the protagonist is unlikely to disappoint. âJHM
Black Meme by Legacy Russell [NF]
Russell, best known for her hit manifesto Glitch Feminism, maps Black visual culture in her latest. Black Meme traces the history of Black imagery from 1900 to the present, from the photograph of Emmett Till published in JET magazine to the footage of Rodney King's beating at the hands of the LAPD, which Russell calls the first viral video. Per Margo Jefferson, "You will be galvanized by Legacy Russellâs analytic brilliance and visceral eloquence." âSMS
The Eighth Moon by Jennifer Kabat [NF]
Kabat's debut memoir unearths the history of the small Catskills town to which she relocated in 2005. The site of a 19th-century rural populist uprising, and now home to a colorful cast of characters, the Appalachian community becomes a lens through which Kabat explores political, economic, and ecological issues, mining the archives and the work of such writers as Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Hardwick along the way. âSMS
Stories from the Center of the World ed. Jordan Elgrably [F]
Many in America hold onto broad, centuries-old misunderstandings of Arab and Muslim life and politics that continue to harm, through both policy and rhetoric, a perpetually embattled and endangered region. With luck, these 25 tales by writers of Middle Eastern and North African origin might open hearts and minds alike. âJHM
An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children by Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker [NF]
Two of the most brilliant minds on the planetâwriter Jamaica Kincaid and visual artist Kara Walkerâhave teamed up! On a book! About plants! A dream come true. Details on this slim volume are scantâsee for yourselfâbut I'm counting down the minutes till I can read it all the same. âSMS
Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov, tr. Angela Rodel [F]
I'll be honest: I would pick up this bookâby the International Booker Prizeâwinning author of Time Shelterâfor the title alone. But also, the book is billed as a deeply personal meditation on both Communist Bulgaria and Greek myth, soâyep, still picking this one up. âJHM
May 14
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud [F]
I read an ARC of this enthralling fictionalization of Messudâs family historyâpeople wandering the world during much of the 20th century, moving from Algeria to France to North Americaâ and it is quite the story, with a postscript that will smack you on the side of the head and make you re-think everything you just read. I can't recommend this enough. âCK
Woodworm by Layla Martinez, tr. Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott [F]
Martinezâs debut novel takes cabin fever to the max in this story of a grandmother, granddaughter, and their haunted house, set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. As the story unfolds, so do the houseâs secrets, the two women must learn to collaborate with the malevolent spirits living among them. Mariana Enriquez says that this "tense, chilling novel tells a story of specters, class war, violence, and loneliness, as naturally as if the witches had dictated this lucid, terrible nightmare to MartĂnez themselves.â âLA
Self Esteem and the End of the World by Luke Healy [NF]
Ah, writers writing about writing. A tale as old as time, and often timeworn to boot. But graphic novelists graphically noveling about graphic novels? (Verbing weirds language.) It still feels fresh to me! Enter Healy's tale of "two decades of tragicomic self-discovery" following a protagonist "two years post publication of his latest book" and "grappling with his identity as the world crumbles." âJHM
All Fours by Miranda July [F]
In excruciating, hilarious detail, All Fours voices the ethically dubious thoughts and deeds of an unnamed 45-year-old artist whoâs worried about aging and her capacity for desire. After setting off on a two-week round-trip drive from Los Angeles to New York City, the narrator impulsively checks into a motel 30 miles from her home and only pretends to be traveling. Her flagrant lies, unapologetic indolence, and semi-consummated seduction of a rent-a-car employee set the stage for a liberatory inquisition of heteronorms and queerness. July taps into the perimenopause zeitgeist that animates Jen Beaginâs Big Swiss and Melissa Broderâs Death Valley. âNodB
Love Junkie by Robert Plunket [F]
When a picture-perfect suburban housewife's life is turned upside down, a chance brush with New York City's gay scene launches her into gainful, albeit unconventional, employment. Set at the dawn of the AIDs epidemic, Mimi Smithers, described as a "modern-day Madame Bovary," goes from planning parties in Westchester to selling used underwear with a Manhattan porn star. As beloved as it is controversial, Plunket's 1992 cult novel will get a much-deserved second life thanks to this reissue by New Directions. (Maybe this will finally galvanize Madonna, who once optioned the film rights, to finally make that movie.) âDF
Tomorrowing by Terry Bisson [F]
The newest volume in Duke Universityâs Practices series collects for the first time the late Terry Bissonâs Locus column "This Month in History," which ran for two decades. In it, the iconic "Theyâre Made Out of Meat" author weaves an alt-history of a world almost parallel to ours, featuring AI presidents, moon mountain hikes, a 196-year-old Walt Disneyâs resurrection, and a space pooch on Mars. This one promises to be a pure spectacle of speculative fiction. âDF
Chop Fry Watch Learn by Michelle T. King [NF]
A large portion of the American populace still confuses Chinese American food with Chinese food. What a delight, then, to discover this culinary history of the worldwide dissemination of that great cuisineâwhich moonlights as a biography of Chinese cookbook and TV cooking program pioneer Fu Pei-mei. âJHM
On the Couch ed. Andrew Blauner [NF]
AndrĂ© Aciman, Susie Boyt, Siri Hustvedt, Rivka Galchen, and Colm TĂłibĂn are among the 25 literary luminaries to contribute essays on Freud and his complicated legacy to this lively volume, edited by writer, editor, and literary agent Blauner. Taking tacts both personal and psychoanalytical, these essays paint a fresh, full picture of Freud's life, work, and indelible cultural impact. âSMS
Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace [NF]
Wallace is one of the best journalists (and tweeters) working today, so I'm really looking forward to his debut memoir, which chronicles growing up Black and queer in America, and navigating the world through adulthood. One of the best writers working today, Kiese Laymon, calls Another Word for Love as âOne of the most soulfully crafted memoirs Iâve ever read. I couldnât figure out how Carvell Wallace blurred time, region, care, and sexuality into something so different from anything Iâve read before." âSMS
The Devil's Best Trick by Randall Sullivan [NF]
A cultural history interspersed with memoir and reportage, Sullivan's latest explores our ever-changing understandings of evil and the devil, from Egyptian gods and the Book of Job to the Salem witch trials and Black Mass ceremonies. Mining the work of everyone from Zoraster, Plato, and John Milton to Edgar Allen Poe, Aleister Crowley, and Charles Baudelaire, this sweeping book chronicles evil and the devil in their many forms. --SMS
The Book Against Death by Elias Canetti, tr. Peter Filkins [NF]
In this newly-translated collection, Nobel laureate Canetti, who once called himself death's "mortal enemy," muses on all that death inevitably touchesâfrom the smallest ant to the Greek godsâand condemns death as a byproduct of war and despots' willingness to use death as a pathway to power. By means of this book's very publication, Canetti somewhat succeeds in staving off death himself, ensuring that his words live on forever. âDF
Rise of a Killah by Ghostface Killah [NF]
"Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why did Judas rat to the Romans while Jesus slept?" Ghostface Killah has always asked the big questions. Here's another one: Who needs to read a blurb on a literary site to convince them to read Ghost's memoir? âJHM
May 21
Exhibit by R.O. Kwon [F]
It's been six years since Kwon's debut, The Incendiaries, hit shelves, and based on that book's flinty prose alone, her latest would be worth a read. But it's also a tale of awakeningâof its protagonist's latent queerness, and of the "unquiet spirit of an ancestor," that the author herself calls so "shot through with physical longing, queer lust, and kink" that she hopes her parents will never read it. Tantalizing enough for you? âJHM
Cecilia by K-Ming Chang [F]
Chang, the author of Bestiary, Gods of Want, and Organ Meats, returns with this provocative and oft-surreal novella. While the story is about two childhood friends who became estranged after a bizarre sexual encounter but re-connect a decade later, itâs also an exploration of how the human body and its excretions can be both pleasurable and disgusting. âCK
The Great State of West Florida by Kent Wascom [F]
The Great State of West Florida is Wascom's latest gothicomic novel set on Florida's apocalyptic coast. A gritty, ominous book filled with doomed Floridians, the passages fly by with sentences that delight in propulsive excess. In the vein of Thomas McGuane's early novels or Brian De Palma's heyday, this stylized, savory, and witty novel wields pulp with care until it blooms into a new strain of American gothic. âZachary Issenberg
Cartoons by Kit Schluter [F]
Bursting with Kafkaesque absurdism and a hearty dab of abstraction, Schluterâs Cartoons is an animated vignette of life's minutae. From the ravings of an existential microwave to a pencil that is afraid of paper, Schluterâs episodic outrĂ© oozes with animism and uncanniness. A grand addition to City Lightâs repertoire, it will serve as a zany reminder of the lengths to which great fiction can stretch. âDF
May 28
Lost Writings by Mina Loy, ed. Karla Kelsey [F]
In the early 20th century, avant-garde author, visual artist, and gallerist Mina Loy (1882â1966) led an astonishing creative life amid European and American modernist circles; she satirized Futurists, participated in Surrealist performance art, and created paintings and assemblages in addition to writing about her experiences in male-dominated fields of artistic practice. Diligent feminist scholars and art historians have long insisted on her cultural significance, yet the first Loy retrospective wasnât until 2023. Now Karla Kelsey, a poet and essayist, unveils two never-before-published, autobiographical midcentury manuscripts by Loy, The Child and the Parent and Islands in the Air, written from the 1930s to the 1950s. It's never a bad time to be re-rediscovered. âNodB
I'm a Fool to Want You by Camila Sosa Villada, tr. Kit Maude [F]
Villada, whose debut novel Bad Girls, also translated by Maude, captured the travesti experience in Argentina, returns with a short story collection that runs the genre gamut from gritty realism and social satire to science fiction and fantasy. The throughline is Villada's boundless imagination, whether she's conjuring the chaos of the Mexican Inquisition or a trans sex worker befriending a down-and-out Billie Holiday. Angie Cruz calls this "one of my favorite short-story collections of all time." âSMS
The Editor by Sara B. Franklin [NF]
Franklin's tenderly written and meticulously researched biography of Judith Jonesâthe legendary Knopf editor who worked with such authors as John Updike, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bowen, Anne Tyler, and, perhaps most consequentially, Julia Childâwas largely inspired by Franklin's own friendship with Jones in the final years of her life, and draws on a rich trove of interviews and archives. The Editor retrieves Jones from the margins of publishing history and affirms her essential role in shaping the postwar cultural landscape, from fiction to cooking and beyond. âSMS
The Book-Makers by Adam Smyth [NF]
A history of the book told through 18 microbiographies of particularly noteworthy historical personages who made them? If that's not enough to convince you, consider this: the small press is represented here by Nancy Cunard, the punchy and enormously influential founder of Hours Press who romanced both Aldous Huxley and Ezra Pound, knew Hemingway and Joyce and Langston Hughes and William Carlos Williams, and has her own MI5 file. Also, the subject of the binding chapter is named "William Wildgoose." âJHM
June
June 4
The Future Was Color by Patrick Nathan [F]
A gay Hungarian immigrant writing crappy monster movies in the McCarthy-era Hollywood studio system gets swept up by a famous actress and brought to her estate in Malibu to write what he really cares aboutâand realizes he can never escape his traumatic past. Sunset Boulevard is shaking. âJHM
A Cage Went in Search of a Bird [F]
This collection brings together a who's who of literary writersâ10 of them, to be preciseâ to write Kafka fanfiction, from Joshua Cohen to Yiyun Li. Then it throws in weirdo screenwriting dynamo Charlie Kaufman, for good measure. A boon for Kafkaheads everywhere. âJHM
We Refuse by Kellie Carter Jackson [NF]
Jackson, a historian and professor at Wellesley College, explores the past and present of Black resistance to white supremacy, from work stoppages to armed revolt. Paying special attention to acts of resistance by Black women, Jackson attempts to correct the historical record while plotting a path forward. Jelani Cobb describes this "insurgent history" as "unsparing, erudite, and incisive." âSMS
Holding It Together by Jessica Calarco [NF]
Sociologist Calarco's latest considers how, in lieu of social safety nets, the U.S. has long relied on women's labor, particularly as caregivers, to hold society together. Calarco argues that while other affluent nations cover the costs of care work and direct significant resources toward welfare programs, American women continue to bear the brunt of the unpaid domestic labor that keeps the nation afloat. Anne Helen Petersen calls this "a punch in the gut and a call to action." âSMS
Miss May Does Not Exist by Carrie Courogen [NF]
A biography of Elaine Mayâwhat more is there to say? I cannot wait to read this chronicle of May's life, work, and genius by one of my favorite writers and tweeters. Claire Dederer calls this "the biography Elaine May deserves"âwhich is to say, as brilliant as she was. âSMS
Fire Exit by Morgan Talty [F]
Talty, whose gritty story collection Night of the Living Rez was garlanded with awards, weighs the concept of blood quantumâa measure that federally recognized tribes often use to determine Indigenous membershipâin his debut novel. Although Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, his narrator is on the outside looking in, a working-class white man named Charles who grew up on Maineâs Penobscot Reservation with a Native stepfather and friends. Now Charles, across the river from the reservation and separated from his biological daughter, who lives there, ponders his exclusion in a novel that stokes controversy around the terms of belonging. âNodB
June 11
The Material by Camille Bordas [F]
My high school English teacher, a somewhat dowdy but slyly comical religious brother, had a saying about teaching high school students: "They don't remember the material, but they remember the shtick." Leave it to a well-named novel about stand-up comedy (by the French author of How to Behave in a Crowd) to make you remember both. --SMS
Ask Me Again by Clare Sestanovich [F]
Sestanovich follows up her debut story collection, Objects of Desire, with a novel exploring a complicated friendship over the years. While Eva and Jamie are seemingly oppositesâshe's a reserved South Brooklynite, while he's a brash Upper Manhattaniteâthey bond over their innate curiosity. Their paths ultimately diverge when Eva settles into a conventional career as Jamie channels his rebelliousness into politics. Ask Me Again speaks to anyone who has ever wondered whether going against the grain is in itself a matter of privilege. Jenny Offill calls this "a beautifully observed and deeply philosophical novel, which surprises and delights at every turn." âLA
Disordered Attention by Claire Bishop [NF]
Across four essays, art historian and critic Bishop diagnoses how digital technology and the attention economy have changed the way we look at art and performance today, identifying trends across the last three decades. A perfect read for fans of Anna Kornbluh's Immediacy, or the Style of Too Late Capitalism (also from Verso).
War by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, tr. Charlotte Mandell [F]
For years, literary scholars mourned the lost manuscripts of CĂ©line, the acclaimed and reviled French author whose work was stolen from his Paris apartment after he fled to Germany in 1944, fearing punishment for his collaboration with the Nazis. But, with the recent discovery of those fabled manuscripts, War is now seeing the light of day thanks to New Directions (for anglophone readers, at leastâthe French have enjoyed this one since 2022 courtesy of Gallimard). Adam Gopnik writes of War, "A more intense realization of the horrors of the Great War has never been written."Â âDF
The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater [NF]
In his debut memoir, Leadbeater revisits the decade he spent working as Joan Didion's personal assistant. While he enjoyed the benefits of working with Didionâher friendship and mentorship, the more glamorous appointments on her social calendarâhe was also struggling with depression, addiction, and profound loss. Leadbeater chronicles it all in what ChloĂ© Cooper Jones calls "a beautiful catalog of twin yearnings: to be seen and to disappear; to belong everywhere and nowhere; to go forth and to return home, andâabove all elseâto love and to be loved." âSMS
Out of the Sierra by Victoria Blanco [NF]
Blanco weaves storytelling with old-fashioned investigative journalism to spotlight the endurance of Mexico's RarĂĄmuri people, one of the largest Indigenous tribes in North America, in the face of environmental disasters, poverty, and the attempts to erase their language and culture. This is an important book for our times, dealing with pressing issues such as colonialism, migration, climate change, and the broken justice system. âCK
Any Person Is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert [NF]
Gabbert is one of my favorite living writers, whether she's deconstructing a poem or tweeting about Seinfeld. Her essays are what I love most, and her newest collectionâfollowing 2020's The Unreality of Memoryâsees Gabbert in rare form: witty and insightful, clear-eyed and candid. I adored these essays, and I hope (the inevitable success of) this book might augur something an essay-collection renaissance. (Seriously! Publishers! Where are the essay collections!) âSMS
Tehrangeles by Porochista Khakpour [F]
Khakpour's wit has always been keen, and it's hard to imagine a writer better positioned to take the concept of Shahs of Sunset and make it literary. "Like Little Women on an ayahuasca trip," says Kevin Kwan, "Tehrangeles is delightfully twisted and heartfelt."Â Â âJHM
Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers [NF]
The moment I saw this book's titleâwhich comes from the opening (and, as it happens, my favorite) track on Mitchell's 1971 masterpiece BlueâI knew it would be one of my favorite reads of the year. Powers, one of the very best music critics we've got, masterfully guides readers through Mitchell's life and work at a fascinating slant, her approach both sweeping and intimate as she occupies the dual roles of biographer and fan. âSMS
All Desire Is a Desire for Being by René Girard, ed. Cynthia L. Haven [NF]
I'll be honestâthe title alone stirs something primal in me. In honor of Girard's centennial, Penguin Classics is releasing a smartly curated collection of his most poignantâand timelyâessays, touching on everything from violence to religion to the nature of desire. Comprising essays selected by the scholar and literary critic Cynthia L. Haven, who is also the author of the first-ever biographical study of Girard, Evolution of Desire, this book is "essential reading for Girard devotees and a perfect entrĂ©e for newcomers," per Maria Stepanova. âDF
June 18
Craft by Ananda Lima [F]
Can you imagine a situation in which interconnected stories about a writer who sleeps with the devil at a Halloween party and can't shake him over the following decades wouldn't compel? Also, in one of the stories, New York Cityâs Penn Station is an analogue for hell, which is both funny and accurate. âJHM
Parade by Rachel Cusk [F]
Rachel Cusk has a new novel, her first in three yearsâthe anticipation is self-explanatory. âSMS
Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi [F]
Multimedia polymath and gender-norm disrupter Emezi, who just dropped an Afropop EP under the name Akwaeke, examines taboo and trauma in their creative work. This literary thriller opens with an upscale sex party and escalating violence, and although pre-pub descriptions leave much to the imagination (promising âthe elite underbelly of a Nigerian cityâ and âa tangled web of sex and lies and corruptionâ), Emezi can be counted upon for an ambience of dread and a feverish momentum. âNodB
When the Clock Broke by John Ganz [NF]
I was having a conversation with multiple brilliant, thoughtful friends the other day, and none of them remembered the year during which the Battle of Waterloo took place. Which is to say that, as a rule, we should all learn our history better. So it behooves us now to listen to John Ganz when he tells us that all the wackadoodle fascist right-wing nonsense we can't seem to shake from our political system has been kicking around since at least the early 1990s. âJHM
Night Flyer by Tiya Miles [NF]
Miles is one of our greatest living historians and a beautiful writer to boot, as evidenced by her National Book Awardâwinning book All That She Carried. Her latest is a reckoning with the life and legend of Harriet Tubman, which Miles herself describes as an "impressionistic biography." As in all her work, Miles fleshes out the complexity, humanity, and social and emotional world of her subject. Tubman biographer Catherine Clinton says Miles "continues to captivate readers with her luminous prose, her riveting attention to detail, and her continuing genius to bring the past to life." âSMS
God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer by Joseph Earl Thomas [F]
Thomas's debut novel comes just two years after a powerful memoir of growing up Black, gay, nerdy, and in poverty in 1990s Philadelphia. Here, he returns to themes and settings that in that book, Sink, proved devastating, and throws post-service military trauma into the mix. âJHM
June 25
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing [NF]
I've been a fan of Laing's since The Lonely City, a formative read for a much-younger me (and I'd suspect for many Millions readers), so I'm looking forward to her latest, an inquiry into paradise refracted through the experience of restoring an 18th-century garden at her home the English countryside. As always, her life becomes a springboard for exploring big, thorny ideas (no pun intended)âin this case, the possibilities of gardens and what it means to make paradise on earth. âSMS
Cue the Sun! by Emily Nussbaum [NF]
Emily Nussbaum is pretty much the reason I started writing. Her 2019 collection of television criticism, I Like to Watch, was something of a Bible for college-aged me (and, in fact, was the first book I ever reviewed), and I've been anxiously awaiting her next book ever since. It's finally arrived, in the form of an utterly devourable cultural history of reality TV. Samantha Irby says, "Only Emily Nussbaum could get me to read, and love, a book about reality TV rather than just watching it," and David Grann remarks, "Itâs rare for a book to feel alive, but this one does." âSMS
Woman of Interest by Tracy O'Neill [NF]
OâNeill's first work of nonfictionâan intimate memoir written with the narrative propulsion of a detective novelâfinds her on the hunt for her biological mother, who she worries might be dying somewhere in South Korea. As she uncovers the truth about her enigmatic mother with the help of a private investigator, her journey increasingly becomes one of self-discovery. ChloĂ© Cooper Jones writes that Woman of Interest âsolidifies her status as one of our greatest living prose stylists.â âLA
Dancing on My Own by Simon Wu [NF]
New Yorkers reading this list may have witnessed Wu's artful curation at the Brooklyn Museum, or the Whitney, or the Museum of Modern Art. It makes one wonder how much he curated the order of these excellent, wide-ranging essays, which meld art criticism, personal narrative, and travel writingâand count Cathy Park Hong and Claudia Rankine as fans. âJHM
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Thatâs What Language Can Do: The Millions Interviews PĂĄdraig Ă Tuama
âFaith shelters some,â PĂĄdraig Ă Tuama writes, âand it shadows others.â
We are luckyâthose of us who are believers, and those of us who are notâwhen our theologians are poets. Ă Tuama makes me think about belief, God, and language in such a jarring, revelatory way. Afterward, I donât want to return to my tired assumptions.
I felt invited into In the Shelter not because it was about a life quite like mineâalthough we both come from the Catholic traditionâbut through Ă Tuamaâs syntax; how his sentences move from past reflection to present encounter. I often think of good books as journeys, and all of the kinesthetic, profluent metaphors and feelings that go along with such movement, and In the Shelter feels like it moves.
PĂĄdraig Ă Tuama is a poet, theologian, and host of Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios, where he is the Theologian in Residence. From 2014 to 2019, Ă Tuama was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Irelandâs oldest peace and reconciliation organization. His poetry collections include Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, Sorry for Your Troubles and Readings from the Books of Exile. He is the author of In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World, and, along with Glenn Jordan, Borders & Belonging.
We spoke about language as exploration, the necessity of questioning, and how we seek sanctuary in this world.
The Millions: Early in the book, you write of being in the monastic community at TaizĂ©, France, during Lent in 1998. Each morning began with reflections in English, French, German, or Spanish, and a monk âwould ask, moving casually from language to language, which tongues he should use in order to be understood by everyone.â Then, on Holy Thursday, he reads from the Gospel of John, and others in the group read it in Dutch and Norwegian. Thereâs this swirl of language as a glorious but also frayed route toward belief throughout your book, and you include moments of Irish as well in the text. Where does language carry or compel you? Does language bring you closer to faith, to God, or to somewhere else?
PĂĄdraig Ă Tuama: When I was a child, my mother wasnât very well. So, from September 1978 (I was two, soon to be three) I spent a few hours a day with a woman known only to me as Bean an TĂ. This lasted for two years. She was from Baile an FheirtĂ©araigh, an Irish speaking village in West Kerry and was up in Cork city living with her niece. My dad told me later that heâd heard her try to speak in English once, but she was utterly confused. She had some vocabulary, but no sense of the English language. So, for two years I was surrounded by her Irish, fluent as the salt in the sea. I remember she had a gravelly voice. I remember she wore lots of navy. I remember that I had a plastic cupâwas it yellow or red?âfrom which to drink milk halfway through the day. It was a kindergarten of sorts, there were other children there too. I thought she was two hundred years old. She gave me language. Bean an TĂ means Woman of the House, a term meaning landlady perhaps. I was affronted when I heard another woman being called Bean an TĂ years later, thinking that I knew the one and only. She was from the Ă Bric family, a well known clan in the Dingle peninsula.
All of this goes to say that the question of language, or, to be more accurate, languages has been a part of my life as long as my life has been my life. I loved speaking in Irish and English, once I realized that I could speak them both already. My older sister Ăine started learning French at school so I begged her to teach me anything she could. When my mother had a small accident involving two German motorbikers, they were invited (read: forced) to our house for dinner. I sat next to them admiring their sleek jawlines, begging them to teach me anything in German. My auntie Mary is deaf, so I asked her for a sheet of paper with the alphabet for Irish Sign on it.
You get the drift.
I donât know if language is a pathway to God. But I know itâs a pathway. For me, learning that Jesus of Nazareth didnât say âbe quietâ to the waves in the gospel of Mark, but rather said âbe muzzledâ fills me with wonder. I am not particularly interested in what it meansâbecause that implies it definitely means something, or, even worse, definitely means one thingâbut Iâm transfixed by what this implies. It implies so much: the sea like a rabid dog, growling, gazing, muzzled temporarily, saliva and ferocity all crowding the experience. Itâs the kind of language that makes literature literature. It doesnât have to mean one thing in order to mean anything. It is like a mouthpiece at the edge of the universe telling its own story to itself.
Language compels me towards more exploration. Sometimes I feel like language is a tool for exploring the underground, the layers of rock underneath the assumptions and messages that are being communicated. When I was 20 and a man who was trying to cure me of being gay told me that my problem was language, I was accidentally landed into an experience of confidence. He claimed to be an authority in religion and psychology, so Iâa good Catholic, always submissive to authorityâtook him at his word. But when I asked him what his obsession with teaching me how to objectify women was, he became angry and told me my problem was language. And suddenly I was more shiny than Iâd ever been before. I saw through his trickery. He was a man making up language for the mouth of God, and he was pisspoor at it. I left and never went back.
Thatâs what language can do, when language is doing its work: it can spur extraordinary action.
Pisspoorâlook at that delicious alliteration. P.P. Two little explosive sounds right next to each other. I needed those sounds to describe the explosion of life that happened in me after I realized that language could be part of being more alive. I know Iâm not describing anything like a pathway to beliefâbecause mostly, Iâve been affected by an awful kind of religion, so Iâve needed language to lead me away from it, not towards it. Godâs own anarchy, giving humanity the faculty by which God created the world. We can create too. And destroy. Language can be a terror, as we know well.
I know. Iâm still not answering. Look at all this language. Once a man I know was telling a group of people how tired he was of fighting for his rights when his rights were being denied by those who said they spoke for God. He was in a room of a retreat at Corrymeela, a reconciliation community I was leading at the time. A woman sitting next to him said. âItâs okay to rest, others will do the standing for you.â Something about the quality of her words meant he heard them. He cried. The seventh day. It was evening. It was morning.
TM: Thereâs a real strand of Ignatian spirituality in this book. While in a course of Ignatian spiritual direction in Australia, you learned the vision of the world that transformed Saint Ignatius of Loyola: âThe Glory of God is found in a human being fully alive.â You also ponder the humanity of Jesus: âWe can ask about when he fell, or when he cried, or when he had nightmares. But we must also ask when he learned truth, or courage, or integrity. When did he learn the human art of apology? How did he live with his own body, the move from boy to man, the richness of a life lived in tension?â What has the corporeal sense of Jesus meant to you? Do you think that people fully reckon with hisâand maybe ourâflesh and blood?
PĂT: Years ago, when I was definitely more religious, I was teaching a class about the Stations of the Cross. It was a class of adults. I had been doing a daily practice of the Stations of the Cross myself for five years by that stage. Iâve always found the three-fold falling of Jesus to be very affecting. I had some images of Jesus that I was using as we were considering the walk of torture for a man about to be executed.
All of this was in a room in Australia. I was the only Catholic, and I was, in a certain sense, trying to prove to the Evangelicals in the room that Catholics, too, can be Christians. I have all kinds of problems with everything that was happening.
Anyway, after the third âJesus Falls to the Groundâ Station, I asked the people in the room what theyâd say to Jesus. A woman named Julie said sheâd ask him if it was worth it. Julie had lots of piercings and tattoos and half her head was shaved. The hair she had was dyed pink and green. She wore Doc Marten boots, and lots of leather. She was magnificent. Her own self. I hear she went to do a degree in law and worked in public defense of young people whoâd been criminalized by a law system bent on marginalizing the already marginalized. She was somewhat of a scandal in this class because she would regularly say she wasnât a Christian, even though she was on devotional course meant only for Christians. I admired her so much. There was something about the disposition of her question that moved me deeply. I think it was the first time Iâd ever heard someone pose a question aboutâor, even more audaciously, toâJesus without expecting they knew the answer. I want what she has, I remember thinking, which was: more distance from religion in order to be able to see a little more clearly.
I have never seen her sinceâthis was 20 years agoâbut I think about her regularly. She gave me what others resented her for having: distance and non-predatory curiosity. She was able to ask a question of Jesus of Nazareth without having formulated what she thought his answer should be. In the freedom she held in herself, her Jesus was also freer. I could imagine him saying No, itâs not. Get me out of here in response to her.
So whatever my relationship to the complicated question of Jesusâs identity is (and I wrote complicated essays about the hypostatic union in my degree), I always want the curiosity of the brilliant Julie. Iâm not interested in being part of a gang who are so desperate to prove we love Jesus that we donât take him seriously. I donât know if I love him. I certainly respect him. I have many questions. I imagine heâd have been exhausting as a friend. I imagine he must have had some kind of energy in him that drew people to him with a heavy appeal. Iâve got a few friends like that. I am drawn to them. I come away depleted sometimes.
Who taught him to read? Was he interested in spelling? Did he skip formalities for the spirit of things? What did he say about Herod when nobody was writing down? Why did he tell the story of the desert with a devil in it? Wasnât it just himself? When he said Why have you forsaken me, was that the end of his belief? It seems to me that when he posted three friends to keep watch as he prayed that he was leaving room for escape. Who is the escaping Jesus? What would he say?
To take Jesus of Nazareth seriously is to take ourselves seriously, I think. And consequently, to treat Jesus like some kind of perfect boy god is to deny the complexity of the secular everyday today. Iâve still got questions. I think I always will.
TM: You talk about studying redaction criticism during your theology schooling: âthe skill of discovering how the texts that we now accept as a literary whole may be the product of decades of editing, with changes, additions, and extractions having happened.â Iâm curious: do you find the action of memoir as a form of redaction criticism? What does it mean for you to revisit the stories of your life?
PĂT: A few years ago, I was in a Swatch Watch shop in New York City. I needed a new strap. The people were very friendly in there and after Iâd gotten a new strap, the man working there said, âDo you want to come to a Swatch party on Thursday night?â This was not what I was expecting him to say. âWhat happens at a Swatch party?â I asked. âOh all kinds of people come and they share their Swatch Story,â he said.
Swatch Story. Jesus. I could almost hear the voice of the branding consultant who came up with this inanity. People had sat in a room wondering how to build their corporate reach, and some overpaid person came up with the idea that the Swatch Story was a way to make people buy more shit.
I didnât go. Although, I wonder what would have happened if I had. I hope that at that party there were small corners of people talking about what really mattered in their lives. I hope people made friends that night. I hope there are groupings of people who, when someone asks them, "How did you all meet?" answer, "Oh, at some party one Thursday night." They forget that it was for a brand of watch. They made human in a place where money was the imagination.
Story is everywhere these days as a commodity. And thatâs a betrayal of the brilliance of story. Story, if it means anything, is always changing. Story should never be convenient, or pretty, or nice. Stories should have the capacity for changeâor, at least, the people who tell them should. If Iâm telling the same old story at 60 that I am at 45 then I think Iâll have failed. Iâm uninterested in being outraged because sometimes stories of outrage are being told by people who are profiting from my outrage while dodging accountability.
Stories are extraordinarily entertaining, but can leave corpses in their wake. Who is made a hero of a story? Who the scapegoat? How can a new point of view be told? How can a story be told anew? How can powers be re-examined? How can I be suspicious of the neat in a neatly told story? Who is the teller? Is it me? Am I over-identifying with the me in memoir? How can I make plural where commodity insists on single? I need to be made exile and made new. Stories have borders, too. And walls. And guns to keep certain people out. So I need all redaction, all historical criticism, all literary theories, and queering and turning upside down. Life is not a story, but storiesâmaybeâcan help us live a life. So theyâd better be good enough.
TM: You intersperse poems in this book, and one in particular, âStaring Match,â really paused me: âI stare at the icon, / the sacrament, and / the sacred story.â I think staring is a form of the ecstatic momentâour eyes locked somewhere, lost and drifting. What causes you to stare, to hold yourself to the point where you canât look away?
PĂT: Iâm intrigued that youâve found such ecstasy in that poem. And Iâm moved, too. That you found this in the poem speaks to me that the poem is doing its work; in that the words made space for you to put yourself into them. Were we sharing a pot of tea (Assam, made with leaves, stewed for seven minutes, proper boiling water. Microwave? Get behind me, Satan.) Iâd want to ask you more about the poem, because you are participating in the making of the book, in the sense that youâre engaging with a conversation that Iâm only an eavesdropper to.
All of that goes to say that if ever anyone ever says to me âI liked your book,â I always ask, âWhy?" Not because Iâm interested in checking out whether theyâve read it or not, but because they always say something interesting in answer to the why. Usually I realize the book is just a prompt for them to have a conversation with themselves.
Iâd gotten completely stuck halfway through writing In the Shelter. It wasnât that I didnât have a plan, as much as I wasnât sure what the point of writing something new was. I was reading Adam Phillipsâs book In Writing, where he says that most things are written in order to be forgotten; but what happens in the experience of reading is what is meant to be remembered. It changed everything for me. I went back to writing.
Staring, for me, in the context of that poem, was actually an accusation. Iâd been schooled in the art of the devoted gaze, the gaze of love, the gaze of adoration. I needed something more like the fuck-you-glare towards an icon. If an icon is a window into God, then I had something to say. So much of In the Shelter is a landscape of anger; as well as a landscape of slowly stripping away denial about the violence of religion. Looking at the placid face of Jesus in an icon, I was angry, and in staring at him (through him, to him, with him) I was able to hear parts of my own life that had questions. I didnât think he was cowed by my anger. I get the impression that if he was listening, heâd have been glad for it. It was my hidden-and-stowed-away questions that required me to get to the stage of exploding towards the very source of the very source. It was such a relief. Like many, Iâd found myself caught in a cycle of leaving a suitcase of questions, objections, fantasies and furies at the doorway of the halls of prayer. Learning to bring a few of those items into chapels helped me take whatever it is that religion does more seriously.
The last word in that poem is "hungry." Hunger, in Irish, is Gorta, a word we use for a bodyâs hunger, but also a word we use to imply the Great FamineâAn Gorta MĂłrâa famine that was not a potato famine, but was, like most famines, influenced heavily by the political machinations of the day. While perhaps two million Irish people starved to death from the years 1845 to 1847, the British landlords (grabbed lands, I hope you didnât need me to say that) were making money by supplying over half the corn and half the cattle to Britain. Hungry people were filling ships with foodstuffs theyâd farmed but would never be nourished from. People who couldnât pay the rent to live on the land that had been stolen from them were being evicted. Kindly neighbors who brought in evicted neighbors were subject to a new law that made such hospitality a crime. All of this being watched over by people who said they had God in mind. Jesus Christ. He deserves everything he can get.
TM: You wrote of living overseas, and sharing an occasional meal with people who were lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and âhaunted and loved by God,â but who âhad found the welcome of the church to be more airy than substantial.â You receive a call that the local priest wants to come to the house and join the dinner, but the caller says the priest âis keen to be seen to respond.â You focus on that language, and consider a few paradoxes. The priest came, brought some wine, and you spent time together. You remain friends. But you let him know that his presence there was fraught, and that what you needed to see âwas less his kind words around the privacy of a table and more his public words in the halls of the powerful. Show us your change, please, I asked.â I canât help but think of your recent erasure poem in response to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faithâs statement on the blessing of same-sex unions. Do you feel, as you write in the book, that âfaith shelters some, and it shadows othersâ?
PĂT: God almighty, that priest. He was a lovely man. Heâs still a priest, and one of the good ones. But the level of entitlement he had to send a message to meâvia a secretaryâthat heâd heard I had a gathering of LGBT people in my house and he wanted to join, in order to be observed to be doing the right thing⊠that left me speechless. Of course he couldnât come. I wouldnât even tell him the night of the week, and I was aghast at how heâd found out. But he came alone to talk about the message.
There was so little consideration of the safety of the people around that table. Many of them would have feared being fired by himâor, at least, his machineryâhad the story of their sexuality become known to him. Was the priest gay? Well, perhaps. But in this instance, unfortunately, who cares? There was a roomful of people seeking sanctuary around a table hoping that a Thursday evening in a kitchen in West Belfast could give enough courage to survive till the next month. His presence there would have been a little echo of empire.
It was a demonstration of the chasm between intention and impact. He would have said that he intended no harm, he intended no worry or threat. But actually his intentions werenât really of any interest or consequence. His presence there, his self-invited presence, would have had an impact far beyond any intention heâd have used to butter over whatever awkwardness heâd have felt. Iâve grown suspicious of my own intentions, too. Itâs all well and good for me to say I mean well. But Iâve been alive long enough to know that when I say I mean well, that thatâs only sometimes true, and even when it is true, it can still wreak havoc.
Anyway, like I said. He was a lovely guy, but the luxury of his imagined innocence was a luxury he alone could luxuriate in. I stay in touch, I do. I text him, too. Iâm always happy to hear from him, and support him if I can, or ask him for his help if he can give it. Heâs not some boogie monster. But he needed to wise up about the impact of his association on a room of people at risk of unemployment.
So of course the establishment of religion works for some and not for others. For some it is important to find a pathway out, knowing that your imagination and safety and creativity might find life outside the borders of religion. Others find religion a salve, and I believe them. Some people say that such violences of religion are evidence of establishment, not Jesus. But I donât accept that at all. Jesus said many things that, today, would not be considered acceptable. Sheep and Goats and Jews and Dogs and Belief and Gehenna and Pharisees and Divorce and Eunuchs and Devils, oh my. I would love to talk to him. But heâs not an innocent in the corner with angels dancing round his head. Thereâs blood on his hands, and not just his own. Thereâs blood on mine, too. Not just my own either.
That recent statementâor Responsumâfrom the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was such a strange pronouncement. It was ostensibly aimed towards LGBT people. But any Catholic LGBT person already knew that any space for our unions to receive blessing was unlikely to come from the top. In reality I think that the true target of that document were allies of LGBT people within the structures of the church. It was a shot across the bow of a Cathedral. You next.
Such a use of language from such a platform was a complete failure of language, and authority. So I wanted to mine for something of curiosity within a text that was utterly predictable in its aggression.
Groups of belongingâwhether thatâs a country, a religion, a gender, an ethnicity, or a clubâhave a long history of violent bordermaking. Some groups are easy to join and impossible to leave. Others deny anything outside them exists. Some are almost impossible to join, butâll kick you out if you sneeze the wrong question. What is the quality of fluid belonging, is something thatâs at the heart of my interest. I donât need toâor, my god, want toâbelong to all the groups. Every group has membership requirements, etc. Thatâs probably okay, or at least, it could be. But itâs the quality of entry and departure that interests me. And the quality of the stories told about those who left too; and those who wanted to leave but didnât for fear of repercussions; and those who needed to; and those who stayed, too; and all of us in the in-between.
Weâre back at story. I know. How neat.
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