Sigrid Nunez recommends
Cheri (2023)Jo Ann Beard"Beard honours the beautiful, the sacred, and the comic in life, and for life's inescapable cruelites and woes she offers the wisdom of a sage."How to Love Your Daughter (2023)Hila Blum"A mother's adoration of her only child might be commonplace, but it is never simple. Hila Blum explores one particular mother-daughter relationship with remarkable acuity. Her novel takes us on a suspenseful psychological journey as she plumbs a great mystery: how the purest maternal love can lead to the most unwanted and even disastrous consequences." A Very Old Man (2022)Italo Svevo"For Svevo, life itself is a fatal pathology, the human condition a sickness for which there is no cure. There exists a treatment, however: laughter. Though the miseries of old age and fear of death are central to his late stories, a huge amount of laughter occurs in A Very Old Man." Trust (2022)Hernán Diaz"Though set in a historical New York, Trust speaks to matters of the most urgent significance to the present day. Money, power, class, marital and filial relations, the roles played by trust and betrayal in human affairs--Diaz's development of his chosen themes is deeply insightful. Cleverly constructed and rich in surprises, this splendid novel offers serious ideas and serious pleasures on every beautifully composed page." Seven Steeples (2022)Sara Baume"It takes both daring and humility to write a book as unique as Seven Steeples. In unfailingly precise and lyrical prose, and with a religious attention to even the humblest things of this world, Sara Baume pays homage to nature, to hearth and home, and to the miracle of a love engendered by the union of two solitaries." City of Incurable Women (2022)Maud Casey"City of Incurable Women is a brilliant exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteria - and the curiously hysterical response to it commonly exhibited by medical men. It is a novel of powerful originality, riveting historical interest, and haunting lyrical beauty." Joan is Okay (2022)Weike Wang"Incisive yet tender, written with elegant style and delicious verve. Joan isn't just okay, she's wonderful. I could listen to her smart, witty voice forever." The Woman from Uruguay (2021)Pedro Mairal"Beautifully written and translated, The Woman from Uruguay is a work of exquisite style, shrewd philosophical insight, and deftly controlled suspense. A searing tale of seduction and betrayal, both wryly comic and deeply serious." Morningside Heights (2021)Joshua Henkin"Reading Morningside Heights is an emotional experience. How much can befall a marriage, and what extraordinary demands must sometimes be met for loved ones to endure. But it is a delightful read as well, because the people here are such thoroughly engaging company. So much that happens in this book is unexpected that it reads at the pace of a suspense novel, but its greatest achievement is to make us feel that we are in the presence of real people, living out their joys and sorrows and making their way in the real world." A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself (2021)Peter Ho Davies"There are some stories that require as much courage to write as they do art. Peter Ho Davies’s achingly honest, searingly comic portrait of fatherhood is just such a story. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself enacts to profound effect the dark shames, fears, and absurdities that are an inescapable part of family life. The world needs more stories like this one, more of this kind of courage, more of this kind of love." What Happens at Night (2020)Peter Cameron"In his characteristically precise and lucid prose, Peter Cameron invents a virtuosic tale that is by turns terrifying, comic, and heartbreaking. We do not always know whether we are in the realm of the real or the hallucinatory in this thrillingly mysterious and gorgeously written novel. What is never in doubt is that we are in the hands of a ravishing stylist and a supremely gifted storyteller." Must I Go (2020)Yiyun Li"Any new book by Yiyun Li is cause for celebration, but now more than ever do we need the clarity and humaneness of her vision. Must I Go takes us into her familiar and powerful emotional territory, brilliantly exploring how what we love, what we lose, and what we mourn make, unmake, and remake us into the human beings that we are." 22 Minutes of Unconditional Love (2020)Daphne Merkin"Daphne Merkin meets the formidable challenge of describing female lust and romantic obsession with all the desired daring, candor, and skill. The result is a bracingly honest, keenly insightful, utterly compelling book." The Weekend (2020)Charlotte Wood"I plan to read this insightful, poignant and fiercely honest novel about female friendship and female ageing a second time, then seek out every other book its marvellous author has written." How Beautiful We Were (2020)Imbolo Mbue"How Beautiful We Were goes to the heart of one of the most urgent matters of the day. The highly suspenseful story of an African village’s struggle for survival and justice in the face of ruthless American corporate greed is written with remarkable acuity and compassion. Mbue has given us a book with the richness and power of a great contemporary fable, and a heroine for our time." A Girl's Story (2020)Annie Ernaux"Another deeply felt, fearlessly honest exploration of female desire, shame, and intellectual passion from the incomparable Annie Ernaux." Divide Me by Zero (2019)Lara Vapnyar"Superb and poignant, Lara Vapnyar writes about love and others difficulties with passion, wit, and probing intelligence." The Grammarians (2019)Cathleen Schine"The mother of the beguilingly unusual twins whose lives unfold in this sublime comic novel could not adore them more than I do. A singular delight for anyone who has ever marveled at the quirks and beauties and frustrations of English grammar, and a fascinating portrait of the passions and dramas of fierce familial love." Books containing stories by Sigrid Nunez
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(b.1951)