Sanjena Sathian recommends
I Love You So Much it's Killing Us Both (2024)Mariah Stovall"I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both is a funny, biting, and big-hearted coming of age story. Enter these pages for Mariah Stovall's witty renderings of the contradictions of millennial youth and for her lovingly excavated cultural artifacts; stay for her poignant reflections on what it means to grow into an adult, to be a friend, and to belong to our moment in history."Hope (2023)Andrew Ridker"A funny, incisive, and keen novel of family, citizenship, and the fundamental American promise. . . . Sweeping yet intimate. Ridker's distinctive talent is his eye for both realism and comedy." The Dog of the North (2023)Elizabeth McKenzie"What a wonderfully weird yet deeply familiar world Elizabeth McKenzie has sketched in The Dog of the North! These pages are full of the absurdly funny alongside the absurdly tragic - hairpieces, talking fish, disappeared parents, a scalpel-happy grandmother, gastrointestinal disasters - the strangeness is not mere quirk. McKenzie's brilliance lies in her deadpan gaze and cool wit, which shows us how inherently odd reality itself is. Families are odd. Homes are odd. California is odd. Dogs and hair and steak and trout are odd. Look up from this book and feel understood in your own inexplicable oddity. A joy, a pleasure, and an addictive read with an ultimately hopeful core that recalls Haruki Murakami, Sayaka Murata, Richard Brautigan, and Miranda July." A Map for the Missing (2022)Belinda Huijuan Tang"Belinda Huijuan Tang has delivered a polymathic, ambitious, and assured debut. All at once, A Map for the Missing manages to be a haunting intergenerational mystery, a poetic rumination on loss, and an epic tale of love disappeared and rediscovered. With propulsive yet patient prose, Tang nimbly examines the way grand historical tides converge with small turns of chance to add up to a life. This novel invites us to think anew about language, education, regret, migration, and the myriad ways political change-winds upend our best-laid plans. A Map for the Missing does not read like a first novel - it's a mature and wise feat of realism from a writer already in total control of her craft." American Fever (2022)Dur e Aziz Amna"American Fever is a fresh, fierce bildungsroman - a story of homesickness and adolescent ache, not to mention a biting meta-commentary on what we expect from immigrant narratives. It's a relief to witness America as Hira does, seeing it clearly as an absurd, flawed nation that is all too often, as Hira says, a concept on whose behalf immigrants are unreasonably asked to testify." All This Could Be Different (2022)Sarah Thankam Mathews"Sarah Thankam Mathews' All This Could Be Different is an exquisite debut. Mathews' is a completely original voice that is, by turns, fierce, witty, musical, poignant, and, yes, deeply sexy. Simultaneously a tender portrait of chosen family, a stunningly rendered queer romance, and a keen reflection on work in a monstrous economy, this novel also thrums with a persistent, private hope for another, better world. It is the kind of book one should read not only to be entertained or impressed, but also to feel less alone." Keya Das's Second Act (2022)Sopan Deb"Sopan Deb's Keya Das's Second Act is full of heart. It's a sincere reflection on love, grief, forgiveness, blood family, and chosen family. This is a novel of real tragedy, but it's also imbued with a persistent hope. What begins as a story of regret becomes one of faith in other people, and in narrative itself. The book ultimately takes joy in the many ways we reinvent ourselves -- a self destructive drummer becomes a devoted boyfriend; a cold father takes up therapy and improv; and a community tries to move forward." Search (2022)Michelle Huneven"Michelle Huneven's Search is immersive, inviting, occasionally wry, and often warm. It's a front row seat to a juicy in-fight that's all too familiar to anyone who's ever tried to get something done by committee. Huneven generously portrays the emotional questing that brings people into spiritual communities while also chronicling the rivalry, pettiness, and basic human failings that manifest in those communities. The narrator of Search reflects that ministry--especially for the secular--is about asking, 'How do we live in this world?', and this novel suggests many possible answers, as it touches on friendships, food, charisma, gossip, the notion of home, and the challenge of making all those things meaningful." Anthologies containing stories by Sanjena Sathian
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