Carrie Carolyn Coco, by Sarah Gerard: This is a book with an identity crisis, or one that’s trying to be too many things. In theory, it’s the story of Carolyn’s tragic, seemingly random murder, and I want to weigh in and say I see no issue with the author being more of an acquaintance/distant friend of Carrie – she clearly had Carrie’s family’s support in writing it. But there’s so much backstory – about Carrie, about her sister, about St…. Read more »
Posts By: Claire
Books of 2025, Part 3
The Night Guest, by Fiona McFarlane: Love. I felt protective over the main character, watching her slow-motion destruction in horror while alternately admiring her autonomy and engagement with the world and feeling embarrassed for her. McFarlane is incredibly skilled (I also loved The Sun Walks Down) and I have two of her other books on hold. Same As It Ever Was, by Claire Lombardo: While this didn’t quite hit me the same way The Most Fun We Ever Had did… Read more »
Books of 2025, Part 2
(Read in the second half of January and most of February) Hidden Pictures, by Jason Rekulak: Ugh. I’ve seen some criticism of this book as “well-written but problematic,” but…I also did not find it well-written. It felt very caricatured, random, and young. It also included an incredibly insulting portrayal of a woman who had struggled with infertility (I don’t want to spoil any good books, so I’ll just say that I know from past reading experience that it is possible… Read more »
Books of 2025, Part 1
(Read during the first half of January) Hum, by Helen Phillips: I would live inside Helen Phillips’ brain if I could. The Need was my favorite book of 2019, and how lovely to start 2025 with Hum. I feel this way even though the book is quite bleak, because every moment Phillips creates – and so often those moments add up to death by a thousand paper cuts – is so precisely accurate to the world today (or at least… Read more »
Books of 2024, Part 12
The Other Valley, by Scott Alexander Howard: Very lovely time-travel narrative that didn’t feel as if it relied too heavily on the conceit, even though the plot wouldn’t have existed without it. I’ve heard comparisons to The Giver and don’t disagree, though I don’t think it reads like YA. The setting felt very specific and complete even though we don’t know what continent we’re on (I kept feeling like we were in France or some kind of French outpost, given… Read more »
Books of 2024, part 11
What Happened to Nina, by Dervla McTiernan: This was extremely hard to put down at night – very propulsive. I thought the style – from the multiple perspectives to the short chapters to the spare prose – served the story well, although I was frustrated by the ending. Some People Need Killing, by Patricia Evangelista: A must read – I didn’t know enough about Duterte or his regime in the Philipines, and Evangelista both crafts a strong work of journalism… Read more »
Books of 2024, Part 10
From October and part of November. The Sleepwalkers, by Scarlett Thomas: I was aghast – generally in a positive way, for the book and writing if not the characters – by the events in this novel. Thomas does an impeccable job demonstrating how trapped the narrator feels and how easy it can be to question your own perceptions. North Woods, by Daniel Mason: I started this, got bored, wasn’t ready to call it more than a conceit/excuse to write in… Read more »
Books of 2024, Part 9
I am VERY behind on these – this set is from the end of August through early October. Whalefall, by Daniel Kraus: So much of this was ridiculous, and the prose veered very purple, but damn I have to hand it to the author for coming up with this conceit – a modern-day Jonah, basically – and sticking with it in the most comparatively realistic way possible. The Garden, by Clare Beams: I loved The Illness Lesson and read this… Read more »
Books of 2024, Part 8
What Lies in the Woods, by Kate Alice Marshall: When I picked this up, I didn’t realize the author had written a YA book (How to Disappear Completely) that was not for me at all, and fortunately, this was much stronger. Slightly predictable, but solid enough, though some slightly off-putting depictions of mental illness. The Devil and Mrs. Davenport, by Paulette Kennedy: In one sense, this felt a bit stock and melodramatic, but those qualities also felt deliberate. I will… Read more »
Books of 2024, Part 7
Babel, by R.F. Kuang: I’m a massive linguistics lover and was thoroughly delighted by the wordplay here. Was it didactic at times? Yes, but how could it not be? I didn’t feel it detracted from the story; I don’t think the story was possible without it. I thought the book might fizzle out toward the end, but was pleased that it did not. Dolls of Our Lives, by Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney: Very gimmicky – structured based on the… Read more »
