The Lost Man, by Jane Harper: It probably wasn’t the most restrained or prudent to read all three of a new-to-you author’s books in one week. Now I have nothing! But I assume Harper will be writing for decades to come, and if she, Laura Lippman, and Tana French can each publish a book every two years or so…well, it won’t be enough, but it will be something. This departed from the first two Harper books, which featured the same detective, but was tonally very similar. With Tana French’s books, I feel like I have fairly strong feelings about which are my favorites (at least the top four- The Likeness, The Secret Place, Witch Elm, and In the Woods), but I don’t know if I could say among Harper’s three.
Who Says You’re Dead? by Jacob M. Appel, MD: I was expecting the entirety of this book to focus on end-of-life/definition-of-alive dilemmas, and (for no particularly well-founded reason) thought it was going to be several in-depth case studies. Instead it’s very scant scenarios (from all areas of medical ethics, not just end-of-life) followed by a few paragraphs of discussing weighing the possible options. Something about it just felt very rote and cursory, although it was still a semi-interesting read.
The Collected Schizophrenias, by Esme Weijun Wang: I was waiting for a few holds at the library that arrived so slowly it seemed they must have taken a canoe down the Gowanus Canal to get to my branch. I read almost the entire collection of essays on a bus to Maryland, engaged and interested. I was expecting them to be more formally experimental (not because of the subject but because that’s what I associate with Graywolf Press, whether that’s completely accurate or not), but while they are more straightforward, they build on each other in interesting ways as the book progresses.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong: I keep thinking of an anecdote I read on Twitter about a bookstore patron who was looking for this book but couldn’t remember the title and asked for the book about “how for a minute we are beautiful” (and that’s not even what they said but my attempt to remember what they said…a double misremembrance). The writing and structure of this book are not briefly but enduringly gorgeous. I stayed up far too late reading the middle part of this one night – until 2 am – because I was so happy in a cave of blankets, wearing black fleece tights and a long-sleeved black shirt like a cozy ninja, the book just poking out so that the page was lit enough to read. I was so happy doing it that I did it again last night, waking up tired and addressing that by staying in bed to finish the book. Gorgeous.
The Great Pretender, by Susanna Cahalan: I don’t understand how I’d never heard of the events narrated in this book before. A psychiatrist sends eight “sane” (the book does a great job interrogating the idea of sanity and mental health/mental illness) people into various psychiatric hospitals, and they’re almost all diagnosed with schizophrenia. And then there are twists upon twists. The book’s title ends up resonating in multiple different ways. I read Cahalan’s Brain on Fire when it came out (or a few years later? It doesn’t feel like it could have been that long) and it was interesting to see how similarly they read (in the most positive sense!) – in her memoir, she’s not only personal but also relentlessly inquisitive and journalistic, and in this book, she doesn’t lose her voice in the facts and details, even though she’s (largely – her reporting is narrated) absent from them.
