Trust, by Hernan Diaz: In the Distance is one of the most sublime books I’ve ever read – also one of the only books I’ve ever read that I would describe as sublime rather than some other merit – so I was both desperate for and wary of his second book. Very similar, actually, to waiting to read Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel (perhaps mainly in the wariness about subject matter – finance world – of the subsequent novel. As a digression – why haven’t I read Mandel’s back catalog? And isn’t it great and shouldn’t it be more frequently the case that she was able to write three novels before her “breakout success”?)
I was about to start Trust when, almost exactly 2.5 years to the day since NYC shut down, COVID finally caught me. The first chapter felt incredibly expository, as if a preface to everything else. Where is the dialogue? I wondered. The entire first section continued in that way, and a sense of dread crept in as the pages sludged by. If I weren’t a completionist, I might have given up. And in the end, I’m not sure that the turnabout of the third and fourth parts, which are vastly better than the first two, makes the book worth it. Yes, I saw what he was doing once I read part two, but that didn’t make the experience of reading it more pleasurable. Alas!
The Invisible Kingdom, by Meghan O’Rourke: This is very well written and well researched, but I found myself wishing that it were a more in-depth exploration of the origins and history of autoimmune diseases (which is a tall ask given that there isn’t just one disease or disorder and the origins are so murky). It’s a rare book that benefited perfectly from being nearly complete during the rise of COVID, at least allowing for a glimpse of hope as more research is done into long COVID that could benefit little-understood autoimmune and post-infection syndromes as well.
Invisible Child, by Andrea Elliott: I read Random Family when I had been living in NYC for a year or two and, I think, stayed up overnight finishing it. This will (or already has, I’m sure) be compared, and it’s equally compelling and dismaying. Unlike Random Family, it takes place just a few blocks from where I live, so the stores and streets and parks are all incredibly familiar even as the experiences are so different from mine. Completely devastating. With years-long reportage like this there are always questions of ethics, of purview, of enmeshment, but it’s incredibly written and I’m glad it won the Pulitzer.
The Wonder, by Emma Donaghue: I haven’t read Donaghue’s best-known book, Room, but I heard this was atmospheric and eerie. It was those things and more – it gave me a master class in deploying information/moving plot forward while simultaneously building character with every scene.
Hell’s Half Acre, by Susan Jonusas: A book about some of the first known American serial killers that combines Kansas history (in particular, other atrocities that were ongoing there courtesy of American gov’t) with the story of the murderous family? It sounded like it couldn’t possibly be boring, but it was slightly boring. There are so many different players to keep track of. It’s a tall order to write about something that happened more than 150 years ago that wasn’t documented as much as other historical events were.
