Book Recommendations from Our Former Guest Editors
Laura van den Berg recommends The Mysteries by Marisa Silver (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021). “Silver’s latest is brilliant on the life-warping power of grief, and on the tactile etherealness of childhood. A suspenseful and deeply felt novel.”
Rosellen Brown recommends Imagine the Dog by Cecilia Pinto (Texas Review Press, 2021). “There aren’t enough presses that dare to publish novellas. The Texas Review Press has issued a rewarding example of what can be accomplished in seventy-nine pages: like Goldilocks’ choice, just the right length, Cecilia Pinto’s Imagine the Dog draws us into the life of an oddly endearing character, adrift but well-intentioned, who offers hope and healing by impersonating Jesus. It’s caustic but forgiving, witty and tonally a little like Flannery O’Connor. Pinto is the winner of the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize; I wish there were more such examples of brevity rewarded.”
Peter Ho Davies recommends Revival Season by Monica West (Simon & Schuster, 2021). “A novel about faith that keeps faith with the best traditions of the novel—it’s immersive, insightful, and warmly affecting.”
Peter Ho Davies recommends Radiant Fugitives by Nawaaz Ahmed (Counterpoint Press, August 2021). “An intimate epic of belief and family, love and politics, knit together by a magical omniscience of profound compassion.”
Margot Livesey recommends No Diving Allowed by Louise Marburg (Regal House Publishing, October 2021). “Each of the stories in No Diving Allowed is so fully rendered, so vividly alive, so utterly interesting and, above all, so fearless. Here is a writer who is not afraid to put her characters in desperate situations and see what they will do. If necessary, she’ll fan the flames. What a dazzling collection Louise Marburg has written.”
Lloyd Schwartz recommends The Yellow Book by Sam Cha (PANK Books, 2020). “This multigenre (poetry, prose, even visual arts), self-and-other-knowing, multitonal (heartbreaking, angry, satirical) is like nothing else I’ve ever read. It’s a book you can’t afford not to devour.”
Richard Tillinghast recommends All These Hungers by Rick Mulkey (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021). “Mulkey has positioned himself as a poet of appetites, specifically hunger, as the title of his earlier book, Ravenous, would suggest. His paean to single-malt Scotch, ‘Concerning Whisky,’ is one of my all-time favorites. We as human beings wouldn’t survive without our appetites and hungers; they give us satisfaction and they lead us into trouble. Mulkey is eloquent on both scores.”
Dan Wakefield recommends Truthtelling: Stories Fables Glimpses, by Lynn Sharon Schwartz (Delphinium Books, 2020). “A haunting and memorable array of fictional perspectives by the author of such outstanding novels as Leaving Brooklyn and Disturbances in the Field.”
Ellen Wilbur recommends The Good Mother by Sue Miller (Harper Perennial, 2016). “I highly admired The Good Mother when I first read it years ago, but felt its true power and brilliance when I read it recently for the second time. I’ve been recommending it to all of my friends.”