Megan Abbott, Bonnie Garmus and More Writers on the Books They Love
Stephen King
author, most recently, of “You Like It Darker”
I particularly enjoyed the warmth and hidden humor of ORYX AND CRAKE, by Margaret Atwood. It’s more science fiction-y than the better-known “Handmaid’s Tale,” but just as satirical, with its warning about multinational corporations and genetic engineering. It would have been the best movie Atwood’s fellow Canadian David Cronenberg never made.
Bonnie Garmus
author of “Lessons in Chemistry”
According to her older brother, Ashmol, Kellyanne Williamson is a fruit loop. She lives an impoverished life in Australia’s opal mining country with him, her depressed mother, her failure of a father — and her imaginary best friends, Pobby and Dingan. When Pobby and Dingan disappear thanks to her alcoholic father, it seems clear Kellyanne must finally grow up. Except she chooses a different path, and the result is not merely surprising, it’s extraordinary. POBBY AND DINGAN, Ben Rice’s short, tight treatise on love, sacrifice and grief is so flawlessly written, you’ll read it in two hours but remember it forever.
Michael Cunningham
author of “Day”
One of the many glories of MARTYR!, a first novel by the poet Kaveh Akbar, is its entirely original voice: half wised-up dude-speak, half soaring lyricism. This is a major novel that, like all major novels, doesn’t quite resemble anything else you’ve read.
Joe Hill
author of “NOS4A2” and “Full Throttle”
There are great historical novels, and then there is Francis Spufford’s GOLDEN HILL, which — for this reader anyway — is the closest any book has ever come to offering the experience of authentic time travel. Spufford’s New York City of 1746 is so vivid, so present, one can smell the wood smoke and wet wool and observe the sheen of light glancing off the “oozy cobbles.” The narrative offers electrifying romantic repartee, desperate chases and tragicomic duels, and a lead character who is playing a secret game all of his own. When the outcome of that game is finally revealed, the reader discovers the stakes were always much higher than one might’ve guessed; the horror and shame at the heart of “Golden Hill” haunt America to this day. Turns out the past is never quite as far off as you would’ve thought.
Sarah Bakewell
author of “At the Existentialist Cafe”
The books that most excite me are those that are meticulous in their research, yet radically change how I think about the world. Several of my 10 choices did this: Hallie Rubenhold’s THE FIVE drew my attention away from the tedious mystery of Jack the Ripper (who cares?), to explore the full, fascinating lives of five real women who became his victims. Timothy Snyder’s BLOODLANDS shifted my idea of 20th-century European history several countries eastward, altering the west-centric story I’d learned at school. Most radical of all was Ed Yong’s brilliant first book, I CONTAIN MULTITUDES. This undid my assumption that I was a single, definite “me.” I learned that I am a great swirling community of microbes, often changing places with those in other swirls of microbes around me. That’s not just a bird I see flying, but a feathery set of “trillions of microbes.” If I touch a pangolin (don’t ask), countless tiny beings move from a “human-shaped raft” to a “pangolin-shaped” one.After reading this gloriously witty and visionary book, I was never quite the same person — I mean raft of microbes — again.
Megan Abbott
author of “Beware the Woman”
Daniel Woodrell might be America’s greatest living writer, and WINTER’S BONE shows you why. The haunting tale of a young woman’s search through the poverty-riddled Ozarks for her father, the novel risks being weighed down by the sorrow and stunning violence of its world. But instead it’s luminous, every page shivering with feeling, mystery and a keenly rendered humanity. And no one writes a sentence like Woodrell — he can make you gasp, weep, ache. A true master still at the peak of his powers.
