Books I Love

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
Lapidary is overused as a term to describe books but Shirley Hazzard’s prose really defines it.  Painstaking perfection and fierce intelligence in every sentence.  The Great Fire is partly set in Hong Kong in the 1950s.  Also read The Transit of Venus.   

Tumble Home, The Collected Stories, anything, really, by Amy Hempel
Astonishing writer, will break your heart.  Beautiful, beautiful writing that makes you pause to savor every syllable. 

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
Laugh-out-loud funny, but so bitingly smart you will wince.  A magician with words.  

A Home at The End of the World by Michael Cunningham
The New Yorker ran part of this as a short story, the part about where Bobby’s brother runs through a window.  This story made me want to be a writer, more than anything. 

The Dangerous Husband by Jane Shapiro
Hilarious, smart book about a woman who marries the wrong man.  You will swallow this up in a day.  Lorrie Moore said of Shapiro: “A prose style that is brilliant and succinct as a martini.  She is also fluent in irony at levels that would cause most other writers to pass out.”   

Poison by Kathryn Harrison
A historical novel about silk growers in France that is heady, powerful, vivid, often painful to read.  One of my favorite books to recommend.   

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
I still remember the night I read this, late, late into the next morning, wrapped in a blanket in a chilly room, knowing that I had to get up for work very soon but unable to stop, spellbound.  The story of twins in 1969 India, lush, packed, thrilling. 

Waiting by Ha Jin
Deliberate, painstaking prose by a master of extrapolation. 

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Everyone agrees.  This is just brilliant. 

A Regular Guy and Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson
Elegant, succinct, suffused with sophistication, I would read anything she writes.