Appropriately for 2016, aka "The Dumpster Fire Year of Our Lord", I began and ended the year by reading books steeped in varying amounts of misery. But, you know, misery and pain aren't always bad things and frankly I'd much rather read about misery than experience it myself.
So, here is a not even close to comprehensive list of books I read this year, some miserable and tragic, others less so, but all of them worth reading. Enjoy, and may 2017 not end in a mushroom cloud of death...because I have a fucking huge "to be read" pile!
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Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget
By Sarah Hepola
Hepola's insightful and funny memoir about her life as a black out drinker until she quit drinking at age 35 isn't a story of sadness, but one of recovery. Hepola isn't preachy or judgemental. She has a clear-eyed understanding of why many women drink. Drinking was "the gasoline of all adventure" for her, allowing her liberty from her own inhibitions.
But as the opening story of Hepola coming out of a black out in the middle of having sex with a stranger implies, the adventure isn't always so fun when you don't remember it. It takes Hepola years, including sober years that turn back into drunken years, to reckon with her drinking before she decides to quit. Again, Blackout is not a pushy morality tale in the least. Hepola's observations about why people--women especially--drink, and what happens to people when they drink (Hepola points out that when men drink they do things to the world and when women drink the world does things to them) are intelligent and worth considering, given our culture of excess.
Grade: A
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A Little Life
By Hanya Yanagihara
I've certainly proselytized about Yanagihara's emotional face-punch of a novel enough, both in my review of it and in real life (I convinced a woman in a bookstore to buy it. I hope she doesn't hate me now). But I just can't help myself given that it's definitely the best book I read this year and one of the best books I've read in my life. A friend of mine who read it around the same time I did said he liked it but will never read it again.
And here I am, biding my time until I've forgotten it enough so that I have a somewhat similar experience to reading it the first time when I inevitably read it again.
I don't know why I loved A Little Life so much, especially given its heart-breaking content. Following the lives of four friends from their early 20s into middle-age, A Little Life focuses mostly on Jude, who endures a Biblical level of suffering his entire life. From ghastly childhood abuse to chronic pain from a grisly car accident, Jude's suffering is almost as intense as the love he is unconditionally shown by his friends and adopted parents. As Yanagihara said in an interview, "I wanted everything turned up a little too high"--she meant both the pain and the love. Perhaps the reason I latched on to A Little Life is because *my* little life is mostly on a even keel--some love, some pain. When life gets a little too safe and repetitive, some people jump out of airplanes, other people take LSD at parties, and some people--myself included--seek out art that requires us to feel something intensely.
Grade: A+
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Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
By Atul Gawande
No one wants to think about old age, illness, and dying--and that's exactly what Being Mortal seeks to remedy. Gawande's important book tells us what we already suspect to be true: that simply being alive is not enough to make life worth living. It's not quantity, but quality, that counts.
Gawande explores ways to make nursing homes less awful (let the residents have more autonomy; introduce plants and animals into the living spaces) even if it means they might be a teensy less safe. He shows how giving up on long-shot treatments for terminal disease and instead introducing hospice care actually improves patients' quality of life near the end. He urges readers to have crystal clear medical directives so that spouses and children in the throes of grief don't have to (or have permission to) make choices like pulling the plug, allowing a feeding tube to be inserted, etc when that was not the wish of the incapacitated person.Although I initially felt alienated from this book, I'm glad I read it at my age (30) before I have to worry about some of this stuff. It's better to work on having the right mindset about end of life issues before faced with them head on.
Grade: B+
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Silence
By Endo Shusaku
Shusaku's remarkable novel about Catholic missionaries in 17th century Japan is about to hit the big screen in an adaptation directed by Martin Scorsese. Who better to direct a film about the complexities of religious faith than the man who directed the controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ?
Silence is a book I would recommend to anyone and everyone who is religious, was religious, or is becoming religious. Hell, atheists should read it too! It follows the story of Father Rodrigues, a young Catholic priest who travels from Portugal to Japan to find out what happened to his mentor, Father Ferreira, who is rumored to have renounced Christianity (the practice of which is outlawed in Japan). Rodrigues encounters suffering and challenges to his faith at all turns, culminating in a situation where he is asked to symbolically deny Christ in order to end the torture of a few innocent people. Rodrigues spent his entire life believing that renouncing Christ is the worst sin you can commit...but is it wrong if doing so will save others from unimaginable suffering?
Silence is a beautiful, sincere story that explores what it means to truly be a servant of God in action, word, and soul. It is not cynical, it is not anti-religion. But it is haunting and it is definitely challenging--to both those who are religious and who are non-religious.
Grade: A+
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The Witch and Other Tales Re-Told
By Jean Thompson
Fairy tales are ripe for reinterpretation because they are based around fears and desires we as humans share regardless of the culture or time period we live in. Thompson's collection of stories takes on classics such as "Cinderella" and "Hansel and Gretel" in novel ways. Some of the stories are funny (a guy hunts down the woman who leaves behind a sexy platform shoe after a drunken night of partying), some are dark (the overprotective father of a teen girl is haunted by an incident from his past). But nearly all the stories are compulsively readable and fascinating.
Grade: B
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Mischling
By Affinity Konar
And so I ended a politically horrific year with a book about the Holocaust. Hooray! Mischling is a work of fiction about very real events: Nazi doctor Josef Mengele's experiments on twins in Auschwitz. The novel follows 12 year old twin sisters, Pearl and Stasha, as they are shuttled in cattle cars to the infamous concentration camp, separated from their mother, and delivered into the hands of "The Angel of Death": Josef Mengele.
The first half of the book is about their survival in the camp, during which they become separated. The second half is after the war is over and they are technically liberated (although still very much in danger of illness and starvation) and their struggle to find each other again.
For a book that details some pretty horrific shit, Mischling has an air of gentleness. I think I read a review where the reviewer said it had "the lightness of a fairy tale". Just as fairy tales are meant to help children understand scary realities of life, Mischling allows the reader to confront a place and time that was
literally hell on earth for millions of innocent people without falling
completely into despair. The story is, ultimately, about love: the love between sisters, but also between people who suffer and don't allow their suffering to turn them into monsters.Grade: A-
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Some other books I read this year:
- A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
- A ghost story with a shocking, yet inevitable ending. Grade: B
- Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
- A funny, smart modern-day retelling of Pride and Prejudice by one of my favorite authors. Grade: A
- It Was Me All Along by Andie Mitchel1
- A memoir about weight loss and body positivity. Not my fave. Grade: C+
- The Secret Place by Tana French
- An Irish murder mystery set in a girls' boarding school. Grade: B
- The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiScalifani
- A coming of age story set in Depression-era North Carolina. Grade: B
- The Hand That Feeds You by AJ Rich
- A pulpy Gone Girl-esque story about a woman who discovers that her fiance is not at all who she thought he was. Grade: B-
- The Tenth of December by George Saunders
- Unique, funny, and occasionally bizarre short stories by a prolific author. Grade: B
- You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott
- A story of a fiercely ambitious teenage gymnast that starts strong but ends weak. Grade: B-
Happy reading in (a hopefully not terribly shitty) 2017!
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