eliza’s staff picks
MATING by Norman Rush
Girls: who among us hasn’t ever been crushing so hard on a man 20 years their senior that they’ve walked for days across the southern African desert to surprise him at his remote feminist utopian village? Not you? Me neither, but this unnamed narrator’s portrayal of love is wholly relatable. I envy anyone who gets to read this book for the first time.
CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING by Dorothy Baker
This is something of a comfort book, but what does it say about me if my idea of a comfort book includes (but is not limited to): drunk dads, dead moms, repressed homosexuality, a stilted graduate thesis, a suicide attempt, narcissism and individuation, and the most horrific of all, a sock slipping down in your shoe while you’re walking?
FIRST LOVE & MY PHANTOMS by Gwendolyn Riley
This pair of novellas by the British novelist Gwendolyn Riley both feature female protagonists dealing with complicated (read: fucked up) interpersonal relationships, which is kinda my bread and butter. As the genre goes, though, these are particularly good.
A LINE IN THE WORLD by Dorothe Nors
I am not sure why I picked up this book, knowing virtually nothing about the author, the place it’s about, or whether I will ever even go there, but I was happy to find it was much more than the book of travel essays shown at first glance. Border politics, climate change, personal and regional identities, the phases of the moon and many cups of coffee help to sketch out this sweeping map of the North Sea coast.
LOVE ME TENDER by Constance Debré
“Family is the place for madness,” posits Debré in this brutal piece of autofiction about a woman whose custody of her son is withheld after she gets a divorce, forgoes her career as a powerful lawyer for writing, and starts seeing women. This book questions the stifling conditions of unconditional love and the violent conventions of conventional family.
KICK THE LATCH by Kathryn Scanlan
Imagine you’re sitting in a dimly lit dive bar in a small town out West and can’t help but eavesdrop on an older woman at the end of the bar, telling stories in hushed tones to the bartender all night. If that sounds compelling to you (or if you’re a former horse girl), I recommend spending your next couple hours with this book. (It’s short!) The stories she tells will stick with you.