A few of my favorite reads…
CONTEMPORARY & CANONICAL ǁ NEW & OLD.
Fiction ※ Poetry ※ Nonfiction ※ Drama
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All tagged short novel
Michiko Aoyama’s slender novel, What You Are Looking for is in the Library (2020, English translation 2023) connects a series of vignettes about largely disconnected individuals living in contemporary Tokyo. The central hub of the many spoked story is the community library with its large librarian who seems like a character who has stepped out of a Miyazaki film like My Neighbor Totoro.
Try as we may, all of us remember the feeling during Covid lockdowns and quarantines when we wanted to escape the confines, climb out of our skin, anything to escape the mindless numb of every day. Sarah Moss puts flesh on those feelings in her post-pandemic novella, The Fell (2021, first American edition 2022). Coming in just under 200 pages, Moss’s latest fiction will haunt readers just as much as our own memories of COVID’s darkest days.
