Catherine Lacey recommends
Antiquity (2024)Hanna Johansson"A wonderful novel written with the menacing elegance of a cat burglar working in the shadows and at great heights."The Dimensions of a Cave (2023)Greg Jackson"Greg Jackson is an athletically talented writer who packs so much into every single sentence and scene it almost scares me. His debut novel is somehow both a hardboiled thriller and a philosophical treaty with dialogues that would make Sorkin blush." I Will Greet the Sun Again (2023)Khashayar J Khabushani"Khashayar J. Khabushani has taken a coming-of-age story and flooded it with light. . . . This is a gorgeous and wrenching debut from a writer I'll be following for many years to come." Open Throat (2023)Henry Hoke"Open Throat is a blinding spotlight beam of a book that I was completely unable and unwilling to put down. I am not convinced Henry Hoke isn't a mountain lion." Gone to the Wolves (2023)John Wray"A wild somersault of a book with pitch perfect humor and pitch black darkness. Wray, a foremost cartographer of the weird, writes with nonchalance and grace, delighting at every turn." Cousins (2023)Aurora Venturini"Cruel and strange and colorful--Cousins will be an immediate favorite for fans of Fleur Jaeggy and Leonora Carrington." The Empire of Dirt (2022)Francesca Manfredi"An elegant and haunting story of feminine chaos and self-possession. Francesca Manfredi's prose, in Ekin Oklap's translation, is piercing and full of dark, honest wit." Witches (2022)Brenda Lozano"Braiding together the voices of two women--a mystic and a skeptic--Witches, to borrow Brenda Lozano's words by way of Heather Cleary's translation, runs into shadows to bring light. This is a story of the world's repeated failure to control feminine power and the sheer magic of language itself. An enthralling, passionate story about secrets both holy and profane." Very Cold People (2022)Sarah Manguso"I loved every sentence, thought, and gesture in this perfect novel. Sarah Manguso has painted a deeply moving portrait of the stark unreality of childhood." Present Tense Machine (2022)Gunnhild Øyehaug"Present Tense Machine is a book for those who have felt themselves grieving something just beyond their comprehension, or anyone who suspects they're living in a parallel universe. Gunnhild Oyehaug is a magician of the highest rank, one who can make reality itself shimmer and splinter before coming back into focus, clearer than ever." The Atmospherians (2021)Alex McElroy"The Atmospherians is a thrilling satire about wrecked reputations and flawed stabs at redemption, but it's also earnest examination of the fragile place between community and mob; most disturbingly, Alex McElroy draws an accurate portrait of this agitated era." A Lonely Man (2021)Chris Power"A thrilling, unnerving novel following an international conspiracy and domestic solitude-A Lonely Man is one of those rare books that’s as entertaining as it is perceptive, a page-turner with exacting syntax and emotional heft." Justine (2021)Forsyth Harmon"Nervy, exacting illustrations and effortless prose . . . with the clarity and mystery of a black opal." Acts of Desperation (2021)Megan Nolan"Megan Nolan writes with piercing vulnerability and precision. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation is a blistering anti-romance about the seductive destruction of trying to find self-worth in the gaze of another." Fake Accounts (2021)Lauren Oyler"Fake Accounts is an absorbing and shameless examination of the way self-mythologies are forged and performed in the public privacy of the internet. Fans of Lauren Oyler's divisive, ferocious criticism will love this 21st century comedy of bad manners." The Seventh Mansion (2020)Maryse Meijer"Reading The Seventh Mansion feels like receiving a divine transmission from a burning bush--I was beguiled by Maryse Meijer's brave and darting sentences and challenged by the questions raised. Can a life be led without doing harm? Or should we forcefully dismantle the machines that act violently on our behalf?" True Love (2020)Sarah Gerard"An unapologetic drama about a woman's insistence on living at the apex of desire and self-destruction—what a rush!" 22 Minutes of Unconditional Love (2020)Daphne Merkin"Daphne Merkin has written a novel as vexing and bright as a Rubik's Cube. 22 Minutes of Unconditional Love is an anti-romance about a woman's profane and humiliating desire to be defined by love." A Girl's Story (2020)Annie Ernaux"Annie Ernaux writes memoir with such generosity and vulnerable power that I find it difficult to separate my own memories from hers long after I’ve finished reading. In A Girl’s Story she detangles an adolescence rife with desire and shame, an era of both internal and external debasement. Ernaux wisely ventures into the gray areas of her memories; she doesn’t attempt to transcend their power, nor to even 'understand' them, but to press them firmly into this diamond of a book." Bubblegum (2020)Adam Levin"With Bubblegum, Adam Levin has created a cubist painting about consumerism, fetishization, and the increasingly blurred line between life and advertisement in a hyper-materialist, post-IRL society. Levin masterfully creates a world without the internet to examine the impact and insanity it has sewn into the American project, and he does so while gleefully skewering our unraveling vernacular. A freaky marvel of a tome." The New Me (2019)Halle Butler"Halle Butler is a first-rate satirist of the horror show being sold to us as Modern Femininity. She is Thomas Bernhard in a bad mood, wearing ill-fitting tights, scrutinizing old take-out leftovers. THE NEW ME shows us the futility of betterment in an increasingly paranoid era of self-improvement, one in which the female body is grated into little bloody empowered bits of itself. A dark comedy of female rage. Fucking hilarious." The Heavens (2019)Sandra Newman"An elegant and untamed novel that illuminates the soft edges between love, madness, idealism, and the narrative power of the unconscious mind." Sonora (2017)Hannah Lillith Assadi"Sonora is the most eerie and unusual coming of age story I've ever encountered-not a tale of innocence lost, but innocence never had." Anthologies containing stories by Catherine Lacey
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