A bildungsroman for the anthropocene, Mobility follows Bunny, the daughter of a diplomat, from mostly-oblivious teendom in Azerbaijan to adulthood in Texas, where she falls into PR work for an oil company (but mostly for the clean energy side! she relentlessly protests). This novel masterfully grapples with an individual life amidst global geopolitics: the disconnect between the truths we acknowledge yet ignore, the seemingly small choices we make and the mind-boggling, earth-changing consequences that follow. I was hooked.
Y/N is strange and elegant, with an addictively esoteric edge to almost every sentence. I knew this novel was for me in the first few pages, when a friend tells the narrator a concert will change her life. "I don't want my life to change," she responds. "I want my life to stay in one place and be one thing as intensely as possible." She ends up attending anyway and becomes obsessed with one of the band members, Moon. This book is full of mind-bending metaphors, cryptic philosophical conversations and a narrator who hovers between over-intellectual awareness and absolute devotion.
Couldn't put this book down! Rachel Aviv devotes each chapter to people who, in different ways, have become entangled in the complicated world of psychiatry--including herself. Just when you think you know where she's headed, she reveals a new surprising facet of the story. There are no simple answers to questions of diagnosis and treatment, or even what it means to be mentally ill. Her focus instead is on real, particular, often messy lives.
Such a tender, deliberate, inquisitive novel about fundamental human relationships, particularl the curious distance of familial love, and on what terms we can bridge the gaps.
This book blew me away! Ecstatically angry, furiously joyful and often hilarious, it's the most radical book you'll ever read about two people who just really, totally love each other (while reviewing some of history's darker moments, hoping they aren't blackbagged by the secret police, and wondering if/when the angels are coming).
This book, set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, has it all: sex, longing, class conflict, religious violence and familial tension galore. Kennedy's clear, beautiful prose brings each character to vivid life. This book is just plain good!
I'm a sucker for a strange premise, and this book delivers: every home in this suburb in an unnamed country has a room prepared for the president, should the leader ever arrive. Spare and mysterious, I read this brief book in one enthralling sitting.
Capitalism and surrealism collide in this weird and sharp novel about a temp worker. It's a tale that includes a locket containing the talking ashes of a chairman, a pirate ship, an assassin, barnacles and eighteen boyfriends (each with their own purpose). Absurd and funny, devastating and moving. I am here for all of it.
