A Girl's Story

The differences between this 2016 book by Annie Ernaux and the earlier ones I've read are telling. Here there is a more writerly, ingrown approach amid the clarity and honesty that was overwhelming in the previous works. Ernaux has evolved, it would seem, and not entirely for the better, from writing about a woman to writing about a woman while writing about writing. Still, the deep insights into a girl's life are worth the trip into a few metaphysical and intellectual ratholes.

Red Dragon

Thomas Harris's first Hannibal Lecter novel, made into a solid film by Michael Mann, is rich procedurally and in its characterizations. Lecter is a supporting character; the killer is the Tooth Fairy, later the Red Dragon, every bit as interesting and given a compelling backstory that is missing from the movie. The ending is shocking and strong.

They Knew

Sarah Kendzior eviscerates U.S. establishment institutions that have failed the public and serve a transnational criminal elite composed of government, business and big media. These bad actors, using an ingenious strategy of creating wild conspiracies that contain a grain of truth, divert attention from the actual dirty dealings that are rotting American democracy. One party is obviously worse, but both are complicit in this culture of impunity. As an example of how this book has opened my eyes like no other in recent memory, I compared the reaction of an establishment type (Michael Bechloss) to the appointment of Jeff Zients as Biden's chief of staff (great choice), to the actual record of Zients as an incompetent COVID czar with a business background that includes demonstrated fraud in medical billing. To think that institutional and establishment players have the public's interest in mind was always, I thought, silly, but Kendzior's dead-serious and sharply written account turns that feeling into grave fear.

Sisters

Daisy Johnson's novel contains some of the worst prose I've read in years. Its artificiality, prententiousness and ham-fistedness are breathtaking. 

Foster

Claire Keegan's short story Foster, sold as a novel like her other short story Small Things Like These, is simple yet manipulative. Tonally, the character of the girl's father shifts drastically from the first pages to the last, making the ending feel cheap.

Playing Under the Piano

Hugh Bonneville's memoir is a bit long-winded on the subject of his childhood, but checks most of the boxes for a successful book of this kind with entertaining anecdotes and name-drops. In addition, Bonneville writes poignantly of his parents, a mother who worked for MI6 and a father who succumbed to dementia. Finally, he has a sly and winning sense of humor that comes through in these pages.

A Woman's Story and Shame

These two short nonfictional novels by Nobel winner Annie Ernaux feature her precise and unblinking excavation of human events and relationships. The first is a cold-blooded look at her mother, who at the beginning of the book has died after suffering from dementia. The second concerns an incident in her childhood – her father threatening to kill her mother – that left psychic scars that persisted into adulthood. The honesty and openness of Ernaux's novels is unlike anything I've ever read.