This fall has been a crazy time, and I’ve fallen far behind on my reading. I’m just about to plunge in again and am excited to have on my nightstand a bevy of books written by friends, old school chums and local writers. Here’s a list of what I’ll be enjoying for the month of December:
Domestic Apparition, by Meg Tuite.
I started this book a few months ago and can hardly wait to get back to it. The story of a young girl’s interactions with her dysfunctional family is freshly compelling, mainly thanks to Tuite’s evocative prose and anti-sentimental stance.
After the Tsunami, by Annam Manthiram
Another great one! This story tells the story of a man who loses his family in a tsunami in India and later goes to live in an orphanage. I’m amazed at how quickly Manthiram cuts to the heart of a scene and the gift she has for plumbing the depths of a character’s psyche.
Lamb, by Bonnie Nadzam
Bonnie recently moved to Fort Collins, and I had the pleasure of hearing her read from Lamb a few week ago at Matter Bookstore. She blew me away with her compelling story of an older man who strikes up a friendship with an eleven year old girl. Nadzam’s descriptions of landscape are among the best I’ve ever read—she has a gift for mirroring a character’s psyche with the natural world.
So There!, by Nicole Louise Reid
Nicole and I attended graduate school together, though she was a few years ahead of me and already a rock star. Her new book recently came out and I’m eagerly awaiting my copy in the mail. Nicole has a gift for lyrical prose and I’m sure it’s going to be as amazing as her other work.
Peter is someone I met just last night, at a Colorado State MFA reading. Peter read a story whose title, as best I can recall, is “127 Miles from Indianapolis, Indiana.” The story was dark and compelling, his accomplished lyricism the balm to a bittersweet plot about a young man’s longing for connection. Peter recently sold his first novel to Random House and I can’t wait to read it.
