Mind-bending Novel of the Midyear
By John Warner
I am going to do a midyear list of Biblioracle Book Awards. I am doing this even though “best of ” books lists are largely arbitrary and meaningless. But we love lists. We love them because the world produces more books than we can possibly read, and it’s reassuring when making a choice of how to spend your time to feel like someone else has vetted it.
The fall book season, always crowed under usual circumstances, will be even more packed than usual thanks to releases delayed by COVID, and I will not have room to put all the worthy books on my inevitable end-of-year list. So here we go with the midyear Biblioracle Book Awards:
Best Illustration of What Ails Society (tie)
“The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town” by Brian Alexander (St. Martin’s, $28.99). Using a single independent hospital in rural Ohio, Alexander unpacks how health care has become a financial game that puts barriers between patients and what they need to thrive.
“Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty” by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday, $32.50). Lots of people were getting rich off of addicting massive numbers of people to painkillers, with the Sackler family buying indulgences for their central role with philanthropy. Keefe’s book unpacks every last sordid detail.
Rain” by George Saunders (Random House, $28). Saunders offers a class in paying close attention to the ways four Russian writers wove their stories.
“Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping” by Matthew Salesses (Catapult, $16.95). Ostensibly written for the academic creative writing crowd, I think this book is for any engaged reader, as it illustrates the impact of dominant cultural narratives on how we create and judge fiction. I’ve been teaching writing for 20-plus years, and this book delivered epiphany after epiphany.
Emotionally Wrenching Novel of the Midyear (tie)
“The 22 Murders of Madison May” by Max Barry (Putnam, $27). Barry can take a potentially eye-rolling premise — in this case, murder mixed with the multiverse — and turn it into a page-turner that also holds up in terms of its metaphysical conceit. This novel about a young woman who is murdered in multiple dimensions, while a journalist follows her trail, kept me up well past my bedtime.
Laugh Until You Cry Novel of the Midyear
Oh, boy, a book club pick. I never hit a home run with every member, but I hope I can at least hit a double. It’s got less obvious plot elements than what’s listed here, but I think Niall Williams’ will give them plenty to talk about.
Turton
Alexander