Best books…chosen by Tara Conklin
Novelist Tara Conklin is the best-selling author of The Last Romantics. In her new comic novel, Community Board, a woman holed up alone in her childhood home after a breakup slowly reconnects with her neighbors through an online community board.
Look at Me by Jennifer Egan (2001). For those familiar with Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad, the multilayered brilliance of this novel will come as no surprise. After a car accident, a fashion model becomes unrecognizable and must reinvent herself entirely. Subplots involving a PI, a teenage girl, and a would-be terrorist all converge in a stunning conclusion. Egan writes like no other—I’d follow her anywhere.
Blindness by José Saramago (1995). Although you can read this novel as an allegory, it works equally well as a dystopian thriller. What would happen if everyone in the world suddenly went blind? Thrilling, terrifying, and utterly plausible, this book will keep you up long past your bedtime.
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan (1997). The opening scene ranks among the best I’ve read: a hot-air balloon rising into the sky, a child alone in the basket, and a man dangling helplessly from a rope. Five men rush across an open field to help. From that point of tragedy onward, the characters’ lives are intertwined in a suspenseful story of obsession and paranoia.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (2013). There are so many things I love about this book. Sonja, the sole doctor in a war-torn city; Havaa, an 8-year-old girl whose father is kidnapped by soldiers; the way Marra shifts seamlessly from one point of view to the next. Set against the Chechen war, this novel is a heartbreaker.
What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt (2003). Sometimes one event is so meaningful that it divides life into before and after. Hustvedt examines this by presenting a story in two halves separated by one unimaginable tragedy. That event shakes every character in this beautifully written, evocative novel of family, love, and art.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (2001). About as close to a perfect novel as you can get. A group of terrorists break into a state dinner and, realizing their intended target isn’t in attendance, decide to hold the entire party hostage. Gradually, the shock and violence of the initial attack fades, and relationships begin to develop between the hostages and their captors.