The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2025, pt. 19: Lesley Wheeler

 

Reading Pleasures

by Lesley Wheeler

The scariest book I’ve read in ages, The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, stole into my to-be-read stack in some mysterious way. I don’t remember buying it or receiving it as a gift, but there it was, so I popped it into my beach bag and devoured it in a single afternoon, shivering despite the sun.

2025 has been a frightening year, which might be related to my quest for fictional uncanniness, emphasis on Gothic houses and haunted people. Of this year’s buzziest genre books, I thought Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar was amazing; my feelings about several other hefty new novels were more mixed. 

Eowyn Ivey’s Black Woods, Blue Sky, on the other hand, evoked weirdness in Alaska with mesmerizing beauty. 

I live at the edge of Appalachia, so I seek out fantasy set in this region; this year I admired Linda H. Codega’s Motheater and Smothermoss by Alisa Alering.  Encounter the Weird in suburban New Jersey—a more surreal place than it sounds—in Scott Nicolay’s novella caterpillars. For spooky mansions, try Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs. Westaway and Elisabeth Thomas’ memorable Catherine House, in which Gothic meets dark academia.

A hybrid novel about a woman’s rage in rural New Zealand is Louise Wallace’s Ash—worth seeking out. Also gloriously hybrid—and full of writing prompts—is Heid E. Erdrich’s Verb Animate.

In poetry, I read a third of Martha Silano’s Terminal Surreal, written while she was dying from ALS, and it was electrifying. I had to return the book, so reacquiring it is a priority! I’m likewise in the middle of Jan Beatty’s Dragstripping, which is, as Sandra Cisneros says, “full throttle.” 

In what, for me, was a book launch year, I only managed to publish one review, of Rosa Castellano’s All Is the Telling, but many other new collections impressed me: Laura-Gray Street’s Just Labor, about gender and the textile industry; Susan Rich’s Blue Atlas, about a long-ago abortion; Tonee Mae Moll’s You Cannot Save Here; Cindy Veach’s Monster Galaxy; Denise Duhamel’s Pink Lady; Luisa A. Igloria’s Caulbearer; and Julie Marie Wade’s Quick Change Artist. An advance look at Joan Naviyuk Kane’s with snow pouring southward past the window excited me about that 2026 collection. 

 I reread Jennifer Martelli’s Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree before an event we did together, unaware that she was dying, too—we lost some important poets this year—then went back to Martelli’s My Tarantella, about the murder of Kitty Genovese, to keep her voice in my head. 

From a couple of years back but new to me: Jaswinder Bolina’s English as a Second Language brandishes wickedly sharp humor at recent culture and politics. Finally, if a terrific and very of-the-moment eco-poetry anthology appeals, check out Attached to the Living World edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street and The Nature of Our Times edited by Luisa A. Igloria, Aileen Cassinetto, and David Hassler. Both will introduce you to amazing poets not yet on your radar.

 

Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of six poetry collections, including Mycocosmic and The Receptionist and Other Tales (Aqueduct, 2012). Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming (Aqueduct, 2020). Wheeler’s work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Workshop; her poems and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, Orion, Poetry, Strange Horizons, and Ecotone. She teaches undergraduates in Lexington, Virginia.