Reading Pleasures of 2025
by Gwynne Garfinkle
Charlie Jane Anders, Lessons in Magic and Disaster. Jamie, a trans witch and grad student, teaches her mother Serena to do magic, in the hope it will help her move on from years of grieving her late wife, Jamie's other mom. But while Serena readily takes to witchcraft, this disrupts Jamie's life in ways she never could have imagined. The novel interweaves Jamie's present-day narrative with the story of her mothers, starting in the 1990s, along with (fictional) excerpts from the 18th-century English literature that is the subject of her dissertation. (As a long-time fan of Dale Spender's Mothers of the Novel, I loved this novel's celebration of 18th-century women writers.) Anders' writing is brilliant, quirky, and full of heart.
John Wiswell, Wearing the Lion. This deft, profoundly empathetic retelling of the labors of Heracles is by turns delightful and devastating. Good-natured Heracles is clueless that his adored Auntie Hera can't stand him (because he's a reminder of Zeus's philandering). Her lashing out inadvertently leads to the death of Heracles's children, and Hera sends him on quest after quest in an attempt to hide her guilt. What follows is a wonderful tale of found family and lovable monsters, including an affable hydra and a lion named Purrseus. I kept wanting to give Heracles a hug. (The audiobook, narrated by Elizabeth Klett and Christian Black, is superb.)
Nisi Shawl, The Day and Night Books of Mardou Fox (2024). As a one-time Kerouac nerd, I was eager to read this speculative novella inspired by Alene Lee, the Black writer Kerouac used as the basis for the character of Mardou in The Subterraneans. Shawl centers Mardou's voice by telling her story in journal entries. In one passage, Mardou recounts how Leo (Kerouac) sent a story of hers to his publisher without her permission, and, even worse, "added his own ending. A collaboration, he called it." Mardou's mystical experiences add another dimension to this unique book.
Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots. An exquisite tale about sisterly love and the magic of music, based on the murder ballad "The Cruel Sister." Contemporary stories about faerie are often not my jam, but this one enchanted me. The hardcover edition is gorgeous, with illustrations by Kathleen Neeley.
Sarah Gailey, Spread Me. This wild ride of a novella is a queer, erotic take on The Thing, replete with unsettling body horror. Very weird, tense, and riveting.
Rachel Harrison, Play Nice. When Clio's estranged mother Alex dies, Clio decides to renovate her childhood home, which Alex claimed to be haunted. In the process, Clio unearths buried family secrets, as well as the truth about the entity living in the house. More ambitious in structure than Harrison's previous works, this novel includes sections from Alex's paranormal tell-all book about her side of the story.
Paul Tremblay, Another. A preteen artist with an anxiety disorder is gradually replaced by a doppelganger, and his parents don't seem to notice or care. Tremblay's first foray into middle-grade fiction is creepy and genuinely upsetting, but it's also a heartwarming paean to the power of making art.
Chris Kraus, The Four Spent the Day Together. This compulsively readable novel blends autofiction and true crime reportage, amplifying both stories in the process. Kraus's exploration of class, social media, and addiction sometimes makes for an uncomfortable read, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about this book.
Marian Engel, Bear (1976). My favorite backlist discovery of the year. When I saw its lurid mass-market paperback cover on Bluesky--an erotic novel about a woman and a bear?!--I was not expecting this quiet masterpiece (which won the Governor General's Literary Award). I really must read more by Engel.
Sienna Tristen, Hortus Animarum: A New Herbal for the Queer Heart (2022). These prose poems are so full of sonic lusciousness, I couldn't stop highlighting phrases in the ebook. From "white bindweed": "I am sick to my mallowbee stomach with watching them try & control you for oh how I cherish my nosenudge in the throat of your corolla, oh how I treasure the ephemeral scent of your rarefied afternoon high--oh how I love a thing that flourishes best in disturbed earth." (Hat tip to Mary Soon Lee, who chose this chapbook for SFWA's poetry book club.)
Maggie Nelson, Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth. I've been dealing with jaw dysfunction for years, so I was curious about this account of Nelson's efforts to find a cure for hers. Melding everyday life and dreams, this lyrical work is a meditation on pain and the desperation to find relief. Nelson discusses in rueful detail the quack treatments she contemplates against her better judgment. She writes: "Sometimes I wonder what I would have thought about all these years, if I hadn’t spent so much time thinking about the pain. Then I remember that I’ve thought about a lot of other things as well. Also, I'm not sure the goal of life is to think about as many things as possible." This year Nelson also published the slim volume The Slicks: On Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift, an incisive study of ambition, fame, misogyny, poetry, and pop culture.
Chloe Caldwell, Trying. Like Pathemata, this memoir uses a specific medical issue (infertility) as a jumping-off point for an unpredictable journey. Halfway through the book, which Caldwell wrote in real time, her marriage crashes and burns, and her life (and the book) opens up as she reclaims her queer identity.
Eleanor Johnson, Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980). This study of domestic horror would have benefited from a more intersectional analysis. Still, Johnson's discussion of the status of reproductive rights, laws against marital rape and domestic abuse, and the Equal Rights Amendment when films like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and The Stepford Wives were released is illuminating.
Becky Siegel Spratford (editor), Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature. This wide-ranging collection includes personal essays by such horror luminaries as Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, Victor LaValle, Gabino Iglesias, and Alma Katsu.
Patti Smith, Bread of Angels. I'm currently savoring Patti Smith's latest memoir, a life-spanning self-portrait of the artist, in prose both gritty and luminous. Smith is a national treasure; in these tough times, I'm grateful for her enduring voice.
Gwynne Garfinkle lives in Los Angeles. She is the author of a novel, Can't Find My Way Home (2022), and two collections, Singing, Singing (2024) and People Change (2018), all published by Aqueduct Press. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in such publications as Strange Horizons, Fantasy, Uncanny, Escape Pod, Apex, Penumbric, and Not One of Us.
No comments:
Post a Comment