Fat City
While Tully’s and Munger’s lives intersect time and again and one or the other often tries to connect, they never quite manage to.
Contemporary
The 20th century contains a lot of small movements, categorized by modern history. Some are more prominent than others, and some are very difficult to define. That’s where the contemporary label comes in.
Post-modernism, structuralism, post-structuralism, post-post-modernism, deconstructionism, post-colonialism, hypertexts, and modern genre fiction can all be found here. Books that don’t fall into a broader movement can also be found here, including many topics of interest that are still current for readers.
Contemporary works were written mostly in the last 100 years. These books are usually a bit easier to find on shelf (though not always) in a bookstore.
You are viewing Contemporary reviews.
You can view all other eras/movements, or you can search by language/region, genre, editor/translator, book authors, or year of edition.
Millennial Crime Trilogy
The three books are substantial, but not overbearing at 300–375 pages each. Each of them is based on a criminal case and uses that case as roman à clef to explore a snapshot of different aspects of society at the turn of the last century through the lens of real events barely veiled.
O Caledonia
Janet is constantly berated about her awkwardness, her lack of interest in what are considered ‘female’ pursuits, and her love of the natural world. She seeks to define herself according to the person she wants to be, instead of the version of herself that others are trying to mold her into.
The Bloater
I hadn’t heard about Rosemary Tonks until lately when I skimmed part of an article about her in The New Yorker. It wasn’t so much her style or subject matter that drew me to her work. It was the fact that she seemed so dead set on destroying it.
You’ll Enjoy It When You Get There
Taylor’s stories usually take place around the home and centre on domestic issues, but I think that classifying her work as ‘domestic drama’ confers a feeling of banality that is quite unfair.
Rattlebone
Rattlebone follows Irene Wilson, a young Black girl growing up in a Black neighbourhood in Kansas City during the 1950s. It’s not often I come across a narrative that is very distinctly and unmistakably character-driven, but this one definitely is.
Lover Man
What I admired most about Anderson’s writing was his ability to take a subject that seems so simple — like two children playing the dozens and going fishing — and turn it on its head. He layers meaning on top of meaning on top of meaning until every narrative is rich and strays far from just the subject at hand into a complex tapestry of politics, tension, and the injustices of the world at large.
Women of the Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance is a literary moment that is vital to study but it can be hard to determine where to start. The movement is lush and complex with many different facets that aren’t limited to literature alone.
The Virgin Suicides
While I tend to avoid male writers writing female characters, in this case, Eugenides makes it work by accepting his limitations. He is writing from a perspective of knowing women, but never truly knowing them or being able to empathize fully with the unknown things that women experience and go through.
Notes of a Crocodile
Academia provides a concrete backdrop for a constantly shifting narrative in which the narrator is struggling to come to terms with herself and asserting that self in a society that treats her like an aberration because of her sexuality.