The White Album and Notes to John
I appreciate that her work seems to be suddenly available and back in print. I often find it on shelves and see it arriving at my local independent bookstore.
Favourites
Some of the novels that Hargrave very much enjoyed and recommends you read.
Gary Indiana
This collection of essays is written with the air of Indiana looking back at his life and taking an inventory of sorts as he acknowledges that he is living in a time that is closer to the end than to the beginning.
Animal Farm
This novel is one of the ones that showed me what a literary statement could be and how vital writing is during the darkest times. It also showed me the absolute striking beauty of the allegorical tale.
Ghostroots
More powerful than gore, I find an eerie atmosphere is what really makes a collection like Ghostroots tick.
Overhead in a Balloon
Gallant clusters the stories like one is hearing about a circle of friends or acquaintances at a party.
Girl, Interrupted
Girl, Interrupted features one of my favourite structures — it is a memoir constructed via vignettes. There are lots of margins here.
Goodbye to Berlin
Reading Isherwood brings you into a moment in history, and there’s something really powerful and rare about that.
Airless Spaces
Sometimes books constructed out of vignettes seem to be built on a faulty foundation and have frames that are not enough to withstand the weight of a message or a book. Firestone here has used the flexibility of very short vignettes to construct just what her title implies — an airless space.
Written on Water
These essays are talks over coffee and catching up after a long week. They are close friends talking about the issues that matter to them and the parts of the past still stuck to the hem of their clothes.
Victorian Murderesses
Hartman asks for serious scholars only, and for the reader to commit to thinking about more than how much blood the scene contained and which gory details are the most disgusting.