Quick Lit May 2024 Archives

The Interestings: A Novel

by Meg Wolitzer

This story introduces us to a group of friends who first meet at an artsy summer camp in 1970s upstate New York, and follows them for decades, well into mid-life. For as much as I'd heard about this book, I was still surprised to find how exactly it suited my reading taste; it hits the same notes as Cara Wall's The Dearly Beloved. Major thanks to team member Ginger for raving about this book for years.

Florida

by Lauren Groff

Lauren Groff has already written three bestselling novels (one of which Barack Obama chose as his favorite novel of the year in 2015). More than ten years ago she moved back to her home state of Florida, and many were surprised to hear that her Fates and Furies follow-up would be a collection of short stories centered around the history, ecosystem, and psyche of Florida through characters that are wives, mothers, homeless women. The publisher says, "the stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries. Storms, snakes, and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life."

Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me

by Ada Calhoun

Regular readers know I adore sagas of complicated families. This new nonfiction work from Why We Can't Sleep author Ada Calhoun delivers all that and more. Thanks to the book's pre-release publicity, I discovered Calhoun is the daughter of art critic Peter Schjeldahl, who I've been quoting for YEARS (especially in MMD Book Club) about his approach to works that aren't "immediately hospitable." Calhoun's new genre-bending book is a memoir-ish look at their complex relationship—and also a profile-of-sorts about poet Frank O'Hara. I couldn't resist, devoured it in 36 hours, and put it straight on my Best of the Year list. By the time I closed the last page I'd googled a hundred things about NYC history and requested ten books from my local library. Fascinating, devastating, vexing, illuminating. Heads up for a handful of content warnings that aren't obvious from the publisher's description or reviews.

Just for the Summer

by Abby Jimenez

Abby Jimenez has been an auto-read author for me for several books now. Here we meet Emma and her best friend Maddy, who move around working as travel nurses, never staying in the same place for more than three months. But then thanks to the internet, the nomadic Emma starts up a relationship with Justin, whose circumstances mean he can't leave Minneapolis. It's obvious to the reader this is going to end in heartbreak, but it's an Abby Jimenez novel, so surely they'll find a way through it ... right? I especially appreciated the strong sense of place: Abby is known for incorporating real places and businesses into her books, and I googled so many Minneapolis locations! If you want to read more about Maddy’s journey, she gets her own romance in the novella The Situationship. (Open door.)

Funny Story

by Emily Henry

In this emotional open door contemporary romance, two unlikely roommates fall in love. They move in together as a matter of convenience, because their housing and the rest of their lives are upended when their respective soon-to-be-spouses fall in love ... with each other, which results in two cancelled weddings and general chaos. Of course these two new roomies are going to fall in love, but in romance it's the journey that counts and this was a fun one. (Although it's worth noting that reading about self-absorbed parents was sometimes painful.) The lakeside town abutting Lake Michigan has a delightful small town feel; he has a cool job at a winery and she works as a children's librarian, which means lots of library details and story time scenes. Once again Henry manages to be insightful and unputdownable.

James

by Percival Everett

Everett's ingenious latest is a retelling of the Mark Twain novel, from Jim’s—or rather, James’s—point of view as he and Huck Finn raft down the Mississippi River. Completely brilliant, stunning on audio, and a book with staying power we'll still be reading and talking about in ten, fifty, or even a hundred years. I first read this on ebook and then revisited it via the audiobook narrated by Dominic Hoffman—and found it unquestionably worth reading twice.

Quick Lit May 2024

The Interestings: A Novel

Florida

Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me

Just for the Summer

Funny Story

James

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