It’s been a couple years since a non-beachy novel has been able to sustain my attention. I’m now reading In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien and I’m riveted. I want more books like this that are well-written and deal with questions of humanity, relationships, and morality.
Some books I also loved that had these qualities: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Notably: War gore, and trauma are most definitely not the unifying thread I’m particularly interested in, despite the subject matter of the books I mentioned. An exquisitely-written book that I absolutely could not finish was On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. It was just too traumatically gut-wrenching without reprieve.
by PS1988