A version of this post originally appeared on April 22, 2023.
 
A Man Called Ove--written by Fredrik Backman, translated from Swedish to English by Henning Koch, and narrated by J. K. Simmons--lives up to the hype.
 
I hesitated to try this one. Literary fiction is a hit-or-miss genre for me, skewing toward misses. Character studies can show how clever an author is, which is great for workshopping ten pages in your undergraduate fiction class, not so great for a whole novel. I do not have the patience to hear the same chord through an entire symphony.
 
Most of all, I was leery of the facile type of story where a cranky old person is transformed by the power of love and saves Christmas. I have never seen a Hallmark movie but I am confident I'm not their audience.
 
I'm delighted to announce I was wrong. For one thing it's a birthday he saves, not Christmas.
 
What could have been superficial sentiment becomes weighty, thanks to a somber thread. The main character, pronounced OOH-vuh, is determined to take his own life. His wife died six months ago and he just got laid off. This is not a sentence I get to type very often, but: his suicide attempts go hysterically wrong. For a book heavy with death, mourning, loneliness, and rejection, I sure did laugh a lot.
 
One criticism: Backman as storyteller chose to indulge in stereotypes about fat people, where he otherwise showed sensitivity and nuance. One of the secondary characters is fat, and he's always eating, always hungry. Without this fatphobia, it would have been a perfect book.
 
Apart from the lazy stereotyping, I was charmed by this novel. Strong plotting, wonderful characters, emotional depth, and humor that comes not just from the ridiculous situations but from the dryness of the prose.

A version of this post originally appeared on January 28, 2023.

George Saunders is in the very top echelon of my favorite writers. A literary fiction writer who leans hard into genre, he is arguably America's best contemporary short story writer, and his one novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, will stagger you. I'm getting into the yearly habit of reading him in January, to start the year out right. This year I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. It is not short stories nor a novel but... literary criticism! Of Russian literature!

I know this is going to be a hard sell, but stay with me here. The book is just astonishingly good. It's like being in the best graduate level English class, only you don't have to write papers or read Derrida. Saunders helps us dive into seven masterpieces, helping us as readers articulate why we respond to the writing, helping us as writers study the craft.

This book was such a joy. I kept making excuses to get to the audiobook--and please, if you're going to read this, consider going that route. Saunders narrates the discussion, while actors read the stories:

• "In the Cart," Chekhov, narrated by Phylicia Rashad
• "The Singers," Turgenev, narrated by Nick Offerman (my favorite)
• "The Darling," Chekov, narrated by Glenn Close
• "Master and Man," Tolstoy, narrated by Keith David
• “The Nose,” Gogol, narrated by Rainn Wilson
• "Gooseberries," Chekov, narrated by BD Wong
• “Alyosha the Pot,” Tolstoy, narrated by Renée Elise Goldsberry

A version of this post originally appeared on January 21, 2023.

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (2000) features a protagonist who lives in the Piedmont of North Carolina. He works in the kitchen of a restaurant and lives by himself at the Lucky You mobile home court. He is handy with car repair and household fixes. He has the body of a man and the head and torso of a bull.

I can be forgiven for expecting this to be a fantasy novel, based on the first two words of the title ("The Minotaur") but I ought to have known it would be a literary fiction novel, based on the remaining four words ("Takes a Cigarette Break"). I tend to be leery of literary fantasy novels, because they tend to have a light touch with the good genre stuff. But I read till the end, hoping the Minotaur would gore somebody or get trapped in a maze. Alas.

Contemporary literary fiction is usually not my jam, particularly the slice-of-life subgenre that features the minutiae of daily existence, peppered with colorful character portraits. It's not to my tastes, but I can respect that Steven Sherrill did a fine job with it. I have no qualms recommending it, if that's your type of reading pleasure. Except:

The main character is both disabled and disfigured, and there's no real reckoning with that. His primary disability is with speech. His bovine tongue struggles with language, so his verbal communication consists mostly of grunting. His disfigurement is that he's half man, half bull. And most people he encounters just sort of... roll with it? They're pretty chill? I can accept the premise of a monster from legend frying potatoes in a diner outside Lexington, sure, but I cannot accept that human beings are open and accepting of radical physical difference. Like. Has Steven Sherrill ever met any people, at all whatsoever.

(For those of you wondering the inappropriate question, the Minotaur has an unremarkable human phallus. He is not hung like a Holstein.)

Given my inconsistent relationship with literary fantasy, you should take opinions with a grain of salt. Droves of people love this book. (Droves. Ha. Unintentional cow pun.) I encourage you to try the audiobook. Narrator Holter Graham gets the accents right, which is rare in popular media. North Carolina accents are hard. I grew up in North Carolina and can't do a convincing one. And he packs a lot of expression into the Minotaur's limited vocabulary.