Wavonna Quinn, known as Wavy, born in the backseat of a car to drug addicted and drug dealing parents, is the heroine of Bryn Greenwood’s third novel. That she fell in love at the age of eight with a man who was twenty and pursued him through years of trial and trouble is the (some would say) inappropriate subject of a novel so full of ugly and wonderful things. The truth is the inappropriate people in Wavy’s life were her parents and while doing the best she could, she found the perfect person for herself.
Carousel Court by Joe McGinniss Jr.
John Cheever was a surrealist but I think the suburbs made him crazy which allowed him to write they way he did. Raymond Carver presented a sculpted world littered with chiseled drunks, sloppy whores, baby killers, lovesick lovers, unwashed truckers, and belligerent bakers – never mind the loners down to their last bone marrow transplant. I re-read Carver’s Vitamins whenever I get down in the mouth about my fiction and that fills me with hope. I dare add, A.M. Homes is an heir to these suburban chestnuts, a daughter born out the bonfire they created.
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler’s opening line: “Kate Battista was gardening out back when she heard the telephone ring in the kitchen.”
The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith
The most venerable and old world thing your family can be in New York City is Dutch. They were the founders of the city and one third of the city flag is orange, in honor of the House of Orange.
The Violet Hour By Katie Roiphe
Death surrounds me – a massacre of grandparents, fathers and mothers, friends, childhood playmates, aunts, uncles and cousins and pets. They die in car accidents, of heart failure, of cancer, of bad luck and worse luck.
The Doomed City by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The Doomed City is a classic Russian dystopian novel which was started in the 1960’s but not released until the 1980’s. Writing the novel and then hiding it was a seditious act. Owning the once solitary manuscript copy was to court disaster in the form of the harsh retribution of the state.