With 2019 coming to a close, we’re looking back at the year in publishing. In no particular order, these are the ten books SwR loved most.
Biloxi by Mary Miller
“Miller mines the humanity of characters built of Value Meals and breakups, and the hour-to-hour search for a little something more. This use of spare detail, this amalgam of quotidian and extraordinary, is why a chorus of critics and litfolk have announced her admission into the Pantheon of Southern Literature.”
—Odie Lindsey, author of We Come to Our Senses and the forthcoming Some Go Home
Tears of the Trufflepig by Fernando A. Flores
“Tears of the Trufflepig is a vibrant novel packed with social commentary and action. More importantly, it is a narrative that explores a fiction that’s incredibly close to reality. Featuring folk legends, wealthy people devouring the flesh of strange animals, and two men who infiltrate an exotic, awful world, this novel is a breath of fresh air that demands to be read.”
—Gabino Iglesias, author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs
Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis
“Aridjis draws the reader in with gorgeous and poignant descriptions of setting, essayistic digressions on history and art, and moody suggestions of violence. She’s like a dreamier W. G. Sebald, or Baudelaire set to a soundtrack of Joy Division and the Cure.”
—Wilson McBee, staff writer for SwR
Black Light by Kimberly King Parsons
“There are traditional writers, MOR writers, experimental writers, and then some who are just plain ballsy. Kimberly King Parsons falls in the latter camp, and she does so with style to burn.”
—Robert Rea, Deputy Editor & Web Editor for SwR
The Dreamed Part by Rodrigo Fresán
“I found such pleasure in the capaciousness of Fresán’s mind and the velocity of his free-wheeling style, untroubled by narrative convention yet fully capable of pushing all the right buttons, offering up an arresting combination of head and heart, of pathos, formal playfulness, and humor.”
—Will Vanderhyden, English translator of Rodrigo Fresán, Carlos Labbé, Fernanda García Lao, among others
A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle
“William Boyle has positioned himself as one of the best, most authentic voices in contemporary noir. He has earned readers, accolades, and a flourishing career in France, but it seems he’s only getting started. His most recent novel, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, is his best outing so far.”
—Gabino Iglesias, author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs
Reinhardt’s Garden by Mark Haber
“The entire package is utterly unique, owing to the abundant strangeness of the authorial voice. Although the novels have little in common subject-wise, as I read Reinhardt’s Garden, I was reminded of Ben Metcalf’s anti-pastoral Against the Country, which came out a few years ago. Both books raise the act of ranting to an art form and create their own demented grammars as they proceed.”
—Wilson McBee, staff writer for SwR
False Bingo by Jac Jemc
“Jemc fans will find plenty to tide them over here. The claustrophobic atmosphere, the tension-ratcheting pace, the growing sense of unease—tie it all together, and you have a story that speaks to some of our deepest fears.”
—Robert Rea, Deputy Editor & Web Editor for SwR
The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán
“With a breathless and brilliant opening chapter, narrated in a stream of consciousness, Alia Trabucco Zerán’s La resta, now published in English as The Remainder, sucks you hard and fast into the undertow of history.”
—Sophie Hughes, English translator of Alia Trabucco Zerán, José Revueltas, Enrique Vila-Matas, Rodrigo Hasbún, Fernanda Melchor, and Laia Jufresa
Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes
“Despentes’s trilogy should be a bigger a deal than it currently is. Brash, provocative, heartbreaking, the Vernon Subutex books offer a biting taxonomic portrait of twenty-first-century society that should resonate as much to American readers as European ones.”
—Wilson McBee, staff writer for SwR
