In case you missed last week's
email: Over the next few months in this space I'll run down my 10 favorite novels published from 2014 to 2024.
Only one rule: No WriteByNight staff or clients, and no friends.
Last week's entries:
11. Growing Up Dead in Texas, Stephen Graham Jones; The Yellow House, Sarah Broom (call them honorable mentions, because they fall outside the parameters)
10. Women Talking, Miriam Toews
This week's picks:
9. The Warehouse, Rob Hart
This book is quietly/subtly horrifying as we follow a couple of workers in a massive complex that includes a gigantic and dehumanizing Amazon-style warehouse, a shopping mall, and apartment complexes -- because all employees live onsite, and their every move (and purchase) is tracked, and
viewed. Meanwhile, outside, very little of society seems to remain, at least in the vicinity. It's an all-too-believable glimpse into the future of the corporatocracy we already live in.
8. Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin
This is one of the creepiest books I've ever read. More than five years later, I'm still unsettled by it. *Do not* take any major hallucinogenics before you read it. But then when you're done,
take some major hallucinogenics and read it again. Argentina; Monsanto; worms. (Like worms, all over.)
7. Ohio/The Deluge, Stephen Markley
Sorry, I couldn't choose one. Ohio is a brick. The Deluge is a brickier brick. They're both engrossing. In Ohio, four former classmates return for the funeral of a KIA soldier in their small hometown, which is being torn apart by drugs and alcohol and economic decline. Secrets come to light and lead to a gut-punch of a climax. Stephen King calls it "The Grapes of Wrath of the opioid crisis." The Deluge is a climate change novel that, like
The Warehouse, shows the future we're hurtling toward. It's like a roller coaster you're not enjoying and can't escape and is being driven straight into hell. (But in a... good way, I guess?)
After all the nightmarish stuff in nos. 7 through 10, next week we'll get a (brief) respite. I swear,
until I put this list together I did not realize so many of the books I love are so dark.
Are you a fellow fan of any of these books? Let me know, and let's gush over them together.