I met Haskell once maybe ten years ago at a patio/bar area. But I don’t hear it mentioned, and it is in some ways a small, quiet, modest book, and I am sure that it is a modern classic. People may be arguing about it in coffee shops. Is it an unsung masterpiece? I haven’t lived in New York since 2004, the year before the book was published. Best not to know anything about it plotwise, just to start reading it. I remember finishing it and just feeling shattered. A novel that meets the problem of the inherent gimmickiness of fiction by diving into the gimmick so deep it emerges out the other side, like the best noir, but not noir, something closer to spiritualism. I keep trying to kick it off the top of the list and replace it with something older, weirder, and longer out of print, but it sits there. I’m surprising myself by naming something so recent. Suggests American Purgatorio by John Haskell (2005) And that, really, is this novel’s power: It demonstrates how the most resonant fiction is by writers who have mastered the art of absence, who have found a way to wield negative space as a literary weapon. The mood of dread that hovers over the book culminates in a single, spectacular scene of violence, but one that’s more suggested than shown. Father is a wonderful, mysterious, vivid creation who manages to be compelling while not quite pinnable: Is he really what he seems? What does he want, and what has he done? And then there’s Caroline herself, whose affectlessness becomes heartbreaking as the narrative progresses. One of the things I love most about this novel is how much it manages to do in so little space, and with such grace and subtlety. This short, disciplined, unsettling book is about a girl, Caroline, who’s living with her father off the grid in the Oregon woods. This is probably the recent novel I recommend most. Suggests My Abandonment by Peter Rock (2009)
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