Ann Patchett's 6 favorite recent books

The award-winning novelist recommends the work of James McBride, Karen Joy Fowler, and more

Patchett

A Day at the Beach by Geoffrey Wolff (Vintage, $16). This brilliant collection of essays somehow fell out of print after its original 1992 release, but that wrong has just been righted. We readers once again have access to Wolff's wealth of experience, his dazzling writing, and the unflinching assessment he brings to everything, especially himself.

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (Riverhead, $28). I'm not a fan of historical fiction or child narrators. But this novel about the abolitionist John Brown narrated by a child slave — a boy passing as a girl called Onion — is the most electric, provocative, and funny (I mean really funny) book I've read in years.

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