René Steinke

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The House of Breath by William Goyen (Triquarterly, $16). The most gorgeous ode to Texas (and its native speech) that I know. Set in fictional Charity, the novel depicts the small town as a hothouse that grows beautiful outcasts and exotic prudes. In Goyen, the erotic is never far from the surface—no wonder the French have embraced him.

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Underworld by Don DeLillo (Scribner, $16). DeLillo’s mammoth masterpiece about the power of history is also an exploration of “trash”—how it’s defined and destroyed, and how it’s recovered and given new value through memory and art. The sheer scope of the book is awe-inspiring, but I especially love one of the interwoven stories about the divorce and late blossoming of the cynical, smart Klara Sax.

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To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Harvest, $12). Woolf performs ingenious tricks with time in this novel about parents and children, first expanding moments in the casual activities of one day, then having years (and deaths) pass in a single paragraph—not unlike the way family life can distort one’s perception of time. And in the interior lives of these characters, she dramatizes how much power the unsaid can wield.

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The End of the Story by Lydia Davis (Picador, $14). In this riveting novel, the writer-narrator struggles to get down the account of her love affair with a younger man, and in Davis’ hands, even the mundane rituals of the writing life become compelling. Her prose is psychologically exact as it follows the narrator’s always logical, but sometimes bumpy trains of thought.

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Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (New Directions, $12). Barnes had an amazingly original, baroque style, praised by T.S. Eliot, who helped shepherd this novel to publication in the 1930s. I reread this novel often while writing Holy Skirts. Apparently based on Barnes’ painful affair with the artist Thelma Wood, the story explores obsessive love, through the dark, back alleys of bohemia.

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Pnin

Lolita

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