Darcey Steinke

Darcey Steinke is the author of Up Through the Water, Suicide Blonde, and Jesus Saves. Her fourth novel, Milk, has just been published by Bloomsbury.

Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage, $13). Long before All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy wrote this stark, poetic novel about an incestuous brother and sister. It’s my favorite of his books, because of its intertwining of biblical themes and lush physical detail.

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Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson (Perennial, $12). These linked stories, told by a desolate seeker living in a small Iowa town, are hallucinatory in their poetic precision. Johnson moves the Joycean personal epiphany into mystical mode, as his characters give us the divine in the details.

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Deep River by Shusaku Endo (New Directions, $12). On a trip to India, Endo’s pilgrims each move through a personal drama of the soul. Most fascinating is the atheist Mitsuko, a middle-aged woman who is obsessed with a clownlike monk named Otsu. The book’s premise is that religious doctrine is much less important than personal theology.

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Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil (Bison Books, $17). The brilliant French mystic’s most accessible book contains ideas taken from her diaries. Among other subjects, she considers Decreation, the Void, and Love. Weil, unlike most theologians, never joined a church; her mission was to reach those of us who are outside any denomination, living in a disenchanted world.

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Nod by Fanny Howe (Sun and Moon, $19). In this virtuosic anti-modernist novel, Howe describes the disintegration of a family, but the plot is just a place holder, albeit an engaging one, for her musings on and frustration with the silence of God.

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Ray by Barry Hannah (Grove, $11). Bizarre, hilarious, Ray is written with more mind to music than any other novel I have ever read. The book reads like literary jazz. Life’s odd particulars sparkle, as Hannah uses dizzying juxtapositions and high-wire syntax to great comedic effect.

Buy it at Amazon.com