Nancy Reisman

Nancy Reisman is the author of House Fires, a short-story collection that won the 1999 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her first novel, The First Desire, was published this month by Random House.

Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig (Vintage, $13). This is a novel that is almost entirely dialogue—and the dialogue is wonderful. Two men in prison—one a leftist political activist, the other a gay man interested in questions of beauty and romantic love—pass the time with embroidered retellings of the plots of B-movies. Their conversation allows Puig to combine engaging storytelling with an overt questioning of what these stories mean and how they reflect who the tellers are.

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $13). Grace Paley is a master storyteller. She writes about ordinary lives, often about New York single mothers, and I love her use of questioning as a method of storytelling, and the fidelity of her characters’ dialogue. “A Conversation With My Father,” which appears in this collection, is my favorite of favorites.

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Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro (Vintage, $13). I love the way Munro evokes small-town Canada, the mysteries and complications of her characters’ lives, the secret histories suggested in old letters, old houses, town streets. Her stories often unfold and move in directions that are both surprising and somehow perfect.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Harvest, $12). I am always astonished by Woolf’s language and her ability to spiral in and out of different perspectives. The insights are sharp, and Woolf’s method allows for great layers of meaning. To the Lighthouse is one of her more accessible works, but I love the risky and lyrical middle section that focuses on an unoccupied house.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $13). As the narrator, Ruthie, tells the story of her girlhood and her family history, Robinson offers a gorgeous evocation of place intertwined with a lyric sense of loss.

Coming Through Slaughter