Catherine Lacey is the author of the acclaimed novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew. Biography of X, her new novel, is narrated by a writer who, while working on a biography of her deceased artist wife, uncovers layers of secrets.
Proxies: Essays Near Knowing by Brian Blanchfield (2016)
This collection of essays is about the desire to know, the certainty that we will fall short in that knowing, and the wonderful detours and excitements we can find when we take indirect paths toward knowledge. Blanchfield wrote each essay — about everything from abstraction to the children's game "sardines" — with the rule that he was not allowed any research, that he had to use himself, his memories, and his incomplete understandings as the sole source. Like all the books here, it's an absolute thrill. Buy it here.
The Freezer Door by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (2020)
This is a book about gentrification in Seattle, anonymous gay sex in parks, attempts and failures to create community, queer communities and their erosion, ecstasy, love, dancing, friendship, and aging. It also features a miraculous and charming conversation between an ice cube and an ice cube tray. Buy it here.
Evil Flowers: Stories by Gunnhild Øyehaug (2023)
This story collection, translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson, occupies a narrow sliver of the Venn diagram of Extremely Intelligent and Extremely Funny. These stories rant and argue and make wild, unprecedented leaps. Absolutely nothing here is what it first seems to be. Buy it here.
A Dialogue on Love by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1999)
This is a book about being in therapy; about being aware that you're in therapy; about dialogues in general, about love in general, and about the puzzles of love and dialogue that you attempt to solve in therapy. It's also about dying. Buy it here.
A Horse at Night: On Writing by Amina Cain (2022)
This short, ecstatic book is about reading, writing, imagining, seeing, solitude, inner lives, and the strange power a writer possesses to silently insert herself into the minds of strangers. Buy it here.
97,196 Words by Emmanuel Carrère (2019)
This essay collection, translated from the French by John Lambert, features pieces on everything from heterosexual courtship between middle-aged Parisians to unthinkably grotesque crimes to hotel rooms. Emmanuel Carrère can make any topic sing. Buy it here.
This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.
