What We're Reading: Erpenbeck, Darragh & Winans
Each week our wonderful staff share the books and music that they've been enjoying.
Baz Ozturk is reading Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann
I recently read Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, which has just won the International Booker Prize. I loved Erpenbeck’s brilliant, often oblique way of telling the story of life in East Germany in the years before fall of the wall, and the way reunification messed with East Germans in the years after it was quickly absorbed into the West. Central to the novel is a doomed love affair between a married older man and a young woman, and Erpenbeck ingeniously braids their story in with the story of East Germany.
Erpenbeck is a great prose stylist. Her voice balances distance and intimacy in a way that makes it magnetic. There’s a weight in her sentences, often they’re aphoristic and contain echoes. She writes in fragments, paragraphs that are often like complete chapters unto themselves. Kairos is a fantastic read, and her two earlier novels Go, Went, Gone and Visitation are – to me – even better.
Aurelia Orr is reading Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh
This book was like an open wound, so raw, and tender, and fresh. The writing is both gorgeous and sensitive, each chapter as though opening to a random page of a photo album and learning about all the complex history behind the smiles for the camera.
Thanks for Having Me unflinchingly tells of the horrors and beauty of girlhood and motherhood in Australia, and I think every woman, of any age, will find a part of themselves that deeply resonates with these three generations of women.
Bella Mackey is reading Bianca Torre Is Afraid of Everything by Justine Pucella Winans
I stumbled across this comic YA mystery and was immediately captivated by the title of the first chapter: "Lesbian Sheep Do Exist". The book absolutely delivers on the promise of that weird and funny opening.
Bianca's internal monologue is both funny and pathetic, relatable and weird by turns. But as well as a unique narrative voice, Winans pulls the reader in quickly with a darkly absurb murder plot and corporate conspiracy. This is a must-read for lovers of young adult mysteries and thrillers, and for anyone who loves a queer comedy. You can also get a great audiobook version through Libro, if that's your style!
