my favourite books

BONES AND ALL

Camille DeAngelis · 2022

Maren Yearly è una giovane donna che desidera ciò che desiderano tutti: vorrebbe essere ammirata e rispettata. Vorrebbe essere amata. Ma Maren ha anche delle esigenze particolari e segrete, che l'hanno costretta a una specie di esilio dal genere umano. Si odia per quella cosa brutta che fa, e per ciò che la cosa brutta ha fatto alla sua famiglia e al suo senso di identità, per come la cosa brutta determina il suo posto nel mondo e il modo in cui le persone la vedono e la giudicano. In fondo, non ha scelto lei di essere così. Perché Maren Yearly non si limita a spezzare cuori: li divora. Letteralmente. L'amore può avere molte forme diverse, ma per Maren finisce sempre nello stesso modo: lei che nasconde le prove e sua madre che carica i bagagli in auto. Ma quando, il giorno dopo il suo sedicesimo compleanno, la madre l'abbandona, Maren decide di andare in cerca del padre che non ha mai conosciuto. E finirà per scoprire molto più di quanto si aspettasse: perché, oltre a suo padre, sta cercando se stessa.

High Fidelity

Nick Hornby · 1996

My Year of Rest and Relaxation: A Novel

Ottessa Moshfegh · 2019

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible A New York Times Bestseller • New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.” — Entertainment Weekly “Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.” —Vogue From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes. Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner

Patti Smith · 2010

<p> It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. </p> <p> Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years. </p> <p> <i>Just Kids</i> begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame. </p>