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No Longer Human
Osamu Dazai · 1973
<p> Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. </p><p>Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.</p><p>Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." (The Japan Times)</p>
Blue Sisters: A Novel
Coco Mellors · 2024
Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister’s death in this unforgettable story of grief, hope, and the complexities of family, from the acclaimed author of Cleopatra and Frankenstein.<br/><br/>“Sparkling with wit, shot through with longing, Blue Sisters is a beautiful novel, both dazzlingly joyful and achingly sad.”—Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street<br/><br/>The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.<br/><br/>But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from one another but from themselves.<br/><br/>Imbued with Coco Mellors’s signature combination of humor and heart, Blue Sisters is a story of what it takes to keep living after loss—and, ultimately, to fall in love with life again.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera · 1984
<p>“Far more than a conventional novel. It is a meditation on life, on the erotic, on the nature of men and women and love . . . full of telling details, truths large and small, to which just about every reader will respond.” — People</p><p>In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of two couples, a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing, and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine.</p><p>This magnificent novel is a story of passion and politics, infidelity and ideas, and encompasses the extremes of comedy and tragedy, illuminating all aspects of human existence.</p>
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 1971
The Woman Destroyed
Simone De Beauvoir · 2013
<b>One of the most influential thinkers of her generation<i> </i>draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises in these three “immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion” (<i>The Sunday Herald Times</i>).</b><br><br>Suffused with de Beauvoir’s remarkable insights into women, <i>The Woman Destroyed </i>gives us a legendary writer at her best. Includes "The Age of Discretion," "The Monologue," and "The Woman Destroyed."<br><br>"Witty, immensely adroit...These three women are believable individuals presented with a wry mixture of sympathy and exasperation." —<i>The Atlantic</i>
Normal People
Sally Rooney · 2019
<b>NOW AN EMMY-NOMINATED HULU ORIGINAL SERIES • <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • “A stunning novel about the transformative power of relationships” (<i>People</i>) from the author of <i>Conversations with Friends,</i> “a master of the literary page-turner” (J. Courtney Sullivan).</b><br> <br><b>“[A] novel that demands to be read compulsively, in one sitting.”—<i>The Washington Post</i></b><br><br><b>ONE OF <i>ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY</i>’S TEN BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE</b><br><br><b>TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: <i>People, Slate,</i> The New York Public Library, <i>Harvard Crimson</i></b><br><br>Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation—awkward but electrifying—something life changing begins.<br><br>A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.<br><br><i>Normal People</i> is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.<br> <br><b>WINNER: The British Book Award, The Costa Book Award, The An Post Irish Novel of the Year, <i>Sunday Times </i>Young Writer of the Year Award</b><br><br><b>BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: <i>The New York Times</i>, <i>The New York Times Book Review, Oprah Daily, Time,</i> NPR, <i>The Washington Post, Vogue, Esquire, Glamour, Elle, Marie Claire, Vox, The Paris Review, Good Housekeeping, Town & Country</i></b>
Intermezzo
Sally Rooney · 2024
<b>THE INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER <i>• </i>Shortlisted for the British Book Awards 2025 • Shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year <i>•</i></b> <b>Foyles Book of the Year • Best Book of the Year:</b><i><b> The</b> </i><b><i>New Yorker • The New York Times • The Globe and Mail • TIME • The Winnipeg Free Press • The Guardian • The Independent • </i>NPR • <i>Dazed • VOX • People • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly • </i>An exquisitely moving story about grief, love and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.</b><br><br>Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.<br><br>Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.<br><br>Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.<br><br>For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.
The Stranger
Albert Camus · 1954
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Ottessa Moshfegh · 2018
<b>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</b><br> <br> 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?<br> <br> <i>My Year of Rest and Relaxation</i> 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.
The Secret History
Donna Tartt · 2004
Crying in H Mart
Michelle Zauner · 2021
<b>#1 <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE <i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER LIST</b><br><br>In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. <br><br>As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.<br><br>Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, <i>Crying in H Mart</i> is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Breasts and Eggs
Mieko Kawakami · 2020
<b>A novel that “considers the agency . . . women exert over their bodies and charts the emotional underpinnings of physical changes . . . with humor and empathy” (<i>The New Yorker</i>).</b><br><br>On a sweltering summer day, Makiko travels from Osaka to Tokyo, where her sister Natsu lives. She is in the company of her daughter, Midoriko, who has lately grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with adolescence. Over the course of their few days together in the capital, Midoriko’s silence will prove a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and family secrets.<br><br>On yet another summer’s day eight years later, Natsu, during a journey back to her native city, confronts her anxieties about growing old alone and childless.<br><br>Bestselling author Mieko Kawakami mixes stylistic inventiveness and riveting emotional depth to tell a story of contemporary womanhood in Japan.<br><br>“Took my breath away.” —Haruki Murakami, #1 <i>New York Times–</i>bestselling author <i>The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle</i><br><br>“Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction with <i>Breast and Eggs</i>.” —<i>The Economist</i><br><br>“A sharply observed and heartbreaking portrait of what it means to be a woman.” —<i>TIME</i><br><br>“Raw, funny, mundane, heartbreaking.” —<i>The Atlantic</i><br><br>“A bracing, feminist exploration of daily life in Japan.” —<i>Entertainment Weekly</i><br><br>“Timely feminist themes; strange, surreal prose; and wonderful characters will transcend cultural barriers and enchant readers.” —<i>The New York Observer</i><br><br>“Bracing and evocative, tender yet unflinching.” —<i>Publishers Weekly</i><br><br>“Kawakami writes with unsettling precision about the body—its discomforts, its appetites, its smells and secretions. And she is especially good at capturing its longings.” —<i>The New York Times Book Review</i>
I Who Have Never Known Men
Jacqueline Harpman · 1997
A work of fantasy, I Who Have Never Known Men is the haunting and unforgettable account of a near future on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by uniformed groups of men. It is narrated by the youngest of the women, the only one with no memory of what the world was like before the cages, who must teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emotions of longing, loving, learning, companionship, and dying. Part thriller, part mystery, I Who Have Never Known Men shows us the power of one person without memories to reinvent herself piece by piece, emotion by emotion, in the process teaching us much about what it means to be human.
