Not really my fav genre, but I appreciate how the fear of coming out is captured.
“The night played out like my biggest fear.. It wasn't that I assumed my parents would disown me, or my grandfather would stop loving me, or my friendships would crumble. I feared the unknown stranger, their angry judgment, the silence of a gaggle of witnesses.”
I was in a bit of a reading slump where nothing appealed to me, but this book got me out again. It has everything I want from a thriller: complicated plot with unexpected twists, terrific characters and very good writing.
The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen*
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope*
Funny Story by Emily Henry
This is Why We Lied by Karin Slaughter*
The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks*
Leave No Trace by Jo Callaghan
The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton*
I mostly keep track of books on #StoryGraph so I was a little surprised after finishing All The Light We Cannot See by #AnthonyDoerr that of all the people who answered ‘Flaws of characters a main focus’ only 38% said Yes 🤔 I mean Werner is a complex sympathetic character but the ways he is complicit in Nazism is a major driver of the plot. If that ain’t a character flaw I don’t know what is! Nevertheless that complexity is part of why it’s a great book that avoids cliche @bookstodon
@bookstodon@diazona I 100% agree with you on both. That question could be interpreted many ways. Werner’s unease over his actions as a member of the German army is absolutely the driving force of his section of the novel though!
As to other ways character flaws can drive a novel: I just read The Prestige which has an unreliable narrator and 91% said flaws are a main driver of plot. Plus it is a great book.
Both Freud and Jung made a good livng from unhinged theories with no objective evidence to back them. They were stories, and we love stories. I think of this pair of frauds as Mr Carnality and Mr Spirituality.
If therapy works, it's because someone is prepared to focus their full attention on what patients are saying.
Can you make something true just by #writing it down? Jenny Erpenbeck traces a paper trail in Sloughing Off One Skin, translated by Michael Hofmann.
Catch this exclusive short story and listen to Erpenbeck talk about borders, endings and the slippery business of #fiction at https://fictionable.world