Molly Recommends 2 Very Male New Novels
By Molly Young
Dear readers,
In a startling break with tradition, we're examining two new (not antique) books today, both of which happen to offer glimpses into the male psyche. Feeling frisky and contemporary as summer approaches! We'll be back to regular programming in coming editions; in the meantime, please enjoy this detour into the present.
—Molly
PS: Read Like the Wind will be on hiatus for the next few weeks, but will return in July.
'Flesh,' by David Szalay
Fiction, 2025
After finishing 'Flesh' in under 48 hours I tried to figure out how it worked, why it moved so quickly, what it was doing. Came up with a few possible answers but nothing conclusive, and would welcome any hypotheses from readers who felt similarly catapulted through its pages.
'Flesh' is the story of a Hungarian man born in (probably) the early or mid-1980s, with each chapter excavating a meaningful period in his life. Then the chapter ends and a silence is imposed, and the following chapter picks up a few years later. A reader interpolates what has occurred during the elided time.
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