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24-07-2025
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50 fiction books featured on Bookends with Mattea Roach
If you're wondering what to read next this summer, this list of fiction books featured on the first season of CBC Radio's Bookend s with Mattea Roach is a good place to start. On the show, Roach talks to authors from Canada and around the world. Here are all the fiction titles that sparked the conversation this past year. Valid by Chris Bergeron, translated by Natalia Hero Set in Montreal in 2050, Valid is a novel about Christelle, a trans woman who is forced to live as a man to stay alive. At 70-years-old, she's held captive by an AI and sets off on her own revolution — a revelation of her true self. Chris Bergeron is a Montreal writer who currently works at Cossette, a global marketing agency. She previously ran the culture magazine Voir. Natalia Hero is a writer and translator based in Montreal. Her short fiction has been published in Mag, Shabby Doll House, Cosmonauts Avenue and The Temz Review. Her debut novel, Hum, was published in 2018. Small Ceremonies by Kyle Edwards In the city of Winnipeg, two Indigenous boys are on the cusp of adulthood, imagining a future filled with possibility and greatness. Small Ceremonies follows a hockey team of Ojibway high schoolers from Winnipeg, who are chasing hockey dreams and coming of age in a game — and a place — that can be both beautiful and brutal. Kyle Edwards is an award-winning Anishinaabe journalist and writer from the Lake Manitoba First Nation and a member of the Ebb and Flow First Nation. He has won two National Magazine Awards in Canada and he was recognized as an Emerging Indigenous Journalist by the Canadian Association of Journalists. He is currently a Provost Fellow at the University of Southern California, where he is pursuing a PhD in creative writing and literature. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid Atmosphere is thrilling from the start, when readers learn there's been an explosion on a space shuttle. Bouncing back and forth in time, the novel shares the journey of Joan, an astronaut in the 1980s, as she becomes the voice of mission control on that fateful day — and what's at stake, both personally and professionally, when things don't go as planned. Spent by Alison Bechdel In Spent, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel grapples with her complicated relationship with capitalism, community and activism after the success of her memoir and its subsequent TV adaptation. American cartoonist Alison Bechdel is the creator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and graphic memoirs Fun Home, Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength. The World So Wide by Zilla Jones The World So Wide tells the story of Felicity Alexander, a mixed-race opera star, who spends her life chasing love and validation and finds herself caught up in the military coup during the 1983 Grenada revolution and is placed under house arrest. What unfolds next is a saga that spans decades and reflects on race, love, belonging and revolution. Zilla Jones is a Winnipeg author and has been a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize on four occasions, and the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2024. She's also won many literary awards including the Journey Prize, the Malahat Review Open Season Award, the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction and the FreeFall short fiction award. The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana The Passenger Seat tells the story high school friends Teddy and Adam. Not yet men, but no longer boys, they set off on a road trip in search of freedom and self-discovery. But the further they go, the more lost they become, until they head down a road from which there's no coming back. Vijay Khurana is an Australian writer and translator based in Germany. His stories have been published in The Guardian, the Diane Williams-edited journal NOON and 3:AM Magazine. The Passenger Seat is his debut novel. One Golden Summer is a follow-up to Carley Fortune's debut book Every Summer After and tells the story of Alice, a photographer seeking a quiet, restorative summer at her childhood cottage with her grandmother. But her plans for peace are upended when Charlie — charming, flirtatious, and impossible to ignore — unexpectedly reappears. Soon, Alice finds herself feeling like she's 17 again, questioning whether this summer might hold something more than she ever expected. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong In The Emperor of Gladness, Hai, a 19-year-old fast food worker in America, forms a found family with his co-workers and an elderly woman. They're considered to be on the margins of society, but find comfort in each other through their shared sense of ostracization by the world around them and their desire for companionship. Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist and novelist. He has received numerous awards, including the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, the American Book Award and a MacArthur Genius Grant. His previous works include On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Time Is a Mother. Everything Is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe In Everything Is Fine Here, a younger sister navigates the challenges of family and societal pressures while offering love and support to her older sister, who is gay, in a country with strict anti-homosexuality laws. Iryn Tushabe is a Ugandan Canadian writer and journalist based in Regina. Her writing has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, Adda, Grain Magazine, The Walrus and CBC Saskatchewan, among others. She won the City of Regina writing award in both 2020 and 2024, and was a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021. In 2023, she won the Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Tushabe was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2016. Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang In Julie Chan is Dead, Julie Chan and her identical twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, are polar opposites and barely communicate after being separated at a young age. But when Chloe, a popular influencer, mysteriously dies, Julie steps in to take her place and is thrust into a glamorous world with millions of followers. However, she quickly learns that Chloe's seemingly flawless life was far from it, and as she uncovers the sinister cause behind her death, it casts Julie as the next target. Liann Zhang is a second-generation Chinese Canadian writer who was a former skincare content creator. She holds a psychology and criminology degree from the University of Toronto and splits her time between Vancouver and Toronto. Julie Chan is Dead is Zhang's debut novel. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami In The Dream Hotel, a device that's supposed to help people sleep also harvests data about their dreams. This becomes one way that the government decides if someone's likely to commit a crime. When Sara, the novel's protagonist, is flagged as high risk, she's sent to a retention centre with other women trying to prove their innocence — and fight for their freedom. Laila Lalami is the writer of books including The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award and the Arab-American Book Award, and The Other Americans, which won the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her work also appears in Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's, The Guardian and The New York Times. She lives in Los Angeles. Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt In Open, Heaven, James has just come out to his family and community and is feeling shut down, isolated and filled with yearning. Then, he falls hard for Luke, who's handsome, unpredictable and a little older. As time goes on, the two boys grow closer and transform each other's lives. But because James can't control his all-consuming crush and ensuing fear of rejection, the line between reality and fiction begins to blur and he must decide whether to risk everything in his life for the possibility of love. Seán Hewitt is an assistant professor of English at Trinity College Dublin. His poetry collection, T ongues of Fire, won the Laurel Prize in 2021, and his memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Nobody Asked for This by Georgia Toews In Nobody Asked for This, 23-year-old Virginia juggles the challenges of grief, supporting her depressed friend and caring for her bereaved stepdad, all while dreaming of a successful comedy career. But when her stepdad decides to sell the family home and a date goes horribly wrong, she faces experiences so painstaking, that even coping with humour doesn't help. Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Dream Count is a sweeping novel that weaves the perspectives of four women, moving between Nigeria, Guinea and the United States. Chiamaka is a travel journalist longing to be known. Zikora is her best friend, a lawyer, who's reeling from a major betrayal. Omelogor is Chia's cousin, outspoken, bold and brave, working in finance in Nigeria. Kadiatou is Chia's maid, building a life for her and her daughter in America, when she faces the unimaginable. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the bestselling author of novels Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Broadband Prize, and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Her nonfiction writing includes the manifesto We Should All Be Feminists, which was sampled in Beyoncé's song Flawless and inspired a t-shirt from Dior. She received a MacArthur Fellowship and divides her time between the U.S. and Nigeria. We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek We, the Kindling weaves together stories of women who were abducted as children by a rebel militia in northern Uganda. Through the writing, each powerful voice tells a haunting story of loss, survival, friendship and what it means to hold on to hope, no matter how small. Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, a poet and scholar born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, currently lives in Kingston, Ont. Her first collection of poetry, 100 Days won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Lushei Prize for African Poetry. Her second poetry collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and her latest collection is Song & Dread. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize. We, the Kindling is her debut novel. The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue The Paris Express provides a vivid account of late 19th-century France, exploring the fears and desires of the time through a group of passengers — diverse in their social class, age and occupation, aboard the Granville-Paris express. The fascinating stories of the passengers, including a young boy traveling solo, a pregnant woman on the run, a medical student and the devoted railway workers, are woven around the central, suspenseful plot of a young anarchist on a mission. But this is no ordinary journey … the story unfolds on the day of the infamous 1895 French railway disaster. Whistle by Linwood Barclay In Whistle, Annie moves to a charming town in upstate New York with her young son. She's reeling from the sudden death of her husband in an accident, and the fact that one of the children's books she authored and illustrated ignited a major scandal. When her son, Charlie, finds an old train set in a locked shed on their property, he's thrilled, but there's something eerie about the toy. As weird things start happening in the neighbourhood, Annie can't help but feel that she's walked out of one nightmare and right into another. Linwood Barclay is a New York Times bestselling author who has written more than 20 books, including thrillers I Will Ruin You, Find You First, Broken Promise and Elevator Pitch and the middle-grade novels Escape and Chase. Many of Barclay's books have been optioned for film and television, and he wrote the screenplay for the movie Never Saw It Coming, adapted from his novel of the same name. The Toronto author championed the memoir Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston on Canada Reads 2025. Body Friend by Katherine Brabon In Body Friend, the protagonist meets two different young women — Frida and Sylvia. Not only do they look just like her, but they also move like her. It turns out, all three women are living with a chronic illness and are in pain. But when it comes to dealing with their illnesses and pain, Frida and Sylvia seem to be polar opposites. Our unnamed protagonist is caught in the middle. Through the novel, we watch her try to find the best way to manage her body, her mind and the effects of her illness on who she is. Picks & Shovels by Cory Doctorow Picks & Shovels is the third book in the crime series about Martin Hench, which examines the early days of the personal computer and the possibilities for both exciting innovation and dangerous fraud it presented. Picks & Shovels takes us back to the 1980s, the start of Hench's career as a forensic accountant in Silicon Valley, where he exposes the finance crimes and shady dealings of tech bros. In this novel, Hench teams up with three brilliant young women to take down a pyramid scheme masquerading as a computer company. Cory Doctorow is a Toronto-born author, activist and journalist living in Los Angeles. His work, spanning non-fiction, fiction, and adult, YA and childhood audiences, has seen him inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and earned him the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Award for lifetime achievement. His book Radicalized was a 2020 Canada Reads contender, defended by Akil Augustine. A Different Hurricane by H. Nigel Thomas A Different Hurricane, is set on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and in Montreal. It's about two young men, Gordon and Allen, who become secret lovers until 1960s society forces them apart. After returning home from studying in Canada, Gordon's wife's journal threatens to expose his affair — putting his and Allen's lives in danger — and they must do everything in their power to keep it under wraps. H. Nigel Thomas is a Montreal-based Vincentian Canadian writer. He is the author of 13 books that span the genres of fiction, poetry and literary criticism. He has won many awards, including the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize in 2022, the Jackie Robinson Professional of the Year Award, the l'Université Laval's Hommage aux créateurs Award and the Black Theatre Workshop's Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award. Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet In Say Hello to My Little Friend, Pitbull-impersonator Izzy Reyes receives a cease-and-desist letter from the iconic rapper's legal team. Living in his aunt's garage, he yearns for money, respect and a girlfriend — and launches himself on a quest to become a modern-day version of Scarface drug lord Tony Montana. But when these attempts lead him to the Miami Seaquarium tank of orca Lolita, he reckons with forces of nature and the truth behind his arrival story from Cuba. Born to Cuban parents, Jennine Capó Crucet is the writer of Make Your Home Among Strangers, which won the International Latino Book Award, How to Leave Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize and the John Gardner Book Award, and My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, which was longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award. Say Hello to My Little Friend won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Capó Crucet is currently based in North Carolina. We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin In We Could Be Rats, Margit has always found it difficult to understand her sister Sigrid, who rejected the conventional path of life, never graduating high school, and preferring instead to roam the streets with her best friend Greta. When Margit, for the first time, tries to reconnect with her sister, she uncovers the heartwrenching reasons behind her sister's choices. Emily Austin is a writer based in Ottawa who studied English literature and library science at Western University. She is also the author of the novels Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space, and the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers. The Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor Death of the Author tells the story of Zelu, a Nigerian American writer whose breakout sci-fi novel catapults her to literary fame and commercial success — but also becomes distorted in the way she hoped people would understand it. Nnedi Okorafor is a Nebula and Hugo award-winning writer based in Arizona. Her books include the Binti trilogy, Who Fears Death and Lagoon, which is currently in development to be a movie. The Riveter by Jack Wang The Riveter follows a Chinese Canadian man named Josiah Chang who is a soldier during the Second World War. Buoyed by his love for Poppy, a singer who works with him in the shipyard, Josiah is determined to survive the battlefields and make it back home — but finds himself fighting injustice on all fronts. Jack Wang is a N.Y.-based writer and professor originally from Vancouver. He teaches in the department of writing at Ithaca College and his writing has appeared in publications such as Joyland Magazine, The New Quarterly and Fiddlehead. Wang's debut short story collection, We Two Alone was longlisted for Canada Reads in 2022, shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Hum by Helen Phillips Hum is a speculative fiction novel about May, a mother in the near future, who's struggling to provide for her family in a world that's gripped by climate change and overrun by technology. When she's presented with a solution, to be a guinea pig in a new face-altering surgery for a big payday, she goes for it. But the reward comes at a steep price — and she'll have to trust technology to save her family. Helen Phillips is the Brooklyn author of six books including novel The Need, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and short story collection Some Possible Solutions, which won the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. A professor at Brooklyn College, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. I Might Be in Trouble by Daniel Aleman I Might Be in Trouble follows struggling author David, reeling from his second book flopping after the resounding success of his first. His boyfriend has dumped him and he's fresh out of ideas for his third novel. Desperate to find redemption and some inspiration, David goes on a date with a promising stranger. After a wild night out in New York, David wakes to discover his date dead in bed next to him and the fact that he might have been responsible. In an attempt to uncover just what happened the night before, David teams up with his literary agent, Stacey, on a mission to figure out exactly what went on and maybe turn the disaster into inspiration for David's next book. Daniel Aleman is a Toronto-based author and writer originally from Mexico City. His debut novel, Indivisible, was released in 2021 and his second novel, Brighter than the Sun in 2023. Indivisible was a recipient of the 2022 Tomás Rivera Book Award. The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight In The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, Pen arrives at the University of Edinburgh, set on uncovering what her divorced parents in Canada have hid from her. Not only does she start to uncover the truth about them during a weekend visit to a famous writer, an old friend of her father's, Pen also experiences the many pangs of adulthood for the first time — including falling in love. Emma Knight is an author, journalist and entrepreneur based in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Literary Hub, Vogue, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus and The New York Times. She co-hosted and created the podcast Fanfare and co-founded the organic beverage company Greenhouse. She is the author of cookbooks How to Eat with One Hand and The Greenhouse Cookbook. Entitlement by Rumaan Alam Entitlement tells the story of Brooke, a woman in her thirties who gets a new job helping an elderly billionaire who wants to give away large parts of his fortune before he dies. This proximity to wealth is dizzying and intoxicating — yet it pushes Brooke closer and closer to madness. Rumaan Alam is the Brooklyn author of the novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and was adapted into a major movie. His other books include novels Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley The Scott Pilgrim series is about an unemployed 23-year-old Torontonian, the titular character, who's going through a breakup. But when he falls for the enigmatic Ramona Flowers, he must face off against her seven evil exes in order to continue their relationship. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life is the first book in the series. Bryan Lee O'Malley's career in comics took off after publishing Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life, the first in a Toronto-centric series about an indie music-loving nerd who must defeat his girlfriend Ramona's seven evil exes. The bestselling books later became a film starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Brie Larson. O'Malley followed up this success with the acclaimed graphic novel Seconds and another series called Snot Girl with Leslie Hung. The Mistletoe Mystery is a holiday novella featuring Molly the Maid from Nita Prose's earlier books. When Molly and her boyfriend are part of a secret Santa exchange that makes her question her relationship, she's thrown into solving her most personal mystery yet. Nita Prose's novella features The Maid characters with a Christmas twist Prose is a Toronto author and editor. She was formerly the Canadian vice president and editorial director for publishing company Simon & Schuster. Her books include The Maid and The Mystery Guest. LISTEN | Nita Prose's mystery with a Christmas twist: Bookends with Mattea RoachNita Prose: The Maid series returns with a Christmas twist Final Cut by Charles Burns In Final Cut, childhood friends Brian and Jimmy set out to create a sci-fi horror movie using an old eight-millimetre camera. With Laurie as Brian's muse, they trek to a remote cabin in the mountains and Brian struggles with finding the balance between his dreams and reality. Why Charles Burns keeps returning to teenage angst in his graphic novels Charles Burns is an American cartoonist. His graphic novel Black Hole won Eisner, Harvey and Ignatz awards. He is the cover artist for The Believer and has made covers for Time, The New Yorker and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. LISTEN | Charles Burns returns to teengage angst in his graphic novel: Bookends with Mattea RoachCharles Burns: Why the comics icon keeps returning to teenage angst All You Can Kill by Pasha Malla All You Can Kill is an absurdist story set at a wellness resort that specializes in solving couples' martial issues with erotic therapy. But the main characters of the novel — an unnamed narrator and a woman named K. Sohail — are not a couple — which incites humorous, yet uncomfortable moments. As horror and surrealism seeps into the narrative, All You Can Kill reminds us how strange people can be. Pasha Malla parodies a wellness resort with horror and humour in new novel Pasha Malla is the author of several books of poetry and fiction including The Withdrawal Method, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, People Park, which was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, and Kill the Mall. Originally from Newfoundland, he now lives in Ontario and has taught at York University, University of Toronto, the University of Guelph, Brock University and McMaster University. LISTEN | Parodying a wellness resort with horror and humour: Bookends with Mattea RoachPasha Malla: Parodying a wellness resort with horror and humour Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson Blackheart Man is a fantasy novel about the magical island of Chynchin. It follows Veycosi who is training as a griot (historian and musician) and is hoping to score a spot on Chynchin's Colloquium of scholars. Blackheart Man explores themes of Black self-actualization and empowerment within a world of African and Caribbean-inspired history, myth, fantasy and magic. Nalo Hopkinson weaves Caribbean folklore and dialect into her latest fantasy novel Blackheart Man Nalo Hopkinson is the author of many novels and short stories including Brown Girl in the Ring, which won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest and was defended on Canada Reads in 2008 by Jemeni. Her other books include Sister Mine, Midnight Robber, The Chaos, The New Moon's Arms and Skin Folk. In 2021, she won the Damon Knight Grand Master award, a lifetime achievement award for science fiction. Blackheart Man is shortlisted for the 2025 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. LISTEN | Nalo Hopkinson weaves Caribbean folklore in her latest novel: Bookends with Mattea RoachNalo Hopkinson: How Caribbean folktales inspired her fantastical novel, Blackheart Man Peggy by Rebecca Godfrey, with Leslie Jamison Peggy tells the story of Peggy Guggenheim from her early beginnings in New York as the daughter of two Jewish dynasties to her adventures in the European art world. Throughout the novel, she is forced to balance her loyalty to her family and her desire to break free from conventions and live her own original life. How Leslie Jamison helped realize her friend's final dream — and brought the story of Peggy Guggenheim to life Rebecca Godfrey was an author and journalist known for her books The Torn Skirt, which was a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the true crime story Under the Bridge, which was adapted into a Disney+ series. She grew up in Canada but lived in upstate New York. Peggy is her final novel, completed by Leslie Jamison after she died. Leslie Jamison is the Brooklyn-based author of essay collections The Empathy Exams, The Recovering, the novel The Gin Closet and the memoir Splinters. She won the 2025 Weston International Award for her body of nonfiction work. LISTEN | Capturing Peggy Guggenheim in fiction: Bookends with Mattea RoachLeslie Jamison: Capturing Peggy Guggenheim in fiction and honouring a friend's dream The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins At the Tate Modern in London sits a unique sculpture by the famous artist Vanessa Chapman. It's made up of all kinds of materials — wood, ceramic, wire, gold leaf, deer bone — all enclosed in a glass box. But when a forensic anthropologist happens upon the piece, he's convinced that the bone in the sculpture is actually human, sending the exhibit's curator into a frenzy. The thrilling mystery of the bone — and the dark look into the art world that surrounds it — is the story told in The Blue Hour. The Girl on the Train author Paula Hawkins turns to the mysterious art world in latest thriller Paula Hawkins is the London-based writer of the novels Into the Water and The Girl on the Train. The Girl on the Train sold 23 million copies worldwide and was adapted into a film starring Emily Blunt. LISTEN | Paula Hawkins explores the dark side of the art world: Bookends with Mattea RoachPaula Hawkins: Exploring the dark side of the art world in new thriller The Blue Hour Curiosities by Anne Fleming Curiosities is a novel that centres around an amateur historian who discovers an obscure memoir from 1600s England that explores a love that could not be explained in those times. Weaving together different fictional accounts, the novel tells the life stories of Joan and Thomasina, the only two survivors of a village ravaged by the plague, and how they eventually find each other again — Thomasina, now Tom, navigating the world in boy's clothes and as a male — and the struggles they face when they're discovered, naked, by a member of the clergy. Anne Fleming's novel Curiosities transports readers to the plagues, witch hunts and love stories of the 1600s Anne Fleming is an author based in Victoria, B.C. Her books include Pool-Hopping and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and her middle-grade novel, The Goat, which was a Junior Library Guild and White Ravens selection. Curiosities was shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize and longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. LISTEN | Anne Fleming chats with Mattea Roach: Bookends with Mattea RoachAnne Fleming: Why her latest novel is a gender-bending tale of witchcraft and forbidden love What I Know About You by Éric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss In What I Know About You, Tarek is on the right path: he'll be a doctor like his father, marry and have children. But when he falls for his patient's son, Ali, his life is turned upside-down as he realizes his sexuality against a backdrop of political turmoil in 1960s Cairo. In the 2000s, Tarek is now a doctor in Montreal. When someone begins to write to him and about him, the past that he's been trying to forget comes back to haunt him. Éric Chacour's debut novel is an ode to the power of queer love — even when it's forbidden Éric Chacour is a Montreal-based writer who was born to Egyptian parents and grew up between France and Quebec. In addition to writing, he works in the financial sector. What I Know About You is his first book and was a bestseller in its French edition, winning many awards including the Prix Femina. What I Know About You was on the shortlist for the 2024 Giller Prize and the 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Pablo Strauss has translated 12 works of fiction, several graphic novels and one screenplay. He was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, Synapses and The Longest Year. His translation of Le plongeur by Stephane Larue called The Dishwasher won the 2020 Amazon First Novel Award. He lives in Quebec City. LISTEN | Éric Chacou r on Bookends with Mattea Roach: Bookends with Mattea RoachEric Chacour: Exploring the power of familial expectations and forbidden love Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner Creation Lake tells the story of Sadie, an undercover agent tasked with sabotaging a young group of activists. But as the writings of a radical thinker named Bruno start to infiltrate her mind, Sadie starts to rethink her choices and the consequences of her transient life. Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake revolves around an anti-hero spy poised to take down an eco-commune Rachel Kushner is an American writer. Her previous work consists of the novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers and Telex From Cuba, the short story collection The Strange Case of Rachel K and the essay collection The Hard Crowd. She has won the Prix Médicis and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Creation Lake was nominated for the 2024 Booker Prize. LISTEN | An agent provocateur faces deep questions about how to live: Bookends with Mattea RoachRachel Kushner: In Booker Prize finalist Creation Lake, an agent provocateur faces deep questions about how to live Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst Our Evenings tells the story of Dave Win, the son of a white British dressmaker and a Burmese father he's never met, from his time growing up in small-town England in the 1960s to the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020. Alan Hollinghurst explores identity and political change in his latest novel, Our Evenings Alan Hollinghurst is a British author of the novels The Swimming-Pool Library, The Spell and The Line of Beauty, which won the 2004 Booker Prize. Hollinghurst also won the Somerset Maugham Award, the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. He lives in London. LISTEN | Coming of age in Britain and writing through the gay gaze: Bookends with Mattea RoachAlan Hollinghurst: Coming of age in Britain and writing through the gay gaze Hi, It's Me by Fawn Parker In Hi, It's Me, Fawn returns home after her mother's death. But the old farmhouse is also inhabited by four other women with interesting and strange beliefs. As she lives in her mother's room and tries to figure out what to do with her possessions, she becomes obsessed with archiving her mother's writing and documents, teaching her more and more about the woman she thought she knew so well. Fawn Parker blends her own grief with fiction in her novel Hi, It's Me Fawn Parker is an author and current PhD student at the University of New Brunswick. Her novel What We Both Know was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2022. Her poetry collection Soft Inheritance won the Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. Hi, It's Me was nominated for the 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. LISTEN | Fawn Parker on blending her grief with fiction: Bookends with Mattea RoachFawn Parker: Blending her own grief with fiction in new novel Hi, It's Me Cicada Summer by Erica McKeen In Cicada Summer, Husha, a woman quarantining with her grandfather and her ex-lover at a remote lakeside cabin, mourns her mother's recent death. While cleaning, Husha discovers a strange short story collection, the last message left by her mother. As the stories, teeming with unsettling imagery, begin to seep into the cloistered life at the cabin, the inhabitants must each reckon with loss, longing and what it means to truly know someone. Erica McKeen uses horror and surrealism to examine complicated grief and the tensions of providing care Erica McKeen is a writer living in Vancouver. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for the Guernica Prize and shortlisted for The Malahat Review Open Season Awards. Her first novel, Tear, won the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prizes for literary fiction. Cicada Summer was longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. LISTEN | Erica McKeen uses horror and surrealism to explore grief, care and love: Bookends with Mattea RoachErica McKeen: Using horror and surrealism to explore grief, care and love in new novel Cicada Summer Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer Absolution, the final instalment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series, explores the conditions that may have contributed to the formation of Area X, including government complicity and scientific experimentation. It includes an account of the very first expedition into Area X, which is surrounded by an invisible border on a coastline that's referred to as the Forgotten Coast. How Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach series reflects our own relationship with the changing environment VanderMeer is an American author based in Tallahassee, Florida. His bestselling Southern Reach series includes four books: Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance and Absolution. Annihilation won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. His other work includes Hummingbird Salamander, Dead Astronauts, Borne and The Strange Bird. His reporting has appeared in Current Affairs, TIME, the Nation and Esquire. LISTEN | Jeff VanderMeer on reflecting our fight against climate change in his writing: Bookends with Mattea RoachJeff VanderMeer: How his blockbuster Southern Reach series reflects our own fight against climate change Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan Brotherless Night follows the story of 16-year-old Sashi in 1981 Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Sashi, an aspiring doctor, wants to do something to help her brothers and friends who are swept up in the violence of the civil war. She decides to work as a medic for the Tamil Tigers, a militant group who are fighting for self-determination for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But when the Tigers kill a beloved teacher and Indian peacekeepers show up and only incite more the violence, Sashi begins to question what she stands for and accepts a dangerous opportunity to document human rights violations. V.V. Ganeshananthan explores the complexity of Sri Lanka's civil war in her prize-winning novel V.V. Ganeshananthan is an American writer and journalist of Ilankai Tamil descent. She served as the vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, on the board of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and is a current board member for the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches at the University of Minnesota and co-host a podcast called Fiction/Non/Fiction. Her first novel, Love Marriage, was longlisted for the Women's Prize. Brotherless Night won the U.K. Women's Prize and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. LISTEN | V.V. Ganeshananthan on her novel Brotherless Night: Bookends with Mattea RoachV.V. Ganeshananthan: Exploring the complexity of Sri Lanka's civil war in her prize-winning novel, Brotherless Night Bad Land by Corinna Chong In Bad Land, Regina's brother shows up on her doorstep with his six-year-old daughter after seven years away, interrupting her quiet loner life. The longer they stay, the clearer it becomes to Regina that something terrible has happened. Once the secret is revealed, they're sent on a fraught journey from Alberta to the coast of B.C. Corinna Chong confronts truth and the strange landscapes of the Alberta Badlands in her fiction Originally from Calgary, Corinna Chong lives in Kelowna, B.C. and teaches English and fine arts at Okanagan College. She published her first novel, Belinda's Rings, in 2013. In 2023, she published the short story collection The Whole Animal which includes Kids in Kindergarten, the winner of the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize. LISTEN | Corinna Chong on her debut novel Bad Land: Bookends with Mattea RoachCorinna Chong: Uncovering long buried truths against the backdrop of Alberta's Badlands The Life Impossible by Matt Haig In The Life Impossible, retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a house in Ibiza by a long lost friend. Feeling unfulfilled in her life, she books a one-way ticket to Ibiza, determined to figure out why she was left this property — and what happened to her friend, who died under mysterious circumstances. Featuring Matt Haig's trademark magic realism, dark humour, complex characters and optimism, The Life Impossible is a tale of a woman rediscovering the beauty of life and fighting for a better world. Matt Haig's novel The Life Impossible features a surprise inheritance, a magical island and cautious hope Haig is a British author of fiction, nonfiction and kids' books, but is perhaps best known for his novel The Midnight Library — which became popular on TikTok during the pandemic — and for his candid memoir, Reasons to Stay Alive, about his struggles with depression. LISTEN | Matt Haig on hope in fiction and life: Bookends with Mattea RoachMatt Haig: A surprise inheritance, a magical island and why he's embracing hope — in fiction and life The Pairing by Casey McQuiston The Pairing tells the story of Kit and Theo, two exes with a long history of love and friendship. They accidentally end up on the same European food and wine tour after not seeing each other for four years. Trapped together at some of the most romantic places in the world, Kit and Theo jump headlong into a friendly European hookup competition to get their mind off their ever-present chemistry. Casey McQuiston's latest novel The Pairing is a sexy European adventure that celebrates queer love Casey McQuiston is the author of Red, White & Royal Blue, One Last Stop and I Kissed Shara Wheeler. Their work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Bon Appetit. They were born and raised in Louisiana but currently live in New York City. LISTEN | Casey McQuiston on the future of the romance genre: Bookends with Mattea RoachCasey McQuiston: Celebrating queer love and joy and navigating the future of romance The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş The Anthropologists centres on a young immigrant couple in an unnamed city navigating friendships, the guilt of being away from family and the search for an apartment. Ayşegül Savaş captures the era of being an 'irresponsible grown-up' in her latest novel Ayşegül Savaş is a Paris-based, Turkish novelist and short story writer. Her other works include novels White on White and Walking on the Ceiling and the nonfiction book The Wilderness. Her short stories are published in the New Yorker. LISTEN | Ayşegül Savaş on writing a book where nothing really happens: Bookends with Mattea RoachAysegul Savas: Finding home in foreignness and capturing the uncertainty of early adulthood Oil People by David Huebert Oil People tells the story of 13-year-old Jade Armbruster in 1987, who is living on the family's deteriorating oil farm, as her parents decide what to do about the land and their business. Jade's teenage experiences are juxtaposed with the 1862 story of Clyde Armbruster, who built the oil farm, and the rivalry he develops with his neighbours. David Huebert explores complexity of our relationship with oil in novel Oil People David Huebert is a Halifax-based writer who has won the CBC Short Story Prize and The Walrus Poetry Prize. He is the author of short story collections Peninsula Sinking, which won a Dartmouth Book Award and was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and Chemical Valley, which won the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize. LISTEN | David Huebert on family secrets and the history of oil in Ontario: Bookends with Mattea RoachDavid Huebert: Exploring the complexity of our relationship with oil through fiction The Capital of Dreams by Heather O'Neill The Capital of Dreams is a dark fairytale set in a small European country during a period of war. Fourteen-year-old Sofia is the daughter of the revered writer, Clara Bottom. When their country is invaded, Clara bundles Sofia onto the last train evacuating children out of the city. Clara gives her daughter her latest manuscript to smuggle to safety. When the children's train stops in the middle of the forest, Sofia senses they are in danger. She manages to escape, but loses her mother's beloved manuscript. Soon Sofia finds herself alone in a country at war on an epic journey to find all that she has lost. Heather O'Neill on how motherhood and artistry intersect in her life and writing Heather O'Neill is a novelist, short story writer and essayist from Montreal. She won Canada Reads 2024, championing The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou. O'Neill is the first person to win Canada Reads as both an author and a contender. Her debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals won Canada Reads 2007 when it was defended by musician John K. Samson. LISTEN | Heather O'Neill on crafting fairy tales: Bookends with Mattea RoachHeather O'Neill: How motherhood and artistry intersect in the bestselling writer's life and work Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar Martyr! follows a 20-something Iranian American poet named Cyrus in his early years of sobriety. When he becomes fascinated with the stories of historical martyrs, he finds himself on his way to interview a terminally ill artist in Brooklyn — a journey and conversation that changes the course of his life. Kaveh Akbar's search for meaning in sobriety led to writing his bestselling novel, Martyr! Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian American writer. His poems have appeared in publications including The New Yorker and The Paris Review. His previous books include Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf. LISTEN | Kaveh Akbar discusses Martyr! on Bookends: Bookends with Mattea RoachKaveh Akbar: Finding meaning in sobriety and writing his bestseller, Martyr!
CBC
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How characters from Alison Bechdel's past shook her out of her memoir-writing kick
Nearly 20 years after her breakout memoir, Fun Home, American cartoonist Alison Bechdel is still unearthing new truths about that period of her life. But this time, she's taking a look at her personal story through fiction, with her new comic novel, Spent. In Spent, she explores the life of a cartoonist, also named Alison Bechdel, who grapples with her complicated relationship with capitalism, community and activism after the success of her memoir and its subsequent TV adaptation. "When I was younger, I did lead a more communal life," Bechdel said on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "I lived in a communal house. I went out and did political activities and was involved in my community. Over time, I really stopped doing that — and it's a bunch of factors. Part of it's getting older, part of it is being in a relationship, but a big part of it was that I was living very much on the edge until I was in my 40s, until Fun Home came out, and slowly saved my financial bacon." "Then I started making a lot of money, which was a very weird experience for someone who had formed their sense of self as an outsider and especially as a poor outsider." Bechdel, who is also known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and books Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength, joined Roach to revisit her debut memoir and how it shaped her return to fiction. Mattea Roach: You published your memoir, Fun Home, almost 20 years ago when you were 45. Now you're in your 60s. How has your relationship with the text evolved over the past nearly two decades? Alison Bechdel: It's funny to have this thing, this record of my life that is unchanging, like it's cast in stone. Even though I have found out lots of interesting information about various people or scenes in the book that would change the story if I were to write it now, it's done. This is the record and it's very odd to have to be constantly talking about it. The book was published almost 20 years ago, but I'm still talking about it as if it's a new thing to people. So that's a funny activity to get one's head around. How did it come about that you learned new information about some of the stuff that's depicted in the book? Was it a situation where people you knew read the book and said that's not actually how it was? I'll tell you one example of that, which is that I learned from my mother's best friend, that on the day that my father died, she had decided to not divorce him. Wow. Your dad died when he was hit by a truck and that was two weeks after your mom had asked for a divorce. And then there's some significant suggestion that it might have actually been intentional on his part. In this tumultuous time around between when I came out to my parents and when he died, which was just a couple of months, my mother had asked him for a divorce. And now I find out that she had been going to call that off. It just just casts her whole story into this really different light. It was already quite a tragic story, but now it's even worse, you know? Fun Home was made into this Broadway musical in 2015 and it won five Tonys. It's a very different work despite being adapted from your memoir. How did it feel to hand over a project that was so personal to be adopted for another medium? I didn't really know what I was doing. I knew I had sort of sidestepped an offer to option it for a film by asking for more money than they were willing to pay me. Which was a great relief. But then this offer came up for a musical and I didn't really have a connection to musicals. I've seen musicals, but I'm not like a big musical person. Somehow it seemed like it was different enough that I wouldn't mind if someone made a really bad musical out of my book — and the way that I would mind if it were a really bad film adaptation. I don't know what I was thinking now, but fortunately, that didn't happen. The people who made it did a very good job. It's a really good adaptation, but I always sort of think, "Wow, that was lucky." In my new book Spent, I explore what it would be like to really lose control of a creative project. Why did you want to explore this alternate path that you're grateful, in your real life, to not have gone down? Well, partly because once you become a writer in this world, everyone expects you to then somehow do something for TV or the great triumph is to get your book turned into a TV show and that just always strikes me as funny. Why can't we just make comic books that are comic books? I guess, obviously, because you make more money, but it's also just a cultural phenomenon. You know that if you're a writer, you have to grapple with this. Why did you want to revisit these characters from your weekly comic strips Dykes to Watch Out For who are now in late middle-age but are still living together in a communal housing situation? This book, Spent, was going to be another memoir. That's what I started doing after my comic strip. I retired the comic strip and began writing books about my life. And I thought that's what I was going to do forever because I really liked writing about actual life. Occasionally, someone would ask me, do you ever think you'll do fiction again? And I would just go blank. Fiction? How do you do that? And I couldn't even remember that I had actually done this fictional comic strip. But I realized early on in the work for this book that doing it as a memoir was going to be really boring. I just somehow didn't want to write about my actual life or actually read Marx or all the things I would have to do to intelligently discuss money or capitalism. In the moment that I threw that idea away, this other idea came in. What would really be funny is if I wrote about a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel who was trying to write a book about money and then it just all sort of sprang to life — and in that new vision, there were my old comic strip characters who were going to be my friends. It just was one of those lovely moments when something just comes into your mind fully formed, which hardly ever happens to me.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Funniest Part of Alison Bechdel's Work
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Dykes to Watch Out For, the long-running lesbian comic strip that launched Alison Bechdel's career, is full of kitchen-table drama and dry humor, but its title is also more literal than those elements might suggest. Watch out, strip after strip said: Here comes Mo, the main character and author-avatar, spinning her way onto the page like a flustered Tasmanian devil of '90s-lefty anxiety. Look out for Mo, going hoarse over the rise of Pat Buchanan or chiding her circle for not thinking enough about genocide in Bosnia. There's Mo, nose in a newspaper, ignoring her friends' new baby to stress about the latest mainstream co-optation of radical activism. This might sound like a drag, but it's actually one of the funniest running bits in Bechdel's work. For decades, the author has allowed herself—or her stand-in self—to be loudly annoying, and often wrong, on the page. When Mo's a bummer, her friends snap back at her; when she talks or worries her way out of an opportunity to get laid, they poke fun at her. Mo is frequently uptight about other people's choices (to take Prozac, for instance, or to transition), but her diatribes usually end with her being dressed down or hurting someone she cares about. I've always been charmed by how much Bechdel is willing to let Mo be both her double and the butt of her joke. In her new book, Spent, Bechdel blurs the writer-character line even further, Hanna Rosin writes this week, and the result is even more gratifying. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic's books desk: Return of the shaman Shutting down Salman Rushdie is not going to help America's Johnson & Johnson problem An awkward truth about American work Spent is not a memoir, but neither is it wholly fictional. Instead, it's a graphic novel about a character named Alison Bechdel, who looks just like Alison Bechdel, the book's author—and also an older Mo. Novel-Alison, like real Alison, lives in Vermont with her partner, Holly, and has made a lot of unexpected money off a television adaptation of her memoir. (Bechdel's memoir Fun Home was adapted into a Tony Award–winning musical.) Alison and Holly's closest friends in Vermont are old standbys from DTWOF: Sparrow, Stuart, and their child, J.R.; Ginger; and Lois, who all live in a group house. They're busy with their own various crises and hookups, while Alison finds that more money means more problems. 'There's no avoiding it. She is complicit to the craw with the capitalist crisis,' a box of omniscient narration says in one panel. Alison, sitting at her desk doing her taxes, says aloud: 'Someone should write a book about this.' Spent is that book. Bechdel the author is 'astute enough to know that famous people lamenting the burdens of fame are insufferable,' Rosin writes. So here, 'she's created an Alison whose dilemma parodies contemporary celebrity culture, while also parodying herself, the author.' And, thank goodness, it's still funny. Alison keeps putting her foot in her mouth on social issues, especially in front of the radical recent college dropout J.R. and their companion, Badger. The young adults—furious with the world for going about business as usual during a 21st-century 'polycrisis' (the name of a podcast they host)—resemble in many ways a younger Mo. Meanwhile, Alison wonders where her fighting spirit has gone, growing concerned that luxury and age have dulled her into complacency. When Sparrow suggests that the kids cool it, Bechdel isn't mocking their idealism. And she's not suggesting that Alison's become a coldhearted reactionary—just that she has more to manage, and perhaps more to lose, than she did years before. After all, in DTWOF, Mo's all-consuming neuroticism prevented her from living a fulfilling life, driving away friends and lovers. As in previous books, Bechdel seems to hint that a middle path is the only way forward: Giving in to mega-corporations and nihilistically welcoming climate apocalypse, she suggests, is an abdication of our responsibilities to one another. But her characters have to learn, again and again, that sticking to your principles doesn't have to mean ruining every meal shared with your loved ones. What Is Alison Bechdel's Secret? By Hanna Rosin The cartoonist has spent a lifetime worrying. In a new graphic novel, she finds something like solace. Read the full article. , by Elaine Castillo Girlie Delmundo—not her real name; she adopted it for her high-stress job—is a content moderator at a massive tech firm. Her work involves filtering through a carousel of online horrors so crushing that there are typically three or four suicide attempts among her co-workers each year. Girlie, however, is sardonic and no-nonsense by nature: She's an eldest daughter shaped by the 2008 recession, when her immigrant family lost everything. The job can't break her. But her life transforms when she gets a cushy position as an elite moderator for a virtual-reality firm. Suddenly, Girlie is enjoying perks such as regular VR therapy sessions, in which she experiences rare moments of bliss—swimming through cool water, touching the bark of a tree. The new gig is great, at least for a while. (All may not be as it seems there.) Her new boss, William, also happens to be a total stud, and his presence transforms Castillo's flinty satire of the tech industry into a sultry romance novel. As we watch Girlie's defenses melt, the book shows a woman slowly surrendering to human experiences that can't be controlled. — Valerie Trapp From our list: The 2025 summer reading guide 📚 Autocorrect, by Etgar Keret 📚 When It All Burns, by Jordan Thomas 📚 The South, by Tash Aw The World That 'Wages for Housework' Wanted By Lily Meyer But creating social conditions that are conducive to motherhood doesn't have to be part of a reactionary agenda. Indeed, one of the feminist movement's most radical and idealistic intellectual branches, a 1970s campaign called Wages for Housework, advocated for policies that, if ever implemented, genuinely might set off a baby boom. Its central goal was straightforward: government pay for anybody who does the currently unremunerated labor of caring for their own home and family. On top of that, the movement envisioned communal social structures and facilities including high-quality public laundromats and day cares that would get women out of their homes and give them their own time, such that paying them to do housework wouldn't consign them to a life without anything else. Read the full article. * Lead image: Excerpted from the book Spent, provided courtesy of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. © 2025 by Alison Bechdel. Reprinted by permission. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Sign up for The Wonder Reader, a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Explore all of our newsletters. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
The Funniest Part of Alison Bechdel's Work
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Dykes to Watch Out For, the long-running lesbian comic strip that launched Alison Bechdel's career, is full of kitchen-table drama and dry humor, but its title is also more literal than those elements might suggest. Watch out, strip after strip said: Here comes Mo, the main character and author-avatar, spinning her way onto the page like a flustered Tasmanian devil of '90s-lefty anxiety. Look out for Mo, going hoarse over the rise of Pat Buchanan or chiding her circle for not thinking enough about genocide in Bosnia. There's Mo, nose in a newspaper, ignoring her friends' new baby to stress about the latest mainstream co-optation of radical activism. This might sound like a drag, but it's actually one of the funniest running bits in Bechdel's work. For decades, the author has allowed herself—or her stand-in self—to be loudly annoying, and often wrong, on the page. When Mo's a bummer, her friends snap back at her; when she talks or worries her way out of an opportunity to get laid, they poke fun at her. Mo is frequently uptight about other people's choices (to take Prozac, for instance, or to transition), but her diatribes usually end with her being dressed down or hurting someone she cares about. I've always been charmed by how much Bechdel is willing to let Mo be both her double and the butt of her joke. In her new book, Spent, Bechdel blurs the writer-character line even further, Hanna Rosin writes this week, and the result is even more gratifying. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic 's books desk: Spent is not a memoir, but neither is it wholly fictional. Instead, it's a graphic novel about a character named Alison Bechdel, who looks just like Alison Bechdel, the book's author—and also an older Mo. Novel-Alison, like real Alison, lives in Vermont with her partner, Holly, and has made a lot of unexpected money off a television adaptation of her memoir. (Bechdel's memoir Fun Home was adapted into a Tony Award–winning musical.) Alison and Holly's closest friends in Vermont are old standbys from DTWOF: Sparrow, Stuart, and their child, J.R.; Ginger; and Lois, who all live in a group house. They're busy with their own various crises and hookups, while Alison finds that more money means more problems. 'There's no avoiding it. She is complicit to the craw with the capitalist crisis,' a box of omniscient narration says in one panel. Alison, sitting at her desk doing her taxes, says aloud: 'Someone should write a book about this.' Spent is that book. Bechdel the author is 'astute enough to know that famous people lamenting the burdens of fame are insufferable,' Rosin writes. So here, 'she's created an Alison whose dilemma parodies contemporary celebrity culture, while also parodying herself, the author.' And, thank goodness, it's still funny. Alison keeps putting her foot in her mouth on social issues, especially in front of the radical recent college dropout J.R. and their companion, Badger. The young adults—furious with the world for going about business as usual during a 21st-century 'polycrisis' (the name of a podcast they host)—resemble in many ways a younger Mo. Meanwhile, Alison wonders where her fighting spirit has gone, growing concerned that luxury and age have dulled her into complacency. When Sparrow suggests that the kids cool it, Bechdel isn't mocking their idealism. And she's not suggesting that Alison's become a coldhearted reactionary—just that she has more to manage, and perhaps more to lose, than she did years before. After all, in DTWOF, Mo's all-consuming neuroticism prevented her from living a fulfilling life, driving away friends and lovers. As in previous books, Bechdel seems to hint that a middle path is the only way forward: Giving in to mega-corporations and nihilistically welcoming climate apocalypse, she suggests, is an abdication of our responsibilities to one another. But her characters have to learn, again and again, that sticking to your principles doesn't have to mean ruining every meal shared with your loved ones. What Is Alison Bechdel's Secret? By Hanna Rosin The cartoonist has spent a lifetime worrying. In a new graphic novel, she finds something like solace. Read the full article. What to Read Moderation, by Elaine Castillo Girlie Delmundo—not her real name; she adopted it for her high-stress job—is a content moderator at a massive tech firm. Her work involves filtering through a carousel of online horrors so crushing that there are typically three or four suicide attempts among her co-workers each year. Girlie, however, is sardonic and no-nonsense by nature: She's an eldest daughter shaped by the 2008 recession, when her immigrant family lost everything. The job can't break her. But her life transforms when she gets a cushy position as an elite moderator for a virtual-reality firm. Suddenly, Girlie is enjoying perks such as regular VR therapy sessions, in which she experiences rare moments of bliss—swimming through cool water, touching the bark of a tree. The new gig is great, at least for a while. (All may not be as it seems there.) Her new boss, William, also happens to be a total stud, and his presence transforms Castillo's flinty satire of the tech industry into a sultry romance novel. As we watch Girlie's defenses melt, the book shows a woman slowly surrendering to human experiences that can't be controlled. — Valerie Trapp Out Next Week 📚 Autocorrect, by Etgar Keret 📚 When It All Burns, by Jordan Thomas 📚 The South, by Tash Aw Your Weekend Read The World That 'Wages for Housework' Wanted By Lily Meyer But creating social conditions that are conducive to motherhood doesn't have to be part of a reactionary agenda. Indeed, one of the feminist movement's most radical and idealistic intellectual branches, a 1970s campaign called Wages for Housework, advocated for policies that, if ever implemented, genuinely might set off a baby boom. Its central goal was straightforward: government pay for anybody who does the currently unremunerated labor of caring for their own home and family. On top of that, the movement envisioned communal social structures and facilities including high-quality public laundromats and day cares that would get women out of their homes and give them their own time, such that paying them to do housework wouldn't consign them to a life without anything else. * Lead image: Excerpted from the book Spent, provided courtesy of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. © 2025 by Alison Bechdel. Reprinted by permission.
Washington Post
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Alison Bechdel makes a welcome return to fiction in ‘Spent'
No artistic border is more poorly defended or muzzily mapped than the wavy line that separates self-consciousness from self-parody. Too many of the greats stumble unintentionally across the divide, and when they do they rarely return. The wisest artists are those who make the journey with eyes open and head held high. How else would we know when they're winking? Witness Alison Bechdel in her charmingly shaggy new graphic novel, 'Spent,' her first proper work of fiction since she ended the 25-year run of her beloved comic strip 'Dykes to Watch Out For' in 2008. Here she is once again her main character, as she was in her graphic memoir 'Fun Home,' but the fictional Alison is the creator of a series called 'Lesbian PETA Members to Watch Out For.' Like the real Bechdel, this one lives in Vermont and is married to a woman named Holly (based on the artist Holly Rae Taylor, who is responsible for the vibrant colors of 'Spent'), but her friends are almost all fictional characters drawn from the cast of 'Dykes.' They're older now than they were when Bechdel last checked in on them, but they remain recognizably themselves as they aspire to thrive in the interregnum years of the covid-19 pandemic and the Biden presidency. Bechdel's return to fiction — even in an autobiographical key — is welcome, not least of all because graphic memoir yielded increasingly diminishing returns for her. 'Are You My Mother?,' her follow up to 'Fun Home,' was a denser book in every way — intellectually, narratively, formally — than its predecessor. Cluttered with lengthy quotations from British psychoanalytic theory across pages sometimes overcrowded with panels, it resembled an endless footnote appended to an already abstruse tome. 'The Secret to Superhuman Strength,' in which Bechdel retold her life story by discussing the kinds of physical exercise she did in different decades — call it a bildungsmuscleroman — aimed for a lighter tone but still overloaded the bar with plates. Both books are really about Bechdel's attempts to follow up 'Fun Home,' which lends them an exhaustingly self-referential tone. 'Spent' satirizes that impulse from the start. The fictional Alison is the author of 'Death and Taxidermy,' a memoir that reimagines the real Bechdel's schoolteacher father as a rogue taxidermist. (An excerpt from the book within the book demonstrates that it looks an awful lot like 'Fun Home,' though its themes are much sillier.) As 'Spent' begins in 2022, an acclaimed television series adapted from 'Death and Taxidermy' is increasingly going off the rails — its own version of the protagonist has just eaten a burger, to the vegetarian Alison's horror. Seeking to reassert herself, Alison is struggling to write her follow-up, '$um: An Accounting,' a book that will, she modestly hopes, 'put the final nail in the coffin of late-stage capitalism.' One problem: She's not entirely sure what 'late-stage capitalism' actually is. Alison's creative frustrations are less the spine of 'Spent' than one recurring gag spilling out of a horn of plenty. With its cast of familiar, aging lesbians, 'Spent' sometimes reads as if Bechdel had relaunched 'Dykes to Watch Out For' in AARP: The Magazine, its story ambling peripatetically between characters and situations. The results are often wry and sometimes raunchy. In one plot strand, a married, barely heterosexual couple from 'Dykes' cautiously opens their relationship to another woman. As things heat up ('Spent' is refreshingly graphic about postmenopausal sex), they settle on the term 'throuple' to describe their arrangement, on the grounds that 'polycule' sounds 'like a skin disorder.' Alison, meanwhile, has to push down jealousy after Holly, who becomes an internet celebrity when a video of her chopping wood goes viral, starts flirting with the alluring veterinarian who keeps stopping by. As Bechdel knows well, queer enclaves in liberal college towns are all alike in their insistence on difference, and she skewers those routine eccentricities as lovingly as ever. When almost all the characters gather for an 'anti-colonial Thanksgiving,' one is delighted to find that the old electric carving knife still works. 'Is that really necessary for Tofurky?' another asks. Alison and Holly are perpetually preoccupied with their finances, but they still spend on groceries with comedic profligacy, partly because they can't imagine going anywhere other than the organic co-op, where three bags of provisions run them $480. Despite its self-reflexive conceits, 'Spent' largely eschews the smirking pomp of metafiction. Yes, the fictional Alison is friends with the real Bechdel's characters, but no one ever comments on that fact — she seems to have simply slid into the place that Mo, her longtime alter ego, occupied in 'Dykes.' Lois, Ginger, Sparrow and the rest are here instead, one senses, as stand-ins for Bechdel's real friends, and the veneer of fiction gives Bechdel that much more permission to go broad as she takes aim at the proclivities of lefty Vermonters, herself included, who long to reclaim their old activist passions but can't quite escape the comforts of Burlington and its environs. Alison's artist's block, similarly, seems to have less to do with Bechdel's own attempts to repeat the triumph of 'Fun Home' than it does with — to put it both earnestly and hyperbolically — the struggle to do anything worthwhile in a dying world. Despite that, Bechdel's visual style is freer and lighter than it has been in years. Panels flow fluidly into one another and occasional splash pages vividly capture the communal tempo of Vermont life at cookouts and farmers markets. Her characters are crisply rendered, but her linework has a slightly wavy quality that imbues her drawings with the improvisatory tone of life as it is lived rather than plot as it is planned. Not much happens, but you don't need it to: The real pleasure of 'Spent' derives from watching its characters go about their lives, and imagining that Bechdel might continue their stories for the rest of her career. To the extent that there is an organizing story here, it is a book about people who need to get over themselves so that they can better look after one another. Holly slips into egomania as she watches her view counts on social media rise and fall, formerly revolutionary parents grapple with the radicalism of the next generation, Alison tries to respect her MAGA-minded sister. Ultimately, the very thing that threatens to grate in 'Spent' — the self-involvement of its characters, Alison in particular — is what makes the book so rewarding. In teasing herself and her friends, Bechdel finds a new way to have fun with both. That attitude, in turn, opens up forms of sweet-minded sincerity, and 'Spent' shines most in fleeting moments when its characters tenderly push one another, often with simple acts of care, to overcome their obsessive impasses and paralyzing dreads. We may not, Bechdel suggests, be able to help ourselves any more than we can save the world, but we can always look after those we love. Jacob Brogan is an editor with Book World. A Comic Novel By Alison Bechdel Mariner. 257 pp. $32
