Weird Books Part 2
and a Book Art Zoom!
I like weird books and I cannot lie.
I like to read books in almost every single genre (sorry romance), but weird books are my favorite! There can be something so dreamlike and surreal in a weird books. There’s room for so much imagination and humor. I have five thousand weird thoughts a day and often feel like I’m working hard to keep them in. As I get older, I find I care less if people think I’m weird. I’ve learned to wave my weirdness like a flag.
So, here is the second installment of Weird Books. I’ve left a link to Weird Books Part 1 at the bottom of this post.
In this wildly inventive and dark novel, we get a first-person account from Tiny, a married cellist who dreams she has made love with a female owl. After this arresting dream she is shocked to see scratch marks across her chest that look as though they could have come from talons. She’s even more surprised when she finds herself pregnant with what she’s convinced is an owl baby. The owl baby germinating inside of her allows Tiny to be able to see in the dark. Indeed, an owl baby is born. While Tiny’s husband recognizes something is off with his child, he will not acknowledge it is an owl baby; he doesn’t see her for who she is. Oshetsky’s prose is clipped, terse and at times searing. Tiny struggles being home with her owl baby all day. This is a portrait of a family with a new baby and whether owl or not, it explores how much upheaval this change can cause and what happens to mothers who don’t get the proper support from their partners or communities.
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin
Poor Gilda, she is so anxious about everything that it practically paralyzes her. After getting into an accident that she can’t quite remember, she ends up at her frequent hangout, the ER, this time with a truly legitimate reason: an injury. She accepts a job as a receptionist (after the previous receptionist dies) at a local church even though Gilda is an atheist, and she certainly doesn’t want to tell anyone at work that she’s a lesbian. When the previous (now-dead) receptionist continues to receive emails from an old friend, Gilda can’t help herself and responds, pretending to be the former receptionist. With each lie she tells, Gilda’s anxiety increases. This is a laugh out loud funny and moving novel about identity and what it means to make an authentic human connection. I would recommend this to readers who love Marie-Helene Bertino, Jen Beagin and Katie Williams.
I am a huge Kristen Arnett fan and this was such a fun read. Sammie Lucas has been afraid of her son since he was a young boy when a man tried to kidnap him. Instead of protesting or being scared, her son willingly went with the man, and Sammie took this as a slight - a commentary on her poor parenting. Of course she swooped in to rescue her child, but over the years as Samson grows, so does Sammie’s worry. Her son seems disconnected, broody, and inappreciative of the work Sammie is doing as a stay-at-home mom. Her relationship with her always-at-work wife, Monika, also feels strained. I particularly enjoyed the structure of this novel, which looks at the evolution of this family through snippets that take place over many years. And there are other structural surprises at the end of the chapters that kept my interest. This is a darkly humorous, intriguing exploration of queer family dynamics and what it means to succeed as a mom. Fantastic and weird.
This one is kind of related to Chouette in the human-as-animal department. In Nightbitch, which has one of the greatest covers, an ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck. In the mirror, her canines suddenly look sharper than she remembers. Her husband, who travels for work five days a week, casually dismisses her fears from faraway hotel rooms. This is a novel of ideas about art, power, and womanhood wrapped in a satirical fairy tale.
I’m beginning to think that motherhood just makes a person weird.
Speaking of mothers, my last weird pick is:
Mother For Dinner by Shalom Auslander
This is an off-beat dark comedy novel. The premise will either intrigue you or repel you. Either response is totally fine.
This novel centers around Seventh Selzer who was named because he was the 7th born child. Unsurprising, the first is named First the second is named Second and so on all the way to Twelve. The siblings have noticed strange behavior from their mother lately. She’s been eating an inordinate amount of fast food and is gaining weight by the day. At her deathbed, she whispers in Seventh’s ear two words he knew she would always say, but he’s been dreading hearing it his whole life and these two words are, “Eat me”. (Has your jaw dropped yet?)
Turns out he Seltzers represent a very small community of cannibalists living in America. And, as per tradition, she expects her children to partake in the ritual eating of the dead within the first 24 hours of dying. The premise is obviously satire, but really successful satire. And it throws into sharp focus longstanding mourning customs and traditions people have. The book also delves into the history of the faux community of cannibalism for which Auslander has done a tremendous job writing this backstory, including how the protagonist’s parent immigrated into the US. This is a novel about identity and family and ritual.
Don’t read while eating.
And some shameless self-promotion. I wrote a weird book of short stories published in 2017!
Unruly Creatures by Jennifer Caloyeras
Five of the stories were previously published in various literary magazines. I had so much fun unleashing my inner weirdness: a woman falls in love with a gorilla, a son has to dress in costume to receive his father’s affection, a young adult going through puberty experiences an unexpected complication and more….
Have a favorite weird book to add to the list? Tell me in the comments below!
This post contains affiliate links to my Bookshop.org shop which not only supports me, but independent bookstores as well. Please consider purchasing books through these links as a way of supporting Books Are My People.