A hard year

For the past 8 years now, I’ve written a blog post reflecting on the past year. This year it took me until the end of January to realize I hadn’t done it.

It’s felt impossible to write about this year. It feels like we’ve collectively exhausted all words—what more can possibly be said about these last couple of years? Last year I wrote about how a lot of 2020 was recognizing that fear and grief don’t negate gratitude or joy. I feel the same way today that I felt then, but I also couldn’t have imagined how much more relentless 2021 might be with its cruelty. I can sort through for the good pieces (of which there are many!) and try to paint 2021 as a time of growth and optimism and moments of joy brightening difficult circumstances. Or I can be honest and admit there’s been quite a bit of anger and frustration amidst that gratitude. That it has been infuriating to spend part of my time in a state that has barely acknowledged that a pandemic ever existed. That it has been horrifying and astonishing to watch as guidelines and suggestions gradually, and then entirely, began to disregard the safety of immunocompromised people who don’t have the luxury of deciding to be “vaxxed and done.” That witnessing the way leadership in my hometown and in the faith communities I grew up in have handled this has caused me shame and embarrassment. For all the terrible things this pandemic has caused, it has at least done something useful in revealing to us with total clarity which people are considerate and caring of others and which people care only about themselves. (And to be clear, this is not a political statement or about differing options on vaccines—people of either opinion about vaccines can be caring and considerate of others. I’m talking about the type of person who publicly tells their Facebook friends to buy a fake PCR test so they can get on a plane when they know they are sick with Covid—these are the people we now know with certainty care only about themselves.) How do you explain to someone that they should care about other people? I’ve had to remind myself again and again this year, you can’t. You can’t make people care about others. You just can’t. 

2021 was a lot of waiting. Waiting for something to change, waiting for the latest wave to pass, waiting for a break, waiting in hospital waiting rooms, waiting for test results, waiting for doctors to call. It was glimmers of hope and vaccine appointments that felt like terror and relief at the same time. It was getting to hug Sam and Sophie for the first time in over a year at the crawfish boil Michael had for me and the dusty pink of Harry’s Japanese magnolia tree when I finally found the perfect one. The first time I ate in a restaurant in over a year at that dim sum place in Houston. The house floats during Mardi Gras that felt as magical to me as any parade. Hockey games and Michael winning the crawfish eating competition. A few weeks of milongas and remembering how to dance and doing circus tricks and buying an international plane ticket and dipping my toes anxiously into something like normalcy. The beach trip with my family that felt like an unimaginable gift after more than a year of fear. 

And then. And then it was the phone call from my mom that morning in Austin when she wouldn’t say the word “cancer,” but I knew. A couple of days later, the vet called to tell me that Pudgy had cancer, too. It was the terror and shock in the waiting room as we waited for the results of the CT scan. Being horrified of the Delta variant during the first round of her chemo and the Omicron variant during the second round. There was my grandmother’s sudden sickness and her death three weeks later, then Pudgy dying later that same day. 

But it wasn’t all a before and after. There was joy mixed in with the grief and anger. There was getting to pick Elijah up from the airport after almost 2 years of not seeing each other. There were the last few hours with Pudge, and Michael and I holding him that night on the floor as we waited for the vet. There was a hurricane evacuation and a night spent in the animal shelter, an Amtrak trip to Jackson, so many paintings of Pudge, and the delight his bucket list brought us. There was Chewie comforting us afterward and always making us laugh. My birthday petting zoo from Michael, and the last time I spoke to my grandmother on the phone when I stepped away from it. The last meal at my dad’s parents’ house before we sold it, and then the hours I spent rescuing the things I didn’t want sold at their estate sale. (There was the battle I had with the woman who tried to buy Maw’s yard-art hens. Don’t worry. I won.). There were chocolate croissants on Saturdays and the discovery that Whole Foods sells Levain Bakery cookies and then the doctor telling me that actually I should avoid gluten. There was oral surgery and not being able to eat solid food for two weeks. There were 6 different international trips canceled but an appalling number of hours planning hypothetical trips that still might happen. There were 82 books read (55 physical and 27 audio) that helped take me somewhere else when I felt trapped in monotony, dozens of letters written, a million emails and zoom calls with students who are just as burnt out as I am, Pudge and Chewie in their hoodies for Christmas photos, the relief of getting to work remotely, optimistic and kind doctors, boosters, and a Christmas together. 

There is so much to be thankful for and so, so much hope. And even though the hope feels delicate, it's strong enough to keep pulling us forward. 

calculating something like normal

Last week made a year ago that I went to work in person for the last time. The students were notified on Wednesday the 11th that they would need to go home the following week to start taking classes remotely, but staff intended to continue working in person. That weekend I spent a few hundred dollars buying groceries that I could freeze. It was the last time I entered a grocery store for almost 6 months. We got an email that Sunday telling us not to come in the following day, and I haven’t been back to work in person since. 

Mari Andrews posted recently about how losing something implies that you once had it, but so many of us this year have been grieving things we never had in the first place. “I can remember the sweet days of an alternate life that I’m just now admitting will never exist,” she says. 

I think about every visit I never got to have with my grandmother in the nursing home while I could still be sure she recognized me and the funeral we didn’t get to have for her. I think about Harry going to sleep for the last time without me holding him. I think about every tango I never got to dance in churches and living rooms and foreign countries. I think about the patatas bravas at Mimi’s that I’ll never get to eat. About all the meatball and taco dinners that I didn’t have with James, the year’s worth of dinner parties that Sophie never got to host, the craft party we never had with Katie and Derrick, the cookies Elijah never brought me in the airport, conversations we never had in Sam and Nick’s living room. The people we were pulled away from or pushed suffocatingly close to. The flights I never booked and that beach trip we had to cancel. The Rusty Nail bar trivia we might have won. I think about the writers who might have inspired me at the Dogfish readings that never happened. I think about the alternate versions of ourselves that we’ll never know if we might have been. 

Of course there is also unforeseen beauty and joy in this new reality we’ve found ourselves in that we wouldn’t have known to miss if things hadn’t turned out this way. New relationships born in spite of these circumstances but in strange ways enhanced because of it. Reconnections with old friends who might have always remained distant. New hobbies. New appreciation for the things I once took for granted. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s okay to grieve a previously imagined present while appreciating the current one. 

I got my first vaccine dose last week. It felt simultaneously like it changed nothing and everything. People are smiling without masks in public and talking about glimpsing normalcy now, but I don’t know how to stop calculating. Calculating the number of days since the vaccine and the number of days until the next one, calculating how many people have been in my proximity in public and how many feet they were from me, calculating how long ago I might have last been exposed to the virus by that stranger who walked by too close in the grocery store, calculating the number of days that have passed since a casual interaction that to me felt like a close call. A year ago I would have told you that this level of hyper-awareness and paranoia is absolutely not sustainable for any extended period. I’m here to tell you that I was wrong about that because here I am, over a year later, still vigilant, still calculating. It is very hard for me to recognize the fine line that exists between a justifiable level of caution and over-the-top paranoia. Which is to say, I do not think there will be such thing as a tidy “after the pandemic” cross-over for me. I do not think that a switch will flip two weeks after my second vaccine where I assume I’m safe to re-enter the social world with carefree ease and joy. I think instead that new levels of normal will gently and gradually seep into each other in small increments. My family and I are planning a beach trip together since we will all be vaccinated. I’m thinking about international travel in the hopefully-not-too-distant future. These feel like things worth poking my head out of my bunker and looking forward to. 

The pharmacy where I got my vaccine was empty when I arrived. I thought it would feel momentous, but it felt strange instead—walking into a pharmacy I’ve never been to to let a pharmacist jab me with substance I don’t want to think too much about. (I didn’t even know pharmacists give vaccines.) But while I was there, a man and his elderly father came in together for their vaccines, too. We were across the room from each other and didn’t speak, but we made eye contact for a second. A moment of recognition. Now my father will be safer. Now my family can be safer. This moment may feel mundane, but it is life-altering and we are experiencing it together. Then the pharmacist said, “Kayla, you can go.” And even though I had only waited for about 5 minutes instead of the generally required 15, I got up and left, and somehow the world looked normal outside. 

Grief and Gratitude

I re-read all my New Year’s blog posts recently—7 years worth of them. I always do a recap of things I want to remember about the year—obsessively documented statistics about the number of books I’ve read (I did keep track, for the record! I read 59 this year -- 47 physical and 17 audio) and miles I’ve traveled and the sentimental images that will always pull me back to that specific time in my life. And I’ve tried to write it, over and over I’ve tried to write about 2020, but it’s felt impossible. How are you supposed to write about a year that felt like 20 years but also like such a haze that it might have been 20 seconds instead? What else can possibly be said about 2020 that hasn’t been said so many times already that it’s lost any potency? What can be said that isn’t depressing or trite? But here I am, still trying. 

There’s this steady refrain of guilt I feel at the ways in which 2020 was far less cruel to me than it has been to countless others, survivor’s guilt about near misses and silver linings. 2020 was the year I lost my grandma. Covid took away the last 3 months of her life that we could have visited her in the nursing home without a closed window between us, but at least the staff let us in for the last week and half of her life to tell her goodbye. 2020 was the year I lost Harry. Perhaps I’d never tried harder at anything than keeping that poor dog alive, and because of Covid, I wasn’t allowed in the veterinary hospital to be with him at the end. But at least I got to spend 2 months at home with him during quarantine that I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten, and at least the vet was willing to bring him to the door so I could tell him a last goodbye. At least, at least—these versions of consolation and reminders of gratitude play on loop. And to be clear—I DO feel grateful, immeasurably so, and a lot of 2020 was about recognizing that fear and grief don’t negate gratitude or joy. 

2020 for me was the Skull and Bones gang as the sun rose in the Treme on Mardi Gras morning. It was midnight tango dances until there was no one left to dance with. It was unreciprocated gifts and unanswered letters, extended hands pulled back again and again, broken promises and empty gestures, the sound of the rats in the walls at night before my apartment became habitable only by ghosts and monsters. It was fear and mental calculations and collective anxiety that made us feel better that at least we didn’t feel it alone. (At least.) It was the 3 months at my parents’ house, the outdoor funeral (at least we got to have a funeral, at least no one got sick afterward), the guitar I picked up from a stranger’s front porch and taught myself to play. The words I sang to no one. The bike rides through pot-holed streets, porch concerts, letters to and from strangers who were desperate to feel less alone. (Could there be a better city to live in during a pandemic? At least we got to be here where the musicians play on their balconies and raise their glasses to you as you bike past in the evening.) It was so, so many paranoia-induced Covid tests, and that moment of doubt after each negative result when I asked myself, “But how do I know it’s really negative?” It was a hundred thousand emails and zoom calls and “It’s not so much working from home as it is living at work.” And then there was August and new letters and tentative park visits, a new apartment with a balcony and an herb garden and fewer monsters. It was Michael surprising me with a new foster dog and the foster dogs who’ve let us borrow them ever since. It was reunions and reconnections with kindred spirits who felt like friends and with old friends who feel like new ones. It was levee paths to the end of the world and back. It was camping on mountainsides, apple-picking in valleys, fall leaves to make us forget the hardest parts of the year. It was hurricanes, swimming pools, s’mores in fireplaces, camping on my parents’ front porch, and election results on my birthday. It was Pudgy and Chewie wearing their winter sweaters at Christmas, a million meals cooked together, surprises, generosity, and learning how to trust kindness when it’s offered.

Words felt too slippery to hold onto, so I quit trying to trap them. Now they feel bottled and as restless as the rest of us. It’s been a long 4 years. It’s been a long year. It’s been a long January already. But look, we made it this far. 

Preferred obituaries

  

My grandma passed away last week. When my grandpa passed away just over a year ago, I wrote a short thing for the funeral. My cousins and I stood together at the front of the chapel, and my sister and I took turns reading it. I try to imagine what my year-ago self would have thought if you'd told me we would be having a funeral for my then-healthy grandma just a year later, and also that the funeral would be outside in the 90 degrees because of a global pandemic. In a way it seems fitting that my grandpa left us in a dramatic fashion--relatively suddenly and amid buckets of loved-one's tears--while my grandma slipped away more quietly, leaving us feeling surreal and numb, and letting the current condition of our country/world have the spotlight instead. Even though we didn't get to have quite the funeral that she might have envisioned for herself, my sister and I still stood with my cousins and read about her and what we want to remember. The format is the same, and the content similar, some of it even copied directly. I think being together for 70 years intertwines two people in a lot of important ways. The newspaper obituaries are impersonal and generic, and I thought I'd share these here because this is what I wish they could have said instead. 

Paw Paw

After Paw Paw passed away last weekend, a few of us spent hours at his and Maw’s house flipping through hundreds and hundreds of photos. Maw has one of the most incredible photo collections I’ve ever seen. The pictures are a collage of Paw Paw’s entire life—there are photos of his parents, his childhood, his brothers and sisters, photos of boats and weapons in the South Pacific, 70 year-old photos of him and Maw looking like movie stars, photos of our parents growing up, and then photos of us from infancy to today. 

Of the hundreds of photos that spanned Paw Paw’s 95 years, and even the years leading up to them, nearly every photo features the same subject—our family. 

Paw Paw’s family was the center of his world. He was the foundation which our families were built upon—it’s not a coincidence that his children still live within 5 miles of each other and that half of us grew up on the street named after Paw Paw’s father. Paw Paw understood the kinds of bonds that are permanent. Both of his parents passed away before any of us were born, but for my entire life, part of me has felt like I knew them. I knew them through the photos and the endless stories passed down from Paw Paw and our parents. In a way it’s like they aren’t really gone because they lived on through their children and their grandchildren, just like Paw Paw will keep living through our parents and through us. One day, his future grandchildren that he didn’t get a chance to meet will grow up feeling like they know him, too. 

We’ll tell them how beautiful his and Maw’s azalea bushes looked every spring, and how dozens of birds used to swarm his bird-feeders. We’ll tell them how he used to find the where the best blackberries grew every year so he could tell us where to pick. We’ll tell them about how he ate more crawfish and drank more coffee and Coca Cola (or “ko-koler”) than any other person on Earth. We’ll tell them about his generosity, how he’d always sneak us gas money, and how he tried to force every morsel of food in the house on anyone who visited. About how he used to feed the neighborhood pets, even though he sometimes pretended he didn’t like them. About how much he valued the simple things in life, like waking up early to sit on the porch swing as the sun rose, and falling asleep while reading a good book. We’ll tell them about how he and Maw got to spend 7 decades loving each other. We’ll tell them about every Christmas Eve at Maw and Paw Paw’s house, and how it was one of the best days of the entire year. We’ll tell them about how in the days after he passed away, we found photos of all of us hanging on the wall of his bedroom. 

We’ll tell them about how how resilient and strong he was—how we never even saw him sick until he was in his 90s. About how he grew up during the Great Depression, then fought in a nightmare of a war, and how in spite of the reasons he could have been pessimistic, he chose to live a life full of love and happiness. How even during the last couple of months of his life, he told us every time we saw him, I’m feeling pretty good. He taught us about the importance of family and the importance of memories, and he taught us how to share the stories that matter most. And though he won’t be able to tell his stories anymore, we’ll keep sharing them for him. We’ll always miss him, but he won’t be forgotten. He’ll keep on living through us. 

Maw

Since Maw passed away on Friday, we’ve spent hours flipping through hundreds and hundreds of her photos. Photos of her and Paw Paw looking like young movie stars, photos of her parents and our parents, photos of our entire lives, photos of laughter and joy. Maw was an incredible archivist, even though she would never have used that word to describe herself. She kept a vast collection of photos and detailed scrapbooks documenting seemingly every birth, marriage, and death that happened in Henleyfield in the past century. When Paw Paw passed away last year, we learned that we needed a copy of his military discharge papers in order to have the military play taps at his funeral. I do not know another soul who would hear this news, calmly retreat to a back room, and come back with uncreased 75 year old documents. “Oh, I just had them in my folder,” she said. We pored over this same collection of photos when Paw Paw died, amazed at how thoroughly his life was documented, but something I didn’t realize until looking through them all again this time was how often Maw was the one behind the camera. 

I think this is something that was often true for Maw. She was the support for everyone around her, the one holding up the spotlight for others, the one who wanted to help everyone she knew without any recognition. Before we were born, Maw used to be an Avon representative. She’d travel door to door trying to sell beauty products to the women she met. For 20 years Maw gave all her free samples to the women on the route who couldn’t afford to buy Avon products, and she brought their children Christmas toys every year. On every Christmas Eve in our memory, we would find gifts under the tree for people we’d never met. A neighbor down the street. A friend’s cousin’s new baby. A new boyfriend or girlfriend she just found out the day before would be joining us. I never met anyone more generous or more subtle about their generosity. 

I also never met someone stronger or more resilient. Maw had quadruple bypass surgery when she was in her mid-70s, but no one even remembers the details because she never complained for a second, never slowed down, and never acted like it was a big deal before or after. In the late 80s, she went to Walmart and asked to talk to the manager. She told him, “I want you to give me a job right now,” so he did. She started working as a door greeter the next day, and kept working there for the next 28 years. She loved working at Walmart and only stopped a few years ago to take care of my grandpa. At 89, she spent months going to the hospital or the nursing home every single day to sit with my grandpa for hours. She never stopped to rest, never complained, never left him alone except to sleep, and always arrived with perfectly styled hair. 

When I think about Maw, I’ll remember how she welcomed everyone. Every person she met was invited in for sweet tea and a meal. I’ll remember how she never hesitated to speak her mind. She was honest and sassy and she would let you know just what she thought, but she was always calm and dignified. I’ll remember how she cooked my favorite meal for me every Sunday for lunch for 18 years. How much she loved Sunny’s pizza and going to eat at the fish house. How we spent our childhoods watching the VHS cartoons she collected for us in her living room. How her azalea bushes grew to the size of small houses. How she insisted on giving us gas money, even after we had jobs of our own. How she woke up at 3:00am every morning to cook breakfast for her and Paw Paw, and how they’d sit on the porch swing as the sun rose. How she and Paw Paw spent 7 decades loving each other. How we spent every Christmas Eve at Maw and Paw Paw’s house, and how it was one of the best days of the year. How she was born during the Great Depression, lived through a World War, and lived long enough to meet a great, great grandchild. How I can still hear her telling us, “Ya’ll stand over there and let me make your picture.” 

Maw taught us so many things by example. She taught us how important it is to collect memories. To recognize moments of joy as they happen, and to be able to share that joy for generations and generations. She taught us about the importance of having a marriage filled with laughter. About the importance of family. To always speak our mind and to remain kind while doing so. And to always, always invite people in, offer them coffee and tea, and welcome them to our table.

Though we will always miss her, we’re so lucky to have known her and to have these years of memories. I imagine the reunion she had with her parents, her brothers and sisters, and Paw Paw, who has certainly been waiting for the past year for her to come on and make the two of them a pot of coffee. 

Parade Drums and A New Year

I can hear the drum beats from the parade bands at my kitchen table. One of the best things about my apartment is that it’s close enough to the Uptown parade route that I can walk three blocks and be there, but it’s far enough away that only the bass from the loudest bands reach this far. This Mardi Gras season feels much different than the last one. Last year was my first Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and I felt like I needed to gobble up every moment of it. I saw 20-something parades last year, all but a couple of them by myself, in rain, mud, freezing wind, and sunshine. This year I recognized that on the days when there are multiple parades back-to-back, they mostly blur together. I’m not so afraid of missing out this time. 

2019 Mardi Gras 

For years now, I’ve written a reflection post at the beginning of the new year. I’ve done more thinking than writing about it this year. Instead of thinking about the past year, I thought more about the decade and about my twenties as a whole. I kept thinking about the things I wanted to write, and then struggling to actually write them. I want to write about Harry, and about dancing, and about my trip abroad, and about finding communities where I never imagined I’d find them. 

I hope that two months isn’t too late to still reflect on last year. Last year was full of a lot of firsts—my first solo aerial performance, my first ever attempt at dancing, my first Mardi Gras as a New Orleans resident, my first time adopting a dog (not counting that one false alarm a few years ago), buying my first bike since childhood. Last year was the year we lost my grandpa and the year I lost Moses (my pet bird of almost 20 years). I think I shed more tears in 2019 than I did in all of the past decade combined. But last year was full of so much joy, too. I spent a lot of nights and early mornings dancing in churches and dancing in bars and dancing in friends’ living rooms and on sidewalks and under the late night street lamps in the Marigny. I spent a lot of hours hanging upside down and peeling the skin from my hands in the circus gym. I spent a lot of hours at the vet and on walks and with Harry snoring in my ear. I took a train to San Antonio and Austin for the first time to see the bats and eat the tacos and to see Ian graduate. I flew with Parul to Colorado to camp in the mountains for the first time in my life—my first night in a tent, and my first time in a plane in 5 years. For these past several years, my phobia of flying felt insurmountable. But I decided last year that there are too many things I want to do that I can’t let anxiety hold me back from. A week after my 30th birthday, I got on a plane again to travel to Portugal and Morocco  for three weeks alone. My first time in Africa, and my first trip to a Muslim country. I hadn’t been overseas since working in Europe 7 years ago, and I had never backpacked before. 30 seemed like a good time to start. 

Flying into Lisbon

2019 was the smell of jasmine for all of spring. It was stargazing on Arabella Street and in the Sahara. It was singing with the ukulele and listening to Pugliese. It was the waterfalls in the Rockies and “Ants Marching” at Jazz Fest. It was the first time I saw Harry with his drooping tongue in his tiny cage at the rescue shelter and knew he was the one for me. It was Paw Paw’s 95th birthday when all the grandchildren faced-timed him and he said, “That looks just like ‘em!” And it was the folded flag and “Taps” at his funeral. He would have been 96 today. 

The first time I saw Harry (when he weighed like 6 pounds less)

Moses and Harry meeting

Paw Paw and me circa 1995

2019 felt like facing a lot of fears and deciding it was worth it. The other day Parul gave me a scratch-off map of the world. And that’s what the past year felt like to me. Finally being able to look at the whole world and decide what direction to head next. 

30th birthday

30th birthday

Rockies

New Year's Eve

Christmas Milonga

Sahara camel ride

Sahara sunset

The Best Novels I Read In The Past Decade

This is the time of year that it seems like everyone makes a resolution to read more. People ask me for recommendations pretty frequently, and my recommendations are very tailored to each individual. But there are some book that I think everyone should read (I say this with caution--some of these have ALL the trigger warnings, and I'd only recommend one of these for anyone younger than late high school.). I've probably read somewhere around 600 books in the last ten years. (I've only kept track electronically for the past 7 years, so this is my best guess.) It's nearly impossible to name the best books I read this decade, so I've tried to narrow it down to make it easier. These are the ten best novels (because at least 75% of what I read is fiction) that I read (AND that were published) between 2010 and 2019 (in order of publication date). 

Eleanor and Park – Rainbow Rowell (2012)

There have been a lot of wonderful young adult books this decade (which I still read and love), but this is probably my favorite. Rainbow Rowell is an expert observer of relationships and teenagers, and she got everything about this exactly right. John Green wrote a review of it in 2013 saying he’d never seen anything quite like it, and though many people have tried to replicate it since then, I haven’t found a book that’s come close. This is what we want teenagers to be reading. 

The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt (2013)

Donna Tartt has a cult following that obsessively awaits each of her books (which she publishes about once every 10 years. There have only been 3 so far, and one of them, The Secret History, is an all-time favorite. I don't know how she functions under this pressure.). I’m an unashamed member of this cult, and though I was thrilled to hear that she was publishing a new book for the first time in 11 years, I was also worried about how it would hold up against the anticipation and expectations the reading world put on it. It turns out that it held up well enough to win the Pulitzer Prize. It’s a nearly 800 page cinder block of a novel that feels very much like it took all 11 years to write, and it’s been one of the most polarizing books of the decade because of the debates that sparked between those who loved it and those who hated it. One thing I’ve learned about writing/reading is that if everyone is content with what you’re doing, then you’re doing something wrong. I think she’s one of the most brilliant writers alive. (And please don’t watch the movie first. Or maybe ever.) 

Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

It’s difficult to find words to describe a book that I care about the way I care about this one. There have been only a handful of books in my life that made me cry (including two of the Harry Potter books, which made everyone alive cry and should therefore not count). This was one of them. But I didn’t cry because the book is tragic (though it absolutely is)—I cried because of the the way the characters never let go of hope in spite of their tragedy, and no other writer has ever caused me to cry those kind of tears. This book horrified me (warning to all my fellow hypochondriacs who may also panic at the thought of a seemingly realistic pandemic—read cautiously), shocked me, and filled me with wonder. I can’t name a book that was more affecting or that I think about more frequently than this one. This decade has been overcrowded with dystopian fiction (though Mandel doesn’t like to classify her book that way)—but none of them compare to this. This is one of my all-time favorites. 

A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

I must have read at least 20 books this decade about friends living in NYC after college, and there are certainly dozens more that I haven’t read yet. (To be clear, I like these books and think they’re great fun, so carry on, Millennial Authors.) Somehow, I missed all the hype around this book when it was published. At more than 700 pages, I thought this would be more of the same, but perhaps a particularly pretentious version of it. Though this book is, technically, about friends in NYC after college, it does not belong in that category of books at all. Yanagihara fills a devastating story with the most beautiful examples of friendship so that even though this may be the most tragic book I read this decade, it’s not without hope. I’ve never read an author who is more merciless to her characters while still depicting them beautifully. Do not read this for a good time. But absolutely read it if you want to think harder about trauma, friendships, love, time, mental health, and the 21^st century, and if you want to be consumed by a story long, long after it’s over. (This book has a major cult following that you should prepare to unintentionally join.) 

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things – Bryn Greenwood (2016) 

This book is astonishing because based on the synopsis alone, this story should be a terribly disturbing modern-day Lolita but in rural America and with more damaged characters. This is a story that would appear in news headlines and elicit disgust from the nation. But Greenwood somehow managed to write these characters in a way that make us root for them when we never, ever imagined we could. This is a love story unlike any I’ve ever read, and it will make you question the morals and assumptions you thought you had. This was one of the boldest books of the decade, and her daring paid off in a huge way. 

Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi (2016) 

I believe this is one of the most important books of the decade. This is the extraordinary journey of two families through seven generations, from the mid-1700s in West Africa to present day America. This was an absurdly ambitious project, especially considering it was Gyasi’s first novel and she was 26(!!!!), but she got it right. She got it exactly right. A woman at the Mississippi Book Festival the following year whispered to me, “I don’t know why this didn’t win the National Book Award.” I hadn’t read it at the time, but I wish I could find that woman now and tell her that I don’t understand how it didn’t win, either. 

My Absolute Darling – Gabriel Tallent (2017) 

I knew nothing about this book before reading it except that Stephen King loved it, and since he and I have bizarrely similar tastes, that was enough reason for me to buy it. I was entirely unprepared for everything about this book. Tallent is a genius who somehow wrote one of the most deeply disturbing books I’ve ever read while at the same time one of the most gorgeous. It was shocking and daring and every form of horrific—it’s a sort of coming of age story about an abusive father and his teenage daughter who comes to understand the nightmare she’s living in. It’s hard to read, but it’s also important. Masterpiece is the word King used, and I think it’s the right one. This is one of the most affecting books I've ever read, and I think Tallent deserves every literary award there is.

The Immortalists – Chloe Benjamin (2018) 

This is a story that makes you think hard about fate and determinism and free will and belief and also teaches you to NEVER go to a fortune teller because what good can possibly come of that?? It begins with four siblings who see a fortune teller as children and are each told the date they will die, and the rest of the book is about how they choose to live either believing or choosing not to believe what they were told. The questions this story asks you to consider will haunt you even longer than these characters do. 

The Book of M – Peng Shepherd (2018) 

The Book of M shouldn’t make sense. How do you cram a love story, a dystopian thriller, a fantasy, zombie creatures, a study of memories and shadows, an odyssey, suspense, beauty, and elephants in one book with any degree of success? You can’t, unless you’re Peng Shepherd, who is a sorceress and can apparently do anything. I’ve never read a book like this, and I’m still astonished by this story. 

The Witch Elm – Tana French (2018) 

I’m obsessed with Tana French, and I have not awaited individual books in a series so eagerly since Harry Potter. It was a huge test when she decided to publish her first novel that wasn’t in the Dublin Murder series. She passed the test. She proved with The Witch Elm that she can write a stand-alone novel that’s just as good as anything in her series and better than any mystery I've read this decade. I picked this one for my list, but she published 4 of her Dublin Murder books this decade that could just as easily be here in its place. I think she’s the best mystery author writing right now.