fiction — Literary Fiction

Anyway, there is simply no way you’re reading More Days without having read the first Morisaki–though I bet you could, and it might even be fun, but I find it so incredibly unlikely that anyone reading Morisaki 2 didn’t like the first one. Why would you even pick it up? Gosh, I would really hate trying to market sequels—you know exactly what you’re getting from reading the previous book, unless it’s wildly divergent, and then fans of the original would probably be displeased. But this book was a nice way to close out my summer of fiction–what, you don’t make yourself personal, overarching reading themes?—and it it felt like autumn, felt like a transitional text:

“I don’t have that many books yet. I don’t worry much about holding on to them, so I tend to gather them up and sell them.”
“I see.” Tomo fell quiet. “I’d better start selling more, or I’ll be in trouble. But once I like a book, I just can’t let go of it.”

David DinaburgSeptember 29, 2024fiction, Japan, Bookstore

what I'd rather not think about

It is one of the those books that does not need to end. The scope of the page does not create a firm boundary of action or event; the book feels like it continues, even after the words cease. Never were a series of unpredictable or “important” events catalogued, but rather a feeling was captured, draped over some things that happened; mundanity poked and prodded until it formed the essential shape of a literary document...

David DinaburgSeptember 18, 2024fiction, nameless female narrator, suicide, NYC

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

In regards to our nameless narrator, she is so unlikable that at first I believed the book was going to be a coda on the prevalence, or perhaps inevitability, of choosing to excuse, overlook, or even come to appreciate the POV perspective of a story no matter how awful the thoughts or actions of the protagonist turn out to be. But no, the book is an internal journey through grief, not a media reflection on empathy; it encompasses how we spend time, surely, but moreso that the “how” matters less than acknowledging that each moment is unique, worthy of said acknowledgment.

David DinaburgSeptember 8, 2024fiction, narrator, NYC

The Guest

The Guest is set in the contemporary kingdom of what I am assuming is the Hamptons—“the city” is never quite named, but there is a passing reference to geographic directions (Alex is quoted as “out east”) and I spotted at least one ubiquitous Citarella shopping bag. It projects an aura of sadness; When Rand al’Thor is wandering around without any money and sleeping in hedges, it’s an expected part of an epic bildungsroman. When Alex does it, here at the beach, she’s tragically lost.

David DinaburgJanuary 13, 2024fiction, Literary Fiction, The New Yorker, Baldur's Gate

My Husband

nothing will come close to the early moment in the book where our narrator is at a small dinner party–it is still before her true internality has been reveled, so experiencing her interpersonal uncertainity and self-castigation over offering compliments (“In bourgeois milieus, people rarely compliment each other.”) might shunt us off into a class-and-standing novel, where the crux is an Eliza attempting to fit in with a My Fair Lady crowd. At the conclusion of one of the parlor games, the possibility that her perspective is accurate or even relatable has gone out of the window:

So my husband thinks his best friend is married to a pineapple, while he married a clementine. He lives with a winter fruit, a banal and cheap fruit, a supermarket fruit. A small, ordinary fruit that has none of the indulgence of the orange nor the originality of the grapefruit. A fruit organized into segments, practical and easy to eat, precut, ready for use, proffered in its casing.

David DinaburgDecember 20, 2023fiction, France, Translated