A Word About Awards

ALL FOURS by Miranda July   Nominations: LA Times Finalist 2024, National Book Finalist 2024, NY Times Finalist 2024, PEN/Jean Stein Longlist 2025, Women’s Prize Finalist 2025   Date Read: March 28, 2025   From Kirkus Reviews: “A  woman set to embark on a cross-country road trip instead drives to a nearby motel and becomes obsessed with a local man. According to Harris, the husband of the narrator of July’s novel, everyone in life is either a Parker or a Driver. “Drivers,” Harris says, “are able to maintain awareness and engagement even when life is boring.” The narrator knows she’s a Parker, someone who needs “a discrete task that seems impossible, something…for which they might receive applause.” For the narrator, a “semi-famous” bisexual woman in her mid-40s living in Los Angeles, this task is her art; it’s only by haphazard chance that she’s fallen into a traditional straight marriage and motherhood. When the narrator needs to be in New York for work, she decides...

BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres   Award: National Book Winner 2023 Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2025, Inside Literary Prize Finalist 2025, Los Angeles Times Finalist 2023, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2023, PEN/Jean Stein Longlist 2024   Date Read: November 25, 2023   The unnamed narrator of Blackouts has come to The Palace to be with a dear friend, Juan, as he dies. Fleeing a flooded kitchen, Juan provides No Name a place to stay in exchange for continuing his life’s work: completing a 1941 study called  Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns.   Between the two’s memories and education, they explore queer history and how this history has affected their own lives. Interspersed throughout the novel is redacted text from the study that forms more of a personal history between the lines or what Juan calls “…little poems of illumination.” The text was originally written by Jan Gay as an anthropological study in homosexuality but Dr. George Henry co-opted h...

LUSTER by Raven Leilani   Awards: Center For Fiction Winner 2020, Kirkus Winner 2020, National Book Critics Circle Winner 2020   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2021, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2021, PEN/Jean Stein Longlist 2021,  Women's Prize Longlist 2021   Date Read: June 22, 2021   Edie is in her mid-twenties and at sea in her own life. She drifts from job to job, relationship to relationship with nothing to tether her to the world. She is black, poor, and suffering from IBS but she’s beautiful, infinitely capable and artistic. Over the course of several months, she flirts and then meets in real life Eric Walker, a married man over twice her age.   There are rules, though. His wife, Rebecca, is aware of Eric’s proclivities and has drafted a set of rules to ensure their relationship doesn’t infringe on her turf. Yet, the rules keep changing until Rebecca changes them completely by having Edie deliver soup and a bone saw to her work, a medical examiner specia...