Best books...chosen by Téa Obreht
Téa Obreht’s new novel, Inland, weaves together the stories of an outlaw crossing
the American West and a homesteader awaiting the return of her sons and husband.
Below, the author of The Tiger’s Wife recommends other novels shaped by place.The Book List^ ARTS^23
The Meadow by James Galvin (1992). While
most chroniclers of the American West cannot
resist the vastness of its landscape, Galvin nar-
rows his memoir’s focus to a meadow in south-
eastern Wyoming, the site of three generations’
struggle and triumph. I often find myself reading
each sentence twice, just to savor the unexpected
twists of Galvin’s prose.
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry (2011). Barry’s
faith that readers will bring a lot of their own
noir luggage to his party pays enormous divi-
dends in this brooding, hilarious, and wildly
satisfying novel. The setting—a bleak Irish town
in 2053—grows through the building-out of
imagined alleys and intrigues, and from the lively
and at-first-impregnable jargon that reveals the
true heart of Bohane’s underworld.What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen
Oyeyemi (2016). Everything about this story col-
lection delights and puzzles and grips the soul, in
a way reminiscent of experiencing the terrifying
lushness of a fairy tale for the first time. Each
story feels like the inside of a clock: intricate,
labyrinthine, working around you in a kind ofharmony you can’t even begin to comprehend
until the final line.
Paper Lantern by Stuart Dybek (2014). Dybek
is without equal on a host of different levels. His
greatest achievement in this stunner of a story
collection centered on his hometown Chicago
(about which he writes like no one else) is that
he casts a haze between past and present, illusion
and reality, then swoops among them all.
Orange World by Karen Russell (2019). Every
new book of Russell’s instantly takes its predeces-
sor’s place as my favorite. Place, in each of these
time-jumping, world-warping stories—which
span a map of territory both real and imagined—
exerts physical, social, and emotional pressures
on both character and reader.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970).
Morrison’s first novel, about a childhood in
small-town Ohio, has remained my favorite,
possibly owing to the particular claustrophobia
produced by its clash between place and person-
hood, and its suggestion that how you experience
the world is governed by age, race, and whether
or not one grows up loved.Also of interest...summers in Maine
Sarah Parcak
Sarah Parcak might have the
best job ever, said Zoë Corbyn
in The Observer (U.K.). Like
Indiana Jones, the swash-
buckling movie hero who
inspired her as a child, Parcak
is an archaeologist. Better
yet, she’s a “space archaeolo-
gist”: She has
discovered
secrets of
ancient Egypt
that eluded
even the fic-
tional Jones
by using
satellites and
remote-sensing technolo-
gies to “see” what lies just
below Earth’s surface. As the
Maine native and University
of Alabama professor details
in her new book, Archaeology
From Space, she and her
team have identified more
than a dozen pyramids and
thousands of tombs in Egypt.
And by processing satellite
images so that they display
buried brick, she spotted and
made mappable a 3,000-year-
old city. “You could see clear
buildings, streets, suburbs—
everything,” she says.
Staring from above at our
planet has affected Parcak’s
view of life on it, said Ari
Shapiro in NPR.org. “I think I
have the same perspective of
Earth that astronauts have,”
she says. “I see how con-
nected we are.” But she also
catches glimpses of human-
ity’s dark side. Her satellite
images of Egyptian sites often
show evidence of looting—
a problem exacerbated by
the lawlessness that followed
2011’s Arab Spring uprising.
Parcak predicts that by 2040,
many of the world’s esti-
mated 50 million unmapped
archaeological sites will be
destroyed or corrupted—if not
by looters then by develop-
ment or the effects of climate
change. That adds urgency to
the work. “I feel like I’m add-
ing little footnotes to the his-
tory of humanity with every
little thing I excavate,” she
says. “I try to never take it for
granted for a moment.”Author of the week
Ilam
Ha
rel
,^ R
ob
Cl
ark
This 500-page novel doesn’t care if
you call it a throwback, said Maureen
Corrigan in NPR.org. “The Guest
Book proudly owns the appeal of
an old-fashioned sweeping storyline,
and in so doing, complicates many of
its characters beyond their shallow first impres-
sions.” At the outset, a 5-year-old tumbles from a
window in a Manhattan high rise, and his parents
retreat to Maine. As generations then convene at
the family getaway each summer, they “fine-tune
the WASP practice of shrouding secrets.”The Guest Book
by Sarah Blake (Flatiron, $28)
The debut novel from NPR’s Linda
Holmes qualifies as “escapism at its
finest,” said Julie Depenbrock in The
Washington Post. In a seaside house
in Maine, a bond develops between
two people at separate crossroads: a
young widow who didn’t love her husband and a
major-league pitcher who has developed the yips.
Though the reader never learns what troubles
the pair deep down, “perhaps it’s better that the
darker material never overwhelms the story.” It
is, after all, a summer novel.Evvie Drake Starts Over
by Linda Holmes (Ballantine, $26)Paul Doiron’s 10th mystery featuring
Maine game warden Mike Bowditch
“works well as a story about loyalty
and judgment,” said Oline Cogdill
in the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sun-
Sentinel. A friend who’s a convict
coaxes Bowditch into probing a prison uprising
at about the same time that a wolf-dog Bowditch
once rescued is found killed. As ties between the
two events are revealed, “Doiron pulls together
an action-packed story that showcases the land-
scape while keeping characters in the forefront.”Almost Midnight
by Paul Doiron (Minotaur, $28)
This thriller isn’t the first to pry open
a vacation spot’s townie/ tourist divide,
said Marilyn Stasio in The New York
Times. But Megan Miranda also gen-
erates real warmth in her story about
a long-running summertime friend-
ship between a townie Maine teen and a wealthy
summer visitor. Once the outsider is found dead
and the townie investigates, Miranda will make
you wonder how genuine the friendship was.
“And, oh boy, does she ever know how to write a
twisty-turny ending.”The Last House Guest
by Megan Miranda (Simon & Schuster, $27)