Best books...chosen by Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn is a critic and essayist whose books include the memoirs An
Odyssey and The Lost, a 2006 best-seller. His new essay collection, Ecstasy and
Terror, examines touchstone works of classic and contemporary culture.24 ARTS The Book List
The Odyssey by Homer. Yes, it’s a pillar of
the tradition, and yes, it’s the first great sci-fi
tale, anticipating everything from Star Trek to
The Wizard of Oz. But its greatest virtue right
now may be its celebration of the complexity
of its hero, who is at once alluring and danger-
ous, charming and deadly—a useful lesson in
the virtues of negative capability in the age of
the “like.”Emma by Jane Austen (1815). For me, the
Box Hill picnic—the scene where Emma humili-
ates Miss Bates—is a key moment in English
literature: a masterful example of how perfect
command of a narrative can lead to almost
unbearable emotion. It never fails to make me
actually wince.Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1853). The
greatest novel by our greatest novelist. Utterly
overwhelming in its narrative complexity and
drive, in the dazzlingly rich array of its charac-
ters, and above all in its relentless, heartbreaking
autopsy of the roiling, unjust society it depicts.
And the emotion! The death of Jo reduces me to
tears every time.The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault (1956).
A sentimental favorite. Renault’s superb novels
of ancient Greece—not least, this marvelously
detailed and persuasive evocation of Athens dur-
ing the Peloponnesian War—were what seduced
me into my love of the classics.A Legacy by Sybille Bedford (1956). This is very
much a novel for grown-ups. Subtle and cosmo-
politan, it evokes the worldly milieu of Bedford’s
childhood—pre–World War I on the Continent—
tracing the story of an ultimately fatal chain of
family gaffes and social misunderstandings that
could be a metaphor for the war itself.
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality
in Western Literature by Erich Auerbach
(1946). Auerbach’s 20-chapter paean to Western
literature—each chapter consists of a close
reading of a single passage in works from the
Odyssey to To the Lighthouse, analyzing how the
writing makes reality feel “real”—was written,
ironically, while the author lived in Istanbul, a
refugee from Hitler. It remains the great model of
critical analysis, married to a sweeping vision of
what literature is and what it does for us.Also of interest...in monsters and the macabre
Matt^ Men
de
lsohn
,^ MichelleWrayForgive the title, a “stitched-together
monster” if there ever was one, said
Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal.
By pulling off an unlikely suturing
of storylines, Jeanette Winterson’s
new novel “manages to be as heady
as it is hot-blooded.” In 1816, by Lake Geneva,
Mary Shelley is writing her tale of Frankenstein’s
monster. In some near future, a transgender doc-
tor begins an affair with an AI-obsessed scientist.
Somehow, the twining proves “rich in the sorts of
ideas one could debate into the small hours.”Frankissstein
by Jeanette Winterson (Grove, $27)
In this collection of nine “thrill-
ingly black-hearted” stories, girls are
transformed by desire into monsters
and killers, and the author never
blinks, said Cal Revely-Calder in The
Telegraph (U.K.). Her prose “has a
stupefied ease,” gliding along stylishly as blood
spills, bones are disinterred, and a girl acquires
a wolf as a stepsister when her father remarries.
“Many of the stories give the impression that
they’ve ended one sentence short, though they
haven’t, and they’d be poorer if they had.”Salt Slow
by Julia Armfield (Flatiron, $25)Joe Hill “has a way with endings.
Also beginnings. Often middles too,”
said Charles Yu in The New York
Times. Each of the 13 short stories in
his second collection—two co-written
with his father, Stephen King—“pull
you forward with the inexorable logic of a math-
ematical proof.” There’s horror aplenty: “Dark
Carousel” features a demented merry-go-round;
“Throttle” subjects a biker gang to a brutal come-
uppance. Hill’s best tales, though, are leavened by
“bits of melancholy, or kindness, or warmth.”Full Throttle
by Joe Hill (Morrow, $28)
Leigh Bardugo’s first novel for adults
turns out to be “a wry, uncanny, and,
above all, unnerving thriller,” said
Ellen Morton in The Washington
Post. The hugely popular young-
adult novelist sets the action at a
Yale University where secret societies accumulate
wealth and power by exploiting the ghosts that
haunt the grounds. A freshman who’s recruited
into one of the houses because she can see ghosts
becomes obsessed with a local murder. The
answers, though, “lead only to new questions.”Ninth House
by Leigh Bardugo (Flatiron, $28)Megan Phelps-Roper
Megan Phelps-Roper was
born into a hate group—and
needed decades to realize it,
said Johnny Dodd in People
.com. A granddaughter of
Westboro Baptist Church
founder Fred Phelps, she was
just 5 when she started picket-
ing funerals
with other
members
of the small
but notori-
ous Topeka
congrega-
tion, most of
them family.
The church taught that God
punished all who strayed
from bible teaching, so the
group’s picket signs were
often shocking: “God Hates
Fags” or “Thank God for Dead
Soldiers.” Phelps-Roper long
thought of the work as an
expression of love. “According
to Gramps,” she says, “we
weren’t hating other groups—
we were warning them of
God’s hatred, giving them an
opportunity to repent.”
As Unfollow, her new memoir,
makes clear, leaving West-
boro at 26 was not easy, said
Brianna Childers in The Topeka
Capital-Journal. Doubts had
crept in for Phelps- Roper after
she started trying to spread
the church’s teachings on
Twitter, and a few responders,
rather than berating her, gently
prodded her to re-examine
those teachings. “I was certain
that, whether West boro was
wrong or right, I was a mon-
ster,” she says. “If West boro
was wrong, I had spent my
whole entire life demonizing
the rest of the world. And if
West boro was right, then I
was a betrayer.” Over time,
she came to realize that the
5-year-old had only been trying
to do good and deserved for-
giveness. Also, that Twitter’s
patient interrogators had
modeled the way to break
down walls. “If even people
who were raised from birth to
condemn the entire world can
be changed by the power of
human connection,” she says,
“I feel like anyone can.”Author of the week