Best books...chosen by Chang-rae Lee
Chang-rae Lee’s new novel, My Year Abroad, follows a college student as he tries
to reset after a wild junket to China. Below, the Stanford writing professor and
author of Native Speaker recommends six tales about encountering new worlds.22 ARTS The Book List
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881).
The story of Isabel Archer is a classic tale of an
“American innocent” abroad. James’ ability to
draw out the countless complications of a life, as
he learned from Tur ge nev and achieved in sin-
gu larly gorgeous prose, makes for a riveting and
tragic account of this “certain young woman
af front ing her destiny” in a culture that she doesn’t
fully understand or belong to.Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861).
There are few more enchanting narrators than
Pip, a poor orphan taken up by the mysterious
rich spinster Miss Havisham and her ravishing
charge, Estella. I loved this novel of coming into
one’s world for its episodic tumult, huge cast of
unusual characters, and enduring humanity.
My Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918). This much-
beloved immigrant story struck a deep chord in
my own immigrant boy’s consciousness. Told by
an unassuming observer, it traces the travails of
Ántonia Shimerda, a remarkably resilient young
woman from Bohemia who with her family
arrives to the unforgiving Nebraska plains and
somehow forges a place of her own.The Adventures of Augie March by Saul
Bellow (1953). Really every Bellow novel is
an exceptional performance, but this early one
surely exemplifies the writer’s genius for captur-
ing the rich complexity of his characters and
their realms in every single sentence. Dense,
psychologically revelatory, and always achingly
alive, the story of Augie March shows us how
life is truly the most brilliant adventure.The Confessions of Felix Krull by Thomas
Mann (1954). I’ve always been delighted by the
exploits of the “picaro,” typically a socially mar-
ginal character who by native skill, resourceful-
ness, and luck upends the established order. In
this late novel, Mann fashions a voice that carries
the narrative with the energy of its discernment.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1615). By
turns comic, tragic, absurd, and quotidian, this
seminal story of search and adventure delivers us
to a destination that all great stories do, which
is a station of existential wondering: Why do we
keep on in this strange and wonderful life, much
of which comes from our own imagination and
making? Why do we persist?Also of interest...in complicated relationships
PamelaTwigg,^ MichelleBran
ca^Le
e“A work of extraordinary insight and
courage,” Avni Doshi’s acclaimed
debut novel “is also the world’s worst
Mother’s Day present,” said Ron
Charles in The Washington Post. The
narrator, an artist in India, nurses
an inner rage throughout the story as she cares
for her own mother, a cruel, neglectful parent
now sliding into dementia. Such a blend of filial
resentment and devotion isn’t new to fiction.
But it’s “something no one has ever expressed so
exquisitely—and so baldly.”Burnt Sugar
by Avni Doshi (Abrams, $26)
The protagonist of this “wildly read-
able” sophomore novel has made self-
denial a sport, said Leah Greenblatt in
Entertainment Weekly. Languishing at
a Los Angeles talent agency, the lonely
24-year-old subsists on Nicorette gum
and fat-free everything until the day an over-
weight and Orthodox Jewish server at a fro-yo
shop insists on her devouring a sundae. Rachel
and Miriam soon embark on a surreally hedonis-
tic journey, transforming Milk Fed into “one of
the strangest and sexiest novels of the new year.”Milk Fed
by Melissa Broder (Scribner, $26)“The story is a little too implausible,
the characters too sentimental, the
ending too rushed,” said Marcia Kaye
in the Toronto Star. But if you can
accept that a woman driving at night
would pick up a man who’s about
to jump off a bridge, you’ll appreciate the safe
space that Leesa Cross-Smith’s latest novel creates
for two strangers to bare their hearts. Though
secrets and suspense figure in, too, this is a story
“steeped in kindness,” and “we can never have
too much of that.”This Close to Okay
by Leesa Cross-Smith (Grand Central, $27)
Mark Leyner has outdone himself,
said Sam Sacks in The Wall Street
Journal. In surely the least sellable
novel of his “admirably weird”
career, the veteran absurdist builds a
bizarro world around a karaoke bar
in Eastern Europe where his fictionalized self is
bonding with his daughter. The real Leyner sup-
plies his usual blitz of pop-culture references and
comic non sequiturs. “He is the undisputed mas-
ter of a style of writing he invented, whose rules
no one else can really understand.”Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit
By Mark Leyner (Little, Brown, $27)Russell Shorto
Russell Shorto never wanted
to write a book about family,
said Dave Davies in NPR.org.
But that was before the author
of several narrative histories
was buttonholed by a second
cousin who mentioned “the
story” and asked when he
was finally
going to write
it. “I said,
‘What story?’”
Shorto recalls.
“And he said,
‘Your grand-
father; the
mob.’” Shorto
had vaguely known already
that in his own hometown
of Johnstown, Pa., his long-
deceased grandfather had
once been the No. 2 figure
in the local crime syndicate,
behind a brother-in-law. The
pair primarily ran a gambling
operation, one that brought in
about $2 million a year. But it
wasn’t the scale of their mis-
deeds that drew Shorto in so
much as it was the dynamics
of the culture. “My grandfather
acted like a medieval king or
something,” he says. “He did
what he wanted.”
Now that he’s written Small-
time, Shorto has become a
big believer in research into
family history, said Dave
Sutor in the Johnstown
Tribune - Democrat. “It gives
you this kind of 3D version of
yourself,” he says. He now
appreciates, he says, why his
namesake, a first-generation
Sicilian- American, turned to
bootlegging in the 1920s and
then to that lucrative gam-
bling racket run out of a cigar
shop near City Hall. He also
knows how much emotional
damage the original Russell
Shorto caused by fathering
two children out of wedlock
and in one case choosing to
take the child from the mother
to be raised by others. Finally,
he came to understand his
own father better, recognizing
the true sources of frictions
going back generations. “It’s
kind of like doing therapy,” he
says. “It’s a wonderful experi-
ence, but it’s hard.”Author of the week