Aleksandar Hemon - 'Nowhere Man'

This was Hemon's first novel, published in 2002. It's the third book of his I've read but it's the first that has really showed me how brilliant of a writer he is. Within the first few pages I was hooked and didn't want to put it down. There are so many great lines. Here's a few that stick out from just the first few pages:

• "...listening to the mizzle in my pillow,"
• "The blinds gibbered..."
• "The toilet bowl was agape, with a dissolving piece of toilet paper in it throbbing like a jellyfish."
• "The faucet was sternly counting off droplets."
• "Smashing the boxes was my favorite part, the controlled, benign destruction."
• (about a cat, eating a mouse)..."patiently exposing its crimson essence."
• "...a grimace of perplexed horror..."
• "...despair was my loyal ally."
• "...on a steel beam high up above perched a jury of pigeons, cooing peevishly."

His use of similes, adverbs and other modifiers, particularly with smell, offer a unique perspective, often accompanied by a morbid Eastern European sense of humor. Even without context, his sentences spring to life.

James Tadd Adcox - 'Does Not Love'

I read this book in less than a day. That itself doesn't mean it's a great book, but there are other reasons this is a great book.

Save for the fact that so much good stuff is coming out on Curbside Splendor and that apparently Adcox knows my fellow Front Psych warrior Keith Meatto, I was excited to read this book. Mostly because it got compared to Don DeLillo, whose White Noise I'd finally read a few months back and thought it was brilliant. This book does indeed carry a similar vein of storytelling, taking jabs at pharmaceutical corporations, contemporary domestic life, and is written with so many jumpcuts that Godard himself would get dizzy reading this book.

Most of the chapters are 1-3 pages, offering multiple glimpses into the two main characters lives, the married couple Viola and Robert. After their third miscarriage, their marriage is falling apart. While predictable Robert is accepting of the state of things, Viola wants change. And Robert isn't as predictable as Viola makes him out to be. And Viola may not be able to handle the change she so desires.

The pacing of this book is perfect. The brevity of the chapters make the book feel like a flash fiction collection of loosely related plots. There are bits of surreality, with ghosts and empty spaces that can talk back to Viola and Robert. Yet it's still rooted in just enough reality to make one think that pharmaceutical guinea pigs could be forming and underground society while an FBI agent is fucking the brains out of a woman with the intent to ruin one man's life.

Never convoluted, often funny, and always kept me wanting more. It's a shame this didn't end up on more year-end lists. A truly contemporary debut novel that shows a sharp, satirical wit that will hopefully only continue to cut.