The Raven Cycle 

(The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, The Raven King & Opal)

By Maggie Stiefvater

I was reluctant to read a book about a group of boys, but the dream elements in The Raven Cycle echoed some of the themes in my own book so I decided it would be valuable research. I tend to eschew male protagonists because I surfeited on a diet of them growing up when I longed to read about intelligent, daring, creative women.

ButThe Raven Cycle not only boasts a menagerie of multidimensional nuanced male characters, but also fierce, dynamic, wild females as well. I am so glad that Maggie Stiefvater lured me in with her brilliant premise, lyrical prose and unexpected landscape so that I could appreciate this gorgeous gritty tapestry of teen male kinship (and dare I say the sensuality of cars?) through not just a trilogy, but a quartet of books - plus a bonus short story. Oh, and for all of us that curse the end of a good series, guess what? There is a spin-off called The Dreamer Trilogy which I am enjoying now narrated by the brilliantly pliant Will Patten.

Blue Sergeant chronicles the names of the dead as the pass on the ley line each year. A seemingly ungifted seer in a house of talented female clairvoyants, Blue never seems to “see” anything until she sees the ghost of Gansey. This encounter catapults Blue into an adventure with a group of misfit prep school boys in search of a legend king.

With the kind of grand reveals that make a reader do a double take, Stiefvater builds a wholly unique world full of fantastical nightmares and earnest possibility that exists just a stumble away from our own.

Written with the intelligence of an adult but the poetry and wisdom that we lose as we age, this southern gothic tarot phantasm has the imagination of Erin Morgenstern and the dark possible magic of Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood.

So, let’s hear it for the boys, and for an author who has rendered such vivid multidimensional heroes - and heroines - to add to the canon of YA literature.

The Hazel Wood & The Night Country


By Melissa Albert

The Hazel Wood and its sequel, The Night Country, are stories I almost wish I could experience again for the first time. An exploration of the fairytale underworld, the tales follow Alice, a beleaguered, haunted teenager, as she lives a piece-meal life, constantly moving cross-country with her mom. The duo flees makeshift homes regularly, with bad luck always nipping at their heels.

 
Though Alice and her mom live modestly, Alice’s grandmother is world-renowned, the author of a sublimely notorious and equally hard-to-find compendium of fairy tales. After receiving word that the estranged grandmother has died, mother and daughter finally settle in NYC, sighing with relief that their bad luck is behind them. Finally, Alice has a chance at a normal life. 


But then, Alice’s mom goes missing and all clues point to the grandmother’s mansion, and beyond - to the morbid world of her concocted fairytales, tales that are starting to materialize on the streets of NY. 


The Hazel Wood is a gritty Brothers’ Grimm bumming a cigarette, a jaded teenager stuck on the dark side of a NYC daydream, a haunted subway ride. It’s the stuff of nightmares but more gruesome and modern than Grimm. Imbued with young adult emo, it is also surprisingly poetic - much like our teenage years. 

The Night Country follows in its footsteps, imagining a world that would make Mary Shelly shiver. 
Albert’s world is a fanatical escape for these dark times if you want to get away and indulge simultaneously.
 And for those hungry for more of Albert’s macabre marvels, the actual book of grandmother’s fairytales is slated to be released this winter. A book within a book. How apropos for a tale like this… Just take care you can separate story from reality. Fairytales are, after all, only make believe… aren’t they?

The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

Fans of The Night Circus rejoice! Imagineer Erin Morgenstern has released her second magical journey into the world of storytelling. The Starless Sea is a book lover’s dream, a storyteller’s story and a reader’s safe harbor. It is a riddle wrapped in an enigma encased in a mystery shrouded in layers and layers of well-crafted narrative.

Morgenstern is such a skilled storyteller that she is of the ilk of wordsmiths I actually resent for not having more published books. Upon reading her literary theatrics, though, it’s easy to see why she doesn’t. These meticulously crafted tales must take years of careful attention and thoughtful planning. This book isn’t one story. It is a whole library. A body of work disguised as a single book.

At its heart, The Starless Sea is a story about a boy who finds a door etched into a wall as a child and wrought with uncertainty, does not reach to open its chalked knob. He spends his life lamenting his tentativeness, always feeling like his story is missing a piece. That is, until he discovers a book. A book with a story in it. A story about a boy, wrought with uncertainty, who does not turn a doorknob. But that is just one facet in this tapestry of a tale.

This is also a story about a pirate sentenced to death and the maiden who rescues him. It’s a story about Fate and Time, about owl kings and forgotten princesses. It’s a story about an orphan boy and a girl who is also a bunny who consummate a relationship outside time. It’s about a secret society and an underground library. It’s a story about the sun and the moon, about broken-hearted knights, a burned dollhouse, about bees and swords and keys, oh, my.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins in the son of a fortune teller. Aforementioned boy at a magical door, he is now a literary graduate student studying media and gaming at a Vermont college. At the school library, he happens upon an unmarked book with no author called Sweet Sorrows. As he reads, he blinks incomprehensibly at its pages as they recount not only the story of a pirate telling a story, but a story that happens to recount his past.

Unseated by this mystery, he starts to investigate the origins of the curious book and discovers that it was part of a much larger donation by an untraceable foundation. He also deciphers a series of symbols from the book: a bee, a sword and a key that lead him down a rabbit hole to a NYC literary ball, happening, as luck would have it, just a few days from now.

So, Zachary Ezra Rawlins, son of the fortune teller, traipses off in the snow, a strapping young man in a suit, on nothing but a hunch.

At the literary ball, a bibliophile costume party cum Sleep No More theatrical experience, Zachary Ezra Rawlins dances with Max, King - or Queen - of the Wild Things. In his quest to find a necklace with a bee, sword and key, he finds himself back in the closet, but this time, with a whiskey handsome storyteller, who whispers the story of Fate and Time, a story that unbeknownst to him, Zachary Ezra Rawlins, is already a part.

Erin Morgenstern’s book is heavily layered and each story subtly shifts the others, expertly interweaving in an intricate tapestry of a tale. Like a document with a dozen carbon copies - each copy bears the ghosted impression of the original though a different color entirely. It is a story about stories, but it’s simultaneously a thesis on how we tell them.

A door to the fantastical and dangerous is waiting behind this cover. Are you daring enough to open it?

The Farm 

by Joanne Ramos

At one day past my due date, I am currently in either the best or the worst position to review Joanne Ramos’ thought-provoking page-turner The Farm.

At the moment, the slightly-too-plausible premise of farming out pregnancies via pricey surrogacy does not seem so bad. Having endured morning sickness occurring all times of day that does not cease after 1st trimester, exhaustion tantamount to being hit repeatedly by a bus, never-ending constipation and pains in places I didn’t know existed, might I hire someone to trade places? Tell me where to VENMO.

And yet, in a way, this isn’t even what The Farm is about. The bookstore employee suggested it was like The Handmaid’s Tale, perhaps in an effort to warn my obviously gestating self that it might not be the best time to read it. In fact, it is only really like The Handmaid’s Tale in that there are pregnant women at its center.

It’s also not about the price of motherhood, the high-achieving women who are penalized at work for having children, nor about the fact that the US is the only developed country without paid maternity leave. These topics could have doubled the size of the book - and I would have gladly read more. 

WhatThe Farm is about is far more personal and insidious - a sort of collective history and culpability woven into the fabric of the American flag - Betsy Ross stitching in her trinity kitchen all the while going blind.

The story follows Jane, a young Fiipina mother, trying to survive in NY. Her cousin presents her with an opportunity: interview at Golden Oaks, a resort-style surrogate facility, where the wealthiest clients pay top dollar to outsource their pregnancies. The facility provides comprehensive nutrition, weekly prenatal massages, yoga, wellness tracking and …alpacas. There she meets Reagan and Lisa, two caucasian “hosts,” who pull her into their orbit. With the payouts for healthy babies so huge, each “host” has her own reasons for signing up for 10 (yes, look up how long pregnancy actually is) months of incarceration, so to speak.

In addition to a brilliantly-paced speculative fiction thriller, what starts to unfold is a social commentary about opportunity, access, immigration, and skin tone.  And by the end of the novel, as Jane marvels at her own brave smart daughter, I start to wonder about the American Dream - who has been duped and who is benefitting from doing the duping. We expect it to pay its dividends in one lifetime. Come “your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” not well,…three generations down the road. And when my own great-grandmother emigrated, gnawed family photo in hand, I wonder if she ever thought about three - and any day now, four - generations down the line, and where her sea voyage would lead.

And perhaps it’s not that the American Dream is dead - perhaps we just always thought it was free. What if it’s always been pricey? And the questions are: how much are you willing to sell?Andhow much are you willing to pay? 

Let the bidding begin.

Recursion 

by Blake Crouch

Could Blake Crouch please write more books so I can start a novel and then read until the wee hours of the morning every single night of my life?

For some reason, I keep on thinking, If Blake Crouch told me to jump off a bridge, I just might. Though it’d have nothing to do with peer pressure. I think I’d step off that bridge just because I wouldn’t be surprised if his concept of time, space and reality so far transcends mine that that small time continuum disturbance would save the world in some way. 

Crouch is simply a master sci-fi storyteller. Do you love slightly alternative worlds to ours? Check. Love near-plausible catastrophic worldwide scenarios? Check. Love books that blow your mind with their theories? Check.

Recursion starts with a world that is suffering from False Memory Syndrome, a seemingly isolated disease in which people experience “false memories” of a life they never lived while simultaneously living the life they do. This naturally causes many a psychotic break. Because what if you remembered a world where you had a spouse and child and rewarding job and suddenly find yourself single, childless and bankrupt?  

I almost don’t know how to write about Recursion because there comes a time while reading Crouch’s books where my meager astrophysical understanding of the world collides with reality to create a fissure through which I can peek into a distinct possibility that he is not the storyteller of a fictional tale, but rather a harbinger of a real impending doom.

I read Dark Matter in one sitting. I opened it at bedtime. I turned the last page before I fell asleep.  Recursion I savored over the course of a 24-hour period, though from self-control or fear for our precarious world, I cannot say which.

In some way, Blake Crouch writes the stuff of nightmares: science, power, playing God. The problem is: sometimes it’s hard to tell whether or not we’re awake.

Nothing to See Here

by Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson has done it again. You may remember Kevin Wilson from his darkly comedic Royal Tennenbaums-eque take on the hapless performance art family in The Family Fang. Or perhaps from his alternatively optimistic commune of utopian ideals in A Perfect Little World. 

While similar in tenor, imbued with Wilson’s quixotic hopefulness and unexpected chaos, Nothing to See Here is wholly unique in premise and scope.   

Lillian, a smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks, fights her way into a privileged prep school where she and her rich roommate, Madison, bond during their first year. Then an infuriating circumstance (which I won’t spoil here) leads to a split. Fast-forward ten years later when Madison, now married to a senator, summons Lillian for an urgent, yet mysterious, job opportunity.  Lillian, still stuck in a dead-end life, jumps at the chance and quickly finds herself dousing the flames of the senator’s twin offspring. 

Literally. 

Because they self-immolate when they get agitated. 

Wilson writes in such a way that I simultaneously want to ask him to be my friend and tell him to get out of my head. His commentary sometimes made me laugh out loud in doctors’ office waiting rooms. He describes a spoiled little boy removing toys from a chest: “like clowns from a VW bug, out came so many stuffed animals that I felt like I’d dropped acid.”  And on feeling out of place: “I felt like some mermaid who had suddenly grown legs and was now living among the humans.” He expertly describes “bread that cracked open like a geode” that makes me crave a loaf immediately.  And then he subversively sneaks in plenty of touching real-life wisdom about things like life, parenthood and meditation: “And I had never thought about it this way, had always assumed that whatever was inside me that made me toxic could not be diluted, but each subsequent breath made me a little more calm.”

Wilson’s is the type of voice we need more of in the world: unfailingly witty, unexpectedly original and always, and perhaps most importantly, relentlessly hopeful, even when it seems like the world is burning down around us. 

*Netgalley provided B3 with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: November 5, 2019

Vox 

by Christina Dalcher

Vox made me angry. I tore through it in 48 hours and felt my rage rise by the page. But oh, the satisfaction in reading a book so infuriating. It stoked all of my justified feminist rage. 

Imagine a world like ours where puritanical values prevail,  - wait, a little too close to home for your taste? Well, in this world, females are relegated to a word count of 100 or less a day. The words are tallied by a nifty and strategically marketable (Look, Mom, it comes in purple!) wristband which electrically zaps the woman at increasing volts with each additional infraction.  And it starts in childhood, so little girls no longer learn to read and write. Naturally, work outside the home is impossible, as is any reading, writing, access to language and computers, and well, you’d be astounded by just how much of our lives incorporates words. It’s a little Handmaid’s TalemeetsAll Rights Reserved.

Our protagonist, Jean, is not only a mother of boys and a girl, but a highly-regarded doctor and expert in aphasia. Restless and stuck at home, when an aphasia-related tragedy rattles the government, who but our doctor can save the day? Add in a forbidden romance, and really, Vox is a veritable politically-charged speculative page-turner.

My one complaint: The book ended too soon; I could have read another 100 pages - or I could, at least, until the government fits me with a wristband.

Dry 

by Neal Shusterman & Jarod Shusterman

Drop everything right now and get this book and a liter of Smart Water.

It is not surprising that Dry is an unblinking-eyes-glued to the page-terror-filled car-crash that you can’t look away from type of read. It does, after all, have Neal Shusterman at its helm. Co-written with his son, Jarrod Shusterman, I suppose is proof that genius may in fact be genetic.

You may remember Shusterman from earlier entries about the incredible and terrifyingly possible world of The Unwind Dystology. If you were a fan of that, you will surely be a fan of this. A little Michael Grant’s Gone Series paired with Emmy Laybourne’s Monument 14 world but wholly Shusterman in eloquence and verisimilitude to our world today.

Dry opens with a sputtering faucet, as the Morrow family tries to fill Kingston’s water bowl. The tap is dry. So begins the “Tap-Out,” a water crisis for all of Southern California. Seemingly not an unsurmountable event- well if it weren’t for all of SoCal becoming a dust bowl in recent years and the Frivolous Water Act draining all swimming pools, fountains and the like.  Because people can survive for a time without transportation, electricity and adults - but every body needs water.

So embarks the tale of three misfits: the stalwart Alyssa, her younger brother Garrett and the survivalist creepy kid next door, Kelton. Three shortly turns into four and then five once a gifted street urchin and preppy spoiled business kid join the mix. This motley collection of characters proves that even the unlikeliest alliances can form during a catastrophe. 

Shifting in narration amongst our rogue troupe while alternately periscoping outside into the unraveling martial law mob landscape compounds the growing tension in the narrative. We learn the sum of all the stories whereas each character only sees from one perspective, and in this case, maybe ignorance is bliss. 

I almost started to reread this book as soon as I turned the final page. It was that good. It made me simultaneously want to stock up on perishables and take shorter showers. But this is the type of book-satisfying hydration that is not just skin deep. It is worthy of book-group discussions about mob mentality, about what lengths people will go to in order to survive, about conservation and climate change. But then, this at the core of all Shusterman novels: a serious question about humanity disguised as a YA page-turner.

And doesn’t that make you a little bit thirsty?

The Dream Daughter

by Diane Chamberlain

I have been trying to pin down exactly what is so unique about this genre-crossing piece. As a time travel story, it bleeds from sci-fi into a domestic tale into a historical reexamination. It is a reinvented Time Traveler’s Wife with a mother/ daughter relationship at its center, steeped in the conflicted history of Vietnam.  I read it over the course of a few afternoons, but now, weeks later,  I think I’ve finally teased out what is so insightful and perspective-altering about The Dream Daughter:

Itbegins in the past.

So many time travel stories begin in the present and the characters revisit the past or leap to the future. In this, our protagonist’s present is the past and as a result, we as readers are immersed in an entirely different storytelling perspective.

This is one for which the cover doesn’t feel quite right for some reason, so don’t judge this book by its cover.  It’s deeper, more nuanced and more timeless than the image suggests.

Diane Chamberlain plots twists and reveals across the span of half a century. Surprising, unexpected, and thoroughly enjoyable, The Dream Daughter will appeal to light historical fiction and light sci-fi fans alike.

*B3 would like to thank @stmartinspress for the ARC!

The Dinner List

by Rebecca Serle

A delightful and sad amuse bouche that defies fictional categorization and does what great literature has the potential to do: transcend. This novel will be described as “unique” because it breaks categorical rules - might it be contemporary fiction? Yes? Magical Realism? Maybe. Time travel? Not exactly, but surreal contemporary? Is that a genre?

Sabrina is throwing her 30th birthday dinner party - and inexplicably, her dinner party is actually her five-person “If I could have dinner with any 5 people” list - both living and dead.  Having completed the novel, I still don’t know the how or the why of it. And I also don’t care. How refreshing to drop into a world where there are just as many questions as answers and the author doesn’t feel the need to over-explain!  It’s storytelling. This is part of the magic!

The Dinner List is a little as if Audrey Hepburn were part of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9 interspersed with episodes of Girls watched nostalgically 5 years in the future of its Series Finale. It conjures the kind of sad longing of Euphoria juxtaposed with the mismatched love of every coupled 20-something in New York that will break up by 30.

The Dinner List could easily have been a kitschy concept book, but it delves deeper.  It explores the frustration of having the perfect romantic relationship — albeit one that only exists in a bubble of studio apartment solitude. It touches on the sadness and inevitability of losing friendship due to life choices, because some people just have kids and move to Connecticut. It is bittersweet and complete, a satisfying little package of a book that will leave you a little enlightened and a little sad, and possibly a little empty even on a full stomach.

*Thank you to the publishers for providing B3 with an ARC.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies

by John Boyne

Every once in a while, a book comes along that is so beautifully written I procrastinate on writing the review to the point of guilt just to eschew not doing the book justice. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is such a book.  

It sat on my stacks for weeks because I didn’t know if the story of an orphan Irish boy would sustain me for so many pages.  But boy, oh Irish boy, was I wrong. This book is everything a literary novel should be: sweeping in scope, intelligent, nuanced, darkly comedic - filled with pathos and estrangement, humor and humanity.

The tale follows Cyril Avery from utero, and proceeds generationally throughout his life.  Born in a conservative Ireland to an unwed young mother who is literally thrown out of her church, the piece threads expertly through Cyril’s entire life: his unlikely adoption into a home where he is treated more like a middle-aged boarder than a child, chance encounters with his birth mother and a series of life-defining - and threatening - struggles along the way, struggles - and threats -  that seem embedded in the fight for Ireland herself to survive.

Moving, generous and finely-crafted, this book made me laugh out loud and audibly sigh. A multifaceted portrait of a desperately evolving man against the never-changing landscape of his intransigent origin country.

*Thank you to the publishers for providing B3 with an ARC.

An Excess Male

by Maggie Shen King

Imagine a world where you could only have one child. Where adult men significantly outnumber adult women to the point that a quarter of men are forced into bachelorhood. Where there are penalties for multiple children, homosexuality, large dogs, and defying the government.

Perhaps the scariest part of it all is: you don’t have to imagine at all.

Fact: China’s one-child policy was introduced in 1979 and was only altered in 2016. While some argue the family planning initiative had its desired effect of decreasing population growth, others argue that the population growth would have slowed naturally anyway. The “excess” consequences of the policy however, resulted in the abortion and abandonment of less-desirable girls and an aging population of “excess” men. Not to mention the surplus of second and third children who were not recognized by the state as citizens. Parents discovered to have more than one child were often dismissed from work and heavily fined. Many unregistered children still exist who are unable to obtain an education or even ID. (For more information, check out this news story from Time:http://time.com/4598999/china-one-child-policy-family-planning/)

That is the nonfiction part.

Enter Maggie Shen King’s addictive novel An Excess Male where we meet 40-something bachelor Wei-guo who has just become eligible for matchmaking services. With such a disproportionate number of males, the policy of Family Advancement has been introduced, and each woman may marry three men, and mother three children, one from each. Wei-guo, escorted by his two fathers (the product of such an “advanced” household) meets May-ling, her two peculiar husbands - who are incidentally brothers - and their irascible son, Bei-Bei.  So ensues a very unique courtship under the watchful eye of an ever-imposing government.

Told from four alternating and enjoyably distinctive perspectives, it’s part sci-fi, part love story, part bromance, part thriller. Don’t be fooled by its seeming domestic trappings. There is a Middle Kingdom real life battle club for bachelors, an anti-social brilliant hacker, and a highly secretive underground gay circuit. In fact, two-thirds of the way through, King’s twists so jolted me I reread the page and stayed up until the wee hours to learn Wei-guo’s fate.

That is the fiction part.

The problem is: they aren’t so far apart.

Sourdough 

by Robin Sloan

When everyone says what foods they’d give up if they were forced to, is your response, “But not bread; I could never give up carbs”? Do you find the smell of fresh-baked bread intoxicating and the idea of marrying a baker dangerous? Also, do you kinda believe in magic though you might not admit it when the lights are on? Or did you read Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Bookstore and think it was an extra stroke of genius to have a book that actually glows in the dark? (Did you know that it glows in the dark? You can go try it out; I’ll wait.)

If any of this applies to you, then you are going to want a full helping of Robin Sloan’s newest novel, Sourdough. If the holy loaf on the cover isn’t enticement enough, you’ll fall quickly for the quirky intelligent protagonist, Lois, a recent transplant to the west coast who lives off of nutritive gel and attends meetings of a club of women who share her name. An overworked engineer, she has no time for proper food. One day, a mysterious take-out menu slips under her door and before she knows it, she is eating their “Spicy Spicy” — really their only menu option —  morning, noon and night, and the new food not only satisfies her beleaguered belly, but also changes her entire state of being.

Then, abruptly, the brothers who run the takeout shop get deported, but not before leaving her with the magical and fickle secret sourdough starter that has been in their family forever. So begins Lois’ decent into the world of bread ovens, competitive San Francisco farmers markets and underground genetic food modification. Not to mention an “it’s complicated” relationship with a yeast that is somehow — possibly scientifically, possible magically — very alive.

It’s warm and well-constructed, buoyant and satisfying - and just the right size. Just how I like my sourdough. Oh, and the book is pretty tasty too.

*B3 received a Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson

I really should have already written about Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang as a page-turner. But, you know, hindsight. Family Fang is written for performance artist and Royal Tenanbaum junkies alike and as a card-carrying member in both arenas, it fulfilled all of my dark humor needs.

Perfect Little World, however, is the sweet quirky answer to my deep desire to run a commune. With a definitively-unique scientifically-sanctioned premise, Perfect Little World plays a little game of God within the structure of a 10-year social experiment. Ten families, each with one newborn, brought to live in a state-of-the-art complex to raise their children as one superfamily. All of the adults co-parent, and all of the families’ needs are met, from education of the children to professional development of the parents, housing, food, you name it. All this with one little caveat: the children will not know who their biological parents are until the age of 5.

Ready to sign up?

We see the delectable scenario play out through the eyes of the youngest and only single mother of the group, Izzy, whose own path to motherhood is a story within itself.

The perhaps most impressive part of the tale is how artistically Wilson writes about childbirth. His depiction is so vivid, so accurate, that I would not be surprised if he had actually given birth himself.

Signature to Wilson’s style, his words are funny and honest, freshly hewn buoyant logs floating down the river of darkness that is the ever-infectious world.

The only shortcoming of the book is that I would have read a novel twice the size I so longed to hear more of Izzy’s floundering tale.  

So does the experiment fail? Does it succeed?

You’ll have to draw your own conclusions.

Symptoms of Being Human
by Jeff Garvin

When you start any novel, what do you notice first about the narrator? I imagine concurrent to style of voice, you make immediate assumptions about gender. I, in fact, often actively search for narrators of a certain gender. I imagine there are some readers out there that actively avoid narrators of a certain gender. Actually, the old chestnut that they like to sell writers is that girls will read stories about boys and girls, but boys are only interested in stories about boys. #alternativefact

So, then, what do you do when the narrator’s answer to “boy or girl” is a simple nod?

Riley is starting at a new high school halfway through the four arduous years, a terrifying plight for any narrator, but exacerbated more acutely by the fact that Riley identifies as “gender fluid,” -  as male or female or anywhere along the spectrum on any given day.  Compound this situation by a congressman father running for re-election and an accidental fame-by-blog-post scenario and you’ve got the makings of a modern cyber hero - and heroine - tale.

The book came out five minutes ago and has already been recognized as a 2017 Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection by American Library Association, among Most Anticipated Debuts by Barnes & Noble, and in 5 YA Novels You Need to Read in the First Half of 2016byHuffington Post. The list of notable mentions is exhaustively long this far. And why?

Well, it’s a fun read to be sure, but what is perhaps most notable about this book is that like all good fiction, it manages to implicate the reader in its exploration. Heck, the gender-fluid narrator is even self-critical. Why are we all so eager to categorize? To label? To break down? Is a thing defined less scary? More relatable? Or is it simply habit? A result of a lifetime of pronouns we’ve been fed and regurgitated? Or, it is more insidious? Is it segregated children’s toy aisles and blue and pink cake reveals and seventy-seven cents on the dollar? Why do we see the world how we do, and why do we cling so ferociously to our arbitrary classifications?

Symptoms of Being Human is destined to join the ranks of the young modern underdog tales like Wonder, Eleanor & Park,andCurious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. It’s a story we’ve never heard before from a narrator we didn’t know we needed - a narrator who invites us to see the world from a slightly less-defined perspective.

The Answers by Catherine Lacey

Have you had a chronic illness? Indeterminate symptoms that ebb and flow confounding doctors and holistic practitioners alike? Ever prostrate yourself on the floor of an abandoned warehouse to experience Reiki as explained by a recently ordained eight-year old?  

No?

Just me?

Junia - or er, Mary, is ill. She lumbers through NY, more a compilation of symptoms than a person, and possibly not even sure she is one anymore. After countless attempts at remedy which leave her sanity and bank account eviscerated, she is referred to a PAKing Practitioner - PAKing being a unique combination of Touch/ Energy/ Zero Balancing/ Reiki / Meditation Treatment which miraculously assuages her discomfort. And, as with most magical alternative cures, it is prohibitively expensive.

In order to scrounge up enough cash to get by, Mary answers a mysterious Craigslist Ad to be a high paid  - well, she is not sure what exactly, - but through a series of rigorous interviews, she becomes part of a well-compensated experiment: a “Girlfriend Experiment” for the megalomaniac tortured star of the era, who is convinced that romantic relationships are thwarting his creativity. So, he creates an experiment breaking down the facets of Girlfrienddom and a team of experts casts a woman in each role, my favorite of which is “Mundanity Girlfriend,” whose directives include sharing the space with the star but not exactly acknowledging him: “stare absently out a window in a daze for up to three minutes at a time,” “look in his direction, but not in his eyes…smile, slightly, as if you are thinking about something else.” There is of course “Intimacy Girlfriend,” “Anger Girlfriend,” “Maternal Girlfriend,” and as Mary discovers, “Emotional Girlfriend.”

If the quirky absurdity of the premise doesn’t reel you in, the writing will. Lacey’s prose reads like poetry: utterly human, intimately clandestine and pathetically humorous. The content harkens to Dave Egger’s The Circle and Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project, and the insightful narrator calls to mind Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Miranda July’s The First Bad Man.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit I was slightly disappointed at the end of the novel. But whether I just didn’t want it to end or I was searching for answers that it wouldn’t give me, I’m not entirely sure. I highlighted dozens of passages in the book and just this moment sent them to a friend to appreciate. The writing is so deep that it seems to resonate at a cellular level. And I wonder if that’s all we all are - an assemblage of random molecules in space, unsure systems negotiating a precarious balance, a collection of cells, congregating in the curvature of a large question mark rather than a definitive period.

*I received a galley via NetGalley for an honest review.