Emily Midorikawa's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I’ve never read anything quite like The Vet’s Daughter. First published in 1959, this Gothic novel—set half a century before, in Edwardian London—has both period character and a decidedly modern feel.

Its heroine, Alice Rowlands, endures a bleak existence in the home of her diabolical veterinarian father, who fills their house with animals and treats his family with such vicious contempt that I was hoping the tables would turn on him from the very start of the book. And turn they do, in a very unexpected way that sends the story veering into fantastical territory.

I won’t say more about the plot for fear of ruining the ending. I’ll just add that this was the first book I’d read by Barbara Comyns and that I’ll be seeking out more of her work.

I loved the quirky premise of Diary of a Void, which tells the story of Ms. Shibata, a Japanese single woman who fakes a pregnancy to take a leave of absence from her dull office job—a role in which she makes many cups of tea but finds her intelligence consistently overlooked.

Emi Yagi’s witty prose, translated by David Boyd and Lucy North, brilliantly captures Japan’s workplace culture, expectations of men and women, and the seemingly inescapable loneliness of modern-day society.

Since Ms. Shibata’s ruse hardly seemed to be one she could keep up forever, I wondered as I turned the pages about how her increasingly complicated deception would end. I was very interested to discover how things worked out for her.

Clint Smith takes on a huge subject in this book—part memoir, part record of slavery in the United States and beyond. How the Word is Passed is structured around a series of visits Smith makes to sites associated with enslaved people and those who exploited them.

At each place he visits, he delves into its harrowing past, writes of his encounters with people he meets there, and notes his personal responses. The results are enlightening, intimate, and moving.

Smith questions the versions of history that many of his readers will have been taught and asks them to think critically about how we can do things better. I also used How the Word is Passed in classes I taught university students. It was an excellent book for a group discussion.