Randy Kraft's 3 favorite reads in 2023

I write and tend to read stories about contemporary relationships. Lauren Groff has recently written a fiction set long ago about women who face extraordinary challenges, in this case, the survival of a runaway servant, c 1609.

It is a literary action adventure of a sort with profound meaning. She grounds her stories in the landscape, while I ground mine in the culture.

I love the contrast. She inspires me. Her descriptive prose is spectacular in detail, and I was swept along, spellbound, on this arduous journey as if I were there, rooting for the runaway, even knowing the odds were against her.

No one writes like Groff – every word is a knockout – and reading her fiction, for me, is a master class. 

I guess I was in history mode this last year [revisiting the sins of the past, perhaps. This novel, which takes place at the turn of the 20th century, focuses on a fictional titan of the financial world and his impact on the economy and the culture, as well as his mysterious marriage.

Diaz also writes prose that brings another world to life, and so, for me, another master class. The structure of the novel – four parts, four different voices, all retelling the story from another angle – is particularly impressive. Something like the Japanese Rashomon – examining a scenario through a prism.

No one’s truth was truth, yet everyone had a meaningful perspective. And again, the challenges facing women at the time are at the core. Something I also write about.

Trust, which went on to win the Pulitzer prize, is a novel I will return to, even knowing the end, because the weaving of the tale is spellbinding. 

The story at the heart of this novel is based on an island off the coast of Maine that was settled in the mid-1800s by former slaves, some with native American DNA. There, they built a self-contained community without conflict until eugenicists and developers took over.

They were evicted, their homes burned, the dead exhumed and trashed, and several were committed to an asylum for supposedly feeble-minded. The story is, of course, disturbing; however, it is a fascinating anthropological journey, questioning the meaning of family and community and what it means to survive against the odds.

Another master class in superlative writing – the opening scene alone, describing a storm that batters the island, is reason enough to read Harding’s pitch-perfect prose.

No wonder the novel has been short-listed for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Award. Diaz, too, inspires me.