Books like A Most Peculiar Act

As someone who considers her brother her creative muse, I would describe this novel as one interested in siblings.

Between Leonie and Given, and Jojo and Kayla is an indescribable, utterly unique bond, held within and beyond both family and friendship. 

I was utterly consumed by this heartbreaking novel. From the opening scene where Pop and Jojo kill and skin a goat, to the heat in Leonie’s car and the scene of Jojo’s police cuffing, Ward delivers a pace, language, and viscerality that means you can’t look away. 

Somewhat surprisingly, I was even compelled by the book’s ghostly elements. I found they enhanced the magnitude of the characters’ burdens, especially for thirteen-year-old Jojo, who already shoulders so much.

I highly recommend this book, as a pleasure and as a duty to your fellow human beings. 

I loved the Glaswegian (quasi-Irish!) voice of Shuggie Bain, but what I will always remember it for is its gut-wrenching depiction of the consequences of poverty and alcoholism for the titular child character. 

There were times when I was reading this novel that I literally flinched from it. It’s one of the most poignant times that I can remember having such a visceral reaction to a book. 

What I found truly remarkable was the book’s sense of simultaneous inevitability and hope. At once, I felt that there was only one possible end for Agnes and Shuggie, and yet I also somehow believed that both characters would escape their miserable situation.

This idea, that hope sustains even against the most improbable odds, accesses something fundamentally human. A book that can do that is one I would recommend any day.

This was my first introduction to Richard Flanagan’s writing, and it was the beginning of a deep, ongoing love affair.

I adore and admire Flanagan’s prose and the small, often invisible truths it contains. What I loved about Wanting was how it delved into and distinctly portrayed the innermost thoughts and feelings of multiple characters.

When interviewed, Flanagan describes this book as his attempt to understand passion, desire, and wanting. I can attest that Wanting is a nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of what motivates human behaviour and how this process can become incredibly twisted and rife with ill intent. 

In Mathina’s story, there is little light or hope. An indictment of what happens to the discarded when the powerful don’t want them anymore, her downfall is tender, devastating, and utterly important as an emotionally charged, narrative account of Australian history.

I am a die-hard Tim Winton fan, but I only recently picked up The Shepherd’s Hut. True to form, Winton produced yet another Australian masterpiece: I can still call myself a Winton fanatic. 

Like always, I loved Winton’s distinctly Australian voice and setting and the delicate care with which he approached Jaxie’s character. Not a single sentence nor word is wasted; every moment is brimming with Australianess. 

The transformation of Jaxie’s remoteness to rough tenderness is where this book is at its best. In Fintan McGillis, Jaxie finally finds a parental figure who sticks by him, who leads with love, even when he’s tough, and who doesn’t leave first.

This novel defied my expectations and didn’t end where or how I thought it would. I thoroughly enjoyed embarking on this derailed journey with Jaxie. 

In my teenage years in the 1970s, I read science fiction voraciously. I loved the ideas and imaginativeness, but it was all rather serious stuff. So, I was delighted when I discovered Robert Sheckley, a rare humorist and absurdist in a largely serious genre. 

I reckon his best novel is this one. It tells the story of a rather dull civil servant who wins the grand prize in a galactic lottery. He is whisked across space and time to Galactic Central to receive his prize: a shape-shifting, talking device/creature. Unfortunately, there is no provision for returning home, so an absurd journey begins from galactic bureaucracy to bizarre alternative Earths and homes. Maybe.

In addition to this book, I recommend diving into any of Sheckley's short story collections.

I loved this book because it combines the gothic tradition with politics. Written during the Soviet era, it deals with the Devil and his entourage who visit Soviet-era Moscow and reveal Soviet society.

While not truly a gothic novel, it is an imaginative work and kept me mesmerized as an undergraduate student so much that I have gone back to read it again as an adult.

Identity Crisis is the most delicious satire! It is so much a send-up of modern times it will unfortunately date, and all too quickly become tomorrow’s history. But I don’t care. I will always find this one of the funniest books I have ever had the pleasure to read - indeed a wickedly witty laugh-out-loud on every page. Anyone who chooses to find the political incorrectness that abounds in Identity Crisis offensive really will need to delve deep in order to discover their obviously lost or sadly under-developed sense of humour.  

I liked the concept of man being small and adrift in the darkness of the wide world. This book taught me to see through politics, grandstanding, and the grandiose nonsense of man. Swift is my kind of guy, brutally satirical and profound. This book is really not for children. We see Gulliver travel on many adventures and experience Swift's disappointment as he engages different cultures, small and large, rational and irrational. 

His adventures demolish Gulliver’s sense of humanity to the point that when he is about to be rescued, at first, he rejects the offer like a misanthrope before finally climbing aboard. Swift is very dark here. Why would anyone want to return to the same old life after having their eyes opened?

I love this book, a classic from the 1960s, for its humanity and how much this young, inexperienced teacher cares about her students. She is pretty much thrown into the NYC public schools and struggles to stay afloat.

The book, written as a novel, is actually a collection of discarded scraps of paper from the classroom wastebasket—notes, doodles, memos, hall passes, student complaints. The young teacher expresses age-old dilemmas teachers face: “Am I making a difference? Do I get through? Do they care? Do they understand how much I care?”  

Blonde Roots reimagines the transatlantic slave trade. In this world, Africans are the ones enslaving Europeans, and shipping them to “Afrika.”

The provocative reversal of roles is a gateway to discussing issues of race, identity, capitalism, notions of beauty, and the legacy of slavery.

Humorous and thought-provoking, this novel is one that stays with you for all the ways it challenges its readers.