100 Books Like Grace

I’ll never quite wrap my head around what Machado has done in this memoir about an abusive relationship. It’s written in the second person, which imbues it with a chilling immediacy. The setting is a home the two women share: a cabin in Indiana, the Dream House of the title.

The Dream House is also the concept of an idealized queer relationship and family life that are not available to the narrator, try as she might, in the context of this relationship. Machado takes fever-dream diversions to places where the narrator is gaslit by a charismatic, emotionally vampiric partner. The Dream House is many-chambered; each holds a vision of the narrator denying her very being, and she has to fight to recover it.

Some books are fascinating character studies. Others are riveting stories. When Rabbit Howls is somehow both.

Narrated by a woman’s alters (The Troops for Trudi Chase), this book really goes the extra mile in terms of forcing the reader to feel the lifetime impact of abuse both through the story being told, and the way that story is written on the page. I won’t spoil anything here, but it includes a brilliant, metafictional ending that has lingered with me for years now like a punch to the solar plexus.

In far too many stories, Dissociative Identity Disorder is positioned as the antagonist of the story, which results in hideously inaccurate, stigmatizing portrayals.

I was utterly captivated by the way Matthew McKay (a clinical psychologist) did not allow us to flinch from the very real challenges Margaret faced as a result of living with DID, while also highlighting the profound strength that flowed into her life via her alters.

I couldn’t put this book down. It was instrumental in showing me how a portrayal could be both brutally honest and authentically faithful, while avoiding the many pitfalls in which so many portrayals seem to bottom out. 

This novel is an incredible feat of writing “from the inside” of a character.

Teenager Tracey Berkowitz narrates her story as she looks for her missing brother, who thinks he’s a dog, but she is absolutely not a reliable narrator. I was lucky enough to have Maureen as a mentor, but for everything she taught me, this book somehow manages to say even more.

A fascinating psychological portrait. There is so much cold, brutal poetry in its pages.

I read this novel when I was twenty-two years old.

I remember exactly where I was (in the kitchen of a dilapidated apartment I loved) and what time of day I read it (early afternoon until early evening). I cackled and sobbed (I am not a sobber), and afterward, I couldn’t get the main character’s voice out of my head for days. He narrated everywhere I went and everything I did.

Before then, I’d always written casual nonsense for my own entertainment, but I knew afterward I wanted to do that—I wanted to make people laugh, horrify them, and put their hearts through the wringer. 

I love all things Irish. I would venture a guess that more than half of what I read is by Irish writers. Every year, my family visits Ireland–from Dublin to Dingle to Donegal. I am intensely interested in Irish history as well as literature.

This book checks off all these boxes for me. Young Willie Dunn leaves his family and the girl he loves to fight in WWI in 1914. On the Western front, it’s the letters from home and the other Irish soldiers who keep him going through the horrors of battle. Willie is able to return home, only to find Ireland itself on the brink of a civil war.

I give this book to anyone I know who, like me, is charmed by the magic of Ireland, to history buffs and lovers of Irish literature, and to those who seek love stories that happen in WWI. I cried… show more.

This book is happiness. 

Okay, but here’s the thing: It takes about 30 pages for Niall Williams to hit his stride. There’s a lot about weather at first, the whole Irish rain situation. Stick with it. Once Christy comes on the scene in this small Irish town, Faha, and is hoping to have a meeting with a woman he left at the alter 30 years before, and once our young narrator gets involved in his plan—BAM. 

The reader is fully in the world of Faha as electricity is introduced into the village, as Noel begins to figure out love and the insanity that is normal around him—well, I did not want it ever to end, even as at the beginning I was waiting for it to begin. Another book to clutch to the heart.    

As this novel is set in 1970s Islamabad, Pakistan and the ex-pats are mainly American, it’s technically not about the British in India. But the ex-colonial legacy is there to see: Pakistan was a creation of independence from British rule and is still being affected by geo-politics. I was gripped by the description of life in the Pakistani capital; an area where my grandparents had lived and worked and through which I had travelled in the ’70s. This coming-of-age story is told by teenager Aliya, (half-Pakistani and half-Dutch) who attends the American school. Not only are the tensions of identity well portrayed but also the growing unease between the communities after a traffic accident leaves a young boy dead and world events ignite further unrest. Fascinating and unusual historical fiction.

It’s devastating to reconcile a world that could treat anyone, especially children, the way Pecola Breedlove is treated in The Bluest Eye. The cruelty of racism and oppression, both historical and ongoing, feels unbearable to confront. The idea that worth, beauty, and love could be tied to a single, narrow ideal is profoundly heartbreaking. I want to reach through the pages, take Pecola in my arms, and tell her she is beautiful, that her self-worth is inherent, and free her from the horrors she endures.

Throughout the book, I yearn for someone in her world to lift her up, hold her, and tell her it will be okay. But they, too, are trapped in cycles of pain and suffering. Morrison’s writing is unflinchingly honest and achingly beautiful, taking me to a raw, vulnerable place where pain demands confrontation.

This book captures the depth of human experience, reminding me that… show more.

Each time I read this American classic, it changes in meaning and relevance.

Told from Francie’s point of view, it’s a family’s coming-of-age story about overcoming personal and societal choices in order to persevere and grow, just like the tree in the title. Smith is one of the first authors to write about the real, human struggles of working-class Americans at the start of the 20th century.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is not a light, whimsical read but it’s one that sticks with me. I relate to Francie, a vulnerable, observant young woman who uses her writing as a way to process, explore, and eventually propel her into a different life, away from the trauma and poverty of her beloved Brooklyn.

This book is one that everyone needs to read and that I find myself going back to again and again.