Books like Something Happened — picked by fans

I read The Day of the Jackal when I was very young, then I saw the original film, and later I read the book again.

It fascinates me because of the precision with which it is written and because of two ideas that have been essential to my own career as a writer: how a terrorist group, by commissioning the assassination of De Gaulle, could have changed history with a single bullet had the attempt succeeded, and how politics becomes intertwined with violence and terrorism, showing that they are ultimately inseparable and that one cannot exist without the other.

In 2025, does anyone actually read The Sound and the Fury anymore?

Consider that it’s soooo very complex and difficult: four narrators, three of them unreliable often enough to be considered suspect; a non-linear narrative structure awash in stream of consciousness and the interior monologue, the narrative devices Faulkner developed along with Joyce; multiple perspectives on the same event that dash any hopes for “objective truth;” an appendix the author felt compelled to tack on after the novel was already in print to make sure his readers could actually understand what they were reading.

It requires intense focus and concentration from beginning to end, work that we are loathe to invest our time in in this jacked-up, high-speed modern age that already demands more of it than we are able to give. I read it while working on my Master's Degree under the guidance of a Faulkner scholar, and it… show more.

I once heard a friend of mine describe Last Exit to Brooklyn as “a significant minor novel.” He was wrong. It’s a good deal more than that.

Set in the same Brooklyn in which one will find Herschel Cain, the main character in my own novel, before he becomes professional wrestler Haystacks Kane, yet light years away, Last Exit is a searing portrayal of life in the raw amongst the American underclass, profoundly disturbing and terribly, terribly sad. It shook me to my core when I read it not long after it was published in the mid-1960s, and has remained with me ever since.

In countless ways, Selby’s novel thumbs its nose at traditional novel structure and the customary rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation in order to present virtually every moment of its bleak and upsetting narrative with a ferocious immediacy rarely found anywhere else.

In truth, it does… show more.

You rarely hear any mention these days of John Hawkes or his masterful 1971 novel, The Blood Oranges, his sumptuously written exploration of one man’s pursuit of freedom—in particular, sexual freedom—and the costs and consequences of that pursuit for himself, his wife, and the couple they meet, bond with, seduce in more ways than one, and help to destroy. 

Which is too bad. Because it’s truly exceptional.

The story unfolds in an unnamed tropical setting that is rich with atmosphere and heat, literal and otherwise. Entering its world was like throwing open the doors to a dream, a dream heavy with languorous passion and sexual tension. It was poetry in sensual slow motion, poetry in the guise of fiction, erotically charged but never ever pornographic (one reviewer called its underlying subject “sexistentialism”). 

Hawkes gifts all this to us in voluptuous prose that suffuses the senses; it dazzles and soars.… show more.

I’m an absolute sucker for a ‘what really happened that night’ tale and this is one of my all time favourites due to the unreliable narration and the sense of slowly creeping dread.

The core of this book is the messy tangle of friendship, obsession, and unspoken longing, which I can never get enough of. Throughout my first read of the story, I re-evaluated what I thought I knew, and went back to the start over and over. I had to know who was lying…

This novel tells the story of Maise, a devoted wife and mother of four children.

It takes place over the course of a single day in October that begins with Maise nursing her infant and leads to a family outing to an orchard the following afternoon. It beautifully captures the daily emotions that a mother feels, ranging from anxiety to grief to deep love, and explores the feelings around the unpaid labor of motherhood and the financial anxiety that being a parent brings to us all. 

Joseph, a Berkeley student and the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father, receives a mysterious package from his estranged father. He embarks on a journey to understand a family mystery that can be traced back a thousand years.

I really cared about all of the characters who strive to lead good lives and demonstrate the many ways in which responsibility, forgiveness, love, and kindness shape the way we see and act in the world. 

Wow. This book grabbed me, forced open my mind, and turned me into a Sinophile. I’m into my third reading now, all 2,000 pages of it.

Crazy adventures, Buddhism, Taoism, and a journey into my own society—there’s too much Monkey in me, and I could use a bit more Sha Monk. My own novel is based on this Chinese classic.  

The Trio captures the essence of friendship and love and the coexisting yet diametrically opposed social anxieties that can accompany them. This is why I love this book–love is presented as complex, challenging, and fraught with more that is unsaid than actually expressed.

I also love this book because it expresses love as a real feeling, something that is experienced but not always easy to explain (or get along with). The characters are relatable, honest, and flawed, yet likable. The book is also set in beautiful locations–Stockholm, Paris, London–which makes it beautiful to read.

This is one of those books I love because you literally cannot put it down until you have reached the final page, and when you do, you are left with a lingering sense of sadness that the book is over.

I love it as a reader, and I admire it as a writer, because it shows how to handle an intense plot with a firm hand, page after page, without losing momentum and without giving the reader a moment to breathe—something I have also tried to achieve in my own books.

In addition, the plausibility of the plot, the dark places where the characters move, the politicians, and those other figures who are always kept hidden from us and who carry out the crimes of power, create an almost disturbingly realistic picture that we should not ignore, because it reveals the true face of power.