Tag Archives: literary prose

Audition by Katie Kitamura

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This is the first book I’ve read by Katie Kitamura, and I thought it was great! This is a 2025 release. I rarely read brand new books. In fact, this might be the only 2025 release on my reading list this year.

Audition is a very concept-y book. I assume this is Kitamura’s “thing” because it’s quite unique–this specific type of concept-driven prose, I mean–but can’t say for sure since I haven’t read her other works yet.

The book is, without doubt, very carefully and artfully written. The pacing is like a dictionary, and yet the characters all feel very human and knowable. The book’s takeaways and insights, always shown with subtlety, are profound.

The Blue Fox by Sjón

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The Blue Fox by Sjón is that beautiful, unique, and compelling work of literary prose that we all seek to read. My only critique is that perhaps it could have been just a bit longer, which is saying something coming from me.

The Seas by Samantha Hunt

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I just finished the beautiful, haunting, absurd, and magitragic novel, The Seas, by Samantha Hunt. This is a book with a rich sense of place, compelling characters, and layers upon layers of themes and possible meanings, which shoot out in every direction.

At times, while reading, I had some judgement about the contemporary’s literary community’s dealings of mental illness. So often, it seems, authors borrow symptoms in ways that do not always feel ethical to me, but instead are used to shock and awe. However, by the end of this novel, Hunt had really earned it, in my opinion, and was able to demonstrate a deeper meaning and a broader purpose in her depiction of this strange and mesmerizing mermaid main character.

We’re nearing the end of the reading year now, and I’ll count this one among my favorites.

The Old Ballerina by Ellen Cooney

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If you’re looking for a book that’s going to make you go “wtf” at the end, in a way that is neither particularly good, nor bad, well then The Old Ballerina by Ellen Cooney is the book for you.

I picked this book up for its compelling title, and the book does live up to the title. The book is compelling. It is experimental in form; it deals with plot in ways that are both typical and unusual, which is why I had a certain expectation for the denouement that were not met, which led to the muttering of “wft” as I closed the book.

I’m glad I read it because it is informative on what’s possible, on something to aspire toward, and, yes, this book does seem possible, and, also, necessary.

Horse, Flower, Bird by Kate Bernheimer

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I recently read the short and delightful Coffee House Press book, Horse, Flower, Bird, by Kate Bernheimer. This is a delightful book of poetic prose pieces that are connected through haunting, sometimes confused, but always strangely familiar imagery of childhood, girlhood.

While reading this, I felt reconnected with the strangeness of being young and not yet fully understanding the world around me and the social expectations and information that would eventually become themes. Bernheimer is able to capture that world for me, which was stranger and more magical.

Reading it, I just found myself grateful that this quirky little book exists. Sometimes the world, and the literary world, starts to feel very similar to me, and this wasn’t that.