Books I Read March 16th, 2026

A friend died on the streets last week. She was 46. She had been homeless for about ten years. At one point I tried very hard to help her, but in retrospect it's clear I was too late. I'm left pondering the last possible moment of intercession, that final instant where the outcome of her story could be effected. Was it before she had taken to living in a tent? Before her first hit of meth? Before whatever misfortune and suffering led her to seek that refuge? When she was a teenager? When she was a child? When she was newly born and slick with after birth? How deep goes our rot?

There are some very fine things about being human and there are some things that are very terrible.

The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride – The well-written stream-of-conscience of a precocious acting student devolves into a Mills & Boon novel of the 'tortured genius is saved by the love of very special woman'. I read McBride's excellent and difficult Hotel Dreams last year and was unprepared for this very peculiar novel, which (I think unintentionally?) mixes literary stylings with the most absolutely banal plotting. There's this odd quality one usually only finds in self-published novels (or novels that should be self-published), in which the author too clearly relates to her Mary Sue-esque heroine and the entire escapade serves to function as this kind of tawdry exercise in literary masturbation.

Your House is on Fire, Your Children All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye – Having read a few books recently which did a shitty job of genre-izing the Holocaust, I had an urge to re-read this small-town Gothic horror, which at once serves as a truly disturbing work of nightmare and as consideration of inherited guilt.

The Deep by John Crowley – A sharp, strange, difficult but riveting work of fantasy. If Gene Wolfe hadn't written Book of the New Sun this would be the foremost entry in the Dying Earth subgenre (sorry, Jack Vance).

The Chill by Romano Bilenchi – A sensitive Tuscan youth suffers through late adolescence, the discovery that he is surrounded by a society of cruel hypocrites from whom he will forever be estranged.

Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen – A rural immigrant to early 90s Beijing reports the tragic misfortunes of his group of his roommates and acquaintances – alternatively violent and innocent, cruel and kind, all desperate trying to find meaning in a society which is rapidly changing beyond conception. Sad an lovely. It reminded me a bit of Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Tortilla Flats, in its depiction of a scuzzy urban underbelly redeemed by its inhabitants somewhat eroded sense of morality.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey – The contemplations of the crew of the international space station over the course of a single 'day' in space, 24 hours spent engaged in the minutia of life as an astronaut along with scattered reflections on the nature of humanity, our relationship with the earth and each other. It's an excellent work of scientific writing, as well as being uplifting without being cloying. I like it just fine.

Kissing the Sword by Shahrnush Parsipur – A memoir of the author's five odd years spent imprisoned by the Islamic Republic. By God, I've read a lot of prison memoirs in my life. Oh, the sickening and universal brutality of man! Anyway, this was good I'll pick up some of her fiction.

The Pastel City by M. John Harrison – Derring do on a Dying Earth. This week's second dip into that sub-genre was a lot less enjoyable than the first.

Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia – A crew of secretly decent brutes working in a slaughterhouse in an impoverished corner of Brazil investigate a terrible mystery afflicting the herds. Many years ago I spent a few weeks on a cattle ranch in the Pantanal, helping mend fences and drinking cold mate. I can vividly recall the vacqueros, illiterate physical geniuses who could roll a cigarette with newsprint while riding a horse, and carried heavy revolvers to deal with wild boar. They also loved dulce de leche, during meals in the messhall we’d sit on these rough hewn wooden tables and they’d eat it by the spoon full. That's neither here nor there, I suppose. But this is very good, blunt, bleak and brutal, full of masculine swagger without going into excess or absurdity. I really liked it and will pick something else up by Maia shortly.