Literature

The Most Iconic Barbie Story Ever Told AM Homes Share article A Real Doll by AM Homes I’m dating Barbie. Three afternoons a week, while my sister is at dance class, I take Barbie away from Ken. I’m practicing for the future. At first I sat in my sister’s room watching Barbie, who lived with

This conversation between AM Homes and Forever Barbie author MG Lord is part of Recommended Reading’s special issue of Homes’ iconic Barbie story, “A Real Doll.” MG Lord: It was Barbie that brought us together. I like that as an opening, especially when we’re discussing a short story that opens with the line, “I’m dating

Debut: The word connotes virginal daughters of the elite, gowned and gleaming, stepping lightly in heels through a ballroom and into high society. This summer brings my debut. I’m sixty-five. I wear orthotics, not heels, and step lightly through the Trader Joe’s parking lot. And rather than a high-society ritual, my debut is a novel—not

The first week of July, the Caine Prize for African Writing released its shortlist for this year’s edition of the prize. Among the nominated short stories is Ekemini Pius’s “Daughters, By Our Hands,” a speculative fiction that imagines a world in which women live and reproduce without contact with men. Pius is a Nigerian writer

Alif, the protagonist of Anjum Hasan’s latest novel History’s Angel, is borne by historical forces into an increasingly catastrophic future for India’s Muslims, even as his face remains turned toward the “reputedly more enlightened” and accommodating past. By profession and temperament a scholar of history, Alif’s perspective provides both solace and a heightened sense of

This Robot Runs on Empathy and Sunrises To Catch the Dual Sunrise 117 steps from camp I don’t think anyone noticed me leave camp and walk into the forest. Stealth mode activated, lights dimmed, footsteps soft. It’s not strictly forbidden, even if a command to explore wasn’t specified. Nevertheless, it’s best not to draw attention

Kathryn Savage / Photo by Melissa Lukenbaugh Kathryn Savage’s Groundglass (Coffee House Press, 2022) explores the health harms of living in a polluted world. The essay, closer to poetic elegy than journalism, begins after her father has died from a type of cancer that occurs at higher rates in polluted areas. Savage grew up in

As someone living with a disability, and a scholar, I have always looked to literature for hope. I have always searched for works that depict the human experience of illness and the power of the written word to get us through life’s adversities. Literature anchored me as I sought to make sense of pain, loss,

The Wonder State, Sara Flannery Murphy’s genre-bending novel, follows five friends as they reckon with a past betrayal. Brandi, now missing, has invoked (with a touch of magic) the oath they all made as teenagers. With her words ringing in their minds—”You promised”—the friends return to their small hometown in Arkansas.  While Flannery Murphy was

Ivy Ngeow grew up in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, and now makes her home in London. An architect and interior designer by trade, she is also a novelist with five books under her belt, the latest a thriller set in Florida. The American Boyfriend is the story of a British Chinese Malaysian single mother who flies

Every work of fiction asks us to believe not only in the story, but also in the story’s telling. Even a seemingly unobtrusive third person point-of-view begs the question—Who is this speaker? Is she part of the story or just an observer? Why is he speaking the way he is? A translated work, too, is

It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Look Down Ann Beattie Share article Nearby by Ann Beattie Midway through the semester, Rochelle stepped in to pinch-hit at the university for a teacher she’d never met, though she hadn’t taught before. CFS, the famous visiting writer claimed: chronic fatigue syndrome. How excruciating it had been, he’d

Photo by Finan Akbar / Unsplash Life Ceremony (Grove Press, 2022) marks the third translation—once again expertly rendered into English by Ginny Tapley Takemori—of recent works by Sayaka Murata (b. 1979) in five years. It differs, however, from both Convenience Store Woman (2016; trans. 2018) and Earthlings (2018; trans. 2020) by being not a novel but

Set in Los Angeles, All-Night Pharmacy follows a young woman who both idolizes and resents her older sister, Debbie, for involving her in drug-fueled escapades that could either, “end with you, euphoric, tanning topless on a fishing boat headed for Ensenada, or coming to in a gas station bathroom[.]” After Debbie disappears, the narrator detoxes

Open Throat wields its language both as a salve and scalpel. The novel follows its unforgettable narrator—a queer, lonely mountain lion living under the Hollywood sign—as they struggle to survive and discover their own identity by watching the humans around them. Observing passing hikers, young lovers, and residents of the nearby encampment from the shadows,

In a work of fiction, place is a character, but unlike mortal characters and their short lives, places are seemingly infinite. Their beginnings are recorded in history books but are distant dawns to its dwellers. We are shaped by place. We fall in love in alleyways and conspire in cafés. We plant our fruits in

Sarah Rose Etter loves to write women with surreal maladies. The Book of X, which won the Shirley Jackson Award in 2019, follows Cassie, a girl who was born on a meat farm with a knot—an actual, physical knot—in her stomach. The knot doesn’t represent any one specific thing, but rather serves as an off-kilter