The Emperor of Gladness, by Ocean Vuong: Beauty in the Sorrow

The heavy metal band Trivium isn't your traditional heavy metal band. To accompany the band's crushing guitar riffs, frontman Matt Heafy writes poetic, evocative lyrics based on Greek myths, traumatic events from his childhood, and art, war, and history. I love the stories in the band's songs as much as I love their sound.

When I picked up Ocean Vuong's stunning new novel The Emperor of Gladness, it only took a few pages before Trivium's song "Beauty in the Sorrow" became the theme music for this read. Sure, a heavy metal song and a literary novel may sound like an odd pairing. But odd pairings are very much the point of The Emperor of Gladness. A major theme is that we should look deeper into the disparate, and when we do, we can often find commonalities.

Vuong, of course, is also known for his poetic, evocative prose, and though this is the first time I've read him, I suspect this novel is fairly representative of his style. What surprised me about this book, though, is how readable and accessible it is. Sharply crafted sentences. Images that make your jaw drop. But also, characters who are doing interesting things, have fascinating backstories, and interact with each other such that even if there's not much plot, you still read along quite quickly.

The Emperor of Gladness is set in 2009 amidst the Great Recession in a small, drug-addled, rusty town in Connecticut. It's about two sad (indeed, sorrowful) characters who form an unexpected symbiotic relationship which blooms into a deep friendship. When we first meet 19-year-old Hai, he's about to jump off a bridge and end his short, drug-addicted life. But Grazina, an 82-year-old Lithuanian woman, sees him and talks him down. Grazina, who is descending into dementia, knows she needs help and so invites Hai, who has no where else to go either, to live with her. The story follows the two of them as they lean on each other to navigate this confusing world that is stacked against both of them.

If that doesn't exactly sound like a page-turner, I'm here to tell you this novel will surprise you in so many ways. There's a scene set in a slaughterhouse. One set during an amateur wrestling show at a dive bar. And lots of space dedicated to the day-to-day of a crew of fast food workers. Not your usual fare in hyper-literary novels. How does this possibly work?  

It works because it's all so relatable. The novel is about finding support and friendship in unexpected places. It's about sifting through the myths, lies, and misinformation with which we're constantly pelted to find truth. And it's about finding elegance amidst the chaos and sadness of modern life -- the beauty in the sorrow. 

Look for The Emperor of Gladness on lots of year-end "best of" lists, and don't be surprised if it takes home one of the Big Literary Awards, as well.

Shelf Lives, Vol. 4: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving

Do you remember the book that turned you into a CAPITAL R Reader? What I mean is, do you remember the book that moved you from a casual fan of the printed page to a person deeply in love with books and willing to spend the rest of your life surrounded by them, immersed in them, thinking about them constantly? 

That book for me was John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Whole buncha John Irving novels on my shelf.

Many readers can probably cite more than one book, and if I'm honest, I could too -- but Owen Meany is the main one. Owen Meany is a book that came to me at exactly the right moment, as these books tend to do. If you're lucky, you only get a handful of books over the course of a lifetime that do that: Come to you at exactly the right moment, and as a result, literally change your life. 

If that sounds too dramatic, or like a too-rosy or apocryphal interpretation of something long in the past, I assure you it is none of those things. Owen Meany is a book that not only made me a lifelong lover of books, it literally altered my trajectory.  

It was December 2001. I'd graduated from college in May of 2000 and had spent the next eight months working for a catering company, trying (but not that hard) to find a "real" job. Amazingly, magazines or newspapers just weren't hiring new Writing Intensive English graduates for staff-level writing jobs. 

When my money ran out, I had to abandon my apartment in Milwaukee and move back home to Ohio with my parents. I was miserable. Missing all my friends. Embarrassed that my life hadn't started yet. Starting to despair that life ever would start. 

Then I read this book. I loved it so much. It was the first book I stayed up all night reading. I wrote in my reading journal the day after finishing: "Well, I finished this novel at 4am last night and I’ve been thinking all day what to write here about it. I still get the chills when I think about how absolutely awesome it was." 

What those lines lack in profundity or craft they make up for in impact. I still get chills, now, when I read those lines, remembering my state of mind after finishing. Just absolutely destroyed, awed, amazed. 

Owen Meany is a beautifully crafted, heartbreaking story about lifelong friendship. It's a novel about finding your destiny, about identifying what it is you are supposed to be doing, which for me I realized at that moment was trying to find more books like it. And if I couldn't find more books like that one, I knew the quest would keep me happy for however long I got to stay on this floating rock in space.

As importantly, reading this book shocked me out of my life-malaise, and helped me understand I needed to turn things around. Within the year, I'd moved out of my parents house and had my own place in Dayton, and within a year of that I finally got my first job writing at a magazine back in Milwaukee. 

Since Owen Meany, I've read more John Irving than just about any other writer. Though his novels lately have been, um, uneven, I still love the warmth of his prose and his unusual casts of characters. He has a new novel out this fall titled Queen Esther, and I see this as an absolute gift. He's 83 years old now, so who knows which of these books will be his last. 

If you've never read John Irving, I can't recommend Owen Meany enough. I can't tell you it'll have the same impact on you as it did on me. But I can tell you it's a beautiful novel, a beautiful piece of art, and truly a book that changed my life. 

Home of the American Circus, by Allison Larkin: On Found Family and Coming Home Again

One of my very favorite subgenres in fiction is the "return to small hometown after extended absence" narrative. There are a million examples, but a few of my recent favorites are Halle Butler's Banal Nightmare, Lee Cole's Groundskeeping, and now, Allison Larkin's wonderful new novel, Home of the American Circus.

Why do these novels work so well? One reason is that the conflict, and therefore the drama, is built in -- how will the characters interact with once-familiar surroundings that either have or haven't changed (usually haven't) while they've been away? The drama is especially rich when the narrator left her small town under mysterious circumstances, and no one, not even the reader, knows why.

That's the case for our narrator Freya in this story. After a run of bad luck as a bartender in Maine, and with nowhere else to go, 30-year-old Freya returns to Somers, New York, to live in the dilapidated home her parents left her when they both tragically died in a car crash the year previously. Not close to her family, including her brutally mean older sister Steena who is the de facto Queen of Somers, Freya reconnects with her 15-year-old niece, Aubrey, and her former best friend, a piano prodigy named Jam (Benjamin) who has also crashed out and is back home. Freya's mission now is to come up with enough cash to pay the upcoming tax bill on the house, decide what her next move might be, and stay out of Steena's way. 

The novel is about how to re-carve out your space in the world when you basically have to start from scratch. It's about choosing your friends and the people you love carefully...and cutting out the people in your life who hurt you, even when they're family. Family is a privilege, not a responsibility. 

The novel is also about the "real" stories behind stories. That is, how are stories told, how should they be told, and which versions of stories should be believed. Whether we're talking about the history books or women who are catfished by powerful and evil men, the first draft is always written by the victors or the more influential, and that's why there should be more than one draft. 

Larkin slowly reveals details about why Freya left in the first place, about her fraught relationship with her parents and sister, and about her soul-saving relationships with Aubrey and Jam. This theme of found family is one she continues from her incredibly great novel The People We Keep (READ IT!), and it's a theme in which she clearly feels comfortable. 

I absolutely love how Allison Larkin writes -- she is sad and sweet and funny and wistful and joyful and she imbues her characters with such an amazing sense of empathy. We want good things for them because we can tell she does too. This novel would make an absolutely ideal book club pick -- so many terrific discussion points. But even if you're not the book club type, it's a novel not to be missed from a writer who is gaining some serious momentum. I cannot wait to see what she does next!  

My only minor complaint about this novel is that noted dog lover Allison Larkin did not include any dogs in this novel. There is a pet rat named Lenny Juice and a temperamental cat named Coriolanus, but no dogs. What the hell?  😅

Have You Even Read Jess Walter, Bro?

This week, I got to review Jess Walter's latest novel, So Far Gone, for the Chicago Review of Books. It's a fantastic novel -- one of my favorites of the year. And as I wrote in that review (please go check it out!), it reminds me of a greatest hits album, "incorporating career-spanning elements of all of Walter’s best fiction: Punchy, hilarious dialogue, long passages of touching interiority, and astute commentary on the absurdity of our current political moment."

As I read that book and then wrote that review, I thought back on all Walter's fantastic books I've read over the years. I've been reading him since 2009's The Financial Lives of the Poets, one of the first books I reviewed when I was a young, bright-eyed book reviewer. The guy's one of my all-time favorite writers -- a writer with whom I just...connect.

To steal an idea, Book Riot does a feature titled Reading Pathways, which gives readers a roadmap to follow to introduce themselves to a new-to-them writer. Let's do Jess Walter! If you've never read him, or if you've only read his most famous book (we'll get there in a second), here is a suggested reading pathway to his roster of novels and stories.

1. Start with the Financial Lives -- This book is a perfect gateway to Walter's work -- one of the funniest sad novels I've read. 

2. Try some short stories -- Walter's two short story collections, We Live In Water (2013) and The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories (2022), are both terrific. 

3. Deep backlist time -- Walter actually published four novels before Financial Lives. I haven't read his two hard-boiled detective novels, Over Tumbled Graves (2001) and The Land of the Blind (2003). But his novels Citizen Vince (2005) and The Zero (2006, a National Book Award finalist) are both tremendous -- both also mysteries, but in both these novels you can see Walter begin expanding his range. 

4. The Cold Millions (2020) -- Walter wades into politics with this early 20th century story about two brothers who find themselves mixed up in the founding of a labor union. It’s part a crime drama, but part a literary thriller, and part social commentary. 

5. Beautiful Ruins (2012) -- It's not a coincidence that Walter's best novel is his most well-known. This book is a masterpiece -- a skewering of the movie industry, a love story, and just a story about how lives are stories. I've honestly never met someone who has read this book and hasn't loved it. This is one of my hall of fame handsells for bookstore customers who come in, especially during the summer, and "just want a good book." 

6. So Far Gone (2025) -- Now you're ready to read Walter's latest. I can't wait for what's next from him!

Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2025

This year, hot girl summer will give way to old white guy fall. New novels from Dan Brown, Ian McEwan, Thomas Pynchon, and John Irving are on tap. Can someone get The Franzen on the horn? He's missing the party!

But beyond the old white guys, this fall is absolutely loaded with great new books: A sequel to Mona Award's Bunny, a new novel by the HILARIOUS Patricia Lockwood, and new essays by Zadie Smith. I can't wait! 

Here's my list of most anticipated fall books. (Please note -- all links are Bookshop affiliate links, so when you preorder any of these books from these links, not only do you help these authors, you also help me!)

Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang (August 25) -- I read Yellowface earlier this year and LOVED it. So I've definitely wanted to try to take on some of Kuang's speculative fiction, and this novel about two friends descending into hell is perfect. 

Buckeye, by Patrick Ryan (September 2) -- This debut novel is a multigenerational tale set in a small town in Ohio. I am myself a multigenerational tale formerly set in a small town in Ohio. Let's go! 

The Secret of Secrets, by Dan Brown (September 9) -- I'm not going to lie to you, I did the laugh-out-loud-deep-sigh combo when I learned the new Dan Brown -- his first since 2017's Origins -- is 688 pages. That's a whole lot of Langdon! 

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai (September 23) -- It's been 19 years since Desai's The Inheritance of Loss captivated readers. This new novel "is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next." This is definitely a winter read for me. 

We Love You, Bunny, by Mona Awad (September 23) -- For many readers, this sequel to Awad's 2019 campus horror hit Bunny, is THE most-anticipated novel of the fall. The way people in the crowd gasped at an event last year when Awad casually dropped into her remarks that this novel was forthcoming...

Will There Ever Be Another You, by Patricia Lockwood (September 23) -- There is not another writer working who is sentence-by-sentence funnier than Lockwood. This new one sounds like a mix of humor and harrowing, though. It's about one woman's descent into...well, not madness, exactly, but something Lockwoodian kind of like it? 

What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan (September 23) -- A love poem and a catastrophic nuclear disaster are the apparent tentpoles of this new novel from McEwan, who has been a bit uneven in his past several offerings. But I'm optimistic about this one. 

One Of Us, by Dan Chaon (September 23) -- Woohoo! Dan Chaon does an early 20th century carnival novel! Come one, come all! 

Shadow Ticket, by Thomas Pynchon (October 7) -- One last foray into Pynchon's mind before he heads off into the great Gravity's Rainbow in the sky is an absolute gift. This novel is set in Milwaukee during the Depression. This is my most anticipated book of the fall. 

Dead and Alive: Essays, by Zadie Smith (October 28) -- I will follow Zadie Smith anywhere, and I'll love it: Obscure artists, movies I've never heard of, poets. This collection apparently includes a piece about Philip Roth, so that's fun. 

Tom's Crossing, by Mark Danielewski (October 28) -- There were some odd social media posts from Danielewski (are there any other kind?) late last year teasing...something, and leaving people to speculate that because this is the 20th anniversary of House of Leaves, something related to that was coming this fall. Instead, it's a 1,232 page novel about two friends who set out to save some horses. I'll be honest, I may never read this, but I'm anticipating it anyway. 

Queen Esther, by John Irving (November 4) -- Like Pynchon, every new Irving novel feels like an absolute gift. This one sounds like sort of a prequel to The Cider House Rules. 

Honeymoon Stage, by Julie Fine writing as Margaux Eliot (November 4) -- A story about early 2000s reality TV? Oh hell yes! 

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch. Tell me about your most anticipated books!