Sheila’s List of Contemporary Must-Read Fiction

1. Mating, by Norman Rush
This is # 1 on the list, forever.

2. Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley
If anyone ever really wants to understand, on a cellular level, how I see the world, and humanity’s place in it … I wouldn’t be able to describe it myself probably. This book is the closest expression of it yet.

3. The Goldbug Variations, by Richard Powers
I do not know how to describe this book without making it sound boring. It’s NOT! Its theme is life itself – the search for DNA, mixed in with the Goldberg Variations … the connections found between these two … and the meeting-up of 3 very different people: a librarian, a crazy-boy nighttime computer programmer, and an ex-scientist – one of the guys who had been on the forefront of the search for the “code” of DNA in the 50s … their paths meet in the 1980s. And how the Goldberg Variations fit into all of this is anybody’s guess … this book is HUGE. All about math, and music, and humanity. A great achievement.

4. Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore -

this woman is tremendous. One of my writing idols.

5. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle.
Enough said. One of the greatest books ever.

6. Cat’s Eye, by Margaret Atwood.
An unbelievable achievement. This book haunts me. Here’s a wee story I told about it.

I’ll probably think of more – but these are the ones that came immediately to mind.

Here are a couple more:

The Bone People, by Keri Hulme.

Thanks, Fee. I don’t know how I could have forgotten that one. The only novel this woman wrote. The story of a Maori woman who is a hermit and lives in a stone tower. Isolated. And then into her life comes the battering-ram of a man Joe and his little beaten-down son. The book is a 3-way dance. It’s tragic – and Fee’s right: it was a painful read, although completely unforgettable.

Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn

I finished this book, sitting on my porch when I lived in Philadelphia (Germantown, to be exact) – My boyfriend was going for a run, and when he returned home I was curled up on the wicker couch bawling my eyes out for poor “Olympia”. Great book, people – about a family of circus freaks. Indescribable. Unforgettable.

Atonement, by Ian McEwan

Going After Cacciato, by Tim O’Brien
The great novel about Vietnam. National Book Award winner – writing beyond compare. The Things They Carried, a collection of short pieces by O’Brien, is also unbelievable – all stories about Vietnam.