2022 NBA Longlist - Three Down...

In which I share my initial reaction to the National Book Award Fiction longlist of 2022 and my thoughts on the three books I've read so far.

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

It’s the year of our lord Beyoncé, 2022, and the National Book Foundation has done us the honor of deciding which books we should talk about for the foreseeable future. As a Virgo with no understanding of my astrological sign, I prefer to have other people make my decisions for me. I love having a list of books that “important” people think I should read. But at the same time, I like to think I have good taste, which is why I’m a bit surprised that not a single one of my predictions made the cut. I don’t think I’m the only one a little shocked not to see Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers, or Trust by Hernan Diaz. What does it say about me that I had only heard of five of the longlisted books prior to the announcement, with only four of them really being on my radar at all? Who can say. For now, I’ll just blame The New York Times.

There are eight debuts on this longlist, which has already been a subject of discussion among those who follow the National Book Award. Some have argued that a few of these eight books by unknown authors have swept in and taken slots from more established authors with critically acclaimed books released this year. The award is looking for the best written book by a U.S. writer, and there’s some skepticism around the idea that eight previously unpublished authors are the ones releasing the best work of the year. I happen to love debuts—it’s difficult to get your book published, and it takes a really impressive manuscript to get your foot in the door. I also think you can feel the passion behind a first book, this desperate need to have the work out in the world. But I also recognize that debuts are sometimes more flawed. Writers will sometimes come at a book with a kitchen sink approach, cramming in every brilliant idea they’ve ever had. Sentences that were once beautiful and simply stated will get anxiously overworked in the hopes of convincing the skeptical reader to keep going. But even so, many debuts have become the most recognized book of an authors career, and debuts signal a new voice, which I think might be part of the narrative the judges crafted with this list. Maybe they’re trying to show the new voices of a generation? I don’t know. I’m anxious to speculate further as I make my way through the list.

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I started with The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela, a novel about a man named Andrés, a gay Latinx professor, who returns to his hometown after his father falls ill—and after discovering his husband’s infidelity—and uncovers more complicated realities of the place and people he’s always known. I loved this book, which often feels like a reconsideration and deconstruction of the suburban novels first popularized by Wright Morris and John Updike in the 60’s. If you’ve followed along with my National Book Award newsletters, you’ll remember that I wrote about the mid-to-late 50’s, when we saw the introduction of the American suburb as we know it, and how that quickly influenced the books that came out moving forward.

It’s interesting when we consider the “suburban novel” as it was throughout the 60’s. Most of the novels by Morris, Updike, Richard Yates, etc. were all about middle-aged white men going through a mid-life crisis. I think Yates’s Revolutionary Road is a great example of this dichotomy introduced early on, that there were supposedly only two types of people living in these neighborhoods—those living lives of “quiet desperation” and those who were simple and happy with their mediocrity. When you revisit a lot of these novels, their narrated by protagonists who are often racist, homophobic, and only know women from their ampleness of bosom. The ideas explored in those books are very clearly told through a very limited lens, which is one of the reasons why Varela’s book is so refreshing; The Town of Babylon feels like it’s actually capturing this world in its complexity.

There’s something about the structure of the novel, the way it weaves throughout the narrative, going from first-person with Andrés to these third person sections often gives the feeling of the reader roaming around one of these neighborhoods, looking through the windows of every home.

I also think this structure lends itself well to gaining a deeper understanding of the complex nature of queerness and homophobia in smaller communities. Andrés thinks back to his experiences with this boy named Paul, who was part of a hate crime back in high school, and of Paul’s father, a man who has a lot of predatory behavior, and the novel never allows for these types of people to become caricatures. At the same time, he never dismisses their inappropriate, harmful behavior. Its a tricky balancing act that I think he does well. And in the same way, the “good” characters are never shown without their own messiness either.

There’s a moment in Chapter Nine (titled Basements) where Andrés and his eventual high school sweetheart, Jeremy, end up masturbating to porn together. Neither boy is out yet, this is a new experience and an experience that there really isn’t a blueprint for. As I read this scene, read their desire to pleasure themselves while also seeing the anxiety of being unsure what is allowed—this is the type of experience I think a lot of queer boys are familiar with, but one that hasn’t really been written or discussed too much, not in the way that we have access to the types of young love that we see depicted all the time. As I read this scene, there was a moment where I recognized something that I’d experienced, that I’d even tried to write about, but it was done better than I’d ever been able to articulate. There’s a necessity to these types of stories for many reasons—so you don’t feel like your experience is just yours alone, so you know that it’s okay to write about these experiences. I was always ashamed of being so aroused as a child, of having masturbated with friends, of having even tried to write about it because it felt dirty. But this scene shows how one could have possibly talked about this in an honest way, written about it.

This novel continues to uncover more and more revelations until every person and the actions they’ve taken that have influenced this story are fully explored, and I think that’s an impressive thing to be able to do, to give everyone character a moment to really become human. By the end of this book, there wasn’t a character that I didn’t understand in some way, that I didn’t fall in love with, at least a little.

Even without having read the rest of the long list, this one feels like a shoe-in for the short list—the way it engages with and subverts a type of story we’d become overly familiar with, a type of story we’d seen already featured on previous long lists, it offers something new for people who’ve read plenty, and feels like a great introduction to those who might be engaging with suburban fiction for the first time.

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The next book I read was All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews, which was technically a re-read, as I’d read an ARC earlier in the year. The first time I read it, I admittedly didn’t give it my full attention and wanted to make sure I paid closer attention when considering it for this award. The novel is about a young woman named Sneha, fresh out of college, as she tries her hand at adulting. It’s about way more than that—it’s about not wanting to deal with your baggage, wanting a normal life, about being queer and figuring out what that means. Much of this novel could be considered part of the “millennial sad girl” genre we’ve seen as of late, but it’s the added layers of complexity that elevate this book above the rest.

I really enjoyed Sneha as a character. She’s a complicated, nuanced person, fully alive. She’s also really judgmental, at times problematic, and I think the way Mathews writes these moments is really smart. There’s a scene where one of Sneha’s friends mentions someone being non-binary, and Sneha makes several transphobic comments, and while the friend halfheartedly comments on it, it kind of goes unchecked for a good bit of the book. When it does come back into play, we see Sneha actually grow in her understanding, but not in a way that feels tacked on or like it’s pointing out her growth. It doesn’t read as cheap or forced into the narrative, and I think Mathews ability to let her characters live in the mess for a while is something we see missing from a lot of newer writers. I appreciated that. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but basically, I like that she allows her characters to be problematic at times, doesn’t swoop in to prove that she as the author doesn’t agree, but lets the narrative play out at a natural pace. It feels more authentic to reality.

We know that Sneha is entering into the workforce, which is already a challenging and anxiety-inducing thing, but she has to do this on her own, as her parents were deported back to India when she was seventeen. It was heartbreaking to watch as Sneha created this space between herself and her family, this separation that felt like an attempt to reconcile her confused feelings of heartbreak, that her family wasn’t there with her and that she has no control over it. She was also abused by a relative when she was younger, and as you begin to see all of these different aspects of Sneha’s life come into view, you have a greater understanding of why it’s so difficult for her to be healthy in her relationships with others, friends or otherwise.

Mathews writes all of her characters with the same richness, the same level of depth, and it’s also really impressive how she is able to give a distinct rhythm to the dialogue from each of these characters. They don’t all talk the same, and I appreciate the work that goes into creating those different rhythms. Which leads me to another thing I really enjoyed about her work. I also really enjoyed her work on the sentence level. Mathews has this ability to write with a very conversational language, that reads like listening to a good friend catch you up on her life, while also crafting these gorgeous sentences that make you linger on the page. She knows when to let certain lines breathe, when to tighten up certain moments and let others go slack. She has a great sense of rhythm.

Oh, a random thing that I loved was that Sneha loved White Oleander by Janet Fitch, which is one of my favorite books. Any book that references a favorite book gets bonus points from me.

I could also see this one making the short list, because it’s so distinct, has such a strong voice, great prose, and great characters. I feel like it’s also, as I stated earlier, akin to those millennial sad girl books, like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and I think we’re finally at a point where the award realizes the value in these stories. I feel like they’re so easily dismissed because they aren’t always labeled as “important”, even when they’re really great. I don’t know, that could just be me overthinking, but I guess we’ll see. Either way, another one I loved.

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The third book I read, and the last we’ll discuss this newsletter, was Shutter by Ramona Emerson. I listened to this one on audio while on a work trip with my boss—we were both ambivalent early on. She ended up really enjoying it, and I thought it was fine. The novel is a crime thriller/family drama about a forensic photographer named Rita Todacheene who can talk to ghosts. This was the only one on the longlist that I wasn’t super excited for, just because I don’t typically read this genre and I knew it wouldn’t be for me. Part of the reason I asked my boss to listen with me was because I knew this was a genre she was more familiar with and she could help me figure out how to consider it.

What I ended up loving about the novel was Rita’s relationship with her family, specifically her grandmother. Being raised by my Granny, I have a soft spot for these types of stories, and I thought that Emerson wrote that relationship with such love and tenderness, and it felt very honest. I also found myself really invested in Rita’s backstory in general, with her growing up on the Navajo reservation, her time at the catholic school, coming to terms with her ability to see and interact with ghosts. The book alternates between the past and present, and for most of the book, it was the past sections that I was most drawn to. The present section got a little repetitive for me initially, with it mostly just being her taking pictures of dead bodies. The past sections, while interesting, actually slowed down the present day mystery a lot, but I think once we hit the second half of the book, it found its stride and became hard to put down.

It’s tough for me, because if I were just reviewing this as a crime novel or even just a book outside of the context of this award, I know I would have said that I enjoyed it, that I thought it was good. But because I went in with high expectations, this one just had a harder time meeting them. I just found this one to be the weakest of the three I’ve read so far.

On the other hand, my boss actually thought this one ended up having a really great ending—it’s a happier ending than either one of us expected—and she said she would give it four stars out of five. I think that, for me, what made this book not quite measure up was that the structure wasn’t quite as strong as it could have been, I wasn’t that impressed with the prose, and I found some of the dialogue a bit stilted. But then again, I read several reviews that praised the voice, that loved the descriptions, and found the mystery really compelling. I think as far as this one goes, it’s just a bit more out of my wheelhouse and so I don’t think I’m the best one to review it.

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That’s all for my first update on my National Book Award 2022 reading. Stay tuned for next week, where I will be covering at least three more of the longlisted books. I’m so excited to discuss more as we go along! If you’re reading the longlist, please let me know your thoughts on the books! Especially of the three I discussed today. Anyway, thanks for reading, as always, y’all are the best.

Until next time,

XOXO