NBA Longlist Part Two: Animal Titles

In which we discuss the two books with animal titles that seemingly have nothing to do with animals...

Hi, Y’all! Glad You’re Here—

Last week, I shared my initial impressions of the 2022 National Book Award Fiction longlist, mostly having to do with my shock over the omissions, my surprise at the number of debuts, and I also just realized I didn’t even comment on the number of short story collections! Overall, I was shook, gooped and gagged, but also I’m gay, so what else would I be. I don’t currently have an opinion on the amount of short story collections that are featured, but I would love to know how one is supposed to approach and consider them regarding an award like this. We’ll pass that bridge when we get to it, I guess. I did write my initial thoughts on the three books I finished, The Town of Babylon, All This Could Be Different, and Shutter. I loved the first two, felt very mixed about the last, but I am optimistic about the books we’re looking at this week.

I read The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones over the weekend, a captivating, sharp and pointedly funny chamber piece about a writer and the troubled marriage of her longtime friend. Jones, a recent Pulitzer-Prize finalist for her novel, Palmares, wrote The Birdcatcher in the late 70’s-early 80’s, with the novel being released in Germany in 1983. I didn’t actually know this little fun fact until after I’d finished the novel, but what I found interesting throughout my reading was how much it stood out from the more recent books I’ve read lately. Jones’s voice is stellar, writing so assured—of the books I’ve read so far, this book feels like the one with the most control over what it’s doing. It also doesn’t handhold and never comes across as essayistic in the ways that many recent releases do at times. I do think it goes off the rails a bit at the end, but it’s clearly intentional. While it didn’t work for me as a reader, I think Jones was successful in what she was trying to do.

If you haven’t read the book, this paragraph will lean a little into spoilers, so if you would like to just hop on down to my review of The Rabbit Hutch, be my guest. If you’ve read The Birdcatcher, you’ll know that the last quarter of the book takes the form of what appears to be writing excerpts from Amanda, the novelist turned travel writer. There’s a moment early on when her artist friend asks that Amanda not write about her, not put her in her work the way Amanda has put the friend’s husband in. Amanda says of course, only for the artist friend to be at the center of the excerpts we read at the end. It’s not just that the friend is the focus, but her life is…except that it’s making you question everything that came before it. And also, maybe the excerpts are different attempts at the novel she’s writing? Maybe the entire book we just read was one of Amanda’s attempts at a novel? Who knows. The book reminds me of a recent NBA winner, in how it utilizes the unreliable narrator, but it does it in a really different way. I did feel that some elements of this ending didn’t come off as effortlessly as they could have, but also I’m not an academic, I only know how to engage with a book to a certain degree, so ignore me.

Moving on, I spent the week with Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch, which is a book that everyone and their momma told me I would love. Now that I’ve read it, I can see why. In some ways, the novel reminds me of one of my all time favorite books, White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Both books feature young women in the foster care system, these girls who are seemingly more cultured and introspective than everyone else around them, who have trauma and incur even more trauma throughout the narrative. I’m often drawn to these books as a femme person with mommy issues, daddy issues, and as someone who always wanted to be more cultured and introspective than I actually was as a child.

This book is about more than Blandine, though she was my favorite part of the novel and its true center. It’s one of those “big idea” books, that looks to explore a lot of philosophical ideas, with the big one being the possibility of transcendence. The books opening line references Blandine “exiting her body”, which we will keep coming back to throughout the novel, this elliptical framing that helps hold together a novel that at times can be unwieldy. In some ways, this book reminds me of another longlisted book from this year, The Town of Babylon, in how it roams around, observing these smaller characters in this Midwestern town, giving us a deeper idea of the collective. But while The Town of Babylon reframes and reconsiders the suburban novel, the male mid-life crisis, The Rabbit Hutch reconsiders and reframes another kind of story—that of the girl whose life is shaped by her encounters with other men.

I mentioned in last week’s newsletter that it seems that both All This Could Be Different and The Town of Babylon were engaging with other works of literature in new and exciting ways, and I think the same is true of The Rabbit Hutch. While we’ve seen far too many books explore the dynamic of a young woman being inappropriately pursued by an older man, Gunty’s characters are very aware of this dynamic before it even happens. It offers a more interesting consideration of this type of story than we usually see. I also think that the way Gunty writes about the ways in which Blandine isn’t self aware is just as fascinating. The way she engages with her three roommates and also with others feels honest and authentic to her at every moment, and feels like a deeper look at how a person who has *been through it* would navigate the world. It really resonated with me.

While I did find the second half a little wobbly at times, overall I thought it was really great, an exciting read, really ambitious, and I can respect that. This is one I would be super happy to make the shortlist.

Now, I didn’t get to finish the third book I planned to discuss today, If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, BUT, I can tell you that from what little I have read so far, I love it, and if it’s as good as the beginning, it will probably be in my top three of this longlist. We will see!

That’s my update for this week. Hoping to finish the four short story collections by next week, so stay tuned. I also can’t remember when When We Were Sisters comes out, but I know it’s at some point in October, so I will cover it as soon as I can. If you have any thoughts for now, comment below and let me know!

Until next time,

XOXO

P.S. my current ranking of the books is.

First place tie: The Town of Babylon and All This Could Be Different

Two: The Rabbit Hutch

Three: The Birdcatcher

Four: Shutter