Short, Weird Books
The Antidote to a Would-Be Reading Slump
I have been in a bit of a reading funk lately. A slump, if you will. But not even quite a slump, because I DO want to read, I just haven’t really had the time to lock in. Between international travel (paradoxically, I am very bad at reading on vacation), friends and family visiting, being pregnant, and accidentally bingeing the first two seasons of The Traitors until my eyes bled, reading has fallen to the wayside.
However, I refuse to let the bastards (me) get me down. Instead of going full-slump mode, I’ve tried to keep myself engaged by reading – you guessed it – SHORT, WEIRD, BOOKS. I’m talking barely over 100 pages, genre-be-damned, far-out shit that is impossible to put down. Not to mention that when you are teetering on the brink of a slump, a short, quick book does wonders in bringing you back from the edge.
So, as I’m sure you’ve ascertained, this installation of Point of Departure is about short, weird books. They are a balm for literary malaise, and, I can attest, general, run-of-the-mill malaise that threatens your precious reading time. Let’s dive in.
The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada
I recently picked this up in Lisbon while traveling and read it throughout the trip. I had my eye on it after reading The Hole by Oyamada, which was extremely weird, and this one was no different. However, I found The Factory to be less totally bizarre, and slightly more grounded in reality, and therefore, slightly more accessible – but only slightly.
The book follows three unnamed individuals who work at a factory in an unnamed city in Japan. What does the factory do, exactly? Great question. The employees don’t even seem to be sure. The factory is massive, sprawling across a campus complete with a bus system to get around, restaurants, museums, a post office, employee living facilities, and more. Think SF tech campus meets Potemkin village. The employees we hear from have vastly different jobs. One is a shredder, and spends her days feeding massive reams of paper into an industrial machine all day. Another is a scientist who has been hired to categorize and study all of the moss on the factory’s property for a reason that is completely opaque to him, despite his being there for 10+ years. The last is a copyeditor, who spends his days editing random documents, seemingly unrelated to anything, by hand.
These employees are baffled by the purpose of their jobs and their roles within the greater factory system. Not to mention, they start to notice more and more strange black birds accumulating in the river that runs through the factory. No one knows what species they are, but there are more of them in the river every day.
This book’s success lies in that it is far-fetched and completely relatable. There’s a Severance-like quality to it, where the workers in the story are blind to the truth behind the factory, yet they persist day in and day out with their strange, mindless jobs. I loved this book; it was clever and kept me guessing at every turn. A strange delight that reminds us of the monotony and ridiculousness of jobs under capitalism.
Comemadre by Roque Larrquy
Easily the best book I’ve read so far this year. I will not be able to do this book justice, but I will try. This book is… wild. It is divided into two distinct but connected parts that occur 100 years apart. The first is set in 1907, in a sanatorium outside Buenos Aires. Our narrator is Doctor Quintana, a physician at the clinic who takes part in a series of experiments based on shoddy scientific research that aims to determine how the brain works after death. Led by his boss, Quintana and his colleagues begin recruiting patients to their trials under the guise of a new miracle drug cancer treatment, which, spoiler alert, does not work (that’s the point). They then goad patients into participating in their experiment, for which the goal posts continually change as they go along. Lives are destroyed for the glory and success of a few men who purport to be interested in the meaning of life. Oddly familiar, no?
The second part of the book takes place in 2009, our narrator is an obese, gay performance artist who tells his life story in the format of responding to a scholar who has written a dissertation about him. He chronicles his childhood as an art prodigy into adulthood, where he meets a man who will become his partner. Together, they create increasingly destructive, disturbing, and extreme works of art in the name of transcendence and becoming the work itself.
I don’t want to say too much about the plot here, but my god, this is a work of creative brilliance. The structure, the syntax, the characters — all of it is intentional, clever, and exacting. I am always taken by authors who can succeed with so few words, and Roque Larraquy does that tremendously in the pages of Comemadre. Interviews with Larraquy only add to the intrigue of the work — I highly recommend reading this one, but only after reading the book. This book is for you if you are looking for something wholly unique that will change you as a person — just beware that it may be for the better, or it may be for the worse. Either way, I cannot stop thinking about it.
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre
OK, this one isn’t as weird as the others in subject matter, but what makes it interesting and different from the majority of fiction I’ve read is the point of view. This slim 162-page novel is about a woman named Fanny and her slow descent into a mental illness that eventually kills her. The story is told from the perspective of a friend, referred to as “the narrator.” From this vantage point, we follow Fanny through the quotidian moments and events of her life in the years before her death by suicide.
There is a difference between the voice of the narrator, which is in the limited third-person, and the character of The Narrator, whom the narrator (lower case) refers to, and is the narrator’s “real self.” I am not explaining it well, but it makes sense when you read it, and it was such a striking, fresh perspective; I was captivated by the writing style.
The book’s focus is on the love, complexities, joys, and hardships in a friendship between two people who adore one another dearly. It explores how deeply and intimately we can know someone while simultaneously being estranged from the innermost parts of their personhood. It made me reflect on the most important relationships in my life and what I love best about them. Read this if you’re looking for something controlled, thoughtful, and contemplative about the possibilities and shortcomings of human relationships.
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
I can’t remember how I heard about this one, but I have wanted to read it for a minute now. Finally grabbed a copy on Indie Bookstore Day at one of my favorite local shops, The Head and the Hand. I went into this one pretty blind, and I recommend you do the same. It’s a classic situation of first-person narration in which the main character is trying to figure out WTF is going on, and we, the readers, are on the edge of our seats alongside them, desperate to uncover the truth.
The truth about what, you ask? Well, the island, obviously. I know — a mysterious island. Tale as old as time. The story is from the point of view of a fugitive who has escaped to this remote, uninhabited island where he is hiding out. There is nothing on the island but a museum, a pool, and a chapel. The fugitive is alone, subsisting on roots and plants, until one day, the tourists arrive. He is shocked because the island was said to be a site of radiation poisoning, and an acquaintance told him it would be uninhabited. Remaining hidden, the fugitive watches the tourists and follows their daily actions, eventually becoming enamored with a woman whom he observes watching the sunset every evening.
But there is something strange about the tourists; they’re not what they seem. Are they part of an elaborate plan to capture the fugitive? Are they figments of his sun-poisoned imagination, or are they something far worse? I’d never spoil the fun, but I will say that this book has you on white-knuckling through each page. I did not know where this was going to go, but Casares expertly lands the plane in this brutally intelligent novella. I recommend this one for a quick but razor-sharp read. I might have been too stupid for this one, if I’m being totally honest, but I loved it nevertheless.
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
God this book fucking rocks, and I feel like no one has read it? It’s time for that to change. This book is creative beyond comprehension, with Clark tying together historical fiction, high fantasy, and horror brilliantly. Such a fun, clever read.
The premise is this: in an alternate version of Macon, Georgia, in 1922, the KKK is alive and well. Among their ranks are “Ku Kluxes”, hulking, hideous monsters that literally feed off of hatred and the consumption of Black people, fueling the fire of the Klan, which aims to take over Macon and beyond. But there are hunters in these parts. Our narrator is Maryse Boudreaux, a resistance fighter, who, alongside her fellow hunters, Cordelia and Sadie, hunts and kills Ku Kluxes to banish evil to hell where it belongs.
But this is more than just a fight, it’s a war for the soul of the country; a battle between good and evil, one where black magic and demons are abundant. Will Maryse and her crew be able to stop the Klan, or will they claim Macon — and the rest of the country? A short novella that packs a punch, this is such an incredible read — I suggest you get your hands on it as soon as possible.
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Have you read any of these? Any favorite short, weird books I should add to my list? Tell me in the comments!!
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📖 Currently reading:
Record of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami. Probably would have made this list had I finished it in time!!
📚Recently finished:
Underneath by Lily Hoang. I mean, where to start? Big ups to
for turning me on to this sleeper hit. This was…. INSANE. Truly harrowing, horrific, and captivating.Person/a by Elizabeth Ellen. There is some really smart stuff going on in this book, but mostly that was overshadowed by how tedious this was. Being obsessed with a man you have only hung out with 3 times is so fucking tired, like cmon sis.
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. See above.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. This was a book club pick. It was fine, but not really for me. Was doing the absolute most, which I would argue is too much.
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre. See above also.
💌 Email me book recs and other literary thoughts at emilygatesjohnson@gmail.com
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Want to read them all 😩
Damn it, once again you spend all my money. I’m going to send you an invoice soon.
One to add: The Night Guest by Hildur Knutsdottir. Short, tense, horrific, captivating.