Books are a part of my life. As an English major, I was of course required to read the classics though somehow I’ve managed to miss a few. And certainly during my long dark period of not writing, I failed to notice a lot of the great new long-form fiction (aka novels) that came out at the time.
Now that I’m a professional writer, it’s part of my job to pay attention. To the great new work that comes out everyday. To what’s hot and what’s not. I suppose you could call it keeping an eye on the competition.
But in truth, I still primarily read for the sheer pleasure of a story well told. Of all the storytelling forms out there, long-form fiction remains my favorite. You can see in this photo what happens with an obsession like that.
Just take a look at all these novels in my to-be-read stack. This is minus the short fiction, nonfiction, literary journals, poetry and plays. Quite a feat to read it all, with or without a Goodreads challenge.
long-form fiction reviews
Here are the reviews of the long-form fiction I have read since 2017. It’s the longest list of reviews on my website so you’ll understand that long-form is my true love.
For me, reading is a form of exploration. And now that there are more than 30 reviews on this page, I’ve decided to regroup my long-form reviews by continent. This geographic designation may seem random: it may be where the novel is set or the country of origin of the author.
Within each section, you’ll find my reviews in alphabetical order using the author’s surname.
africa
High Life: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Mini review: The Promise by Damon Galgut
Family Tree: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Polygamy: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin
americas
Witness: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Games People Play: Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba
LA Love Song: The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Little Old Ladies: White Houses by Amy Bloom
Little Green Men: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Lucky Strikes: Gun Love by Jennifer Clement
Mini-review: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Macondo: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Fight Club: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Alphabet Soup: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Annotated Alice: Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Pillow Talk: Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
Gormless in Gotham (or How to Write a Micro-Scene): May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes
Isherwood: A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Southern Gothic: Young God by Katherine Faw Morris
End-times: Weather by Jenny Offill
Sentinel Tree: The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Great Awakening: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
The Putz: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
Possessed: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Tracks: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
asia
Ancestor Worship: Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao
Republican Fever: Little Reunions by Eileen Chang
Hill Station: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
In Conversation: The Vegetarian, Human Acts, and The White Book by Han Kang
Chinese Lessons: A Free Life by Ha Jin
The Critic: Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous by Manu Joseph
Hell Notes: How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee
Stone the Crows: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Phut: The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan
The Wisecrack: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Amnesia: The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Body Parts: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, translator Jonathan Wright
Combini: Convenience Store Woman by Murata Sayaka
Happy Family: Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag
Mom: Please Look After Mom by Shin Kyung-sook
Zen: The Gate by Natsume Soseki
Geometry: Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
Heat: The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
Iron Horse: The Stolen Bicycle by Wu Ming-Yi
In the Re-Ed 99: The Four Books by Yan Lianke
europe
Accommodation: Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck
Madame Bovary Revisited: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Doors and Windows: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Sweet Cheeks: Orchid and the Wasp by Caoilinn Hughes
Mini review: Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
Devilry: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Carnival in Hell: Niet van hier (Not from Here) by Judith Maassen
Witch: Circe by Madeline Miller
Guslar: The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
Wind on the Water: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
oceania
Reverse Alchemy: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Listen: the everrumble by Michelle Elvy
One Fish, Two Fish: Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
White Water: Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan
Wired Women: Flesh and Wires by Jackie Hatton
Whacko: Cloudstreet by Tim Winton