The other day, I reflected on the fact that we are nearly a quarter into the 21st century. It motivated me to begin organizing some of my favorite fiction books into the category of "contemporary fiction."
Why? In college, I began to read contemporary fiction as late as my senior year because it took me so long to study the ancients, the classics, and the canonical texts. As a result, my relationship with contemporary fiction has been largely defined by my independent reading and partly by my graduate schooling at UCLA.
In other words, I have developed a unique relationship with contemporary fiction that, with a few notable exceptions, did not rely on a university professor lecturing me on their literary power.
For my readers, I have compiled this list of 5 contemporary fiction books that have influenced my writing and thinking. My commentary is intentionally general to avoid spoilers and to induce your interest. Favorites like Raymond Carver just missed this list; I used 1990 as my starting marker.
5. Perdido Street Station by China Miéville (2000)
This is the weirdest and the most daring novel I have ever read. Miéville’s worldbuilding is itself an extraordinary accomplishment; Bas-Lag expands in scope with every page. The various ways Miéville introduces new dimensions to his world while also developing the plot and characters are worthy of study by any fiction writer.
This behemoth of a book will absorb even the most avid reader for weeks. As it should. The best science fiction enables us to see our own reality in new and critical ways; the more times you pick up and then put down this novel, the more you will see of Bas-Lag on Earth.
(And I don't mean the garudas and the scarab people.)
4. Loverboys by Ana Castillo (1996)
What resonates with me to this day about Loverboys is my reading experience. Read together, these stories convey complex representations of romance, yearning, lust, and infidelity. The stories inform one another, and in many ways rely on one another, despite each containing independent plots and characters.
It takes an adept storyteller to write 23 stories on love ranging from the comedic to the tragic; it takes a master storyteller to write 1 overarching narrative composed of 23 stories on the comedies and tragedies of modern love.
3. Jazz by Toni Morrison (1992)
In graduate school, I took a course on Toni Morrison and read nearly all of her books in 12 weeks. Of them all, Jazz continues to leave an impression on me. The prose is indelible and nearly indescribable. It would be cliché to claim this novel is how jazz sounds on the page; I believe it’s the undercurrent of darkness and violence beneath the surface that keeps me in suspense reading about Joe and Violet Trace.
Just reading the opening paragraph: “Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church. She ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from their cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the parrot that said, ‘I love you.’”
2. American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1997)
Roth’s name was invoked often in my creative writing classes at Princeton, but I did not read him until nearly a decade later. I am fortunate to have started with American Pastoral, and I am grateful I read this book at age 30 rather than age 20. The tragic downfall of Seymour Levov, or “the Swede,” is one of the most intriguing character studies I have read. Perhaps most riveting is the Swede’s slow unraveling due to forces out of his control, from international politics to domestic affairs (literally). It’s a character arc that feels inexplicably true and familiar, even if the Swede’s tragedies seem circumstantial and extraordinary.
The narrative framing device changes throughout the novel, which reinvigorates the plot and begs the questions: Who do we really know, and how do we truly know them?
1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)
It is difficult to describe what I love most about this book. Its verve, its audacity, and its candor all undergird its genre- and culture-bending prose. Simultaneously a story about the Dominican diaspora, a multi-generational family curse, and a comic book nerd who struggles with girls, Oscar Wao demonstrates the power of contemporary fiction to tell stories that matter in ways that matter.
I have read it 5 times. I believe Yunior is one of contemporary fiction’s greatest narrators, and Lola one of the most compelling characters — the kind that infuse novels with heart, helping them endure well beyond their century of publication.
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