Read on Suggested Reading
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk
If there’s any one book that inspired this novel, it’s Snow. It’s the story of an exiled Turkish poet, Ka, who returns to Turkey to investigate a rash of suicides among young, religious girls in a small village. I love the mysterious, uncertain atmosphere of this novel; it enveloped me immediately, from the first scene when Ka boards a bus that almost seems to take him back in time. Although I read Snow years before I started working on Home Field, there was something about its odd angles that got me thinking about where I grew up and how I might write about it.
Independence Day, by Richard Ford
I read this at the recommendation of my husband, who doesn’t read much fiction, so when he likes a book I pay attention. It took him several months to finish it, and I teased him about that until I started reading it. Even though the story takes place over only a few days, it’s densely narrated by Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of several of Ford’s books. I love Bascombe’s narration, especially his vocabulary, which is so American in the way that he mixes poetic language with regional slang, technical terms with academic allusions, and ten-dollar words with the simplest endearments and place names.
The Stories of John Cheever, by John Cheever
I discovered these stories when I was in my early teens and have been reading them ever since. My favorites are “The Country Husband,” “The Death of Justina,” and “Goodbye, My Brother”—a story I read pretty much every year. I love Cheever’s sensibility: his jokes; his vocabulary; his feeling for landscape, mood, childhood, color, and light. His narrators are melancholy, dissatisfied, and ashamed, but they love life, and that mix of sadness and delight is what always brings me back to Cheever. I think of scenes from his fiction every time I go to the beach, take a walk in Manhattan, or board a train on the Hudson line.
The Autobiography of My Mother, by Jamaica Kincaid
I first read this at age nineteen and it floored me. It’s the story of Xuela, a motherless child who grows up on the small Caribbean island of Dominica. Xuela is a survivor, a woman who finds her way in the world on her own terms, rejecting motherhood, daughterhood, siblinghood, and all kinds of inherited identity. At the same time, there’s an embrace of the natural and material world that gives Xuela’s writing an incredible vitality.
Sweet Talk, by Stephanie Vaughn
This is one of my favorite short story collections, simply because the stories are so full of emotion and evocative of childhood. My favorite story is “Dog Heaven.” I still can’t get through it without crying — and I’m not even a dog person.
A Home at the End of the World, by Michael Cunningham
I love the title of this book, I love the characters in this book, I love the warmth and elegance of the prose in this book, and I even love the movie adaptation of this book, which introduced me to the wonderful actor Dallas Roberts, whose performance I admired so much that I went to see him in a revival of Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story. So, just read this book: it will enrich your life in unexpected ways.
Far from the Tree, by Andrew Solomon
As part of my research for this novel, I read Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which is an excellent and intensely personal nonfiction book about the history and treatment of depression. Around the time I finished The Noonday Demon, Solomon’s next book, Far from the Tree, was published. It addresses what happens to families when a child turns out to be very different from his or her parents; for example, a deaf child born to hearing parents, a child prodigy born to parents of ordinary intelligence, or a transgender child born to cisgendered parents, to give just a few examples. Once I started this book I couldn’t stop reading it. Every chapter brings a new family portrait, a new set of complications. It’s like a series of linked novellas, except they are all founded in an extraordinary amount of reporting and research. Solomon’s compassion radiates off the pages as he interviews families about their fears, joys, disappointments, and triumphs as parents of the children that they never expected to have.
Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
I’ve been a fan of Alison Bechdel since the 1990s, when I started reading her syndicated cartoon, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” But it wasn’t until I read Fun Home that I truly appreciated her depth as a writer. Fun Home is a memoir, telling the story of Bechdel’s complicated relationship with her late father, a closeted gay man who taught English and ran a funeral home, which was also the house Bechdel grew up in. Bechdel’s childhood is strange, bookish, morbid, and haunted by her father’s tormented identity. It isn’t until she leaves home that she is able to come out as a lesbian; around the same time, her father dies suddenly in a possible suicide, leaving Bechdel with even more mysteries to unravel. Somehow, this is a very funny book, and also full of literary allusions and quick, sensitive pieces of literary criticism.
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This book showed me how to write the voice of Stephanie. I wanted her to be genuinely naive and lacking in experience, but I didn’t want to condescend to her. Americanah follows two high school sweethearts, Ifemelu and Obinze, Nigerian students who are separated by war and by economic and social forces beyond their control. Ifemelu ends up in America, where she struggles with what it means to be black and African in a new country, while Obinze barely gets by in London on an illegal work visa. Both are unprepared for what life throws at them, and Adichie depicts their naïveté as well as their bravery and strength. It’s a full, sympathetic portrait of youth and young love, and in general this novel is so full of life, so overflowing with observations, jokes, and dialogue, that I couldn’t help feeling as if Adichie poured everything she knew into this book. That’s always the kind of novel I like best.
Playlist
“Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam,” by Nirvana
Which Nirvana song to pick for a book set in the 1990s? This is the one that immediately came to mind, even though it’s not my favorite Nirvana song and isn’t actually a Nirvana song — it was originally written and recorded by The Vaselines. But I like it for this story because it’s a parody of Christian children’s songs, the kind of music that Stephanie would have learned as a kid and rebelled against as a teenager.
“Violet,” by Hole
At the beginning of the novel, Dean spots Missy wearing a Hole T-shirt and has no idea what it means. I probably never would have heard of this band if my older sister hadn’t been living in Olympia, Washington, at the time and sending me mixtape dispatches. (My sister also got me a subscription to Sassy magazine — why, oh why didn’t I keep the one with Kurt and Courtney on the cover? Why didn’t I keep all of them?)
“Feel the Pain,” by Dinosaur Jr.
I can’t listen to this song without picturing the album cover, that sad-looking animal in a red jacket. I didn’t even own this album; I didn’t have to, because everyone I knew had it and this song played nonstop on the alternative stations.