Reading roundup

It's been a while! Four novels, each definitely worth your time, ranked from essential to merely recommended...

The Known World
Edward P. Jones

On second reading, I can affirm that it is one of the great novels of our time. The fully formed and ambiguous characters are implicated in multiple layers of historical and moral complexity. The dehumanizing brutalities of slavery and racism are in full view, along with heart-wrenching acts of humanism and dignity, not to mention venality, betrayal, and the full range of human behaviors. Everyone is trapped in a complex web of hierarchies based on race, freedom/unfreedom, gender, class, ancestry, and education. Yet agency and moral responsibility are not absent, even if they are tragically constrained by circumstances. I have made it all sound quite sociological, but the story-telling is simply extraordinary, and the writing is spare and poetic– biblical, I'd say. It's also full of life and love and beauty, and darkly funny in parts. Have you not read it? For all its limited geography, it encompasses our known world.

Fludd
Hilary Mantel

After reading her bloated finale to the Cromwell trilogy, you may find it refreshing to be reminded of what an efficient and lovely writer Mantel can be. In this charming short novel, Satan (maybe) comes to visit a sleepy town. Lives are upturned. Wonderful.

Abigail
Magda Szabó

I loved The Door, but Katalin Street left me a little cold. Abigail is somewhere inbetween– not a masterpiece, but well worth a read if only to get to know its plucky young hero. This is definitely the kind of novel a young person could love... a Hungarian Harry Potter? Perhaps so: According to Wikipedia, it was voted the third most popular Hungarian novel in Hungary. 

Red Pill
Hari Kunzru

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the neo-fascists aren't out to take over the world, and in the process target you individually and make your life miserable while they're at it. Well-written, in full-on Don DeLillo mode, although I found the story-within-a-story flashback to East Germany more compelling than the main plot. It ends with a note of cautious semi-optimism on the worst political night of your life.