Photo: Courtesy of Ecco

Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Verge (out Feb 4): Hands down, the book that carried me through the year was Ocean Vuongs On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Im willing to bet this book carried legions of us, with the brutal and yet also tender beauty of the poetics, the intimacy between bodies, the weight of the heart suspended inside longing. This is a book that multiplies meanings, but at the center is a queer coming-of-age story as well as a bicultural family history. The shadow of a mother-son relationship and the shadow of the America-Vietnam relationship haunts the story. I fell in love with the narrator a hundred times over. I also felt suspended between the atomized mother who cannot fully understand the language of her son, a sons attempt to both inhabit as well as break free from his own family history, and the force of nature it takes to wrestle the gap. The language went into my body.

Anna Wiener, author of Uncanny Valley (out Jan 14): What a pleasure it was to read Caleb Crains Overthrow, a novel about political crisis, political optimism, technology, divination, surveillance, queerness, digital subversion, and the profound possibilities of empathy. The book, which is set in the near past, follows a small group of friendsall young, all attempting to carve out a lifewho refer to themselves as the Working Group for the Refinement of the Perception of Feelings. The group lives in an unnamed but familiar city, where there is growing excitement and energy around a particular public, collective political action, la Occupy Wall Street. Some members have telepathic powersmaybewhich lead to an unusual style of digital exploitation. All are struggling for selfhood, connection, privacy, and intimacy, in a time when such pursuits can feel nearly Sisyphean. Perspectives shift, as do individual commitments. The reader begins to question certain narrative realities; this is part of the fun.

When you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Continue reading here:
10 Authors on The Best Books They Read in 2019 - Vogue