RECOMMENDED

By Eric Lutz

The weirdest thing about Jesse Ball’s novels is how naturally the most unnatural things unfold in them.

An example: In the Chicago author’s second book, “The Way Through Doors,” a young man sees a stranger get hit by a cab and brings the ID-less, memory-washed woman to the hospital.

“Are you her boyfriend?” the receiving orderly asks him.

“Yes,” he replies.

And like that, the hospital and victim knowing no better, he is.

It’s the kind of organic absurdity that exists in Kafka’s world, and often in Alfred Hitchcock’s. Worlds with the same look and texture as our own but in which reality is a bit weirder, identity a bit looser and circumstance and fate gravity-like forces.

Indeed, that book, and his debut “Samedi the Deafness,” played all sorts of games with the nature of reality and identity and circumstance, and earned Ball due praise.

His new novel, “The Curfew,” may stand as the best of the three, or at least the darkest—a strange, brilliant work of speculative fiction that calls to mind Kafka’s “The Trial,” Nabokov’s “Invitation to a Beheading” and, most prominently, Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” Read the rest of this entry »

Illustration: Pamela Wishbow

A strange and unpleasant wind blows through the literary land. Our obsession with technocultural toys, whether iPhones, iPads or Kindles, makes the foundation of thought almost since thought was recorded, that is ink on paper, seem increasingly destined to be twittered into obsolescence. And it’s not just mere media frenzy, either. Massive upheaval among major publishers these last few years has left some of Chicago’s finest writers stranded in a strange land: that is, the work is finished, but no one is around to put it out. Who knows, maybe in two years when this version of Lit 50 returns, some, if not all, of our authors will be publishing mostly, if not entirely, in the digital realm. If that’s the case, let’s enjoy an old-fashioned book or two while we can. Read the rest of this entry »

Top 5 Books
“Chronic City,” Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday)
“War Dances,” Sherman Alexie (Grove Press)
“Generosity: An Enhancement,” Richard Powers (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux)
“Ruins,” Achy Obejas (Akashic Books)
“Inherent Vice,” Thomas Pynchon (Penguin Press)
—Tom Lynch

Top 5 Local Books
“Ruins,” Achy Obejas (Akashic Books)
“Her Fearful Symmetry,” Audrey Niffenegger (Scribner)
“How to Hold a Woman,” Billy Lombardo (OV Books)
“The Way Through Doors,” Jesse Ball (Vintage)
“The Adventures of Cancer Bitch,” S.L. Wisenberg (University of Iowa Press)
—Tom Lynch Read the rest of this entry »