Bruce Bauman’s And the Word Was (Other Press) asks this: “How much must you love god to accept Auschwitz? Or whatever happened to you? To accept that god exists after that?” To read the rest of my recommendation of this tremendous fiction debut, see Moorishgirl.com.

I love how he finds gorgeous and tender moments inside moments you expect to be fierce and narcissistic. So very honest.

—Susan Henderson

I love everything about this book—it’s unflinching look at war, the slipperiness of truth and how the stories are often more true when they are fictionalized, the heartbreak within victory and the tenderness within killing. He gets at every paradox that makes us human.

—Susan Henderson

I’ve read a number of translations of The Iliad. This one’s my favorite by far. You have to read it out loud. Every line is gorgeous.

—Susan Henderson

The first section was disorienting for me, but then—wow, the language, the details, the tiny moments that paint a large picture of grief and of love when seen all together.

—Susan Henderson

The writing is so absolutely alive—cocky, at times, unexpectedly tender. I tried to slow down my reading so it wouldn’t end too soon, but I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

I’ll definitely read it again.

—Susan Henderson

I enjoyed this one a lot. It’s not life-changing, but the author takes a look at the heart and interests of many Generation X-ers and her observations about email affairs and flight attendants and fringe marriages are often funny, tender, and insightful. It’s a quick read.

—Susan Henderson

How To Be Lost is a mesmerizing book that really takes off in the fifth chapter. It is primarily the story of Caroline Winters, a trained-pianist working as a cocktail waitress. Her lack of effort in her career is reflective of a general disconnectedness shown in other areas of her life. The things she once felt passionate about have dulled, and she seems disconnected, or rather, closed off and somewhat irritated by the relationships in her life. Over Christmas, Caroline is faced with a dilemma: her pregnant sister Meredith wants to finally declare their little sister, who disappeared at age 5, dead so they can all move on. But Caroline’s mother who has never stopped searching, shows Caroline a clipping from a magazine of a girl who might be Ellie all grown up.

Caroline’s decision to search for her missing sister is not so much a belief that Ellie is alive, as an expression of her rootlessness, her ability to pick up and leave. It is on this search where Caroline’s heart is exposed—the hurts that have caused her to close off to others, the fears and hopes she has kept to herself. Carline returns to music in order to support herself in the town where she believes she’s found her baby sister. And in being away, she learns what it is she misses back home.

The novel is full of hope and heartbreak. But the real gift of this book, where you feel its impact, is in its unique structure. Though the story belongs primarily to Caroline, the reader is really following the narratives of two other characters, also lost and incomplete, and how those narratives intersect in the end.

—Susan Henderson

The strength of Fizz is its narrative voice and the weird kaleidescope of thoughts and images that ultimately tell a story about belonging and truth.

—Susan Henderson

I really wanted to like this one because it’s been recommended to me so many times. There are some details and moments that are fantastic, but I found the narrator to be too prissy for my taste. And for all the other characters in the stories, the narrator is never able to penetrate any of them—almost as if she lives in a world where others are only there for her to gather more information about herself. I disliked it very much, and it’s probably more to do with an incompatibility with the narrator’s life-view and self-absorption.

—Susan Henderson