Author Archives: Kasia Bartoszynska

I knew almost nothing about this before listening to the audiobook (the narrator is perfect), which meant that I could fully experience the gradual build-up of horror. It’s a terrifying book, all too true to our historical moment. But it’s made bearable by Smith’s trademark delight in language, and by something that is not hopeContinueContinue reading “Gliff, Ali Smith”

I saw this on a few Best Of lists last year and was semi intrigued, and then a friend of mine posted about hating it and a few people chimed in, and then I was even more intrigued, and checked out the audiobook. And to my surprise, I found it extremely interesting! It reads likeContinueContinue reading “Good Material, Dolly Alderton”

I spied this on the shelf at 57th Street Books and it called to me (this is the joy of browsing a well-curated bookstore!). It opens with two teenage girls who are accompanying their grad student scientist mother on a dig and accidentally discover a perfectly preserved woolly mammoth. And it’s great — outwardly aContinueContinue reading “The Last Animal, Ramona Ausubel”

One should of course resist the strange temptation to pit women novelists against each other, but still, I couldn’t help thinking to myself as I read this that Sally Rooney wishes she could write like this. And then I immediately chided myself — they’re different! And Rooney does have a kind of lightness and gobble-it-upContinueContinue reading “The Wren, The Wren, Anne Enright”

This book was a mega-hit some 10 years ago, and I’m glad, because it really is a profound meditation on aging and how we make decisions about elderly and end of life care. The main thrust of the book is, first, that we should focus on quality of life rather than on extending it asContinueContinue reading “Being Mortal, Atul Gawande”

This book (especially hot on the heels of some scathing reviews of other books) made me ponder if all writing about polyamory is cringe, and what is that makes it so. My hunch is that writing about love or desire can seem profoundly narcissistic, especially when it’s about getting “more” than what is socially sanctioned?ContinueContinue reading “Crush, Ada Calhoun”

This is a deeply unsettling book. It reminded me a bit of Eleanor Davis’ work because of how it imagines what apocalypse will feel like in these terrifyingly concrete ways that also have a sort of manic playful quality (though Graham is mostly grim). Both authors explore the contours of a dire future with anContinueContinue reading “To 2040, Jorie Graham”

When I (re)read this with a group of Ukrainian students last year, I did so with a kind of speculative curiosity, wondering if and how they’d connect to it, whether it would be relevant to them. This time around was different, in that I had a kind of template for how they’d react, and yetContinueContinue reading “Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua”

I was surprised by how much my class enjoyed this novel, because it’s weird and formally complex and fairly opaque, and the narrator is often annoying, or at least, doing blatantly stupid things. I think Heti really strains relatability with this one, but I could be totally wrong, because my students did in fact seemContinueContinue reading “How Should a Person Be? Sheila Heti”

I first heard the title poem of this collection during a book launch held over Zoom during pandemic lockdown, and it lingered with me for days — “I was born from an apocalypse and have come to tell you what I know” — it seemed so prescient (this was published in DECEMBER 2019?!), but then,ContinueContinue reading “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Franny Choi”