Laurus Reads: Top 3 of 2024
A year in review
Confession: I hate ranking books.
I stopped rating them, too—if I feel particularly moved, I’ll write up a brief comment on Goodreads, but too often my words torment me and I’ll go back and erase them, disgusted by my attempt to sanitize the literary ball pit, undulating, spilling, teeming, festering. Four stars? Three? Three and one half? A quarter, even? What’s the difference? Why care? Art is alive.
Follow-up realization: I don’t hate ranking books. I hate quantifying feelings. Books deserve more; movies deserve more; art deserves more than a tongue-in-cheek sum-up by a wise guy with an MFA convinced by her own virtue that she’s somehow cracked it.
I do, however, find it important to highlight pieces of particular value. That can mean anything: entertainment, emotional resonance, craft. I like books for different reasons, but as someone downright obsessed with people1, I mostly like them for character. I am also, against numerous opportunities to become more gentle and accepting, a half-baked snob, so hopelessly, desperately in love with the English language that any hint of disrespect for the craft of writing is an instant disqualifier. (Looking at you, BookTok.)
My favorite books boast perfect, though varying, balances of these qualities.
Here are three books I couldn’t stop talking about this year (and some honorable mentions). Whether they’re officially ranked, I’m not sure—let’s just say I’m writing on Whim.2
Laurus (Eugene Vodolazkin)
I already sang the praises of Laurus in my Favorite Books Ever post. As the year concluded, I knew I’d have to write about it again.
Laurus is one long stream-of-consciousness narrative wrapped in mystery. It’s cruelly grounding, a bold contradiction that defies and even denies its own spirituality through the eyes of its titular character, whose desperate calls to the realm of the dead—and the realm of God—persist unanswered in a world that God himself nonetheless haunts.
Even as the details of Laurus fade deep into my personal graveyard of previously-read book plots, it’s impossible to forget its many gentle heartaches. I watch the world unfold through Laurus’s eyes: from childish wonder and innocence to burgeoning love and birth and gore and many forgotten faces lost to death.
Though I find myself increasingly interested in female authors, I am equally drawn to pensive, observant male voices like that of Eugene Vodolazkin, whose honest and perhaps obsessive interest in the human condition stands out amongst the splattering shitstorm of the modern literature market.
American Rapture (CJ Leede)
I first saw American Rapture on a curated table at the McNally Jackson bookstore on Prince Street. I’m not much of a book buyer, but I’m a regular at this particular spot for the sole purpose of building my TBR (To Be Read) list.
I didn’t know what I was in for, truthfully. I’m not sure why I read it at all. This book is the world’s worst checklist of all the things I hate reading about: teenagers, zombies, and rape.
So why in the fuck did I order this book from the library? Why was I so stupidly excited to damage myself by reading it?
Honest answer: Because I adored the cover art.
Second honest answer: Because each day I develop into a braver young woman than I was the day before.
I have a weird relationship with Catholicism; it’s more of a private, spiritually-tinged cultural journey than it is any single identifiable thing (or than it is anyone’s business). For that reason, I appreciate both positive explorations and criticisms of Catholic culture, especially as it pertains to the modern woman. American Rapture is heavier-handed than I enjoy, but main character Sophie is an undeniably ideal vehicle through which Leede pens her judgment.
The book is violent, gory, and unforgiving. But it topped my list this year for one unique quality that I find rare in this genre: it is empathetic.
I’m not a fan of horror. I hate others’ enjoyment of human suffering; I’m too fragile. I watch people get crunched up on screen, sliced up in pages, and all I can wonder is what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, how they reckon with the fact that they are in pain and that their fate is cruel and hopeless. I am particularly haunted by any destruction of agency—hence my distaste for zombies (destruction of mental faculties; or, being swarmed and helpless) and, of course, rape (destruction of physical freedom; destruction of mind; destruction of soul).
But Leede’s empathetic approach to all these things is downright remarkable. It builds trust. I feel her careful eye on every page. She makes no effort to shield us from the worst, but she’s there with us to witness the destruction of humanity, a reassuring squeeze of her hand in ours.
Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery (Brom)
I didn’t like Slewfoot at first, and for a similar reason as American Rapture. Oh, brother, thought I, here’s another brilliant depiction of Cruel Puritan Society penned by someone who thinks they’re progressive. I get it… Women are witches if they show their hair... I’m a man and I know how bad that is… I’m an ally! Religion is bad! Big fuckin’ whoop.
But Brom kept at me. His character work won me over, and his thesis—a bold declaration of inter-religion unity—sealed the deal. Slewfoot reframes evil in its historical context, then reinvents it, and ultimately embraces its hybrid form, making for a delicious fairytale with staying power.
Abitha’s treatment during her trial and (attempted) execution is reminiscent of similar martyr stories, like those of my favorite saints: Joan of Arc and Saint Lawrence, for example. I’m fascinated by conflicted characters who detest the unfolding cruelty but are ultimately torn between loyalties and other obligations. I liken Brom’s character of the Reverend to the kindly Massieu in one of my favorite films, The Passion of Joan of Arc, or to the prison guard Saint Lawrence converted to Christianity before his execution—or to any unlikely quasi-ally in the face of impending doom.
Honorable Mention: My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh)
I read Lapvona last year. It’s a book I return to often. I like historical fiction because it strips down the setting—no tech distractions or modern luxuries to throw irritating curveballs at plot and character. I like to get right to the heart of human conflict, and a historical setting is the perfect stage.
For this reason, My Year of Rest and Relaxation perplexed me at first. A lot of brand names, a lot of phones, a lot of television: all things I’m not used to. But once I adjusted, character shone; conflict shone; Moshfegh’s doomed protagonist shone, and I devoured her misery with a greedy heart.
I think about that final page all the time.
Honorable Mention: Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks)
Year of Wonders, recommended to me by a pen pal, is a hypnotic, historical character study that sparkles on the page. Heroine Anna Frith fashions her own unique role in a plague-ridden village. The blurb insinuates something of a Crucible nature—a kind of dark, swelling witch hunt—but it’s not the case, and I was glad for it; it’s a treat to navigate the dangers of the world alongside Anna, and its unlikely beauty as well.
That being said… I have no respectful way to explain that the ending of the book sucks. I thought the reviews were lying, but I gasped out loud when I read it. We so often remember books and movies by their endings, and one so strange as this verges on unforgivable.
But I try to remember how truly wonderful the rest of the book is, and I hold onto that tightly.
Honorable Mention: The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty)
I’ve never seen the film adaptation of The Exorcist. Aside from my vast disinterest in getting my shit rocked, I’m ambivalent about stories that prey on readers’ fear of Christian evil (i.e. and e.g., The Devil); they uphold a trite, reductive idea of morality that simply does not exist.
But what I found in The Exorcist was a careful, smart, matter-of-fact plot coupled with a character arc that tore a river of tears out of me by the last page, kind of like those magicians with that silly old handkerchief gag.
Crying? At The Exorcist? Lame!
For more about my obsession with strangers and people in general, check out “how to exist” (december 8, 2024).
Capital-W “Whim” as defined by Alan Jacobs in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (2011).
Definition from Gary Gilley in a great Amazon review:
“…the author goes further and distinguishes whim from Whim. He defines whim as ‘thoughtless, directionless preference that almost invariably leads to boredom or frustration or both. But Whim is something very different: it can guide us because it is based in self-knowledge’ (p. 41). With Whim the books that delight others need not delight us, nor should we feel obligated to be delighted. Instead, based on our own interest, we are free to enjoy the literature that we appreciate.”
I dream of one day making this list...