6 Lovely Little Novels That Nobody's Heard Of (Yet)
Try out these amazing (if less-than-famous) tales and spread the word!
4 of 6
See Through
By Nelly Reifler
160 pages;
Simon & Schuster
This
funny, compassionate collection of stories veers from the painfully
real to the comically surreal. A lonely young girl gets a job taking
care of her next door neighbors' cats but is too overwhelmed to go
inside the dark, yawning house. A mother faces down her impossibly
intelligent baby, who listens to Bach cello pieces and questions why we
exist but refuses to cuddle with her. A teenager shows porno magazines
to his younger cousin, trying to make him feel better about his father's
terminal cancer. These completely original tales—told in
completely original language—take you back to those moments,
whether in adulthood or childhood, when you were trying to figure out
how the world worked or if it even worked at all, like Teeny, the
lovable but negligent cat sitter, who thinks about summer camp and "how
some of the girls had made wallets, and burned their names into the
leather with a glowing hot tool. But the counselors hadn't offered to
teach her how to make a wallet. Why? ... Did they know something
she didn't know for sure, but suspected? That she wasn't capable of
using that burning tool? How did they know that about her? Could anyone
know it just from looking at her?" As with many of these stories, you'll
laugh at the ridiculousness of the logic but go "ow" with recognition
at the feelings they inspire.
— Leigh Newman
Published 02/07/2012