Danielle DuBois Dimond is the buyer at Brazos Bookstore in Houston. She's a big fan of experimental literary fiction and is always in search of the diamond in the rough book. Her critical eye is apparent when you scan the shelves at Brazos.Here's Danielle's pick:
The best book I've read this year is definitely Ramona
Ausubel's new short story collection, A Guide to Being Born. These stories are
formally inventive, unimpeachably imaginative, and written with stunning grace.
The collection is organized into sections named for different phases of life -
conception, gestation, birth, death - and centers around the changes that take
place in us during those important bodily shifts. However, instead of simply
writing about these events in a straightforward manner, Ausubel renders them
foreign and unfamiliar by applying her wild imagination to them. A girl
imagines her gestating child is a variety of different wild animals. A
community grows extra arms on their bodies each time they fall in love. Believe
you me -- you won't read another short story collection quite like this one!
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