I realize that, if the purpose of this column is to surface works its readers haven’t immediately heard of, picking the most recent Booker Prize winner misses the mark. That said, Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song is just that good. More critically, it’s an important artifact pointing up the exhaustion of the threadbare neoliberal consensus that dominates much of “developed” democracy.
thom vernon invites readers to meet sex and death
I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Tom Meuley, thom vernon. Guernica Editions, 2024.
Wildly audacious. Hilarious yet devastating. Punchy and raw. I’ve never read a novel like thom vernon’s I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Tom Meuley. As a novelist, vernon breaks all the rules because he knows them. It’s why the story leaps off the page. This novel begs to be a film, and I shouldn’t be surprised considering vernon’s backstory of being an actor-turned-writer.
As a writer, I’ve always held a particular fascination for children’s books. In my opinion, there’s much to be admired in their simplicity. I feel that anyone can fit meaning into hundreds of thousands of words, but when you’re limited to 30-60k, the lines written must be shaved down to their bitterest and most potent form.
When my friends recommend books, I borrow them from the library—my apartment remains infested with paperbacks despite my efforts to downsize, and books are an expensive vice—but I lasted a whole fifteen minutes into the audiobook of Julia Armfield’s novel Our Wives Under the Sea before I caved and ducked into a bookstore to buy it while out on a walk. It was just that good.
The Fiddlehead is excited to announce the finalists of our 2024 Creative Nonfiction Contest, judged by Lorri Neilsen Glenn! The winner of the $2000 contest prize will be announced in October and the winning essay will appear in the Autumn 2024 issue (301). Thank you to all who entered and congratulations to the following fifteen finalists!
