• NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book is ubiquitous enough in pop culture that I was already kind of aware it was a boarding school book about clones, even though I knew none of the specific details. In that sense I think I undermined some of the plausible impact the book might have had on me. But it seemed silly not to read something so fundamental to the subgenre, no? I have previously read KLARA & THE SUN, and I think there was a bit of recognizable DNA between the two books in terms of the author's interests and curiosities. There is a palpable desolation to both books, a sense of regret and loneliness, something to say about the value of a life. It did what sci-fi as a genre does very well, which is to humanize things that are (or are regarded as) non-human.

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• MAKE BELIEVE: On Telling Stories to Children by Mac Barnett. If you don't have a child, you may not know about Mac Barnett. Tuck him in your back pocket just in case. I was reading this book on my phone while I was lying in my son's bed with him, as I do every night until he falls asleep, when, for the first time, my son asked me what I was reading. I told him it was a book for adults by a children's author—did he want me to read it out loud? He said yes. So I read for a bit, and then I said do you want me to stop, and he said no, I want to fall asleep listening to you, please. So I read him a lot of this book, and you know? It was very nice and enjoyable for both of us. And then I bought a lot of Mac Barnett's children's books, and can confirm they are also beloved by both of us, and good. 

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• ASSEMBLY by Natasha Brown. A very short debut, this one is pretty crushing. It's specific to the experience of being Black and British, though I related to parts of it as the child of an immigrant, and it is disheartening and sad. Basically, a woman of Jamaican descent is invited to a party at her posh boyfriend's family estate at the same time that she has learned she has cancer, which she is told is yet another thing she should (but doesn't necessarily want to) fight. But also, it is less about plot than it is about the experience of moving through the world with her face, her body, her identity. It's a very effective essay, perhaps more so than it is a story. A couple of times I thought girl, surely another profession would help, which is similar to a thought I had while reading SUBLIMATION (more on that next month). But on the whole, I understand it; I hate it; I see what she means. 

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• CROSS-STITCH by Jazmina Barrera. This novel was written in Spanish—the characters and author are Mexican—and if you can read proficiently in Spanish, I recommend that you do that, if only because the English cover is heinous and undermines almost everything wonderful about the novel. The Spanish covers are much better and truer to the material. But this is a wonderful story told in mixed timelines (mainly in retrospect, by a narrator remembering things after a close friend has died) about female friendship and the way "women's work" like embroidery, needlecraft, and textile arts are important to mythology, history, literature, and cultural identity. It's all blended so powerfully and lyrically; it covers so much about what is hard and beautiful and agonizing and irreplaceable about female friendship. If you still need to be sold on the vibe, it reminds me of a more contemporary version of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND (specifically THE STORY OF A NEW NAME), or a more earnest, less absurd THE IDIOT.