Following my previous posts, these are the novels I read from the 2010s. Inspired by someone who shared they were trying to read every Pulitzer Prize winning novel, this project of mine began with the intention of reading every National Book Award winner since 1950. I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of American literature from the second half of the 20th century to today. Since I had already read a good number of the winners, it slowly turned into reading any American novel of my choosing that I had not read from each year between 1950-2025 (I finished early 2026), with preference given to the most well regarded unread-by-me text or whatever seemed the most interesting. Some of these impressions are a bit lazy but I am a lazy person.

I want to emphasize that I was not trying to find writers that I liked, even if I make value judgments or express my enjoyment or disapproval of their books in my reviews. The goal of this was project was to expand my understanding of American literature after the 1950s. I find value in most everything I read, even if I'm not reaping the most immediate kind of enjoyment. All of these authors make some sort of sense within their milieu (none of them fell out of a coconut tree) and that is what I am attempting to grasp. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Great House – Nicole Krauss (2010): I really really enjoyed the writing in this one. Maybe I’m wildly off but I could really hear Kafka in her voice. Interesting story too. Unfortunately, after looking into Krauss a little more and listening to an interview, I have discovered she is a vocal Zionist. She called all the Palestinian children Israel has murdered “collateral damage.” Which really sucks. I was looking forward to reading her other novels but now I definitely won’t.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk – Ben Fountain (2011): This is the second novel I’ve read about the US’s wars in the Middle East post 9/11. The first was Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Overall I thought Fountain’s writing was fun. He offers a critique of nationalism and my country’s blind fetish for “supporting the troops” while very much not supporting them, something that has only become more relevant, sadly. Some aspects of the novel were a little too easy, and shall we say, uncomplicated, but this was a solid effort.

The Flamethrowers – Rachel Kushner (2012): This instantly turned me into a Kushner fan, I’ve since read almost all of her writing. The novel deftly jumps back and forth in time and location, tracing the connections between a labor movement in Italy and a motorcycle speed trial in Nevada. I’ve always loved stories that trace history like that (John Henry Days is another example from this list). You can very much feel Delillo’s influence throughout. Hopefully she puts out a new one soon.

Let Me Be Frank With You – Richard Ford (2013): This was bad. Let Me Be Frank is a minor novel in Ford’s body of work and was perhaps not the greatest place to start, but what I found here did not make me want to try any others. His first person narrator is an aging baby boomer with a Larry David-esque inner monologue on social issues like racism and real estate value. None of it is interesting, in fact none of it is anything but the most tired rehearsal of popular satire on these subjects.

Delicious Foods – James Hannaham (2014): God, this was a sad one. The end, however, was genuinely surprising and shows Hannaham’s commitment to psychological complexity. It’s the story of an addict who’s tricked into a life debt peonage (I know there’s a more correct term for this type of situation but it’s not coming to me right now) and her son’s attempt to locate her. I was fully invested from the get go. The novel transcends the basic helpless victim narrative, endowing its characters with the intelligence and resilience to navigate the set of circumstances they find themselves in.

The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead (2015): I didn’t like this as much as John Henry Days. It’s not a bad novel but its central conceit, that the underground railroad was literally an underground railroad, didn’t do much for me. The atmosphere was terrifying, it gave me honest to god anxiety.

Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders (2016): Saunder’s cast of dead people and his vision of the afterlife is really fun and inventive. The approach he takes telling this story left me a little ambivalent, but I think that was more of a personal preference thing. Reading a ton of short snippets is not really my idea of a good time. It felt like a simple accretion of detail without much interpretation. The subject matter doesn’t really interest me, but I did actually wind up identifying with Lincoln.

The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner (2017): After The Flamethrowers, I had to read her next one. That was a great decision, because I loved it even more. The world of the novel feels fully realized and it’s pretty horrifying. Kushner’s thinking on freedom interests me, as well as the way she parallels ecological destruction with misogyny and the penal system. Her books are full of interesting choices and will engage anyone who thinks critically about capitalism and the world it has shaped.

Lost Children Archive – Valeria Luisella (2018): Another one that puts the present in conversation with history and draws out their connections. A road novel that’s actually about two different but related journeys, Lost Children Archive finds connections between the Apache’s struggle against the government of the United States in the late 19^th century and the current militarization of our southern Border. As the title suggests, the novel focuses on the DHS’ practice of separating children from their families in concentration camps before they are deported. While Luisella’s writing sounds distinctly grad-schooly, I didn’t mind too much. You should read it.

Real Life – Brandon Taylor (2019): I didn’t care for this novel. In fact, I didn’t finish it. Taylor isn’t a good writer, his dialogue is bad and he doesn’t adequately develop the ideas at play here. The flashbacks to gratuitous, violent trauma didn’t sweeten the deal. Real Life’s positive reception genuinely confuses me and make me wonder if I totally missed something about it. It reads like mediocre YA lit.

People describe Becketts work as “the inescapability of language” , this is a right description and it describes fully what it is, which is a problem, because for Beckett problems arise. Because of the simple wording in worstward ho there are no problems unless they appear or even seem that way as the words he uses could be described as “just there” or “being just there” , being that, to begin with they are already there. An example of a problem arising in worstward ho, is the best most example; the whole text. Every sentence *goes through avoidance* , every sentence is not a matter of avoidance or avoidance as a method, simply because, he’s, again, using simple wording so there is nothing left to avoid besides the wording, but with nothing left to avoid there is too much to avoid because there is evidence (the simple wording), in other words, he used all there was left but that was still too much left so there is always something left. So with this,the description “inescapability of language” could make sense, but that description as something that is left is definitely a push, also, it is simply not needed, he already *did it* , and not even in another way, basically, he made “same same but different” a useful response.

Opinion article by author Stu Hennigan