The Grumpy Librarian: Caitlin Goodman tells you what to read

Loved: Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye 

Loved: Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go 

Hated: Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge 

First: You’re incorrect about Olive Kitteridge; it is a near-perfect book and you are lucky the Grumpy Librarian is professionally obligated to not just suggest you take up TV. So take a look at Joan Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer, which includes some “playfulness” about time and memory and identity and is very thoughtful and full of gut-punch phrasings, like Atwood’s book. It doesn’t have the kind of “SURPRISE, WE’RE CLONES” (uh, spoiler alert) revelation on which Ishiguro basically hangs his narrative, but it does bring about that sense of slightly out-of-focus world-building. The GL likes Ian McEwan’s Atonement too (oh, shush, it’s good), and it shares Ishiguro’s quiet, English, don’t-spill-your-tea kind of suspense. And since you did such a good job of reading women (you know how the GL feels about that bugbear), a bonus tip: Don’t swap in McEwan’s Sweet Tooth, it’s basically the M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening of McEwan’s work.

Send the Grumpy Librarian two books you like and one you hate and she'll tell you what to read.