Books by Kate Zambreno
“Kate Zambreno is a true writers’ writer; her books are always being recommended to me by other authors. Her latest, The Light Room, is billed as ‘a candid chronicle of life as a mother of two young daughters in a moment of profound uncertainty.’ The life of the mind finds intellectual trapdoors that can relieve the tedium.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
“I’m recommending Screen Tests as a counterfactual novel because it is a collection of writing written from a consistent point of view, that of Zambreno, as a character, in a certain mood. No, it’s not a novel with a single plot threading through the stories, but it is a novel if you can accept a single line of thought as no more or less valid than a plot. It’s a perfect book.” Read more...
The Best Counterfactual Novels
Catherine Lacey, Novelist
Interviews where books by Kate Zambreno were recommended
The Best Counterfactual Novels, recommended by Catherine Lacey
Novelists often make the decision to create alternate realities—worlds that are very like, but not quite identical, to our own. Catherine Lacey, the acclaimed novelist whose latest book Biography of X is set in a United States in which the Southern states seceded during the 20th century, talks us through the process of plotting counterfactual timelines and recommends five books that explore the slippery relation between truth, reality, and fiction.
Notable Memoirs of 2023, recommended by Cal Flyn
Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn selects the best recent autobiographical writing in this round-up of notable memoirs of 2023—taking in new work from such literary giants as Janet Malcolm and Annie Ernaux, the writer other writers are raving about, and a humorous debut depicting life in a haunted antiquarian bookshop.
