I have finished just shy of sixty books so far this year (and it's only the end of July!). It's a lot. Many are excellent, and some are just average. I like to read the classics; I like to read about history, philosophy, politics; I like novels from around the world. But something that gives me particular joy is reading debut novels. I have read many.
I have read There There by Tommy Orange, who won the PEN/Faulkner Prize for a Debut Novel, who had just won the Hemingway prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer--on his first book! I was not the first person to read There There; I had read it early in the year after it was published, but I found it wholly deserving of the praise heaped upon it at the time and the prizes and accolades it continues to win.
I have just started Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. I am about 1/3rd of the way through it. It came out in 2017, it earned a Kirkus Star, and The Guardian had an article about it, which I only found recently, despite the date of publication. Idaho is the story of a woman whose husband is developing dementia, and the husband's previous wife inexplicably murdered one of their children. She wants to know why before dementia overtakes him.
But one debut novel that had been completely forgotten--and that I absolutely love and still mention to people--is The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. She has yet to publish another novel. The Ghost Network came out in 2015, and I still think about it. It's not a perfect novel, but it is one of the only two novels I have ever read (the other being House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, which I will discuss later) written in a nonfiction, investigative style. I forget how I even found it, but I remember reading the NYTimes review of it at some point, and decided that I must read it. I was looking for another novel in the same style as House of Leaves, and I had found it.
The Ghost Network is about a celebrity journalist who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Lady Gaga-like pop star named Molly Metropolis. The investigation leads a little bit into the weird, featuring an avant-garde architectural movement, among other curiosities. It somewhat borders on magical realism. I felt that it was brilliant and weird enough for me, and I sing its praises wherever and whenever I can.
This is perhaps the biggest reason I enjoy debut novels so much. I am always hungry for something new, something different. Something so totally bonkers, like Animal Money by Michael Cisco (which is not a debut novel, but is wonderful nonetheless. Go ahead, check out that sexy cover!), that no one else would ever even think to look for it.
I do not, however, want to give the impression that I do not also enjoy the classics. I am as big a literary snob as they come. My favorite novelists are Emile Zola and Dostoevsky. I read everything from Dickens to Dune (I'm bringing Dune on vacation next week. I plan to start it after Idaho). But sometimes I need something really, really, really different. That is where my love of debut novels comes from. As well as my other, secret, love of something called Weird Lit, or, more specifically, New Weird...
Are you ready for this rabbit hole?
Weird Lit encompasses authors like Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgeson, as well as Ambrose Bierce or Robert Chambers. It is fantasy and science fiction, but without traditional monsters or events; things that are indescribable or unexplainable. New Weird builds on this tradition, and incorporates offbeat science fiction like Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation, Borne, or Danielewski's House of Leaves, The Cipher by Kathy Koja, novels by China Meiville, and Animal Money by Michael Cisco. The famous Japanese horror master Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo) is also considered a part of this tradition.
Earlier, I had mentioned Animal Money and House of Leaves, two radically different novels--totally unique from anything else I had read before and since--both in substance and style, that have really opened up new worlds to me, and new literary possibilities. Let's start with House of Leaves, which is a little bit less weird than Animal Money.
If you are familiar with the Slender Man phenomenon, it helps to think of that as a point of reference for the kinds of things that happen in this book. The main character's landlord dies, and, among his belongings, is a heavily annotated manuscript that reads as an investigation into a series of home videos called the Navidson Report.
Main Character > Manuscript > Home Video. Three layers. But we aren't yet done!
The Navdison family has just moved into their new house, and it isn't long before they discover that the external and internal dimensions of the house do not line up. They discover a gap, and in this gap is a dark, possibly infinite, labyrinth that extends into the earth. Mr Navidson decides to spelunk into the labyrinth, and he brings a video camera and lights as far as he can into the labyrinth.
So far so good.
Layer two, the landlord's manuscript, talks about the Navidson Report as though it were real, and includes citations from real publications, just like The Ghost Network does. It is a heavily researched book on the Navidson Report, trying to figure out what it is and where it came from.
It is as if Slender Man were real and was reported about on the news not as some bizarre pseudo-religious phenomenon, but as actual fact.
Some parts of it are hard to read. I read it on ebook and I feel like I missed out on some important parts of it, because there are annotations, some text changes depending on who is speaking, and one section where you have to only read the first letter of every word, which is very difficult and sometimes didn't make sense.
HOWEVER.
It was the only book to ever keep me awake until morning. I've been reading Stephen King since middle school. I read Joe Hill (King's son). I read the supposed "scariest novels ever." Nothing, I tell you: nothing scared me the way House of Leaves did.
And, I think there's a minotaur in that labyrinth....
The other novel that is completely bonkers was not scary, but it did have Communist aliens, occult economists, money that could sexually reproduce, and a character who did not even exist in the world of the novel itself! Animal Money by Michael Cisco was a complete satire on economics and monetary value, and it was as hysterical as it was brilliant. Once again, look at that cover!
I will close with one final Weird Lit novel, this time by another science fiction author who is famous if you know where to look.
The City & the City by China Meivelle (who also wrote Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Embassytown) was made into a BBC miniseries a few years ago. Reviews of the series were mixed and I never watched it, but the novel itself is perfect for our current political situation. The story is as follows:
Two cities exist in the same physical space, but different psychological dimensions. Citizens of one city are conditioned to "unsee" events, people, and places in the other. "Breaching" this law is the most serious offense a citizen can commit. The main character is charged with investigating a murder of a citizen of one city by a citizen of the other.
When I think of this novel, I think about how it could be that Democrats and Republicans occupy the same physical space, but completely alien psychological spaces. As our political situation grows more severe, the more relevant this fascinating novel becomes.
One of Meivelle's other novels, The Scar, takes place entirely on a city far out in the ocean constructed entirely of boats.
I am always looking for something new, something different, and debut novels are a big part of exactly that, whether they are of the Weird tradition or not. Reading something that few have ever seen before, that has only existed for a short time, brings the joy of discovery, of surprise, and occasionally, of terror.
