What are yours best books of 2013?

Who Wrote It?:

Acclaimed playwright Jeff Jackson, who has had five plays produced by the Obie award winning theater company, Collapsible Giraffe.

Plot in a Box:

"A coming-of-age story for people who hate coming-of-age stories" about a young runaway and the gaps in his dream-like memory.

Invent a New Title For This Book:

Wonderful Bodies

Read This If You Like:

Dennis Cooper, recommendations by Don DeLillo, the publishing sensibilities of Two Dollar Radio, the writing of J.T. Leroy even though he was a fraud.

Meet the Book’s Lead:

Jeff Jackson, apparent authorial avatar who I hope is more fiction than fact, proud owner of one seriously disturbed childhood.

Said Lead Would Be Portrayed In a Movie By:

Any number of damaged, androgynous boys that populate independent queer cinema and The CW.

Setting: Would You Want to Live There?

An orphanage? A forest surrounding an abandoned amusement park? The alley behind a Chinese food restaurant? No thanks.

What was your favorite sentence?

At first I think I'm going blind, but then I realize there's nothing to fear. A veil is being lifted. I watch as the house transforms itself around me. The paint on the walls, the furrowed lines of my palms, the oracles huddled in the hallway with their twitching shoulder blades—everything is slowly becoming blank.

 

The Verdict:

Read the rest of Josh Chaplinksy's review here.