Chad Pelley's Blog

Anxious People (by Frederick Backman)
This is a funny but deeply human story about a failed bank robber who accidentally takes an open house full of people hostage. None of the hostages care though, because they all have bigger problems. It's phenomenally well constructed, plotted, and unfolded mystery. This was a completely original way of telling a story.

If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English (By Noor Naga)
Not a spoiler, but this one's on here because of its unprecedented twist ending. After hundreds of years of fiction novels, Naga managed to find a a fresh spin on something akin to the "then I woke up" curveball. And its stylistic panache was a pleasure to read.

The Listeners (by Jordan Tannahill)
There's a sound in a town that only a few people can hear: why? The story started out half funny, but no joke for the main character, chugged along at a good pace without sacrificing plot-thickening character development and quality writing. It touches on some big questions, and prods the modern zeitgeist without being heavy handed.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Not quite a new book, but the HBO adaptation came out this year. I was floored by the mood it conjured, and liked its unique spin on the post apocalyptic dystopian thing. The author is marvelous at fast forwarding through years of characters' lives, confidently and commendably gutting any filler from the story, and she's a trailblazer for blending literary and genre fiction so well at a time when people are bailing on books for Netflix. It's all so well rendered and crystalline. It's a brilliant showcasing of an author in a sweet spot.

This Is How We Love by Lisa Moore
Any new Lisa Moore novel will rank on my year-end lists for her sentence-level writing alone. She could write a book about a character brushing her teeth and I'd be transfixed by her talent in crafting engaging sentences. At the crux of the novel is a mother whose son has been stabbed, during snowmageddon, and her need to understand why. It's a great rumination on the unique capacity of a mother's love, and also does a great job capturing the seedy underbelly of St. John's.