Shocking confessions, acts of depravity, and a feminist meet-cute with a merman.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Darcys infuriating backhanded proposal to Elizabeth Bennett.
Gatsbys long line of crisp shirts fluttering to his closet floor.
Anne Boleyn quivering on the scaffold, waiting for the executioners neck-bound sword.
His blanketed tail jutted off the wagon, but it wasnt the strangest thing to happen in Venice.
No one seemed to notice or care.
It wasnt like I was smuggling a dead body.
The basic premise ofThe Piscesis (relatively) simple.
It seemed cozier than the others, with faux-wood-lined walls and red tiled floors.
But at the heart of the relationship is a deep discrepancy, not just in age but in possibility.
The money is largesse but also power, which she subverts in her own way.
Its a radical act, raising questions beneath the surface of the simple text.
A pain hit somewhere behind her eyes, and she turned away.
But the pain was thunder, it broke and it broke.
When she lay on her back, he said, No youll do the other thing.
He had a bottle of something clear that he smeared over her stub, and then he showed her.
He said, like this, and then he got on the bed.
The violation nearly kills her, and the scene left me physically nauseous as it should.
5.The Perfect Nanny, by Leila Slimani (Penguin)
A chicken carcass sits on a plate.
It looks as if its been gnawed clean by a vulture or a stubborn, meticulous insect.
I was intensely bored of Reva already.
I cant look in her closet, Reva says, Its too upsetting.
Reva gets the shoes.
The narrator takes another nap.
Moshfeghs cold, poisonous prose carries on.
In unflinching detail, the motive unspools, and Ganly is unmasked just as forcefully as his killer.
Its a brilliant undoing of the mandate that we accept one version of a fictive story as its reality.
But if you want to be a parent, you dont end up in prison.
Its the loneliest scene Ive read this year in the past five years maybe.
Romy screams, Thats my son!
as the guards hold her down, until every part of [her] was pinned.
