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Lilith Saintcrow's Picks
Lilith Saintcrow's PicksLilith Saintcrow was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old. She currently lives in Vancouver, WA. Find out more at www.lilithsaintcrow.com.
This account of a half-French, half-German young man on the Eastern Front in WWII is heartbreaking and sobering. Detailing the brutality of training to the chaos of battle all the way through the price of peace, Sajer doesn't flinch. He shows the disillusionment of front-line infantry grunts, who fight not for nation or for ideology, but for survival and the survival of their battle-mates. I will never be able to read military history again without thinking of the slog, blood, and pain of the "boots on the ground".
Yes, the man was a misogynist. But my heavens, could he write, and his accounts of drunken poverty while struggling to break into short-story writing are clear, unforgiving, and brutally honest. I have a soft spot for all Bukowski's novels, but it was Factotum that made me realize I could love an artist's work while deploring some of their personality quirks.
The first three books of the Bernie Gunther series are collected in one volume, and I highly recommend reading them all straight through. Kerr's Gunther is a private detective and ex-policeman in Nazi Berlin and afterward. Ambiguous, driven, smarter than he appears and absolutely unable to compromise as much as those around him, Bernie is a hero I love, hate, and cannot stay away from.
Fitch's debut novel absolutely blew me away. When Astrid Magnussen's mother is jailed for murder, the girl begins an odyssey through the California state foster system. Each house is a universe with its own rules, risks, and razor-tooth rewards. Bent but not broken, battered and bruised, Astrid begins to take control of her life, and manages to grow up, a weed in wilderness that has its own spare beauty.
Perez-Reverte is one of the few male authors in the last two decades who has successfully written a female point of view. The story starts with Teresa Mendoza, a narco's girl in Sinaloa, getting the phone call every girlfriend dreads--the one that says your lover is dead, and you're next. She flees, keeping one step ahead of assassins, and in the process of surviving becomes legendary. Part homage to The Count of Monte Cristo, part narcocorrido ballad, and all gut-clenchingly wonderful prose. I return to this book every once in a while just to marvel at how Perez-Reverte brings Teresa to full, unapologetic life.
