Friday, September 11, 2009

Maile Meloy's best books

Maile Meloy is the author of the story collection Half in Love, and the novels Liars and Saints, shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize, and A Family Daughter. Meloy’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, and she has received The Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, Meloy was chosen as one of Granta’s Best American Novelists under 35. Her new book is the story collection, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

For The Week magazine, she named "six books that have changed her idea of 'what’s possible in fiction.'"

One title on her list:
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (Random House, $15).

The nested, multiple narratives in Mitchell’s brilliant novel, each written in a different style—19th-century traveler’s journal, ’70s airport novel, sci-fi debriefing/celebrity interview—made me stop writing for a while, because I was so sure I couldn’t do that.
Read about all six books on Meloy's list.

Related: In praise of David Mitchell.

Visit Maile Meloy's website.

What is Maile Meloy reading?

The Page 69 Test: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

The Page 99 Test: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

--Marshal Zeringue