Aaron Thier | The Nation

How did everything a writer had known and loved come violently apart?

In the short stories of Tenth of December, the impression of chaos belies a careful design.

Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie; Andrey Platonov’s Happy Moscow

Edward P. Jones’s characters know that everything they’ve worked for might suddenly be taken from them.

In Black Bazaar, characters vent and stumble over their shared obsession with the colonial past.

A.M. Homes’s May We Be Forgiven; Sherman Alexie’s Blasphemy.

Maureen F. McHugh's After the Apocalypse; Joshua Cohen's Four New Messages

Samuel Beckett wants you to have a less bad day.

With We Others, Steven Millhauser remains the master of the inevitable ending in American fiction.
 

In his novel Abbott Awaits, Chris Bachelder employs his comic wackiness to great effect.