Five for Fall: The Fall Fiction Compendium

An autumnal reading guide for literary fiction lovers

Hey, Mood Readers!

I am so excited to share Five for Fall, my Fall Fiction Compendium with you today. This hyper curated selection of books represents my favorite works of literary fiction of the many I read or sample over the last couple of months. This is going to be a wonderful season of reading and I’m excited to share my thoughts on some of the buzziest books of the season, alongside some gems I found along the way.

A couple of quick logistical notes before we dive into Five for Fall. There are five (duh) books included in this newsletter as my primary selections. Beneath those five, you will hit a pay wall. After that point, paying subscribers will get my thoughts on five additional fall titles. If you are not seeing all of the books, you may need to visit this post on Substack as your email server may limit the length of this email. If you are a Patreon member, be sure to head over to our Patreon page where you can access all ten titles!

In addition to five additional titles, later this month paid newsletter subscribers and Patreon members will receive a podcast where I’ll share some behind-the-scenes info on the guide: the books that almost made the cut, the books I wanted to preview and couldn’t get my hands on, the buzzy books I DNF’d, the trends I noticed throughout the process, and more! There’s never been a better time to join the FictionMatters community!

Alright…let’s get to the books!

Five for Fall

While summer reading is dominated by books to breeze through, fall is the season for literary fiction. Just what that means might depend on who you ask, but, to me, literary fiction means I care about how the story is being told as much as, if not more than, the story itself. The five books on this list have surprising structures, unique tones, original characters, and meticulous language. Some of them are weird, some of them feel classic, some are funny, some heartbreaking, some scary. All of them, I think, will make you contemplate the writing as art and feel worth the pages whether or not they end up on your favorites list.

In order of release date, here are my Five for Fall:

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (September 6, Knopf, 353 pages)

In The Marriage Portrait, O’Farrell has returned to the realm of historical fiction, this time focusing on rounding out the life of Lucrezia de’ Medici, whose untimely demise history has long debated and whose story served as the inspiration for Robert Browning’s haunting poem, My Last Duchess. Lucrezia’s story unfolds in a nonlinear timeline (which has become somewhat of a signature for O’Farrell), allowing her to create tension from the opening scene. She then takes us back to show us Lucrezia’s rather unusual childhood, painting her as a feral outsider amongst her aristocratic family. I was enthralled by the way O’Farrell’s third-person narrator kept Lucrezia enigmatic, while making her emotions and desires totally visceral, and while I’m not sure I ever fully knew Lucrezia, I can say that her yearnings, her heartaches, and, most notably, her fears and suspicions were thoroughly palpable.This novel is slow to start and at times a bit tangled, and admittedly to me didn't have the emotional resonance of some of O'Farrell's previous works. That said, she is a world class author and in this book shows her at the pinnacle of her craft..The Marriage Plot is meticulously structured in a way that creates a building sense of doom and disorientation, making us wonder if we can truly trust what we are seeing or if we and Lucrezia both are experiencing an intense paranoia. Of the books I’ve read of hers, this is by far the eeriest and most autumnal O’Farrell novel, and like the rest of her work, The Marriage Portrait rewards a steady and deliberate reading. If you can hold out, stash this book away until the nights get a little crisper and you have a stretch of uninterrupted reading time to truly lose yourself in it.

Reading mood: you want to curl under a blanket with a perfectly constructed slow burning novel

Read this if you like: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, My Last Duchess by Robert Browning, slow burn books, books you want to reread as soon as you finish 

Amazon | Bookshop | Blackwell’s

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (September 13, FSG, 240 pages)

I read Ling Ma’s novel Severance with my book club at the start of the pandemic, and the combination of exceptional writing and timing made this an unforgettable reading experience. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Ma’s collection of short stories, and these strange and disquieting stories contain some of the best contemporary writing I’ve read in a long time. It’s not fully horror, but it’s certainly uncanny and surreal, at times verging into the downright unsettling. In one story, our narrator lives in a large, beautiful house with her husband and 100 of her ex-boyfriends, until one by one they begin to leave her. In another, a young woman and her longtime frenemy take a drug that makes them invisible. In yet another, our narrator remembers a past relationship while beginning a love affair with a yeti. Yet Ma manages to make the absurd feel real–depicting in feeling, if not fact, the experience of being a young woman. Even if you don’t typically read books that can be described as speculative, fantastic, or just plain weird, this is a perfect read for anyone who likes to consider craft, syntax, and the future of fiction.

Fall reading mood: you’re ready to fully embrace spooky season

Read this if you like: Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda , Kelly Link, seriously great writing, experimental fiction, speculative fiction, weird books that make you feel seen

Amazon | Bookshop | Blackwell’s

The Furrows: An Elegy by Namwali Serpell (September 27, Hogarth Press, 288 pages)

I admit that I almost didn’t read this book. The premise of a 12-year-old girl who witnesses the drowning of her younger brother felt like it might be too raw for my new mom heart. I wasn’t wrong about the way this book would wreck me, but I’m so glad I read it anyway. The Furrows is utterly mesmerizing. The story is told from the perspective of Cassandra, who is twelve when her brother Wayne drowns in the ocean, leaving no body for her family to mourn and a mother who insists that Wayne is still alive. Cassandra bristles against her mother’s delusions for years until, as an adult, she meets a man named Wayne and is certain it is her lost brother. I thought I had a handle on where Serpell was taking me with this conceit, but I was wrong. This novel defied my expectations and then continued to do so again, and again, and again. The book opens with Cassandra telling us, “I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.” She certainly succeeds in this, penning a gripping tale and a meditation on grief with sentences as clever as they are poignant. If you can handle this story of devastation and enjoy authors who defy narrative conventions, The Furrows is not to be missed.

Fall reading mood: you want your heart broken and your mind blown

Read this if you like: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, sad and gorgeous stories, luminous writing, metaphors you could have never come up with but that capture a feeling you know too well

Amazon | Bookshop | Blackwell’s

Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet (October 11, W.W. Norton, 240 pages)

There’s something special about a book you absolutely love, but you can’t quite put your finger on why. Dinosaurs is that book for me. I couldn’t put it down, I can’t stop thinking about it, and yet I’ve struggled for weeks to try to communicate what about this book touched me so profoundly. In this novel, Millet introduces us to Gil, a middle-aged man who, following a breakup, walks from New York to Arizona. Perhaps surprisingly, Millet begins her story not with Gil’s walk, but instead after he has already arrived in Arizona, living in a giant house he refers to as the castle. In his new life, Gil lives next door to a house with a glass wall, giving him an almost theatrical view of his new neighbors. He, of course, can't help but become intrigued and then consumed by this family’s life. Knowing Millet’s previous novel, A Children’s Bible, when I read the premise, I thought Dinosaurs was going to be eerie if not completely creepy, but it’s not. It’s a story about friendship, intimacy, and what it means to do good in the world–or at least to try. Gil is a surprisingly lovable protagonist: wealthy, earnest, lonely, with a deep appreciation for the natural world. I absolutely loved Millet’s writing through Gil’s eyes. It’s simple in the best way: I felt like I was under a spell and could not stop turning the pages. Her keen observation leads to moments of profundity as often as to moments of humor. In many ways, this is a slice of life book: a book about the biggest of things in the smallest of things–and it would have been exceptional just as that. Yet Millet does more here by injecting moments of satire and a touch of oddity, like sprinkling the novel with gorgeous, brief descriptions of birds and ruminating on those birds’ Jurassic ancestry. This strange little book will linger with me for a long time.

Fall reading mood: You want something short, meaningful, simple, and deceptively strange

Read this if you like: characters you want to hug, complicated relationships, observational humor, straightforward but beautiful writing, considering our connection to the natural world

Amazon | Bookshop | Blackwell’s

A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley (December 6, Knopf, 244 pages) 

In this surprisingly funny and deftly crafted novel, Pulitzer winner Jane Smiley takes the Western trope of the whore with a heart of gold and gives us a pair of fresh and nuanced heroines. Set in the 1850s, the protagonist of the novel is Eliza, a bookish midwestern girl working as a prostitute in Monterey, California after her doomed marriage comes to an abrupt end. When other prostitutes begin to disappear, Eliza and her colleague (and fellow Edgar Allan Poe enthusiast) Jean determine to solve the case, beginning a much-needed friendship and a true adventure for both women. I love this book’s tone: it’s funny and frank, and while Smiley is an absolute pro who writes with tremendous control, the novel never takes itself too seriously.  She’s able to keep Eliza at a distance while displaying a mastery of characterization via precise language and quippy dialogue.  While the story is a murder mystery, it’s neither a procedural nor a puzzle book and while we root for our heroines to discover the murderer, we aren’t really playing along with them. Instead, Smiley uses the framework of the mystery genre to suggest what a dangerous business it is to be a woman. This book is everything I love in a work of fiction: it’s playful, it’s smart, and while it’s certainly in conversation with other great books, it’s also unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Fall reading mood: you need an adventurous romp crafted in pristine prose

Read this if you like: True Grit by Charles Portis, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, literary genre fiction, badass women characters, Godless, wry humor, witty dialogue, bookish references and Easter eggs

Amazon | Bookshop | Blackwell’s

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