Countless young writers have asked the unanswerable question: how to write about family members without wreaking havoc? How to approach the urgent and inescapable material that has shaped your life without rendering that life unlivable – because you have included too many details about Aunt Joan or (almost always) portrayed one or more of your parents in an unflattering light … Given that fiction is always on some level born of experience (even when set in another century or on another planet), and that experience so often involves family, how to write fiction at all?
When my husband and I were looking to join a community pool a few years ago, we only had a couple of requirements: a low-key and judgment-free vibe, members who were already friends, an adequate amount of adult swim time, and an old-school snack bar. You know the ones. More shacks than kitchens, these snack bars are keepsakes from my youth. They’re run by middle schoolers still figuring out how to calculate proper change and their “menus” are handwritten in Sharpee and only mildly accurate. They are perfect.
Travelling from Miami to the island of Key West, Florida, hasn't always been the carefree drive it is today. In the early part of the 20th Century, the only way to make the journey to the southernmost point in the continental US was a day-long boat ride, and that was dependent on weather and tides. But thanks to a stunning engineering marvel known as the Overseas Highway that stretches 113 miles from the mainland's southern tip across 44 tropical islands on 42 bridges, I was seemingly floating across a necklace of mangrove forests and cays as I drove to a place where North America and the Caribbean meet.
Stuart Turton's The Last Murder at the End of the World is a wild amalgamation of genre elements that pulls readers into a unique postapocalyptic world in which another end is imminent. Told with surprising speed, given its depth and scope, this bizarre whodunit also works as a science fiction allegory full of mystery that contemplates the end of the world and what it means to be human.
This is an impressive debut; I already look forward to Van der Wouden’s next. She can draw characters with nuance, without fear too; she creates and sustains atmospheres deftly, and ultimately delivers a thrilling story.