fatloach

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Quiet Novels 🏡💭🤫

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Contemporary Literary Fiction where nothing out of the ordinary happens but the characters’ inner lives are rich, complicated, and layered.

fatloach wants to read...

Martyr!

Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

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Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.

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Betty

Tiffany McDaniel

A stunning, lyrical novel set in the rolling foothills of the Appalachians in which a young girl discovers stark truths that will haunt her for the rest of her life. "A girl comes of age against the knife." So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence--both from outside the family, and also, devastatingly, from within. The lush landscape, rich with birdsong, wild fruit, and blazing stars, becomes a kind of refuge for Betty, but when her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, she has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio. But despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write. She recounts the horrors of her family's past and present with pen and paper and buries them deep in the dirt--moments that has stung her so deeply, she could not tell them, until now. Inspired by the life of her own mother, Tiffany McDaniel sets out to free the past by telling this heartbreaking yet magical story--a remarkable novel that establishes her as one of the freshest and most important voices in American fiction.

fatloach wants to read...

Yolk

Mary H.K. Choi

From New York Times bestselling author Mary H.K. Choi comes a funny and emotional story about two estranged sisters switching places and committing insurance fraud to save one of their lives. Jayne Baek is barely getting by. She shuffles through fashion school, saddled with a deadbeat boyfriend, clout-chasing friends, and a wretched eating disorder that she’s not fully ready to confront. But that’s New York City, right? At least she isn’t in Texas anymore, and is finally living in a city that feels right for her. On the other hand, her sister June is dazzlingly rich with a high-flying finance job and a massive apartment. Unlike Jayne, June has never struggled a day in her life. Until she’s diagnosed with uterine cancer. Suddenly, these estranged sisters who have nothing in common are living together. Because sisterly obligations are kind of important when one of you is dying.

fatloach finished reading and left a rating...

fatloach

Jul 16, 2025

4.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 3.5Characters: 4.0Plot: 3.0

fatloach finished reading and left a rating...

fatloach

Jul 16, 2025

3.5

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 3.5Characters: 3.5Plot: 3.0

fatloach finished reading and left a rating...

The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All, Vol. 1 (The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't a Guy at All, #1)

fatloach

Jul 16, 2025

5.0

Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0

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fatloach commented on a post

lovedeterrence

Thoughts from 13%

Really liking this so far! I love the variety of the POVs we're getting, gives a lot of opportunity for more world-building and theme exploration. I can tell this is going to be a very thematically rich novel, which excites me. And I LOOOOOVE footnotes. I always get excited seeing footnotes LOL Honestly, the only thing really bothering me at this point is the random instance of head-hopping. It happened in the first chapter and hasn't happened since. I don't mind it when it's done well and with purpose, but it needs to be consistent or I find it very immersion-breaking. I guess we'll see how I feel about it later.

fatloach commented on a post

mithrandir_reads

Thoughts from 15% (page 76)

I've been a fan of all the Grady Hendrix books I've read so far and I'm enjoying this one as well but I'm not sure how I am going to feel once it takes that 'campy horror twist' that I normally love so much in Hendrix's other works. Being Irish we have so much dark history with mother and baby homes ran by the church, the last being closed within my lifetime, so its not a distant history. I'm not sure how I'll feel about it, I'm hoping I can separate it in my mind as this books feels so American rather than Irish. I'm going to keep going for the moment, here's hoping the girls get their revenge on those who have wronged them🤞🏻

Post from the Witchcraft for Wayward Girls forum

fatloach

Thoughts from 39%

this is such a good summertime read (it's about to start hitting 90s again here in the midwest) + i'm determined to work "bippies" into my lexicon

fatloach started reading...

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

Grady Hendrix

There’s power in a book… They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened. Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who. Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood. In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).

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The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging

Julia Hotz

In this combination of diligent science reporting, moving patient success stories, and surprising self-discovery, journalist Julia Hotz helps us discover the lasting and life-changing power of social prescribing.. Traditionally, when we get sick, health care professionals ask, “What’s the matter with you?” But around the world, teams of doctors, nurses, therapists, and social workers have started to flip the script, asking “What matters to you?” Instead of solely pharmaceutical prescriptions, they offer ‘social prescriptions’—referrals to community activities and resources, like photography classes, gardening groups, and volunteering gigs. The results speak for themselves. Science shows that social prescribing is effective for treating symptoms of the modern world’s most common ailments—depression, ADHD, addiction, trauma, anxiety, chronic pain, dementia, diabetes, and loneliness. As health care’s de facto cycle of “diagnose-treat-repeat” reaches a breaking point, social prescribing has also proven to reduce patient wait times, lower hospitalization rates, save money, and reverse health worker burnout. And as a general sense of unwellness plagues more of us, social prescriptions can help us feel healthier than we’ve felt in years. As the first book on social prescribing, The Connection Cure empowers you to find, experience, and implement this revolutionary medicine in your own community. While touring the globe to investigate the spread of social prescribing to over thirty countries, she meets people personifying its revolutionary potential: an aspiring novelist whose art workshop helps her cope with trauma symptoms and rediscover her joy; a policy researcher whose swimming course helps her taper off antidepressants and feel excited to wake up in the morning; an army vet whose phone conversations help him form his only true friendship; and dozens more. The success stories she finds bring a long-known theory to life: if we can change our environment, we can change our health. By reconnecting to what matters to us, we can all start to feel better.

fatloach commented on a post from the Founder Announcements forum

jenniferPagebound

Dev Update! (07/14/25)

Hi everyone! Here's a quick list of recent quality of life updates + bug fixes: - The most obvious: you probably noticed your feed is flooded with "badge earned" updates. There was a bug where, when a book was added to a Main Quest, those who had previously joined the Quest did not get credit for reading the newly added book. I fixed this bug and earned out badges for everyone (hence the feed getting flooded!). If you see anything still incorrect on your profile, email me at team@pagebound.co - there was a bug where the Edit option for your Reviews did not consistently show up in the ... (three dot menu) on the review card. This has been fixed! You can now edit your review anywhere you see it. - various infrastructure updates to help with server crashes + load times as we've seen a ton of growth on Pagebound over the past few weeks :) and of course, still working hard on the app! Our plan is to release to our first round of beta testers this month and publicly release before the end of the summer. Appreciate everyone's patience on this! On the bright side, there are TONS of updates on the app that address many feedback concerns we've seen lately :) Lastly, it's been so exciting to see all the new readers join us! Huge thank you to everyone who has sent good vibes, welcoming messages, and answered questions. This community is truly the best. Happy Reading 💙💜 Jennifer & Lucy

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