'More Than It Hurts You,' by Darin Strauss. In his first two novels, Darin Strauss made the strange familiar.
Taking the perspective of a 19th-century Siamese twin in “Chang and Eng,” he brilliantly humanized a figure known to history as a traveling curiosity. And “The Real McCoy” turned the story of the famous boxer Kid McCoy into the tall yet intimate tale of a flimflammer who slugged and conned his way to notoriety at the turn of the 20th century. Although Strauss’s new novel, “More Than It Hurts You,” is set in present-day Long Island, where he grew up, this is no retreat into a safer territory and time. What he’s after is, in fact, very ambitious: to show what strangers we can be, even to those we think we know best. The novel opens just before Josh Goldin, a handsome and successful television ad salesman, hears that his wife has rushed their infant son, Zack, to the hospital.
Nearer Than the Sky. Sickened by Julie Gregory. “A painful but wonderfully written memoir that should create greater awareness of a bizarre disorder… Keen self-awareness, a sharp eye for details, and an original, poetic voice.”
—Kirkus Reviews“This story of unfathomable child abuse is told with remarkable wit, compassion, and courage. It’s a work of beauty from a beast of a childhood.” –Augusten Burroughs, author of Running with Scissors and Dry“Like some Diane Arbus photograph come to life, Julie Gregory’s Sickened offers us a portrait of quintessential American Disturbos in all their tender, heinous can’t-look-and-can’t-look-away glory.