Now that weโve closed the book on 2024, itโs time to assess its cultural products. Letโs start with movies. This week the Golden Globes distributed their brassy trophies, and the SAG awards listed their nominations. It was an exciting year for cinema. From the small and strange to the sweeping epic, Hollywood covered lots of ground.
If the occasion to reflect has left you longing for more good narrative? Well buddy, youโre in luck. The following list picks up where this August post left off.
Hereโs what you should read next based on your favorite (cough: my favorite) films of 2024.
Ralph Fiennes serves papal intrigue.
If you loved Conclaveโฆ
The pageant of high church compels you. And you like a story with lots of whispering in corridors.
If you were drawn to the ethical dilemma those would-be popes circle, I suggest a luminous novella about faith and doubt. Catholics by Brian Moore is set at an isolated Irish monastery where all the brothers are thrown into a tizzy thanks to recent edicts from the Fourth Vatican Council. Itโs tense and precise and elegant, just like those popes.
For its political scope, scandal, and high-octane pacing, try some classic non-fiction. Woodward and Bernsteinโs All the Presidentโs Men.ย
Writers for your radar: Dostoevsky, Wilde, Bronte. (Hey, if it ainโt broke!) Iโd also point you to the nun-fiction on this list.
Margaret Qualley contemplates Margaret Qualley.
If you loved The Substanceโฆ
Congratulations, freak! You have a high threshold for body horror, and youโre intricately concerned with how sex and beauty bestow power. You also appreciate high-concept satire, and never look away during the violent bits.
To start with the former charge, I recommend Julia Langbeinโs American Mermaid. This compulsively readable novel charts one womanโs quest to own her unruly bodyโand body of work. Hereโs a logline: Penelope is a novelist trying to turn her book about a woman turning into a mermaid into a screenplayโbut the Hollywood honchos keep asking her to compromise her vision. Meanwhile, a pesky pesca-transition may be happening to our narrator in โrealโ life. What follows is weird, audacious, and extremely entertaining.
If you prefer a gnarlier social critique, pick up Dennis Cooperโs Frisk. Like much of Cooperโs canon, this upsetting novel about a teen boy who discovers some snuff photos is also concerned with โthe ecstasy and horror of being human.โ As queasy as it is compelling.
Writers for your radar: Kathy Acker, Mary Gaitskill, and Jennifer Egan. (Look At Me, in particular)
Alessandro Nivola and Adrien Brody embrace.
If you loved The Brutalistโฆ
And speaking of brutal! You skew serious, and doorstops donโt frighten you. Give you a chunky epic and a great, troubled man and thatโs the weekend sorted.
Marguerite Yourcenarโs Memoirs of Hadrianย is set on the eve of the Roman empire. But this novel following one emperorโs ascent through a war-torn world isโlike The Brutalistโequal parts character study and history.
And for another survey of time-bound, traumatized geniuses, look to Benjamรญn Labatutโs heady masterpiece, When We Cease to Understand the World.
Writers for your radar: Primo Levi, John Williams, Ralph Ellison.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin quibble and vex.
If you loved Hard Truthsโฆ
You love a chamber piece. Spiky narrators are your special cup of tea.
First, check out Helen Garnerโs The Spare Room. This short novel offers a tough, funny look at a friendship imperiled by the demands of caregiving. Like most Mike Leigh films, this novel locates humanity with a tight, painfully honest lens.
And hereโs a sideways recommendation. Not a novel but a play, in homage to Leighโs origins as a board-treader. Shayok Misha Chowdhuryโs Pulitzer Prize finalist, Public Obscenities, is a quiet epic following one young Bengali-American manโs attempt to document queer life in Kolkata. Chowduryโs close attention to family dynamics feels radically, refreshingly honest. Just like Leigh is at his best.
Writers for your radar: Jamaica Kincaid, Muriel Spark, and Zadie Smith.
Zoe Saldana and Karla Sofia Gascรณn prepare to SING.
If you loved Emilia Perezโฆ
A maximalist, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach tends to wet your narrative whistle. But you also delight in high camp, telenovelas, and opera. You arenโt afraid of a little controversy, and can be contrarian. (Your other favorite film of 2024 was probably this one scene in Maria.)
If what you loved best in Jacques Audiardโs genre-resistant musical was the music, pick up The Glorious Ones by Francine Prose. This big-hearted book follows a traveling theatre troupe in seventeenth century Italy.
Megha Majumdarโs A Burning is a sideways suggestion, but hear me outโthis propulsive, polyphonic novel dissects a whole society through an unlikely character triangle. Just like Emilia Perez. And like the film, itโs also a sweeping thriller with a political peg.
Writers for your radar: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Gabo. And for fun, try James McCourtโs Mawrdew Czgowchwz.
Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson are trying to break your heart.
If you loved Nickel Boysโฆ
Congratulations! You are correct and have great taste! Assuming youโve already spilled tears over the Colson Whitehead novel this perfect film was based on, allow me to recommend two other novels that deal with the psychological freight of racial violence in unexpected ways.
In Gayl Jonesโ Corregidora, Ursa is a blues singer enduring a loss that turns out to be connected to horrific much-earlier events. Jones perfectly captures how trauma can resurface over long stretches in this strange, utterly inimitable book.
And Edward P. Jonesโ The Known World considers a lesser-explored historical phenomenon: the formerly enslaved man who receives his own plantation. This book has fascinating things to say about surviving violent epochs.
Writers for your radar: Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Toni Morrison.
Elle Fanning and Timmy Chalamet, blowinโ in the wind.
If you loved A Complete Unknownโฆ
Aww, sweetie. Youโre nostalgic. You love good guitar tunes, faithful impressions, and detailed biographies. For its recreation of A Sceneโespecially the salad, come-up days of A Sceneโitโs past time for you to get your hands on Patti Smithโs Just Kids.ย
If youโre rolling your eyes because that book already lives rent-free on your favorites shelf, hereโs a lesser-known memoir from another New York 60s icon. Samuel Delanyโs The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Villageย captures a mood and a moment with all the vim and panache of Little Timmy.
Writers for your radar: Dana Spiotta, Richard Brautigan, Anatole Broyard. Also check out this list.
Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison ride the carousel of love.
If you loved Anoraโฆ
You like fun! Yet you have no illusions about capitalism. You enjoy romantic comedies right up until their big, dumb Cinderella endings. The marriage plot leaves you cold. But let it also be said, youโre a bit salacious. A little leg gets your attention. So sue you.
Rufi Thorpeโs Margoโs Got Money Troubles similarly captures the pleasures and minute-to-minute hustles required of peripatetic sex work. And like Ani, Margo is a shrewd, lovable protagonist whose fall from security makes you wince with empathy. All the way down.
For an older examination of the flaws in the love plot, try Irmgurd Keunโs chronicle of a Weimar-era girl about town, The Artificial Silk Girl.ย
Writers for your radar: Raven Leilani, Jane Austen. Youโll want to pre-order Brittany Newellโs upcoming Soft Core. And maybe some of these.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera, green and blonde besties.
If you loved Wickedโฆ
Is it cheating if I direct you to Gregory Maguire? (Or better yet, L. Frank Baum?)
Assuming yes, try another tale from a stressful teen universeโMarisha Pesslโs Special Topics in Calamity Physics. This novel takes place at a boarding school, and tracks a murder mystery through the eyes of a polymath protagonist. Itโs a pyrotechnic, stylish feat, and plenty fun.
And for a truly world-bending adventure, pick up Tomihiko Morimiโs The Tatami Galaxy.ย This time traveling odyssey follows a disillusioned and lovesick college junior through several parallel universes.
Writers for your radar: Nash Jenkins (Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos), Susannah Clarke (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell), and James Frankie Thomas (Idlewild).
Happy viewing, and happy reading! And if your favorite film is missing here, sound off in the comments. Iโll see what I can do.
