I read a lot.

I read a lot of debuts, alternating with a lot of classics, which keeps me in mind of what lasts, and why. Spoiled with advance reading copies as a published author myself, I look back on these five books as essential new additions to my personal collection of great literature. When I read, I want originality of voice, characters to care for (if not like), beautiful and logical prose, a propulsive plot, a richness of theme, and a sense of the potential of the world and our lives in it. These five books gave me all that and more. With no exaggeration, I wept as I wrote these reviews, astonished and humbled by the talent of each of these writers.

"Fire proves gold, adversity proves men."  THE MOUNTAINS SING by Nguyen Phan Que Mai is a beautiful testament to the unbreakable bonds of family. Written in calm—and calming—prose, this heart-wrenching novel is made not only bearable but essential by its brilliant narrative structure. Alternating chapters enable a resilient grandmother and her spirited granddaughter to share a multitude of family stories over many years while always getting to the heart of the matter, enhanced throughout by the author's gift for quick characterization. Each family story is like a different sharp, cutting facet of a diamond which holds in its centre the clarity and peace that so many in this book survive, fight and strive for. As moving and lasting a story as I have ever read, I cannot recommend it highly enough both as a book and as a significant contribution to our collective understanding and humanity. Amazon.com: The Mountains Sing (9781616208189): Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai: Books

Pete Beatty's debut novel CUYAHOGA is as comically genius as a Coen Brothers film; his narrative skill and voice as singular as Faulkner's; his imagination as dizzying and expansive as the tall-tale feats of hero Big Son it recalls. With the most exquisitely sparse, precise and perfect prose, Beatty sets his story smack dab in the middle of a comical and longstanding feud between two towns, divided by the famous Ohio river and glorying in the lack of rules of the wild and wacky 1830s frontier. But the heart of the plot involves the attempts of Big Son to maintain legendary fame for his superhuman strength and prowess and win the heart of his foster sister Cloe Inches. Page by page, I felt like the top of my head had blown off as I read: even the most seemingly thrown-away lines left me astonished at their efficiency and beauty. A startlingly original novel, CUYAHOGA is as close a reading experience to first discovering Salinger and Nabokov as I have ever found. A remarkable debut. Amazon.com: Cuyahoga (9781982155551): Beatty, Pete: Books

THE LOST BOOK OF ADANA MOREAU by Michael Zapata is one of the most stunningly imaginative books I have ever read. I could just sink into the worlds within worlds that Zapata creates: worlds of brothers-in-arms, extended families, beckoning landscapes, and marvellous books so magical-sounding that one feels the very pull to distant shores that lures so many of his characters. I won't give away any of the plot, because the level of creativity here should be experienced fully fresh, from the mesmerizing first chapter ("The Dominicana May 1916-August 1930") through the final pages that tie together the hopes and dreams of a century's worth of living. Zapata is the heir to Robertson Davies, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Michael Ondaatje, displaying through his dexterous prose a level of both potential and ambition that leaves me breathless. Amazon.com: The Lost Book of Adana Moreau: A Novel (9781335010124): Zapata, Michael: Books

A mesmerizing, disturbing, and heart-wrenching read about loneliness and grief, THE ALL-NIGHT SUN by Diane Zinna follows a troubled young adjunct professor as she embarks on an intense friendship with a Swedish international student, both of them having been orphaned young, and ends up also entangled with the student’s distrusting friends and mysterious older artist brother. Zinna writes sentences that will break you, and then suddenly everything on the page lights up again, and you go on the rollercoaster that is love, and loss, and life. Propelled by a tightly-wound and unpredictable plot, Zinna’s debut novel ingeniously conveys for the reader the fun-house distortion of the human mind as it reels from trauma and yet fights through the pain to try to see clearly again. With poetic and hypnotic prose, THE ALL-NIGHT SUN is an essential addition to fiction on grief and a compelling story about female friendship, its limits and constraints, and the surprising ways it can make us whole. The All-Night Sun: A Novel: Zinna, Diane: 9781984854162: Amazon.com: Books

SIGH, GONE is the ideal memoir: raw, honest, authentic, hard-hitting, hilarious and inspiring. Debut author, teacher and tattooist Phuc Tran describes his travails as a Vietnamese immigrant growing up in small-town Pennsylvania with the perfect balance of insight and self-deprecation. As a child myself of the 70s and 80s, Tran captured for me all the essential truths of that strange era: the power of pop culture at its zenith, the pain of family expectations, the salvation by friends, the exceptional role of the teacher in the life of the North American adolescent, and the awakening of a young mind through books. Reading Tran’s engaging words, I kept thinking how he and I could not have grown up more differently, yet we also grew up very much the same. And that, my friends, is the true power of literature. Amazon.com: Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In (9781250194718): Tran, Phuc: Books