Kelly Braffet

Kelly Braffet is the author of the novel Save Yourself. Her previous works include the novels Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving, and her writing has been published in The Fairy Tale Review, Post Road, and several anthologies. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University and currently lives in upstate New York with her husband, the author Owen King. Her likes include caramel, soft furry things, and things with stripes. Her dislikes include snow days, passion fruit, and having her blood pressure taken. (Seriously, when they put the cuff on your arm, and it gets all tight, and you just know that deep inside your muscles there are veins and arteries going, “Hey, where’s our blood, we need that for living?” That is super, super creepy.)

Late last month I asked the author about what she was reading. Braffet's reply:

We Have Always Lived In The Castle – Shirley Jackson

I read this, as I do so many books these days, on the recommendation of somebody on Twitter. (Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed that I’m as old as I am and haven’t read it before.) It’s amazing: a perfect, tight, grim little gem of a novel, otherworldly and brutal and did I mention perfect? In the University of Kelly, there would be an entire semester devoted to reading and re-reading and analyzing and studying this book. Everything from the first line to the title is perfectly calculated to throw the reader into a world where nothing is certain except the obsessive need to keep reading. And Jackson is utterly unabashed about it: you get what you get, and you make of it what you will.

Easily one of my Top 10 favorite novels, ever. Thanks, Twitter.

Visit Kelly Braffet's website.

--Marshal Zeringue