Brendan Duffy is an editor and author of the new novel, House of Echoes. He lives in New York, where he is at work on his second novel.Recently I asked Duffy about what he was reading. His reply:
I’m currently three-fourths of the way through Joe Hill’s short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and find myself rationing the remaining pages to make them last. I’ve enthusiastically devoured Hill’s novels—Heart-Shaped Box, Horns, and NOS4A2—but this collection reveals a whole new side to him. Anyone familiar with his work knows heVisit Brendan Duffy's website.has a top-rate imagination, but I was unprepared for how sensitive and sweet a writer he can be. To reveal such depth in as tight a format as a short story wildly impresses to me.
As for books I’ve recently read and loved, Kelly Braffet’s Save Yourself is a stand-out. Braffet’s novel is populated by characters who are flawed, unique, and deeply sympathetic. It’s dark and surprising and magnificently affecting: a real gem.
The Bone Clocks has brought me dangerously close to becoming a bona fide David Mitchell fanboy. Like many of his books, The Bones Clock would be,if nothing else, astonishing for its structure and ambition. The way it connects and relates his previous work is a special treat for longtime fans. But I most loved the way Mitchell commits to his many first person POVs. An impulsive teenaged girl, an arrogant Cambridge sociopath, a jaded middle-aged writer: Mitchell nails all of them. The way that the narrative unfurls and then comes together is a thing of beauty.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
