January 8, 2025, 2:29pm
Now that we’ve closed the book on 2024, it’s time to assess its cultural products. Let’s 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, you’re in luck. The following list picks up where this August post left off.
Here’s what you should read next based on your favorite (cough: my favorite) films of 2024.
Ralph Fiennes serves papal intrigue.
If you loved Conclave…
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. It’s 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 Bernstein’s All the President’s Men.
Writers for your radar: Dostoevsky, Wilde, Bronte. (Hey, if it ain’t broke!) I’d also point you to the nun-fiction on this list.
Margaret Qualley contemplates Margaret Qualley.
If you loved The Substance…
Congratulations, freak! You have a high threshold for body horror, and you’re 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 Langbein’s American Mermaid. This compulsively readable novel charts one woman’s quest to own her unruly body—and body of work. Here’s a logline: Penelope is a novelist trying to turn her book about a woman turning into a mermaid into a screenplay—but the Hollywood honchos keep asking her to compromise her vision. Meanwhile, a pesky pesca-transition may be happening to our narrator in “real” life. What follows is weird, audacious, and extremely entertaining.
If you prefer a gnarlier social critique, pick up Dennis Cooper’s Frisk. Like much of Cooper’s canon, this upsetting novel about a teen boy who discovers some snuff photos is also concerned with “the ecstasy and horror of being human.” 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 Brutalist…
And speaking of brutal! You skew serious, and doorstops don’t frighten you. Give you a chunky epic and a great, troubled man and that’s the weekend sorted.
Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian is set on the eve of the Roman empire. But this novel following one emperor’s ascent through a war-torn world is—like The Brutalist—equal parts character study and history.
And for another survey of time-bound, traumatized geniuses, look to Benjamín Labatut‘s 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 Truths…
You love a chamber piece. Spiky narrators are your special cup of tea.
First, check out Helen Garner’s 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 here’s a sideways recommendation. Not a novel but a play, in homage to Leigh’s origins as a board-treader. Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s Pulitzer Prize finalist, Public Obscenities, is a quiet epic following one young Bengali-American man’s attempt to document queer life in Kolkata. Chowdury’s 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 Gascón prepare to SING.
If you loved Emilia Perez…
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 aren’t 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 Audiard’s 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 Majumdar’s A Burning is a sideways suggestion, but hear me out—this propulsive, polyphonic novel dissects a whole society through an unlikely character triangle. Just like Emilia Perez. And like the film, it’s also a sweeping thriller with a political peg.
Writers for your radar: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Gabo. And for fun, try James McCourt’s Mawrdew Czgowchwz.
Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson are trying to break your heart.
If you loved Nickel Boys…
Congratulations! You are correct and have great taste! Assuming you’ve 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 Jones’ 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. Jones’ 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, blowin’ in the wind.
If you loved A Complete Unknown…
Aww, sweetie. You’re nostalgic. You love good guitar tunes, faithful impressions, and detailed biographies. For its recreation of A Scene—especially the salad, come-up days of A Scene—it’s past time for you to get your hands on Patti Smith’s Just Kids.
If you’re rolling your eyes because that book already lives rent-free on your favorites shelf, here’s a lesser-known memoir from another New York 60s icon. Samuel Delany’s The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village 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 Anora…
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, you’re a bit salacious. A little leg gets your attention. So sue you.
Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s 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 Keun’s chronicle of a Weimar-era girl about town, The Artificial Silk Girl.
Writers for your radar: Raven Leilani, Jane Austen. You’ll want to pre-order Brittany Newell’s upcoming Soft Core. And maybe some of these.
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera, green and blonde besties.
If you loved Wicked…
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 universe—Marisha Pessl’s 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. It’s a pyrotechnic, stylish feat, and plenty fun.
And for a truly world-bending adventure, pick up Tomihiko Morimi’s The Tatami Galaxy. 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. I’ll see what I can do.