Finding strange and wonderful books
Jedediah Berry has a new book out and, when I looked, it wasn't in any of the libraries in Tasmania. Nor my local bookstore. None of his work is actually, which feels like a real loss, especially since The Manual of Detection is the kind of book that changes things.
I reread The Manual of Detection at a dark time. Its peculiar mix of noir mystery and dream logic, its whimsy and strangeness - these things brought me back to myself. Reminded me that I need these kinds of books the way I need sunshine or oxygen.
Berry's other work is significant too. The Family Arcana tells its story through a deck of cards you can read in any order. The latest book, The Naming Song, apparently teaches readers its own language as they read (the internet told me this, I don't know yet how accurate it is). Of course it's easy enough to find a copy online. But looking, and waiting, makes me wonder about other writers whose strange and wonderful books we don't see enough of here.
Vi Khi Nao's Fish in Exile completely reinvents what narrative can do, using everything from stage directions to mathematical equations to tell its story. The text itself becomes a kind of performance, shifting between forms as it explores grief and absence.
Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House approaches memoir through different genre conventions - gothic, romance, comedy, academic study. Each chapter transforms the story through a new lens, creating a kaleidoscopic truth that couldn't be told any other way.
Valeria Luiselli's The Story of My Teeth emerged through collaboration with factory workers who discussed each chapter as it was created. Her Lost Children Archive plays with documentary and fiction in ways that change how you read both, weaving together multiple narratives about loss, archive, and memory.
And while we're discovering these writers, here are some experimental voices from Australia that deserve to find readers everywhere:
Adam Ouston's Waypoints weaves together Houdini's planned attempt to fly across Australia with a contemporary story about drone warfare and grief. The narrative keeps transforming itself - you're never quite sure what kind of story you're reading until you're deep inside it.
Jessica Au's Cold Enough for Snow moves like water, its narrative flowing between memory and present, between mother and daughter, between what's said and what's felt. It questions how we read family, culture, and connection.
Jane Rawson's A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists plays with reality and cartography, creating impossible spaces and temporal shifts that somehow feel more true than realism. Her From the Wreck blends historical fiction with something stranger - a story that transforms itself as you read.
Tom Lee's Coach Fitz follows a running coach and student through Sydney, but it's really about how we read landscapes, bodies, and the spaces between things. The narrative moves like a long-distance run, rhythmic and hypnotic and occasionally hallucinatory.
Some books feel like they're reminder you how to be yourself. Even as they're changing who that is. I'd love to hear about more of them, from anywhere in the world. What strange and wonderful books can we share?
And don't forget to order The Naming Song - for yourself or for your local library:
