My Name Is Lucy Barton (Amgash #1)
Elizabeth Strout
A hospitalized woman and her difficult mother, in Strout's spare, aching prose. Quiet and powerful.
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Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)
Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout centers on Olive, a teacher living in coastal Maine — and one of my all-time favorite heroines. This book has an unusual structure: It’s a series of short stories revolving around Olive, letting us get to know her through different perspectives. She’s thorny yet compassionate, stubborn yet capable of growth. I feel like I understand her more deeply with each reading, and despite (or because of) her flaws, I see myself in her.
Amy and Isabelle
Elizabeth Strout
Strout's first novel, about a mother and teenage daughter in a Maine mill town and the affair that cracks them open. You can already see how good she is.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong
This debut novel, a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read, is more than anything a work of poetry, one so rich and moving it clearly draws on lived experience. I’m not a big re-reader, but I’d like to go back to both of these.