The New York Times recently listed 100 notable books of 2008; here are five of them from the Fiction and Poetry Category:
AMERICAN WIFE. By Curtis Sittenfeld. The life of this novel’s heroine — a first lady who comes to realize, at the height of the Iraq war, that she has compromised her youthful ideals — is conspicuously modeled on that of Laura Bush.
ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES. By Rivka Galchen. The psychiatrist-narrator of this brainy, whimsical first novel believes that his beautiful, much-younger Argentine wife has been replaced by an exact double.
BASS CATHEDRAL. By Nathaniel Mackey. Mackey’s fictive world is an insular one of musicians composing, playing and talking jazz in the private language of their art.
BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN. By Charles Bock. This bravura first novel, set against a corruptly compelling Las Vegas landscape, revolves around the disappearance of a surly 12-year-old boy.
BEIJING COMA. By Ma Jian. Translated by Flora Drew. Ma’s novel, an important political statement, looks at China through the life of a dissident paralyzed at Tiananmen Square.
