Four thick books that will hurt your brain—but in a good way

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At B & N Reads Somers tagged four huge books that will hurt your brain—but in a good way, including:

Night Film, by Marisha Pessl

Night Film is an imperfect book, but what it gets right it gets right. The spooky, creepy story of a legendary reclusive filmmaker who may or may not be involved with black magic and/or literally committing terrible crimes for verisimilitude in his films and the disgraced journalist who investigates the death of the filmmaker’s daughter, Night Film pulls off a head-spinning trick by establishing a very real-feeling universe that it then begins to destabilize, until you’re not sure what’s real and what’s not. Using a few modern multimedia tricks like reproducing webpages and articles right there on the page, that link out to extra information and images or videos on the web, the whole book slowly warps into an unreliable narrator that still somehow feels grounded in reality. The ending, on the surface, feels surprisingly reasonable—for a moment. Then you realize you don’t actually know if you can trust the words you just read. It’s one of those maddening narratives where you’re certain all the necessary information is right there in the pages, but you can’t seem to solve the puzzle.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue