What is Cara Hoffman reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Cara Hoffman, author of So Much Pretty.

Her entry begins:

I’m reading In the Shadow of the American Dream: The Diaries of David Wojnarowicz. The first entries date from when he was seventeen years old and the last from about a year before he died of AIDS.

Wojnarowicz is far and away one of my favorite writers. Probably because he was not simply a writer but an activist and an artist. And because his way of thinking, his modes of expression had no use for the tropes of power and authority. And because he was concerned with beauty—the kind of beauty people in what he would describe as “the one tribe nation” don’t see.

For the...[read on]

Among the early praise for So Much Pretty:

“This beautiful, stealthy novel creeps up on the mesmerized reader, subtly drawing new strands into itself until what begins as the suspenseful story of a rural American murder grows into a dark, disquieting and urgently fascinating examination of the violence and concealment practiced by a whole society. By choosing a small town canvas on which to paint her big picture, Hoffman achieves a focused intensity which she holds on the very edge of anger, without once giving in to it. She never surrenders the compassion, insightfulness and humor that make her a masterful navigator of the human heart. This is an impassioned, intelligent and important work of art, and with it Hoffman takes her place in that select group of American novelists including Philipp Meyer and Adam Haslett who, eschewing nihilism and hauteur, write with urgency and passion about what is really going on out there.”
—Chris Cleave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Little Bee and Incendiary

"So Much Pretty is everything I love in a novel - dark, fascinating, beautifully written, impossible to put down. It marks the beginning of what promises to be an indelible literary career for Cara Hoffman."
—Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family

"So Much Pretty is certain to be talked about—not merely because it is a profound meditation on both public and private violence in small-town America, but for its captivating storytelling which draws you in on a visceral level and leaves you feeling haunted, in the best of ways."
—Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust

Read more about So Much Pretty at Cara Hoffman's website and blog.

Writers Read: Cara Hoffman.

--Marshal Zeringue