Eight top books about cross-generational friendships

Diane Zinna's new novel is The All-Night Sun.

At Electric Lit she tagged eight books about connections that transcend age, including:

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata

In this deftly conjured novel of bubble universes and dopplegängers, people are united by a beloved lost manuscript in post-Katrina New Orleans. I felt deeply for Saul, who we see at the start mourning his grandfather Benjamin’s death. While trying to piece together an understanding of his grandfather, Saul discovers his own best friend, Javier, had a deep relationship with him of his own. When his grandfather met Javier for the first time, he called Javier a “luftmensch,” a Yiddish word for someone who lives in “a cloud of possibility.” Saul is jealous of that but comes to understand that his friend and grandfather were drawn together because they were people insistent on hearing and saving people’s complicated stories.

Author Michael Zapata shared with me that he wrote this novel for a dear friend of his, Matt Davis, who passed away in 2003. Matt was a seminal figure in the Afro-Punk movement and the first person Michael ever knew to be a true artist. He was also the only reader Michael ever had in mind for this novel, and hearing that made the friendships on the page feel all the more poignant.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Lost Book of Adana Moreau.

--Marshal Zeringue