Since it will be coming out in paperback later this month, I feel it’s appropriate to bring back into the conversation my favorite fictional release from 2015, Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child. After Morrison announced the imminent publication of her latest novel just over a year ago, it quickly became one of the most anticipated books of 2015; however, it was published in late April to somewhat mixed reviews.

God Help the Child tells the story of Lula Ann Bridewell, a blue-black girl born to light-skinned parents who view the darkness of her skin as an insult to their respectable family. Unable to feel anything but shame for his only child, Lula Ann’s father soon deserts the family, leaving her mother Sweetness to care for the unwanted girl. Sweetness assumes the responsibility of preparing Lula Ann for a harsh world that will undoubtedly punish her for having dark skin by withholding affection for her daughter entirely. The only departure from this loveless childhood comes after Lula Ann testifies against an elementary school teacher for sexual abuse. The thumbs up she gets from fathers and hugs she gets from mothers do not compare to the tender grasp of Sweetness’ hand as they walk down the street away from the courtroom.

Fast forward some fifteen years, and Lula Ann has become Bride, a strikingly beautiful woman behind a successful cosmetics line based in Los Angeles. Dressing always and only in white, Bride has changed her name and transformed her dark skin into her most valuable asset. Although she turns the head of every man and woman she passes, black and white, she has recently been abruptly abandoned by her enigmatic boyfriend Booker, an event that she not-so-convincingly attempts to downplay. Hoping to restore some of her self-worth that disappeared along with Booker, Bride goes in search of Sophia Huxley, the very teacher whom she helped imprison with her testimony and who was released on parole earlier that month.

These events and those that follow are told through chapters of rotating narrators: Sweetness, Bride, Brooklyn (Bride’s best friend and coworker), and Booker. Though Sweetness’ and Brooklyn’s chapters are shorter and mostly revolve around Bride, Booker’s chapter is long and details his own complicated childhood. Here we learn that Booker’s older brother Adam was abducted and murdered when he was young, an event that Booker, unlike his family, can never accept and move past. Consequently, Booker isolates himself emotionally and quietly nurtures his anger. Booker’s past, along with Bride’s, highlight the underlying theme of the novel, that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”

In the wise words of my coworker Lisa, God Help the Child doesn’t quite pack the punch of some of Morrison’s most successful novels, but frankly, it doesn’t have to be her best work for me to call it my favorite book of last year. Stylistically, Morrison is a master, and her prose is as lyrical as ever. In one of my favorite paragraphs of the novel, Booker recalls a memory of Adam skateboarding, the last time he saw his brother before his disappearance.

“It was early September and nothing anywhere had begun to die. Maple leaves behaved as though their green was immortal. Ash trees were still climbing toward a cloudless sky. The sun began turning aggressively alive in the process of setting. Down the sidewalk between hedges and towering trees Adam floated, a spot of gold moving down a shadowy tunnel toward the mouth of a living sun.”

Morrison is without question one of the most important authors in the world today, and, at age 84, she doesn’t seem to have lost her touch. We are lucky to still have her around, publishing a novel every three to five years. It is a truly special experience to read a literary giant during her own lifetime.

God Help the Child will be out in paperback on January 26. Also, if you enjoy being read to, check out the audiobook read by the author in her signature mesmerizing voice.

Eleanor was not what I expected.

When I read “Eleanor has been ripped out of time…” on the front cover of this novel, I expected there to be quite a bit of time travel; but that’s not quite what happened here. Turns out, it isn’t necessarily different times that Eleanor is traveling to; it is different realities. In fact, it is different people’s realities.

In 1985, Eleanor’s identical twin sister, Esmerelda, is torn from her life in a horrible accident. Esmerelda’s death pulls the family apart and Eleanor becomes a source of resentment to her own mother. Her parents separate and her mother begins to heavily rely on alcohol to help her get through the days she spends seeing her dead daughter’s face on Eleanor. Eleanor spends her days just trying to keep her mother alive.

The first time it happens, Eleanor is fourteen. She walks through a simple door at school, and vanishes. Again and again, against her will, she falls out of her reality and into other ones. Sometimes only an hour has gone by, sometimes days or even months have passed before she returns to her own reality. Again and again she leaves behind empty rooms and worried loved ones.

One day, Eleanor is removed from her world altogether and meets a stranger who reveals to her that the death of her sister is not the only grief that plagues her family. She realizes then that if she can harness her curious ability, she may be able to save and heal her family from generations of grief and pain.

This is a story I fully expected to be magical, yet I didn’t expect to be so raw and to dive beautifully into the depths of grief and depression. Author Jason Gurley does a great job of pulling you into worlds inside of worlds and takes you into someone’s reality who is grieving. I was so surprised by this book, and Gurley’s writing was delightful; I’ve never read a novel that really made me understand and experience grief like this book has. This is a story about the beauty of healing, and Gurley definitely made it beautiful.

I have to bake cookies for the board, so I’ll leave the blood for later.

I am rendered a bit speechless in trying to describe what makes Helen Ellis’s new collection of short stories, American Housewife, so sharp and delectable. It is an homage of sorts (equal parts tender and piercing) to the oft-scoffed at domesticity that some women have chosen to take up, despite so many loud voices claiming that staying home is synonymous with giving up.

The settings are so familiar, just women doing simple hausfrau things like introducing new book club members to a circle of readers, supporting young and burgeoning artists, or gossiping with the bellboys about building residents. And then,

AND THEN,

The dynamic shifts, ever so subtly, and there is an itch in the back of your brain telling you that something about all of this is strange. Sometimes, that feeling is because there is definitely a dead body somewhere in the apartment. Sometimes, it is because the women in several of these stories full of vacuuming and meal planning are happy. Not a cynical, eye-rolling “happy”, but truly content. (What does it say about us as readers that when reading a story about a housewife, we expect to be thrilled by some outside catalyst- as if a story simply about a woman in her home could never be truly enough?) In a sparse, two page story titled “What I Do All Day”, the narrator wakes up, makes coffee, throws a party, and goes to bed flawed and at peace.

I see everyone out and face the cold hard truth that no one will ever load my dishwasher right. I scroll through iPhone photos and see that if I delete pictures of myself with a double chin, I will erase all proof of my glorious life. I fix myself a hot chocolate because it is a gateway drug to reading. I think I couldn’t love my husband more, and then he vacuums all the glitter.

Not all of the stories in this collection are home runs (very, very few collections can boast such a thing), and at times the narratives drag just the tiniest bit; but the parts of this book that shine are absolutely stunning. In “Hello! Welcome to Book Club”, the needling feeling of dread that came from the slowly unfolding purpose of said book club was thrilling, to say the least.

The women in American Housewife are forces to be reckoned with. They bake, they plan parties, they are patrons of the arts, they grocery shop, they murder building committee members, and then they clean up the blood with organic, non-toxic kitchen sprays. Their experiences range from the every day to the utterly extraordinary and bizarre, and I cannot stop thinking about them. That is, I suppose, one of the best things you can say about a book.