Summer Reads - 2016
Atomic Books' staff recommends some summer reading picks. The Cook Up: A Crack Rock Memoir by D. Watkins No writer alive tells stories from the stoop like East Baltimore native D. Watkins does. Following 2015's essential The Beast Side , The Cook Up eschews nostalgia while weaving through past and present narratives of race, masculinity, money, and more. In an epoch where elites still shrug off the reality of marginalized folks, Watkins' prose makes everyone a witness. -Caitlin The Girls by Emma Cline The Girls is Emma Cline's addictive first novel, loosely based on the lives lived and crimes committed by followers of Charles Manson. It packs the sort of florid prose a diarist would employ in a struggle to precisely negotiate memories with language not designed by the powerful to fully encompass trauma. Turning the male gaze of books like The Virgin Suicides inward and focusing on relationships between women, Cline presents an impressionistic vision of the...