I think Anthropology of an American Girl is the best account of a young woman's life I have ever read. Hamann reminded me at different times of Salinger, Austen, or even Proust in her ability to describe a girl's inner life and relationships in crystalline detail and exhaustive scope. This semi-autobiographical novel follows Eveline from high school in East Hampton to college in New York City in the early 80s. She is beautiful and talented and as keen an observer of humanity as Holden Caulfield. Her penchant for self destruction will break your heart, but because she's in the hands of such a phenomenally talented writer, you know not to give up on her. This is a miss-your-stop-on-the-train kind of book; it takes you in and by the end her friends are your friends and her tragedies hit you personally, but simply spending 600 pages with such a great writer and such a great character feels like an enormous privilege.

Like many, I don't usually pick up short story collections, I prefer to invest my time and attention to novels. But this slim collection of stories, which I read in the better part of an afternoon, packs more insight, humanity, and humor per page than anything I've read during this administration. The characters are largely lovable underachievers, who come to pivotal moments in their life and find that epiphanies or wise advice is scarce. So they continue on with a combination of improvisation and instinct, like the character "who didn't know what he wanted to say, or what he was going to say, though he knew he was about to say something." But the result is neither pessimistic nor resigned. It's a portrait of the way people who don't mean any harm live their lives when not many people are watching.