THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS by Ocean Vuong

Hai, a young Vietnamese-American, is rescued by an elderly Lithuanian widow and WWII refugee with dementia, after attempting to jump to his death. Hai can’t believe he’s disappointed his mother again after dropping out of college, so he invents a story that he’s now a medical student at a university in Boston. In reality, he’s living blocks away from his mother’s place with Grazina, the widow, and working at Home Market, a fast-food restaurant. At Home Market, which advertises, “Thanksgiving for every day of the year,” Hai finds a host of other misfits who become like family. The novel is a poetic close-up on the stark and often cruel lives of everyday working people, observing the minutiae of disillusionment and hope. A masterpiece in the interiority of depression.

Favorite line(s): Look how the birches, blackened all night by starlings, shatter when dawn’s first sparks touch their beaks. How the last crickets sing through fog hung over pastures pungent now with just-laid manure. In August, the train tracks blaze so hot the rubber on your soles would melt if you walked on them for more than a minute. Despite this heat, everything green grows as if in retribution for the barren, cauterized winter, moss so lush between the wooden rail ties that, at a certain angle of thick, verdant light, it looks like algae, like the glacial flood returned overnight and made us into what we were becoming all along: biblical.

Follow the tracks till they fork off and sink into a path of trampled weeds leading to a junkyard packed with school buses in various stages of amnesia, some so old they’re no longer yellow but sit grey as shipwrecks. Furred with ivy, their dented hoods pooled with crisp leaves, they are relics of our mislearning. Walk through this yard—as some have done on their way home from the night shift at the Myers sock factory or just out wandering on Sunday afternoons alone with their minds—and you walk through generations of wanderlust burned between faux-leather seats. At the lot’s far edge lies the week-old roadkill, its eye socket filled with warm Coca-Cola, the act of a girl who, bored on her way from school, poured her drink into that finite dark of sightless visions.

If you aim for Gladness and miss, you’ll find us. For we are called East Gladness.

THE REST OF OUR LIVES by Ben Markovits

Tom Layward’s wife, Amy, had an affair twelve years ago. He vowed to leave her once their youngest was in college. Fast forward to the day Tom drops Miri off, and his journey to trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life begins. Along the way, driving from the East Coast to the West Coast, stopping to visit friends, family members, and an ex-girlfriend, Tom must come to terms with his undiagnosed illness and decide what it is he’s looking for in his life. There is so much to glean from middle-aged angst-riddled Tom about the perplexities of wanting a complacent, simple life, and the needs of the people he loves.

Favorite line(s): Miri walked me to the car to say goodbye. She put her arm around my waist, and we moved a little awkwardly, hip to hip. It was nine o’clock by now. The old-fashioned globe lamps were lit beside the walkways, and the sprinkler system had kicked in; the grass smelled wet. I had a sense of undigested emotional material, which is really just a disconnect between the totally normal passage of time you happen to be in and the totally normal passage of time that is about to follow, after which everything will be permanently different.

THEO OF GOLDEN by Allen Levi

Theo’s arrival in Golden, Georgia, and his interest in ninety-two portraits on the wall of The Chalice, a favorite coffee spot, sparks curiosity from the town’s inhabitants. Why does this kind, elderly man buy the pencil sketches and give them to the people depicted in the portraiture? Who is he, and what does he want in return? It is a story of being seen and understood, of giving and receiving. Of unspeakable sadness and joys, the fruits of a well-lived life. And how one man can change the lives in a town, one person at a time. Who are we really, if not how we treat one another? A feel-good and utterly readable love story about friendship and community.

Favorite line(s): “Asher, in every face I detect sadness.

A crease of curiosity formed between Asher’s eyes. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, it is subtle, and maybe it takes an old man—an expert in sadness—to see it, but it is there in every portrait in some more than others. It is not gloomy or angry or even terribly obvious. It is like a weariness or an unmet longing or a disappointment; something we inherit from those who lived before us. But to these old eyes, it is in every face, the universal affliction. It is what gives such gravitas to your portraits and makes them so believable. Even when your subjects are smiling, the shadow of sadness is there. And so far, my meetings at the Fedder only confirm my suspicion.”

Asher mulled over Theo’s remarks.

“I never really thought of it that way. I certainly don’t do sadness intentionally.”

“Ah,” Theo nodded his affirmation, “the mystery of art.”

Asher leaned in and spoke softly. “So, you’re an expert in sadness?”

Theo shrugged. “I suppose anyone as old as me could say the same. When we’re young, we’re usually too busy or too self-absorbed to see it, but by the time one is almost ninety, this world has beat the sadness into him quite deeply. Every week there is some tragedy or reminder to keep it alive and well.”

It was an unusual subject to discuss while standing in line for coffee. They placed their orders, stepped away from the counter, and continued talking.

“Theo, I appreciate that you’re such a sensitive man. You have a tender heart.”

“Not tender, Asher. Broken. My expertise in sadness is hard-earned. But I realize more and more that it is a gift. Living with sadness, accepting it, is easier than trying to pretend it isn’t there. It is another of life’s great mysteries that sadness and joy can coexist so compatibly with one another. In fact, I wonder if, on this side of heaven, either one can be complete without the other.”

“You don’t strike me as a sad man, Theo. If you are, you’re good at disguising it.”

“Thank you. I hope it’s true. There is no virtue in advertising one’s sadness. But there is no wisdom in denying it either. And there is the beautiful possibility that great love can grow out of sadness if it is well-tended. Sadness can make us bitter or wise. We get to choose.”