American Delirium: A Novel

"At first glance, it’s hard to tell how Betina González is going to stick the landing of this book. She introduces three separate plotlines: An old man discovers a woman who’s been secretly living in his house, a group of retirees learn how to hunt deer, and a young girl finds her mother has vanished without a trace. You can tell that somehow, all these disparate threads are going to be tied together but how exactly isn’t clear. (Spoiler: Everything is, in fact, related in the zaniest way possible.) The 2021 version of the book, which was originally published in Spanish back in 2016, is a wonderful translation job by Heather Cleary; it’s a commentary on aging, sex and the emptiness of modern living in the U.S. that could’ve only been written by an outside observer."