8 Books I Was Heartbroken by in 2024

When it comes to writing for the new year, I always feel like I post about it a little later than everyone else because I wait until Vietnamese New Years has rolled out, or maybe that is the snake in me (I'm not a snake, I'm just poking fun at the fact that it is the year of the snake).

Anyway, I thought today would be a better time than any to share some works of writing that really moved me in 2024. I will preface this by saying that I read six of these books as part of my graduate experience, and then five of them came from a world-building class I took. I share these statistics to give a shout out to my thesis director, Jocelyn Bartkevicius, for facilitating that class and being a wonderful curator of books. I was so fortunate to have her advise me and nurture my love for the personal essay.

There is so much nostalgia that I have for my MFA experience. Let's always keep reading, especially now as I share some heartbreaking favorites.

1. Negative Space by Lilly Dancyger

Dancyger beautifully captures her exploration of her relationships with her parents in this book and is able to showcase that through both negative and positive space. There are poignant parallels drawn from Greek mythology as she develops into adulthood. As she actively adjusts the filters the images of her parents from when she was a child to the new lens of disillusionment, readers are discovering alongside her that grief is an inescapable fate.

I went into my archives to try and find my notes for this book from when I read it, and what I ended up was finding a document of quotes and how I reacted to the quotes. The writing was so beautiful that I didn't want to disrupt it with my response, but it is so thought provoking.

2. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

So, I have just completely finished moving, and my new town library has chosen this book as their book of the month. I had picked it up when it was the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year in 2022, but didn't really have time to sit down and digest it between everything I was doing, so I had been taking it in the smallest spoonfuls.

The writing is so engaging that I always wanted to spend more time on it than I had, and even after I finally finished it, I was talking about it for months. Elizabeth Zott is a character with so much heart, and the themes of the book have probably changed me on a chemical level. I would honestly recommend it to any of my friends because it speaks to such universal themes and a need to understand the female experience. Apple TV has released a TV adaptation, but I have not gotten around to watching it yet because I'm saving it for a rainy day.

3. Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Ali Hazelwood's Love, Theoretically is probably the least literary thing on this list, but I loved reading it. I would argue that it is a more satisfying SMUT novel than The Love Hypothesis, but maybe that has to do with my preferences (GoodReads doesn't agree with me--Love, Theoretically has a 4.09 while The Love Hypothesis has a 4.12). It was apparently also nominated for a GoodReads' Readers' Favorite Romance in 2023.

What I really appreciate about Love, Theoretically is that it is quirkier and a bit sexier than The Love Hypothesis. There's a bit more room for fun because Elsie isn't in Jack's direct line of power, which takes some of the edge off. That's probably why I appreciated this book so much more: it was a reprieve from all of the heavy stuff that I was reading. It felt fun to me, especially finding a Taylor Swift playlist to go along with the story while I read.

4. The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

This book was an assigned read at the perfect time for me, because I had to live with it for a week. There are books in the world that can really plough on the emotional weight and drain a reader, and as heart-wrenching as this collection was, breaking the book up into essays allowed space for a bit of reprieve. These spaces really allowed me to empathize with all the stories Jamison told.

This takeaway that I had when I read the book on February 6, 2024 is probably the best way to sum up my experience with the book (and even then, I was quoting Jamison in an interview):

5. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

I believe that I have already addressed what a heartbreaking, torturous book this was to read when I first reviewed it here on the site, but it is so painful that it continues to haunt me. Jocelyn doesn't get credit for getting me to read this book though--Rochelle Hurt, another professor of the MFA program, assigned this painful read (but I think it ended up on my thesis list too, so maybe Jocelyn should get some of the credit). But since I had her as a professor since I started my MFA, I expected many of the books that Rochelle assigned to hurt me, so I can say it did not surprise me.

No, what surprised me about Machado's In the Dream House was the depth of the pain that I felt when I read. The book inflicted a wound that then crawled under my muscles and skated on the layers of my bones, and the more I read, the more constricting the sensation became. The dream house became a living nightmare where a piece of my mind will forever live for free.

6. Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey

As I have gotten to this spot on the list, I am realizing that there is a running theme of female stories that need to be read. Maybe that has become my preference when it comes to stories, because that is something I would definitely say about Natasha Trethewey's Memorial Drive. If you do not understand how engagingly frustrating the female experience can be, you need to read this book.

While many might know Trethewey as a poet, this memoir was the first work that I read from her. If it taught me anything, it is that Trethewey knows how to create a sense of dread and maximize the feeling of betrayal and injustice. I've encountered a few of her poems now that I've started teaching, but I don't think any of them have compared to this memoir.

7. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

A theme that I love but don't read enough about is girlhood. That is one of the themes that Marjane Satrapi tackles in Persepolis, but what complicates Satrapi's coming-of-age story further is that it takes place in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

It was a new experience for me to be able to read a graphic novel and be able to say that I was reading something literary. Satrapi's world-building throughout the story is masterfully done, to the point where I cried when I reached the end. Even though it's in simple black and white, all of the shades of emotion are invoked through the compelling designs that spilled right off the pages.

8. Maus Book 1: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

*Trigger warning of a potentially graphic image in this section.

Something I remember from middle school was being required to read about the Holocaust in eighth grade language arts. Apparently, there were schools that read Art Spiegelman's Maus, and I feel robbed of the experience. I read Daniel's Story and then watched a movie of Anne Frank. There's an image in my mind of an emaciated Jewish girl being thrown into the air and snapped in half on the knee of a Nazi solider that I will forever associate with the Holocaust.

I'm not saying that Maus presents the Holocaust in a more palatable way by any means, because it was a truly horrific event. I felt robbed of the experience of being able to read and analyze on a literary level a graphic novel like Maus. As a child, I loved comics, but I think I stopped reading them because they weren't as accessible anymore and it didn't seem like they were respectable pieces of media. This will forever be another reason for me to appreciate Jocelyn for working with me, because she was able to bring this love back into my life with readings like Maus and Persepolis.