The Hundred Waters has been named one of Vogue’s best books of the year, a Lit Hub best book of the summer, and one of The Millions’s most-anticipated books of 2022.
At Lit Hub Acampora tagged nine novels that "feature spellbinding artists and their rapt admirers—and spellbound artists enrapt by their own subjects.... Ultimately, in each of these novels, art is the great seducer, sometimes spiraling the lives of its victims out of control." One title on the list:
Marisha Pessl, Night FilmRead about the other books on the list.
This propulsive, genre-defying novel straddles literary fiction, thriller, and hard-boiled detective novel, peppered throughoutwith postmodern elements of media pastiche. Investigative reporter Scott McGrath is drawn to the mystery surrounding reclusive film director Stanislas Cordova, around whom a rabid cult has formed, complete with secret codes and underground screenings of his violently disturbing films, banned in public. Banding together with two other young New Yorkers who are similarly absorbed, McGrath takes it upon himself to investigate the mental breakdown and suicide of the director’s grown daughter. He finds himself embroiled in an elaborate, mystical web of derangement—becoming increasingly entranced by the darkly glittering aura that surrounds the director and his daughter both—and eventually questioning his own sanity.
Night Film is among Kate Reed Petty's seven thrillers about filmmakers & subversive art and Jeff Somers's four huge books that will hurt your brain—but in a good way.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
