Seven titles about unconventional situationships

Christine Ma-Kellams is a Harvard-trained cultural psychologist, Pushcart-nominated fiction writer, and first-generation American.

Her work and writing have appeared in HuffPost, Chicago Tribune, Catapult, Salon, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

The Band is her first novel.

At Electric Lit Ma-Kellams tagged seven books that feature situationships "replete with the kind of sexual tension that makes you wonder: will they or won’t they?" One title on the list:

I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel

Patel’s obsessive, thoroughly modern novel also has plenty of sex—forget “spicy”; this book will burn the roof of your mouth with the searing, unflinching way it talks about the kind of intercourse that can only be called f*cking and not “love-making.” This makes it all the more ironic—and unusual—that the central relationship of the book is not between the 31-year old narrator and her roster of both official and unofficial lovers, but rather, between her and the woman she is obsessed with, the ex-girlfriend of the man she wants to be with. It’s a situationship—or “delusionship”—unlike any other and I am here for it. By all the critical accolades it’s been getting (here’s to the Women’s Prize), I’m not the only one.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue