Lauren Oyler is based in Brooklyn, and also spends time in Berlin. Her essays on books and culture have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the London
Genres: Literary Fiction
Non fiction show
Award nominations
|
Lauren Oyler recommends
Perfection (2025)
Vincenzo Latronico
"Vincenzo Latronico is a writer who sees clearly and conveys it beautifully. In Perfection, he paints a stark picture of the conditions that have created a generation's 'identical struggle for a different life': globalization, homogenization, the internet. Though on one level the novel is (pitch-perfectly) 'about' Berlin and the 'creative professional' expatriates who have sought a different life in, and inevitably colonized, the city, the story of Anna and Tom will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has tried to resist the flattening effects of whatever life is now. I can't recommend it highly enough."
Elegy, Southwest (2025)
Madeleine Watts
"A novel composed of the details that accumulate in the wake of loss: of a relationship, of a weather pattern, of a moment in time. Watts elegantly weaves a love story with deep research on its cinematic setting to ask a poignant question: What do you do with all that remains after something ends?"
Really Good, Actually (2023)
Monica Heisey
"Monica Heisey is a very funny writer, which would be enough for me to recommend this book. But you have to remember: humor isn't a supplement to realism; it's a necessary component of it. Really Good, Actually may start out like a light-hearted not-so-romantic comedy, but it quickly transforms into something more tense and existential, a realistically absurd portrait of a woman who has no idea who she is or what is going on. And yeah, it's really funny."
More recommendations
Visitors also looked at these authors
Genre Pages
