The 10 Best Californian Books of 2023

But beneath the glossy surface is a “deafening river of melancholy roaring through the dark red cavern of my heart.”

Death Valley by Melissa Broder

This novel follows a grieving narrator, who travels from Los Angeles to the edge of the Mojave Desert and tries to reconnect with Earth. From our review:

“’Death Valley’ is a triumph, a bawdy prayer for sensuality and grace in the face of great loss, a hilarious rebellion against the aggressive wickedness, dehumanization and fear that plague our time.”

Non-fiction

‘Daughter of the Dragon’, by Yunte Huang

This biography of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American film star, is intended as a form of reclamation and subversion. From our review:

“Hollywood was obsessed with the exoticism of Chinatown, yet there were exceedingly few roles for Asian actors; it is therefore all the more remarkable that Wong, who was born in her father’s laundry shop in Los Angeles in 1905, was as productive as she was.

“The Longest Minute,” by Matthew J. Davenport; and ‘Portal’ by John King

These books explore San Francisco’s resilience, with one focusing on how the city recovered from the 1906 earthquake and fire and the other using the iconic Ferry Building as a way to chart the city’s zigzagging trajectory. From our review:

“San Francisco has become a political hockey puck, being hit with little regard for its true qualities. Two very compelling new books attempt to give the city its value, presenting it not as an abstraction but as a place – albeit a very dramatic one, suddenly swinging between crisis and rebirth.

‘A Man with Two Faces’, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer,” Nguyen combines polemic and family history in this fragmentary memoir of growing up in San Jose. From our review:

“In the relative comfort of San Jose, where Nguyen has ‘everything I need, but almost nothing I want,’ he learns that the secret to surviving a divided upbringing is… keeping secrets, including his girlfriend from high school, J, a Filipino refugee who lives three hours away and uses up his comic book collection on long-distance phone bills. “In Ba Ma’s house,” he writes, “you are an American spying on them. Outside their home, you are a Vietnamese spying on Americans and their strange habits and customs. ”