Three (Book reviews) on Thursday

I read three books this week, so I decided to post all the reviews together today. Edited to add: It turns out that I actually finished four but didn't want to ruin the alliteration of Three on Thursday. 

The first is one that Sarah read last week, and I read the second one in an attempt to try and make more sense of the first. Abigail Thomas’s What Comes Next and How to Like It is a quiet, contemplative memoir that reads less like a traditional narrative and more like a collection of fleeting thoughts, small, intimate moments stitched together in a non-linear, almost stream-of-consciousness style. Comprised of short vignettes, the book moves through grief, friendship, aging, creativity, and the strange, often unanswerable question of how to keep going when life keeps taking.

Thomas’s prose is undeniably sharp and direct. There’s a spareness to her writing that I appreciated; she wastes no words, and many passages carry a kind of understated honesty. Her reflections on long-term friendship offer glimpses of something deep and sustaining, even when the rest of life feels uncertain or diminished.

That said, the fragmented structure, while stylistically interesting, made it difficult to fully engage. The vignettes often felt more like impressions than explorations, and I found myself wanting more depth and more cohesion. While there are moments of insight, they felt fleeting, and I struggled to come away feeling truly enlightened, moved, or even particularly educated, which are qualities I tend to look for in a memoir.

Ultimately, this is a book that seems more about sitting with life as it is rather than drawing meaning from it. For some readers, that may be enough. For me, it felt a bit too slight to leave a lasting impression.

I came to A Three Dog Life after reading What Comes Next and How to Like It, mostly hoping to better understand the events that shaped Abigail Thomas’s later reflections. In that sense, this book provided some helpful context. It fills in the emotional and practical realities behind the fragments of her more recent work.

This memoir centers on the aftermath of her husband’s traumatic brain injury, and the life Thomas builds in response to that devastating shift. While her signature style is still present, with brief sections and a somewhat impressionistic structure, it felt more cohesive here. Her emotions are written more clearly, and I was better able to follow the arc of her experience, from shock and guilt to a kind of fragile stability.

Thomas’s prose remains spare and direct, which works well for the subject matter. There are moments of genuine insight, particularly in how she grapples with what it means to remain connected to someone who is, in many ways, no longer the person you knew. I also appreciated that I did learn something from this memoir, about care giving, adaptation, and the ways people continue living after unimaginable disruption. That’s something I tend to look for in memoir, and this book delivered more of it than her later one.

Dogs, as the title suggests, play a central role here, not just as companions, but as emotional anchors. Thomas’s deep affection for them is evident, and they help shape the quieter, rebuilt life she describes. It’s striking, too, that despite everything, she manages to carve out a decent, even meaningful life.

Still, while I admired much of what this book was doing, it didn’t fully land for me on an emotional level. The distance created by the fragmented style sometimes kept me from feeling as immersed as I wanted to be. I gave it 3.5 stars, but couldn’t quite round up.

Maxim Loskutoff’s Old King is a quiet, unsettling novel that lingers in the spaces between men, between ideologies, and between the myth of the American frontier and its unraveling. Set against the rugged backdrop of Lincoln, Montana, the story follows Duane Oshun as he runs away from a divorce in Salt Lake City and stumbles into a logging community and the orbit of a reclusive neighbor, Ted Kaczynski, along with some other reclusive and stubborn men. There are few women in this book, and they are definitely secondary characters.

I’ve always had some degree of interest in Kaczynski, with my own connection to Lincoln through having a cabin there. That familiarity made this novel feel quite grounded. Loskutoff captures the place with an authenticity that’s hard to fake, the rhythms of the town, the isolation, the quiet tensions simmering beneath everyday interactions. Lincoln is more than just a setting; it’s a force that shapes these men and their choices.

What makes Old King particularly compelling is that it isn’t really about Kaczynski, at least not in the way one might expect. Instead, it’s about the intersection of several lives of along Stemple Pass Road, men who circle one another, sometimes barely aware of the impact they’re having. Their connections are loose, almost accidental, yet deeply consequential. Loskutoff explores how proximity alone can bind people together, for better or (more often) worse.

The author's portrayal of Kaczynski is especially fascinating, neither sensationalized nor excused, but rendered as one thread in a larger tapestry of disillusionment, masculinity, and environmental grief. The “Old King” itself, the ancient Douglas fir, stands as a powerful symbol of what’s being lost, and of the competing values that drive these men toward conflict.

This is not an easy or uplifting read. There’s a quiet inevitability to the tragedy that unfolds, and it’s striking how none of these men emerge unscathed. Their lives, shaped by isolation, stubbornness, and a kind of muted longing, seem destined to collide in ways that can only end badly. Still, Old King is a deeply rewarding novel, thoughtful, atmospheric, and sharply observant. It asks difficult questions about progress, connection, and the stories we tell ourselves about independence. Three and a half stars rounded up. 

Yesteryear is an ambitious, unsettling debut that’s at its best when it leans into its sharp social critique, even if it occasionally stumbles under the weight of its own ideas. 

The premise was irresistible to me: a carefully curated “tradwife” influencer suddenly forced to live the actual reality of early 19th-century life. Burke wastes no time stripping away Natalie’s glossy, performative existence and replacing it with something brutal, filthy, and deeply disorienting. The contrast between the Instagram fantasy and the physical toll of survival is vividly rendered, and often genuinely disturbing. There’s a visceral quality to these sections that kept me turning pages.

What worked well for me was how pointed the novel is about performance, of femininity, of faith, and of morality. Natalie’s confidence in her own superiority, built on a curated life and a rigid belief system, feels uncomfortably real. I actually know a woman very much like this; she professes to be deeply religious, but she has also openly expressed that her faith makes her better than others. That familiarity made Natalie less of a caricature and more of a recognizable and unsettling type. Burke clearly understands the psychology she’s writing about, and that lends the book a sharp, sometimes biting authenticity.

That said, the novel doesn’t always balance its themes as smoothly as it could. At times, the satire feels heavy-handed, and the story’s central mystery, what exactly is happening to Natalie, loses momentum as the book toggles between possibilities. I found myself much more invested in the idea of the story than in its eventual direction. I'll admit that I childishly wanted Natalie to get her comeuppance, but I'm not sure that happened. Parts felt rushed, particularly given how extreme Natalie’s transformation is meant to be.

Still, Yesteryear is a thought-provoking read, especially for anyone interested in the intersection of social media, gender roles, patriarchy, and belief. It’s sometimes uncomfortable and unafraid to ask questions, but sadly, it doesn't explore those questions in any depth.

 

Some different reading for me this week, but that's what keeps things interesting. What are you reading?