Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss

The truth is I liked Nicole Krauss's Great House better than her iconic and universally beloved The History of Love. But whatever your attachments, you'll find that Forest Dark, her latest novel, is her finest yet. Oddly, then, given its near-transcendent prose and the clip of its pace, it turns on a novelist with writer's block and a wealthy man who has decided to divest himself of his every worldly possession. Both travel from New York to a brutalist hotel in Tel Aviv and the depths of the desert wilderness. Only one finds her way out.

Forest Dark is reverential in its treatment of faith and the divine. It's a meditation on why we believe what we do and how myths are made. And it leaves you delusional in the way the best narratives do: Who might you have been if you'd let yourself transform? What does reinvention even mean, and is it possible or worthy? Not since The Leftovers has a work of fiction made me feel so full, despite its steadfast unwillingness to answer any of the questions it poses. Oh my god, read it immediately. —Mattie Kahn

Purchase Forest Dark here.