To be clear: These are the weirdest book I personally read in 2015. I was going to keep it to only books published in 2015, but I wanted the weirdest of the weird featured in this post. So I think at least half of them were published in 2015, which is close enough, right?
1. // Three Moments of an Explosion by China Miéville
These stories are some of the most inventive, strange, and disturbing that I've ever read. Glaciers suddenly appear floating above London? Dead people suddenly acquire a new condition where they're always perfectly horizontal and they swivel around so their feet face you? I don't know how he comes up with this stuff.
2. // Black Hole by Charles Burns
I wasn't going to put graphic novels on this list, but I couldn't help myself and I didn't really have a reason not to. Not only are Burns' illustrations bizarre and very dark -- the plot is centered around sexually transmitted mutations like being able to molt and having a second mouth on your neck, etc. Just the usual stuff.
3. // The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields
There are literal monsters/cryptids in this (yeah, I said cryptids. I listen to coast to coast fm every once in a while, whatever). At first I thought the sasquatch was a metaphor, but one of the characters is literally just a sasquatch (and also sort of a metaphor, but mostly a sasquatch).
4. // Of Things Gone Astray by Janina Matthewson
Somebody loses the front wall of their entire house. Someone loses their place of work (like it's gone gone). Someone begins to turn into a tree. This book is so charming and whimsical.
5. // Light Boxes by Shane Jones
February has gone on for many many years in one town. And February is also a god/person. Also the format is a bit experimental. Tiny and magical book.
6. // The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
A man with no face is the main character Josephine's new boss in her new horrifyingly claustrophobic and nonsensical office job where she enters strings of letters and numbers into a database for hours. The walls of her office have grimy handprints on them. There are weird doppelgangers?? This book was incredible, please read it and be creeped out.
7. // The Blue Fox by Sjón
This novella is so dreamy and interesting. It feels like a fairy tale and it has a lot of layers for so few pages. A man in Iceland hunts a magical blue fox that can sort of talk. I don't even know. I really don't know how to talk about it.
8. // Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann
OH my god, this is so dark and strange. Another graphic novel pick that uses the form incredibly. At first it feels like a fun illustrated kids' book with little fairies and animals, but then they are also living inside a dead girl. These adorable little fairies are much more vicious and charming than you could ever have expected. I laughed, I gasped, I cried.
9. // You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman
Man oh man, this is a good book. It's like a quirkier, more contemporary version of "White Noise" by Don DeLillo. Kleeman's writing never lets up in being beautiful, funny, and disturbing -- often all in the same paragraph. If you want some social commentary with your weird, here you go. Also there's a reality show in the book where if you can't recognize your significant other, you're contractually obliged to sign a restraining order and never see them again. MAKE THAT A REAL SHOW, PLEASE.
10. // The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink
The characters are what's weird in this book. They're pretentious, they're bad at being loyal or communicating anything, and their lives float around in the strangest non-structure I've ever read. And suddenly eco-terrorism out of nowhere?? This tiny book is very difficult to define.
What's the weirdest book you read this year? PLEASE TELL ME.
