Is a book under 100 pages a novel or a novella? Does a short story published in a standalone volume count toward your reading goal? These are the questions we ask ourselves as the year comes to a close.
There's something very satisfying about reading a good book in one sitting. Here’s a list of books that pack a lot into fewer than 100 pages.
The claustrophobic novella Chess (96 pages) follows a group of passengers on a cruise ship with the reigning world chess champion. They challenge the bored genius to a match and are poised to lose until a disturbing stranger in their ranks begins to whisper advice.
Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux turns her neat prose to the question of desire in Simple Passion (67 pages). The narrator catalogs her all-consuming two-year fling with a married man with unflinching honesty.
In Weasels in the Attic (96 pages), the animal world intrudes upon strained domestic scenes in three interconnected short stories, from the back room of a pet store full of exotic fish to a countryside cabin with a maddening weasel infestation.
The Hour of the Star (96 pages) is beloved Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector’s masterpiece. We observe Macabéa, a poor and sickly woman from the slums of Rio de Janeiro, through the eyes of a judgmental and educated narrator. Macabéa's simple desires for beauty and love repulse the narrator, yet he is forced to recognize her essential happiness and freedom.
A strange and beautiful little book from New Directions' Storybook ND series, The English Understand Wool (69 pages) is narrated by a genteel teenager, Marguerite, raised in Marrakesh by a French mother and English father. All of human life is dryly sorted into the categories of "good taste" and "bad taste" before a twist upends Marguerite's mannered life.
What are your favorite short books?
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