Watching the Body Burn
by Thomas Glynn
A father sets himself on fire and a son watches him burn. A metaphor for complicated father-son relationships? Yes, but the father is also actually on fire, for the entire book. (The original 1989 Knopf hardback edition features one of the most stunning Chip Kidd designs.)

The Hundred Brothers
by Donald Antrim
One hundred brothers meet at their mouldering paternal homestead, ostensibly to look for the urn holding their father’s remains. The search devolves into an antic dinner party and a post-meal drunken football brawl. A lot of stuff gets broken.

Falling Angels
by Barbara Gowdy
A daughter gets her first period while the family is holed-up in the backyard bomb shelter “practicing” for a nuclear attack, and Dad won’t let any of them out, not even when things get really unpleasant.

To read the rest of this piece, please purchase this issue of the Believer online or at your local bookseller.

—Lilian Hernandez