Grappling with mental health aka "quirky"

Years ago, I began labeling books with the moniker quirky after noticing that “quirky situations” merited a movie rating of PG. Although the following list includes some 2020 releases, some are simply those I discovered this past year. Although old favorites made the list (see Kevin Wilson and Aimee Bender), others were included for the unique way the characters grapple with depression, ignition, death, identity, thirst, and divorce, among other more run of the mill challenges. All, fittingly for 2020, are memorable.

Inland by Tea Obrecht

“Might the dead truly inhabit the world alongside the living: laughing, thriving, growing, and occupying themselves with the myriad mundanities of afterlife, invisible merely because the mechanism of seeing them had yet to be invented?”

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

 “A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable?”

Ordinary People by Diana Evans

“His life required a dramatic change, a splintering, some kind of scandal or shock or tremor, when he most wanted to flee, to rip off his suit and run screaming from the building, and go – where?”

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

“We just rode in silence the rest of the way, the radio playing easy listening that made me want to slip into a hot bath and dream about killing everyone I knew.”

The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender

“The conversation from the Living Room recorder between us all was the only one I could listen to in full, because if was the last I had, and the easiest to rewind to, and didn’t cause the same kind of ache.”

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

“Just because it’s made up, doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” said Penn. “Made up is the most powerful real there is.”

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

“Most adults claim not to believe in magic, but Klara knows better. Why else would anyone play at permanence--fall in love, have children, buy a house--in the face of all evidence there's no such thing?”