I read Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, The Crying of Lot 49, for my American Literature module at university – and like most of the books I studied back then, I haven’t returned to it in thirty years. But after seeing Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, I started thinking maybe Pynchon wasn’t just another of those great white males I generally avoid like the plague. And that I might even enjoy reading one of his books, if the same kind of mayhem conjured on the screen could also be found within its pages.

In what has been a good year for fiction (if not our lived experience), Shadow Ticket was my most anticipated read of 2025. Continue reading →