A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow

Beautiful 1960 British novel, about a working class young man who falls in love and suffers the usual dire consequences. There is a truthfulness and a familiarity about Barstow's narrator voice (the young man's voice) that is refreshing and seems unusual for that particular moment in pre-sexual-revolution Britain.

Astounding use of northern England slang, too, dozens of words and phrases I'd never seen before, like "take a butcher's" (to look at).

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

A great title, but the book itself never really moved me.

This is Not Your City: Stories by Caitlin Horrocks

Very beautiful stories. The first one a strange, second-person singular narration. The second about a rural girl caring for her 40ish mother crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, and the lonely girl befriends a philosophical Amish young woman: story is in the form of a make-up term paper to earn her high school equivalency.

Orientation and Other Stories by Daniel Orozco