John Kenney's 6 favorite books that will break your heart softly

John Kenney's debut novel, Truth in Advertising, won the 2014 Thurber Prize for American Humor and his Love Poems for Married People was a national best-seller. In his new novel, I See You've Called in Dead, a newspaper hack accidentally publishes his own obituary.

'Someone' by Alice McDermott (2013)

I don't know how Alice McDermott pulls off what she does in this book in a mere 240 pages. The uneventful life of a woman from Brooklyn and her Irish-immigrant parents. Her priest brother. Her neighbor Pegeen. Their seemingly small lives, writ large, with nuance and empathy and grace, in what is a painfully beautiful telling. Buy it here.

'Underworld' by Don DeLillo (1997)

A sweeping, majestic book—the history of the second half of the 20th century told through a remarkable cast of characters. Moments and sentences that stop you dead, grab hold of you. The "Angel Esmeralda" chapter is one of the greatest pieces of writing I've ever encountered. Buy it here.

'The Night Manager' by John le Carré (1993)

I'm not a fan of labels, of categories. Le Carré is sometimes called a spy novelist. Rubbish. He's a novelist of the first order. His protagonist here is Jonathan Pine, trying to infiltrate the life of "the worst man in the world," an international arms dealer. Like all of le Carré's work, this is a morality play on a global stage. Buy it here.

'Franny and Zooey' by J.D. Salinger (1961)

The Glass family breaks my heart. I want to be friends with them, and I feel like I am in some way. In the scene where lovely, confused, too-smart Franny sits at lunch with her overconfident, insecure date, her too-quick wit, her college-aged anxiety, is just remarkable. Buy it here.

'A Confederacy of Dunces' by John Kennedy Toole (1980)

I've read this book maybe four times and still don't understand quite how the author conjures the character of Ignatius J. Reilly, his warped and wonderful mind, his hilarious utterances, his mother, and his ex-girlfriend, Myrna. Yes, it is riotously funny. But how strange and wonderous to find yourself laughing through tears at the end. Buy it here.

'Who Is Rich?' by Matthew Klam (2017)

Klam is the rare writer who makes me laugh out loud. Who Is Rich? follows a middle-aged cartoonist whose early career success is a distant memory. It's a portrait of an artist in pain and crisis. Klam is a superb writer, sentence-for-sentence wonderful. Buy it here.