A Year in Reading: Pitchaya Sudbanthad

I began my reading year with a book both beautiful and sad for me: by , whose memorial I had the honor of earlier attending. The recollections by family and friends who knew him as more than an author reminded me of our collective loss on his passing. I’d only been one of the many devotees of and , and this final short story collection, so electrically alive from characters’ animal struggle to keep precarious balance, made me feel the loss even more. The book’s titular story ends with this line: “Then sometimes I get up and don my robe and go out into our quiet neighborhood looking for a magic thread, a magic sword, a magic horse.” The magical something is what I think I’m looking for every time I open up a book.