Five Nonfiction Books That Read Like Fiction

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Nonfiction books sometimes get a reputation for being hard to slog through. But the qualities that make good novels so enjoyable—the well-paced plot, the engaging characters—can also be found in many of their fact-based counterparts. The Atlantic’s writers and editors answer the question: What is a nonfiction book that reads like fiction?

Priestdaddy, by Patricia Lockwood

This memoir is a trip. A broke 30-something poet, Lockwood returns to Kansas City with her husband to live in her parents’ rectory (her father, a former Lutheran minister, sought permission from the Vatican to keep his wife and kids when he converted to Catholicism). He’s the sort of priest who plays frenzied electric guitar, eats homemade pickles by the handful, and cleans his guns in front of people he doesn’t like. “There’s no in-between with him, is there,” Lockwood’s husband observes. “He’s either buck nude or he’s in a little outfit.”

Lockwood’s life, and lens, is so absurd that it’s hard to believe any of it is real. As she reflects on a childhood spent attending pro-life protests and parishes across the Midwest, the sorts of sly, surreal observations that made her Twitter-famous are streaked with darker ones about organized religion, class, and gender. In our very-online world, where people sound more and more like one another, it’s refreshing to read someone who sounds only like herself.

— Stef Hayes, senior associate editor

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One of Us, by Åsne Seierstad

I wouldn’t say that One of Us is easy to read. Any account of the day—July 22, 2011—that the neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people, many of whom were teenagers, is bound to be horrifying and heartbreaking. And Seierstad’s book is both of those things. She unpacks Breivik’s troubled childhood and youthful obsessions. She traces his descent into extremism, how he holed up on a farm north of Oslo to write his manifesto and prepare for his attack in downtown Oslo and at an island summer camp close by. But what’s remarkable to me is how Seierstad weaves that grim tale with deeply moving narratives of the teenagers and their families, giving their stories the care and the space they deserve. It’s a book about a nightmare—the approximately 70-page description of the massacre itself is unflinching and difficult to shake—and the moments of extraordinary empathy and resilience that the atrocity revealed.

— Tom Bartlett, staff writer

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Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe

I first read Keefe’s Say Nothing in the depths of COVID lockdown. Although it had come out two years prior, it was the sort of book that gained more and more traction with time. Each of its readers seemed to become an evangelist for the story—I had heard that it was one of the best works of nonfiction at least a dozen times before I picked it up. It can sometimes be difficult for a book to live up to its growing mythology, but Say Nothing is no such book.

Keefe is a master of his craft. He takes a story about one woman’s murder during the Troubles, in Northern Ireland—which spanned about 30 years, from the 1960s to the ’90s—and transforms it into a propulsive murder mystery, historical account, and series of riveting character studies. I felt deeply invested in the people, as well as in the sociopolitical and historical landscape, of a country I’ve never set foot in. And the thing is, Keefe has done this in every book he’s written. There is no one quite like him in his ability to take something from the archive, or from a legal cabinet, and transform it into something that reads like your favorite novel.

— Clint Smith, staff writer

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Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, by Kerry Howley

This eminently readable book, which gets its title from a viral video of a woman ascribing satanic intent to a can of Monster Energy, expands on Howley’s 2017 New York profile of the NSA whistleblower Reality Winner. But it is less a straightforward narrative than a historical and critical patchwork: a look at how the internet’s ceaseless agglomeration of data has come to shape how we understand the world. As Howley demonstrates, there’s more than enough information out there for everyone to come to their own conclusions about everything—hence, satanic energy drinks. The kicker is that Bottoms Up was released just a few months after the advent of ChatGPT, the aftershocks of which have only served Howley’s thesis.

— Will Gottsegen, staff writer

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Eat the Buddha, by Barbara Demick

When Gonpo, the daughter of the last Mei king of Tibet, was just under 10 years old, Chinese Communists commandeered her family’s palace, arrested her father, and exiled her family. Even though she ended up in Beijing, learned Chinese, and eventually integrated herself into Chinese society, she was sent to a labor compound in Xinjiang, her lineage being enough to mark her as an enemy of the Communists. She is one of the most engrossing and sympathetic characters in Demick’s Eat the Buddha, a chronicle of Tibetan defiance and Chinese repression.

Much of Demick’s story centers on Ngaba, a county in Sichuan province, which she calls the “undisputed world capital of self-immolations.” She focuses on the history behind this form of Tibetan protest against Chinese rule, masterfully charting the arc of Tibet’s story over 90-odd years by illustrating the motivations and idiosyncrasies of colorful characters: a teacher who passes around an illegal copy of the Dalai Lama’s autobiography, a Tibetan girl who loves Chinese war movies. It is through their intimate recollections and everyday lives that Demick tells the story of a community, an embattled region, and, indeed, Tibetan resistance at large.

— Maya Chung, senior associate editor

Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

The Week Ahead

Black Rabbit, a new crime-thriller series starring Jude Law and Jason Bateman (out Thursday on Netflix)
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a romantic-fantasy film starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell about two strangers who relive important moments from their past (out Friday in theaters)
When You Come at the King, a book by Elie Honig, a senior legal analyst for CNN and former assistant U.S. attorney, about how the nation holds its most powerful leaders accountable (out Tuesday)

Essay

Illustration of a man in push-up position with a smiling sun rising on the horizon behind him — Illustration by Jan Buchczik

Six Ways to Start Early and Lift Your Mood

By Arthur C. Brooks

This column generally focuses on how to become happier. But over the years, I’ve found that the questions I most often get from readers are less about getting happier and more about becoming less unhappy. People inquire about how to resolve relationship disputes, quit a job they hate, or deal with anxiety and sadness. Getting happier or less unhappy might strike you as equivalent efforts, but they aren’t. Indeed, neuroscientists have found evidence that certain positive and negative emotions are produced in different regions of the brain. This makes sense when we understand that emotions exist to alert us to opportunities and threats, and parts of the limbic system specialize in producing each type of notification …

So my personal well-being challenge is to manage strong negative affect in the morning. I do this with the help of a six-part daily protocol, based on the neuroscience and behavioral-science research that is my trade. If you, like me, struggle to feel human in the morning, this protocol can probably help you.

Read the full article.

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