My college had a literary house, a revival Victorian with a large enclosed porch and a kitchen, a library, a living room, the walls covered gallery-style with posters from past events. Edward Albee plays and visits from John McCain. Somewhere my name was on those walls for awhile, too.

My senior year I was awarded a fellowship in that house, with an office up on the third floor where I hid for eight months while I wrote my thesis. The house cat, Edith, would curl up in my open desk drawer as I typed and read and scribbled so many things that seem almost meaningless now.

There was a visiting author at the house one day, a cousin of a classmate of mine who had just published her first book. I went to the reading mostly because I needed a break from work, so I wandered downstairs and sat quietly in a back seat on the enclosed porch and what I heard stuck me over the head. I was so captivated, so utterly undone by the excerpt I immediately left the house, ran to the ATM, withdrew $20, and came back to buy a copy of the book and have her sign it –

For Allison – the great poet! It was fabulous to meet you, I hope you’ll enjoy this book! All my best, Lauren Groff

The book is The Monsters of Templeton, and I did enjoy it. I have read every Lauren Groff novel since, and both short story collections (Florida being exceptional). Her work is unlike almost anything else I have ever liked in literature. I am partial to horror and science fiction, and on its face her works are neither – but also, they are both.

There are a handful of authors I have read since that capture the same feeling, as of something rotten lingering behind everyday life. Something you can only see out of the corner of your eye – to look at it head on will destroy you. And these stories are about what happens when you don’t look at it – all the neurosis and uncertainty and ineffective choices.

You can call it – if you want – a flavor of magical realism, or a throwback to first-wave feminism. Something about The Yellow Wallpaper, or To The Lighthouse. I would call it a curdling realization that in 150 years, almost nothing has really changed.

You can compare Groff to Charlotte Perkins Gilman or Virginia Woolfe if you want, but I think the best comparison is Shirley Jackson. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my favorite ghost story, even if the ghosts have not yet died. It is a supernatural horror without anything supernatural. Just the banality of human action and some false hope that we can gain control over an uncontrollable life. Groff does the same thing, leaving you wondering if in fact there was something more without ever really saying it.

That’s what I like – that uncertain finish, because that is where belief lives. That is where fairy tales and myths live, in a place where we make meaning out of that unknown. That is what makes them frightening and compelling and leaves you a little bereft when you come to the end, wishing for another glimpse of the things lurking at the corner of your own life. So I want to recommend to you these things I have found that I love, that hit me so thoroughly

So I am recommending to you now these things that have so thoroughly undone me in the reading, that have left me feeling both deeply understood and wondering if I have ever really understood anything at all about the world in which I live.

• Lauren Groff: The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Florida (short stories)
• Samantha Hunt: Mr. Splitfoot, The Seas, The Dark Dark (short stories)
• Lindsay Lusby: Catechesis: a postpastoral (poetry)
• Chavisa Woods: Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country (short stories)
• Ottessa Moshfegh: Eileen, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Homesick for Another World (short stories)