Just One Book: Troika

If you loved the Correspondent…this is the literary, page-turning memoir you’ve been missing.

Have you read In Her Boots yet? If you love my book recs, you’ll love this one—it’s a high stakes ride full of literary fraud, reluctant fame, a little romance, and one rogue mini pony, and you can grab it from Barnes & Noble here, Amazon here, Bookshop here, and my favorite indie here.

I know. You haven’t seen this absolutely everywhere. It probably hasn’t broken into your consciousness yet… but trust me on this one. If you’re here, it’s probably for you.

Why the The Correspondent comp for Troika: Three Generations, Three Days, and a Very American Road Trip, which is obviously a memoir? Because, like that book, it’s a completely engrossing look into a mind that works, like all of ours, in meandering ways but with a distinct internal logic. It’s the story of a moment in a life (a three-generation, long-weekend road trip) and also of the moments that led to here, the immigration and career, the family successes and failures, the truths behind doors and facades.
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It’s told in in bite-sized, bingeable bits, as though you were following a trail of pieced-together thoughts and notes, almost as if the author were writing to us or to herself. And those bits draw together literary references and pop culture to reflect how both invade our sense of who we are and how we tell our story.

As you’ll have gathered, I loved this. It has that can’t-stop-won’t-stop quality without being in the least gimmicky or even suspenseful. You just want to be there with the author on this journey. In fact I want to hear more from Irena Smith so much that I immediately ordered her other book and followed her Substack (both of which are probably more “marketable” to publishers than Troika was… it’s one of those special books you don’t hear about because it doesn’t fit neatly in the box.)

And after you’ve read it, I want to know what you think! I dropped a chat thread here (and I’m adding some chat links for my other “Just One Book” recs too, because I want to talk about them!) It will likely start slow—I mean, I just recommended this—but weigh in any time.