Nick Drnaso - Beverly

A cold, fluorescent-lit mosaic of suburban unease, Beverly drifts through a series of loosely connected stories where people talk past each other, circle their own anxieties, and quietly unravel. Teenagers flirt while danger hums nearby, friendships collapse under the weight of unspoken tension, and small humiliations bloom into something darker. The book isn’t driven by plot so much as atmosphere, each vignette feeling like a sealed room where something slightly off is happening just beneath the surface.

Drnaso’s style is deceptively simple, clean lines, pastel stillness, faces like masks. But underneath that calm is a slow leak of dread: sexual confusion, loneliness, paranoia, and the vague sense that nobody is really connecting with anyone else. The stories interlock in subtle ways, characters drifting in and out like ghosts across timelines, reinforcing a world that feels small, repetitive, and emotionally airless. It’s a book about the quiet horror of ordinary life, where nothing explodes, yet everything feels slightly broken.