Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bored to Death | 2009 | Jonathan Ames | Buy |
| 2 | You Were Never Really Here | 2013 | Jonathan Ames | Buy |
This collection of shorter works by Jonathan Ames includes two pieces that brought his writing to a wider audience. Bored to Death (2009) is the novella that served as the basis for the HBO comedy series of the same name, in which a Brooklyn writer moonlights as an unlicensed private detective.
You Were Never Really Here (2013) marks a sharp tonal departure. This terse, brutal novella follows Joe, a traumatized war veteran who rescues trafficked girls, as he takes on a job that spirals into violence. It was adapted by director Lynne Ramsay into a 2017 film that earned Joaquin Phoenix the Best Actor award at Cannes. The two works together show the range of Ames’s short-form fiction, from comic self-deprecation to bleak, stripped-down noir.