A Millions Most Anticipated Book of Summer 2025
A Literary Hub Novel You Need to Read This Fall
Bookshop.org Best of Summer 2025
Favorite Book of 2025, The Paris Review
Favorite Read of 2025, Granta
Favorite Book of 2026, The Times
“Lyrical but succinct, . . . playful without being pretentious.”
—Emily Hall, Necessary Fiction
“A vessel for the contradictions of the present unlike any recent novel I’ve read.”
—Idra Novey, Chicago Review of Books
“Frank and brutal in its unpeeling of the professor’s ego, [Helen of Nowhere] highlights how the fantastic can elevate the mundane.”
—Ian Mond, Locus
“Epic in the best way. . . . Goodman’s novel is a tribute to her influences, and a crackling joy to read.”
—Jessie Gaynor, Literary Hub
“A clever exercise in exploring the shifting nature of power.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Virtuosically written, with an insanity inside its sanity—or the other way around—that seems the proper use to make of reality in this moment.”
—Rachel Cusk, award winning author of Parade
“Goodman has found a unique way of blending political urgency and psychological insight with an almost hallucinatory spiritual dimension that manages to strike the reader as perfectly justified, deeply funny, and profoundly true.”
—Vincenzo Latronico, International Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Perfection
"Goodman has wrought an epic in miniature."
—Sarah Manguso, author of Liars
“Intrepid, reconfiguring, and full of the best hauntings.”
—Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book
"A furious energy runs through Helen of Nowhere, whose every sentence is a joy to read. A unique and brilliant work."
—Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists
"Blending biting wit and gorgeous, lyrical prose, Helen of Nowhere is at once a modern satire summoning Dickens in A Christmas Carol, an exploration of the failures of second wave feminism, and a sneaky ode to Woolf and Thoreau."
—Alexandra Auder, author of Don't Call Me Home
"An extraordinary book, gripping, daring, and unusual. I wolfed it down."
—Celia Paul, author of Letters to Gwen John
“An intimate and immersive tour de force by a writer with a fearless style.”
—Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath
“Helen of Nowhere expands one's sense of how a novel can be written.”
—Sheila Heti, author of Pure Colour
" A perfect fairytale for our times."
—The Guardian
“This is a novel for anybody who has had the thought recently that all contemporary fiction is the same.”
—Polly Barton, author of Porn: An Oral History
"I loved Makenna Goodman’sHelen of Nowhere, a truly unusual tale of male obsolescence that is, like the best books (like the best men?) brave. It follows a soft-canceled neotranscendentalist college professor through a psychosexual encounter with a real estate agent—what ensues is a heady romp written with moral seriousness and real comedy, like Iris Murdoch soundtracked by Enya. Books can be funny!"
—Milo Walls, Interviewer, The Art of Nonfiction No. 13 with Maggie Nelson, The Paris Review
"Searing...Helen of Nowhere offers up an exhilarating myth for men who need to be shuffled offstage."
—Joanna Biggs, New York Review Books
‘Is it possible for a man to truly change? Helen of Nowhere, the second novel from the American author Makenna Goodman, dramatizes this timeworn question to honest and hilarious effect…. [T]he energy of the novel, with its characters’ loopy digressions and riffs on everything from helicopter parenting to the role of pesticides in modern farming, is closest to the work of the Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard. Goodman’s ending is a stroke of genius, a triumph of what Bernhard once referred to as a suffering mind’s “inner landscape”.’
— Abhrajyoti Chakraborty, Observer
‘Helen of Nowhere is unlike any other fiction – unique in its blend of surrealism, philosophy and satire – while also raising questions about feminism, success, marriage and sacrifice. Every single sentence works hard and yet reads effortlessly. Brilliant.’
— Martha Alexander, AnOther
‘Beautifully written with a poetic, intriguing rhythm.’
— Markie Robson-Scott, Arts Desk
’Once in a blue moon, a book comes along that seems to read itself, demanding no extra effort beyond the turning of its pages. Makenna Goodman’s Helen of Nowhere is one of those books…. Goodman’s jabs at the travails of academia are sharp, and the novel’s goal of recovering lost pleasures is amplified by its thrilling metaphysical ambition.’
— Colm McKenna, Irish Times
‘[A] satire-cum-spiritual epic concerning a professor and a country home – a psychic space that becomes a stage for total self-transformation…. Goodman links questions of intimacy with questions of politics. Can we, she wonders, really believe in the reality of the other? And can we assimilate enough of what is outside the self to become fully realized beings, suited to love and braced to meet the world, to engage honestly with its challenges to our most steadfast beliefs?’
— Rachel Gerry, Times Literary Supplement
‘This is already one of our favourite books of the year…. Makenna Goodman makes the novel genuinely thrilling again as she masterminds us through Helen of Nowhere‘s six “acts” and a heady mixture of perspectives and audiences. As you’re reading, you’ll think to yourself “did she just… are we… is this…?” and you’re fully with Goodman for the entire ride…. Just read it.’
— Sophie Charara, Shortlist
