Favorite Read of 2025, Granta

A Millions Most Anticipated Book of Summer 2025
A Literary Hub Novel You Need to Read This Fall

Bookshop.org Best of Summer 2025

"A perfect fairytale for our times." — The Guardian

"Wildly original." — Johanna Thomas-Carr, The Times

"Exhilarating." — Financial Times

“Helen of Nowhere is lyrical but succinct, and it’s playful without being pretentious. Undoubtedly, Man will stay with readers for a long time, something that would make him quite happy.” —Emily Hall, Necessary Fiction

"I loved Makenna Goodman's Helen 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 pschyosexual 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 fun!" — Milo Walls, interviewer, The Art of Nonfiction No. 13, with Maggie Nelson — The Paris Review 

“A vessel for the contradictions of the present unlike any recent novel I’ve read.” —Idra Novey, Chicago Review of Books

"A hallucinatory closet drama."  — Merve Emre, Granta

“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—the characters feel both familiar and new, the folly of Man is on full display, and on a sentence level, it’s the kind of book that forces you to underline. 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

“One of the most surprising novels I’ve ever read. 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, somehow as appealingly vast as a Greek tragedy or a Platonic dialogue, equal parts philosophy and art that's also delightfully wicked, like something from a fairytale or a fever dream." —Sarah Manguso, author of Liars

"This is a wild and brave book! Intrepid, reconfiguring, and full of the best hauntings. In Helen of Nowhere, Goodman has daringly crafted toothsome characters you will devour." —Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book

"A furious energy runs through Helen of Nowhere, whose every sentence is a joy to read. This is a book about loneliness and bitterness written with a wicked humor, and its moments of grace are as striking as they are enigmatic. 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. It’s hard to pin down what this book is exactly, and whether or not Helen is Jesus, a furniture maker, god, the house, a wife, or time itself. Which is why you must restart it the moment you turn the last haunting page." —Alexandra Auder, author of Don't Call Me Home

"Helen of Nowhere is an extraordinary book, gripping, daring, and unusual. With a pacing that completely swept me along, Goodman explores the need to steady oneself by valuing that which is dear, by taking care of the love that needs to be nourished. The trajectory through anger into healing feels like a real journey in time—the dialogue flashing past, written with such speed and brilliance. I wolfed it down." —Celia Paul, author of Letters to Gwen John