My "To Be Read" list is very long, and normally my reading habits follow a structure. I've got my next several books already queued up next to my bed, easily enough literature to last into October. I'm a pretty serious book buyer, and typically I let my books marinade on my shelves for a few weeks/months before I finally get around to reading them. However, there is always that occasional book that grabs my attention and demands to be read immediately after purchase, and The Autobiography of Red is one of those rare specimens. It's certainly helped by the fact that it is so very short, so very unique and intriguing, and that it was recommended by someone over at Insatiable Booksluts.
To call it a novella would be to ignore its poetic language, and to call it a poem would be to ignore its novel-like narrative structure and character development. It lands in this really magical middle ground, more like epic poetry, but without the negative associations most of us probably have of reading Homer in college. It is a pseudo-retelling/modernization of the Greek myth about Geryon, a monster whose killing was one of the labors of Heracles, but in Anne Carson's version Geryon is not a monster per se, but a young man struggling with is sexuality and identity.
There's a hefty dose of magical realism and some will probably be frustrated by the prose, but I would advice you to just power through, because although it starts out with a confusing framing device, everything becomes clearer as you delve into the Geryon narrative.