In which I pick some Books of the Year (again)
I was uhmming and ahhing about making this list (primarily because December keeps getting busier and that’ll probably keep on for a while…) but then I got curious about what I’d actually decide to put on it. My records tell me that I’m reading my 60th book of the year and I definitely do not remember all of them. But there are plenty I would recommend, and a few that have stuck with me to the extent that I might want to re-read them—not something I do often nowadays.
Speaking of records - I should like to abandon Goodreads, but I’ve not really got on with any of the alternatives when I’ve tried them before. What do you all use, and why do you like it?
Annual disclaimer that these are not books published this year, just books I’ve read and enjoyed this year. Also they’re not in any kind of order, but the non-fiction is first because, actually, they might be the things I’d recommend the MOST.
In My Time of Dying: How I came face to face with the idea of an afterlife, by Sebastian Junger. Junger is a journalist, writer and filmmaker I’ve been aware of for a while, but I’ve not actually read very much of him. I saw this reviewed in the summer I think, and picked it up on this basis of that. It’s about his experience of nearly dying in a medical emergency that came not as a result of doing journalism in war zones, but as a result of something that had been going on inside his body his entire life. It’s really fascinating, not least in its determination to provide a detailed account of exactly what was going on medically (it is, um, a lot, shall we say, and might not be for everyone) as well as reflecting on the emotional reality and impact of it. I found it intriguing that in exploring what happened he digs deep into scientific and medical research, but not so much theological or philosophical thinking about the meaning of life and possibility of God. There’s a moment where he says he was finding himself drawn to the idea of the afterlife—but actually, I think he resists it quite hard.
The Message, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I was delighted to be able to grab the American edition at Shakespeare & Co in Paris, because the British edition isn’t out till about February, and it didn’t disappoint. The noise on publication was all about the third essay (technically fourth, because I think the intro is also an essay) in the book, which is about Palestine and Israel, but this is a book of three/four essays that builds up to this finale. The first is an address to his students, about the work of non-fiction writing, the second is an essay reflecting on his first visit to continental Africa (to Senegal), the third on the reaction to his previous books and book banning in the US, and the last on his first visit to Israel-Palestine early in 2023. The thing I like about Coates is that you let you see the work he is doing himself - not just as a writer, but as a human, trying to stretch his understanding, imagination and vision. His earlier writing has been formative for me, so I’m predisposed to follow his thinking and approach in many ways—but I don’t always agree with everything, and his approach makes it easier to let the writing stretch you, poking at the places where feels like it is poking at you, where you might want to ‘sssss’ through your teeth a bit,
The Place of Tides, by James Rebanks. I confess, I’d wondered what a James Rebanks book that wasn’t about sheep farming in the Lakes might be like. I thought his writing and his eye was likely to be good enough to make the move, but also, there was a certain amount of ‘oooo, what will this beee?’ It turned out to be wonderful. I found it particularly interesting that it was something that seemed to have been brewing for a while—or at least the initial visit seeming to predate a lot of his breakout via social media and perhaps some of the book. It shares certain themes with English Pastoral, I think, but what it really shows is how often you have to go outside of yourself to truly see yourself and your world again. It’s a beautifully written picture of a very particular way of life and consideration of what it might mean to live that way, with other people.
Moon of the Turning Leaves, by Waubgeshig Rice. This is the sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, which was on last year’s list, and it expands out from it quite wonderfully. It’s set twelve years later, as the little community that survived ‘whatever happened’ finds that it might need to look for a new home as their resources start to dwindle—and so a group of them set out to try and find a way back to their ancestral home. It’s a different kind of novel to its predecessor - less claustrophobic and creepy, and perhaps slightly less distinctive. However, it’s still incredibly atmospheric, as the band make their way towards an uncertain destination and grapples with their first encounters with other humans for since the collapse. It’s fundamentally hopeful, without being romantic or idealising life in post-apocalyptic nature
The Safe Keep, by Yael van der Wouden. A few of the Booker lists caught my eye this year, but this was the one I went for first, and I hugely enjoyed it. It’s extremely well-constructed, as it lays down its plot-lines—and if you know anything about about C20th Dutch history then you’ll probably have a good sense of where some parts of it are going. But its distinctiveness is in the detail and especially in its characters (who are, by and large, not people you want to live in a big house in the countryside with!), which unravels the plot steadily and ultimately in a way I didn’t expect. I’m not 100% sure it sticks the landing, but it definitely doesn’t blow it.
Kairos, by Jenny Erpenbeck. This won the international booker this year, and in the process of reading various interviews with the author and translator, I came to wonder if they’d really registered quite how creepy the central relationship really is. It’s about an affair between a young woman and an older, married professor, and about the decline of the GDR to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In interviews I’ve seen conversations about how the relationship mirrors this decline, and comments that suggest that the relationship itself isn’t necessarily problematic. However, as a friend and I screeched to each other via WhatsApp as we were reading it, it is an extremely good depiction of an unbalanced relationship that turns abusive. I found the setting really interesting, but an abusive relationship isn’t quite the same as an equal partnership falling apart over time. But that aside, it’s really very good, and Erpenbeck’s ongoing writing about East Germany and its end continues to be fascinating.
Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford. This is just a damn good fun read. A noir detective story set in an alternative history of the US, in which smallpox didn’t decimate the indigenous populations. It’s a whodunnit - and whytheydunnit - caught up in a very believable political reality in which the USA is looking to expand and annexe the independent state of Deseret, in which Cahokia is situated, and in a religious reality in which indigenous beliefs and catholicism have been fused in a really interesting way. In its alternative vision it is definitely over-optimistic about some things while other things are weirdly absent (as in last year’s Babel, Christianity is prevalent, but Judaism is just… not there?). I read one piece on it that likened its political vibe to The West Wing, which *yes* that is exactly it, which probably speaks to why I had so much fun with it. The things that are missing, or to be discussed, are more interesting in the dynamics they’re indicative of than they are a reason to dismiss it, I think.
The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley. Also in the ‘rollicking good fun’ department is this speculative fiction time-travel romp. A strange civil service department finds a way to bring people out of the past and into the present - and in order to do so without disrupting history they test it on ‘minor’ figures who were about to die anyway. But how does this time-travel work and what is going on with everything else that unravels just as some of the transplants begin to get acclimatised? Lots of timey-wimey shenanigans, some polar exploration, and a nice romance. The ending is barmy, but you want to go with it (or I did).
The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton. Every year is the year I’m going to read more Edith Wharton (I have The Reef and Age of Innocence for 2025) and this year was the year I read this one, on the strong recommendation of a new edition with a Brandon Taylor introduction (and one of his newsletters discussing it).* It is so great. Love u, Edith Wharton. Everyone in Wharton is a mess, and there are consequences for everything that are utterly believable, and this is just so scathing about the whole of society (old and new money alike), but in a really human way. Undine Spragg is hilarious and spectacularly self-involved, and the men who she ends up around or who end up around her basically deserve her because they are clearly blind to both her and themselves. Apparently Sofia Coppola was trying to make a TV adaptation of this novel, with Florence Pugh but it fell apart. Sort that out world, that would be incredible.
* sidenote: I also watched and very much enjoyed Apple TV’s rollicking adaptation of Wharton’s unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, even if it is quite silly and I suspect lacking in Whartonian consequences.
The Once and Future King, by T. H. White. I’d read The Sword in the Stone as a kid and so enjoyed its version of the childhood of the Wart (the future King Arthur). I moved my dad’s copy of the whole series to my shelves when X2 came out at the cinema, because that was the novel Magneto was reading in his plastic prison, and I wanted to know why—and then that particular director baled on X-Men (and other things…) and I never read it. But I thought since I’d finally read and loved Earthsea and The Dark is Rising I should try this. They’re so much fun, somehow taking the whole idea of knighthood and chivalry seriously while also reading it for filth, and fascinatingly set in an AU medieval England, taking things like civil society and legal systems terribly seriously in a really interesting way. Also there’s a hilarious moment where Guinevere is described as being, ‘Like most women, a much better theologian [than the men]’. I chortled.
Bonus mention: I spent a chunk of the year re-reading Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. I am so familiar with it (this was about my fourth time, I think) and it is still so wonderful and grimy and good. Because I know it so well, it became my insomnia book, a perfect thing to read on the sofa in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep.
Also Recommended: Kibogo, by Scholastique Mukasonga; The Mighty Red, by Louise Erdrich; The Little Virtues, by Natalia Ginzburg; Shy, by Max Porter; These Bones will Rise Again, by Panashe Chigumadzi; Fully Alive, by Elizabeth Oldfield; Help Wanted, by Adelle Waldman.