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The following twelve books are the best books I read in 2011. All of these have in common sublime writing and are filled with subtle, nuanced life. Each of them surprised me, as well, constantly helping me rediscover the joy of reading.
Here they are, my favorites, in the order in which I reviewed them:
Vivant Denon: No Tomorrow (original review January 14, 2011) — This was one of the first books I read this year and before I was even half-finished (which is only, like 15 pages in this short volume) I knew it would be on this list come December. I’ve read it many times through the year and will probably read it again during the Christmas holiday (it’s very short, so maybe again at New Year’s). Denon packs an amazing amount of lust and mystery into this short tale about a one-night fling at the mistress’s estranged husband’s house — while the husband in the other room. It is sweet and savage at the same time, and I have been completely charmed. This is certainly one of those rare literary relationships that will last a lifetime. One thing: I highly recommend the translation by Lydia Davis — I’ve sampled another and it simply wasn’t as good.
Gert Hofmann: Lichtenberg & the Little Flower Girl (original review February 15, 2011) — This is probably the saddest book on this list, yet it is also one of the most tender and boisterous. And, like No Tomorrow, it reaches its depths through a unique kind of whimsy that most authors couldn’t handle when treating such a narrative. This is the story (based on fact) of Lichtenberg, an eighteenth-century physics professor with a hunched back and a gift for composing witty aphorisms, if not a gift for advancing studies in physics. The little flower girl is Maria Stechard, the young girl who lives with him, at first in innocence. Then, abandoning the oft-used exclamation point, Hofmann has the Stechardess say one powerful line: “Don’t hurt me, she said.” As it deals with yearning in a life shadowed by death, it is witty, funny, and it expressly includes the readers in the text as we continually ask: “And then?”
J.A. Baker: The Peregrine (original review March 3, 2011) — When I reviewed this memoir/nature book I made comparisons to W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. I still stand by those statements. Baker’s book is searching as it takes into account something that lies beyond mankind and that is dying. As the memoir progresses, we see an amazing transformation; slipping into the text are Baker’s own desires to escape humanity and become one with the creature he hunts. Nearing the end, the transformation — at least psychologically — is complete: “We live, in these days in the open, the same ecstatic fearful life. We shun men. We hate their suddenly uplifted arms, the insanity of their flailing gestures, their erratic scissoring gait, their aimless stumbling ways, the tombstone whiteness of their faces.”
Cynthia Ozick: The Puttermesser Paper (original review March 25, 2011) — Ozick is one of my favorites, and this book compiles short pieces she wrote about Ruth Puttermesser over the course of four decades (Puttermesser is also a victim of the passage of time and ages the four decades with Ozick). It’s a fantastic series of tales about this rather lonely woman who, at one time, becomes the mayor of New York and unleashes a modern-day female golem (she really wanted a daughter of her own) in the city. In another chapter, when she’s in her fifties, she relives — she thinks, she hopes – the love affair between the similarly aged George Eliot and the much younger George Lewes. All of this leads to the last story where, at the beginning, we witness her violent death at nearly 70 — and then we go a bit further.
Georges-Olivier Châteaureynard: A Life on Paper (original review April 13, 2011) — I nearly missed this title, which would have been a shame. Had I missed it this year, it is unlikely I would ever have encountered it again once its publication date drifted back in time. I only heard about it when it was a finalist in the Best Translated Book Award (this year’s finalists should be announced sometime toward the end of next month). It happened to be a book I could acquire rather easily, and what a surprise! This selection of Châteaureynard’s short-short fiction is the first time this prolific writer has been translated to English. The tales are lovely and strange, mixing the realistic with the bizarre to both sad and comic results (which reminded me of one of my favorites, Steven Millhauser — more on him in a moment).
J.M. Coetzee: Youth (original review April 22, 2011) — Coetzee is another long-time favorite. I’ve been working my way through his work for a few years, enjoying everything a great deal — and I mean everything. This particular book, the second part in a loose autobiographical trilogy (both the trilogy structure and “autobiography” should be interpreted loosely), is one of the best. Here Coetzee writes in the first-person about his (or his character’s, rather) time in London working as a computer scientist at IBM. He’s young, alone, and melancholic, and he’s trying hard to develop a tragic, romantic spirit to become an artist, but he’s failing at things as foundational as passion because his cold, rational brain cannot, for example, understand why any woman he barely knows would give herself to him. He seems to belong to the world of IBM where there’s no possibility of a drunken brawl. As an autobiography, Youth contains blatant untruths and, therefore, probably some truth, but none of that really matters: it’s just a fine book.
Alan Heathcock: Volt (original review May 1, 2011) — It took only a few lines in the first story, “The Staying Freight,” before I was convinced Heathcock was something special, providing something new that still paid homage to the old masters as it shows us the lives of a few inhabitants of the fictional small town Krafton. The whole book is an excellent exploration of guilt and redemption that reminded me of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, the sense of space — apparent in the first few paragraphs as an unmanned tractor slowly pulls away from the protagonist in a large arc of dust – reminded me of Maile Meloy. Yes, it reminded me of other authors — the best of these other authors — but it still has a distinct life of its own, and I hope someday Krafton is known as well (or nearly as well) as Winesburg, Ohio.
Steven Millhauser: Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943 – 1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright (original review May 24, 2011) – Millhauser brings childhood back to haunt us, reminding us of just how much our innocent minds actually knew and how terrified we were, in this very strange fictional biography. The author is the very young Jeffrey Cartwright; the subject is his tragic, genius friend, Edwin Mullhouse. Millhauser often reminds me of the great Edgar Allan Poe, both in writing skill and in tone, particularly here when we see just how jealously Jeffrey guards Edwin from some young romances (which were admittedly ill-advised to begin with). This is possibly the most outrightly terrifying book on this list, in spite of (or perhaps because of) how seductive it is.
Jean Echenoz: Lightning (original review June 22, 2011) — If this list has a consistent theme it could be quasi-fictional biographies on eccentric personalities. Lichtenberg, Baker, Puttermesser, Coetzee, Mullhouse, all lives worth reading about, whether fiction, real, or somewhere in between. Adding to the list is another whimsical (though ultimately tragic and lonely (another theme here?)) fictionalized biography, this one of Nikola Tesla, the famed scientist that helped usher electricity into our lives and caused a famous fued with his one-time employer, Thomas Edison, who managed in the end to at least die in better circumstances than Tesla. Again, the author brings the reader into the story; it’s as if we’re sitting down with Echenoz as he offers us refreshment before continuing the tale, and we can’t wait to hear more.
László Krasznahorkai: The Melancholy of Resistance (original review July 11, 2011) — The most outwardly challenging book on this list is this 300+ page single paragraph (okay, there are some breaks, but not enough to really count). But, just like the others here, it pays back a great deal as we read about a dead whale brought to a small Hungarian town by a wandering circus. The opening pages about the increasing tension as people on a train platform wait for a late train, followed by the terror of arriving somewhere much later than anticipated, soon give way to coldly calculated chaos. Eventually the town is torn apart by anarchy. The story focuses on an evil woman (whom we watch twitch in her sleep for a time), her reclusive husband who is working on his ideas about the Werckmeister Harmonies, and the village idiot. What a strange — and magnificent — book. I’m very excited for more Krasznahorkai (New Directions will be publishing his Satantango early in 2012).
Gyula Krúdy: The Adventures of Sindbad (original review November 30, 2011) — A fantastic late-year surprise from NYRB Classics, The Adventures of Sindbad continues to show that, for whatever reason, this year my tastes ran to the bizarre, with a generous touch of modern style. This collection of stories about a paramour’s many many pursuits takes us back and forth in time, into dreams, into the grave, into a sprig of mistletoe. There’s a lingering air of melancholy over the whole thing (in the very first story a young boy with a hunchback drowns in a river), but that’s one of the reasons that, despite the obvious strangeness, it feels so real. Furthermore, this is a story about a wandering paramour, so melancholy is actually to be desired. It makes the lust more poignant, which in turn makes the affair more — but, out of preference, not wholly – satisfying.
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky: The Letter Killers Club (original review December 19, 2011) — After finishing The Adventures of Sindbad, I thought this “year’s best” list was done. I should have known better than to discount NYRB Classics, who’d just published yet another lovely book. Just as the year began, when I knew Denon’s No Tomorrow would be on this list after just a few pages, the year comes to a close with another NYRB Classic that, after just a few pages, I knew this list would have to accomodate. The Letter Killers Club, which takes us to secret meetings where men tell stories without writing them down (and not without a great deal of suspicion), may have been my favorite book of the year (though, looking at this list, it’s hard to make that a definitive statement). Krzhizhanovsky again touched on my apparent taste for the bizare portrayed realistically in an effort to depict the familiar even better.
Going over this list again, I can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store! To everyone: a happy holiday season!
— Trevor
This year I tried to limit my list to ten books, but I couldn’t decide which two of the following books should go: here are my top twelve books of the year. I had no trouble deciding which two were my favorites. They are listed at the bottom.
It was a great reading year for me. Each of the books below impressed me so much that I have already either started reading or started acquiring the author’s back catalog (or marked that their front catalog should not be missed).
César Aira: The Literary Conference – ”The Literary Conference borders on . . . no, delves into the ridiculous — in the best way possible.” Last year I put Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter as one of my top reads, and I could as easily have put his Ghosts. Neither of these books was particularly funny, so I was surprised when I declared The Literary Conference to be ”the funniest book I’ve read all year.” With more titles due in 2011 (will he make my top-reads list three years in a row?), there is much Aira to look forward to — thankfully! Next up? The Seamstress in the Wind, coming in spring of 2011.
Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad — “I’m sure the book might still look like a stylistic, structurally ambitious flight of fancy. I assure you that Egan pulls it off. The ambition, the variety — they never cloud over the intimate settings she’s created where we can spend quiet moments with these compelling individuals.” I’m still not sure why this novel composed of interconnected short stories — each in its own unique style — didn’t show up as a finalist for the National Book Award. Surely it will show up in the awards early next year. After this, I went back to read Egan’s lesser The Keep. It was okay but didn’t do it for me. Nevertheless, next up is Look at Me.
Michael Frayn: Headlong — “We have as fast-paced a narrative as one can hope to find. Frayn’s writing is smooth, and very very funny. Throw in some genuinely intriguing art history (as opposed to that falsely intriguing stuff making bestsellers), and it’s already a winner for me. But now, throw in Frayn’s skill at tying the human drama to the art drama.” I still find myself pulled into Brugel’s paintings. I had already attended several of Frayn’s plays, but this was my first attempt at one of his novels. I have gone back to read Spies, and I look forward to reading The Trick of It. I might even read his memoir, My Father’s Fortune: A Life, which is coming out in February.
Damon Galgut: In a Strange Room — “I loved this book. I was completely entranced. I might hate reading books on the iPhone, but I wouldn’t know yet because this book is so good I would have enjoyed reading it while someone kicked me in the shin.” Since it is out of context, I should probably explain: this is the first book I ever read successfully on an e-reader, and I hardly noticed the different medium so much did Galgut’s prose and story pull me in. My pick for the Booker Prize, even though I loved the eventual winner too (which didn’t find its way onto this list, but easily could have). Going to Galgut’s back catalog, I recently enjoyed The Good Doctor and can’t wait for The Imposter.
Alexander MacLeod: Light Lifting — “Perhaps I shouldn’t have started my Giller shortlist reading with this book. It might not get any better.” That turned out to be the case, and this book eventually went on to be the Shadow Giller’s choice (though I was quite taken by the Giller Prize winner). This book of short stories is a debut collection that encourages readers that MacLeod is the rightful heir to his father’s exceptional talent. Since MacLeod has no other book out, I cannot read his back catalog, though I would have if he had one, and I’m certainly in line for whatever he publishes next.
Brian Moore: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne — “At just over 200 pages, I expected to breeze through it, but it demanded that I slow down — in a good way. The language and the cadence of the story, at first delicate and then raucous, made it impossible to read quickly. The best thing about this book is not the cover.” That last sentence is saying quite a bit, since this is one of my favorite covers of the year. This is such a creepy book, I couldn’t resist acquiring several of Moore’s back catalog. I’m not sure what I’ll read next, but it will probably be either The Temptation of Eileen Hughes or Lies of Silence.
Harry Mulisch: The Assault — “This is a fantastic book about chance and fate, about guilt and innocence, all against the backdrop of the twentieth century as the big issues range from World War II to Budapest to nuclear weapon talks in the 1980s. For all its scope, it remains intimate, just like that opening section when we looked on the four homes lined up in a row.” I know a lot of people feel that the market for World War II books is oversaturated, but this one is not to miss. I have what many consider Mulisch’s masterpiece, The Discovery of Heaven. It is quite long, though, so I’m not exactly sure when I’ll get to it.
Cynthia Ozick: The Cannibal Galaxy — “Though this is a relatively short book, it is incredibly dense with both plot and idea. The writing is top-notch.” Ozick had a new book — Foreign Bodies – out this year, and it, too, is exceptional. Still, I found that I connected more with this, a book about an aging pedagogue and his obsession with the mind of the mother of one of his students. Ozick is critically acclaimed, but her books are difficult to acquire since a few are shamefully out of print. I have her The Messiah of Stockholm on my need-to-read-soon list. Then again, I have all of her books (save her first novel) on my need-to-read-soon list.
Larry Watson: Montana 1948 — “[L]ike So Long, See You Tomorrow, Montana 1948 is a special book, a classic piece of American literature not because it is widely read (though it should be) but because it simply is in its depiction of a facet of American life and counterlife.” This was one of my favorite “quiet” books this year, and I hope that it eventually rises from relative obscurity. I actually haven’t done much looking at Watson’s back catalog, but I’m interested in Justice, which examines the Hayden family (the subject of this book) in the late nineteenth-century. I haven’t heard anything about it; then again, I hadn’t heard anything about this book either.
Edith Wharton: Ethan Frome — “Ethan Frome skirts a Romantic ending and punches the reader in the gut.” Another of my favorite “quiet” books (how does a quiet book punch one in the gut?), this one looking at rural Massachusetts a little more than a century ago. It is the perfect little book for a dark winter night. After reading this novella I turned to Wharton’s The House of Mirth, and it was hard to know which of these two I liked more. Next up is Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, which I’ve heard so much about and which recently made KFC’s best of the year list (also, K2D2 has written about it on his blog, and I know he’s a major fan).
Now for my two top books of the year. They are not only my favorites of the year but also two favorites of my lifetime. They are exceptional from any angle. Unfortunately, one of the authors is dead and wrote only a few novels. Fortunately, the other is very young. That she was not on The New Yorker‘s 20 Under 40 shows a major blindspot for that list.
Maile Meloy: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It — “I was so pleased with this collection I immediately marked Meloy as one of my favorite authors.” This book of short stories is the best short story collection I’ve read in a long time. Meloy’s controlled prose is simply in another league. I’m sure it heightened my interest that many of these stories are set in Montana, just north of where I grew up. (In fact, if you haven’t noticed, it seems that rural (even western) writing has won me over this year.) This is Meloy’s second collection of short stories; her first, Half in Love, is just as good. I have her two novels, Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter, in line. In fall 2011 her first young adult novel, The Apothecary, will come out. It sounds strange: a cold war novel featuring kids and magic. She hope adults will be able to read it too. I trust her. Count me in.
John Williams: Butcher’s Crossing — “As an American reader, deeply interested in what literature has to say about this land, its promise, its spirituality, and its emptiness, Butcher’s Crossing hit me with the same force as (if not more than) Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick, The Age of Innocence, The Great Gatsby, Martin Dressler, American Pastoral, and Gilead. Yes, I expected Butcher’s Crossing to be great, I expected it to be well written — people told me so — but I was shocked at how much it contained, at how well it balanced jubilance and heartbreak, innocence and depravity, all while reinventing the western to expose the fault lines the American Dream is founded upon.” After reading Butcher’s Crossing, I read Williams’ National Book Award winner Augustus and the recently much revered Stoner. I loved each of them as well (Augustus is a worthy award winner, and Stoner deserves every ounce of praise it has gotten — more, in fact; each of the three books deserves more), but, to me, Butcher’s Crossing is Williams’ masterpiece. Williams only wrote four novels. He didn’t much care for his first, Nothing But the Night; however, where can I turn next? Plus, I learned earlier this year that, while the author may be right that a certain book is not a masterpiece, it doesn’t meant it is not worth reading.
I like the end of year lists. They are self-indulgent, giving the reviewer a chance to reminisce and even become prideful about a year’s-worth of reading (at least, I admit to those feelings). But as a fellow reader, I love to see others’ lists so I can see what books made the year’s reading pleasurable to others — and it gives me a chance to see what I’m missing. So here’s my contribution: my second year-end review.
Making this list is impossible this year. I was very selective in 2009, basically reading only books I was genuinely interested in from publishers whom I trust. Also, it was my most international year ever (30 of the 89 — 34% — books reviewed since December 17, 2008, when I last posted this year-end list, were in translation), so many books I read were illuminating in one regard or another. Indeed, I would have a difficult time coming up with ten books I didn’t like, let alone ten twelve I liked about all others. So this year, rather than list my top reads, I’m posting a nonexclusive list of some highlights. Each of these books, in one way or another, satisfied whatever mood I had at the moment, even if I wasn’t aware I was in the mood for anything in particular.
But before even listing the highlights, I’m going to put in this little paragraph that cheats. How can one leave out Philip Roth or Gilead or By Night in Chile from this list? These contemporary classics were obviously highlights of my reading year. But perhaps even more mysterious than leaving those off my list, why leave off classics like Madame Bovary, “The Turn of the Screw,” The Age of Innocence, and Moby-Dick. Well, here’s why I’m leaving them off the highlights list: because they have been highlighted time and time again, deservedly. Instead, I chose to focus on books I’d never really heard of before this year. While this will reveal some of the many gaps in my reading, I think it also might be helpful to others like me who have such gaps. (Not to mention the fact that this little shenanigan allows me to link to more of my favorite books!)
So, here is my list (seven works in translation, five in English), in alphabetical order by author’s last name. There’s just no way I can rank these in any other way. In fact, when I tried, I had most of them in the number one spot at one time or another. The list:
César Aira: An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter – “Even when I was unsure where this was going, I was thoroughly enjoying the voyage. It is vast yet immediate, full of frenetic energy yet poised and controlled.” I read this book in one spell-bound sitting, and I can still remember the way the light fell in the room while I was reading it. It’s imprint on me and that moment in time are that vivid still. I also absolutely loved his Ghosts, and How I Became a Nun is not too distant in third.
Adolfo Bioy Casares: The Invention of Morel – “One of the best things about The Invention of Morel, though, is that even when we readers understand the nature of what is going on, Bioy Casares doesn’t stop there. Many lesser books stop with cleverness. In this one, the intelligent construct is only incidental to an even more intelligent examination of love, lust, loneliness — and the ambiguities of immortality.” The feelings of loneliness and interrupted silence stick with me as I think back on this dream-like book.
J.L. Carr: A Month in the Country – “It was moving and peaceful and interesting. In it Carr, about whom little is known but who has some whimsical biographical information detailed in the introduction to the NYRB edition, packs layers of nostalgia, making the reader aware of emotions lost to time but evident in what remains of the past.” Another peaceful masterpiece, and one book I’ll read again and again. I loved the complex arrangement of love, art, history, and nostalgia on a simple canvas. A truly affecting work I feel almost reverent toward.
Gérard Gavarry: Hoppla! 1, 2, 3 – “Each section carries the same people to the same event. Each is still unique and compelling and important. Indeed, through this book not only does Gavarry reveal some excellent insights into the roots of violence but, in doing so, he shows the power and vitality of literature.” Several months later, I’m still amazed at the multiple perspectives Gavarry uses in this book as it tells, retells, and then retells again, the story of a murder. And being stuck in traffic has never been the same.
Imre Kertész: The Pathseeker – “If this sounds like it should be a work by Kafka, that’s completely understandable. . . . However . . . unlike Kafka’s absurdity, this one is ‘real.’ Not that Kafka’s works aren’t real in their essence, but here is no heightened reality exaggerated for effect. As bizarre as it might sound, as elusive as the author is being, the exercise in silence and inference creates a very realistic piece.” For the year, this was my favorite book that succeeded by not saying directly what it was shouting indirectly.
William Maxwell: So Long, See You Tomorrow — “So silently does the story progress that the moments of violence are audible to the reader and reverberate in the later pages though silence returns.” Short, softly spoken, quietly impactful. If I were back in college, taking literature classes, I’d demand to read this as an American classic. A master-lesson in how to write directly, without all of the fanfare and preening, yet still engage in metafiction at its best. Disillusioned me towards McEwan’s Atonement.
Richard Price: Lush Life – “Lush Life builds and changes its form in unexpected ways, and I’d hate to give away too much. Then again, there is so much in the book that I could write in depth about aspects of it and it would still leave plenty for the reader to discover.” Indeed. I’m still uncovering layers of this excellent police procedural in downtown Manhattan. Brilliant dialogue, fantastic descriptions, very profound as it deals with class and race and crime. Why on earth haven’t I read Clockers yet?
Guillermo Rosales: The Halfway House – “A semi-autobiographical allegory, this is the best book I’ve read so far this year, and one of the best books I’ve read period. It is stunning in its execution and its content—indisputably the work of a literary master.” I stand by my review. This book is brilliant in its depravity as it describes a Cuban exile’s time in a corrupt Miami halfway house where the narrator’s complicity in brutality comes out. Very sad, very violent, very disturbing — if the book is any indicator, one can see why Rosales felt hopeless.
W.G. Sebald: The Emigrants – ”One of tales is told primarily by Mme Landau, and she talks about ‘the systematic thoroughness with which these people kept silent in the years after the war, kept their secrets, and even, I sometimes think, really did forget. . .’ But Sebald suggests they don’t forget. In fact, it’s all they can remember, and it follows them everywhere, to their death.” I think one of the reasons I didn’t care for Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault was because I’d read this book just prior — this book was simply so so much better.
Robert Walser: The Tanners – “The precision with which Walser captures the seasons and the times of day makes the experience of reading these impressions almost surreal. Truly, Susan Bernofsky did a fantastic job translating this book.” This was the only book I read this year that took me back to my early days of reading literature, back when I was still discovering the European greats (which is fitting since Walser was a European great). There’s just something epic and yet fable-ish about this book — and it’s incredibly funny.
P.G. Wodehouse: Leave It to Psmith – ”[The first few lines] made me chuckle in the bookstore. Despite that, however, I did not expect to be incapable of holding in my laughter while on the train. But I couldn’t help it when unexpected things like legs dangling through ceilings and flung flower pots pepper the pages.” My introduction to Wodehouse — surely it will be a long and pleasant relationship. Since I read this book, I’ve purchased it for several people who could use a hearty laugh (in the wonderful Overlook edition, of course).
Tobias Wolff: Old School – “I’m not giving anything away when I say that Wolff completely reworks the perspective of the novel in the last few pages, not through a surprise twist or an epiphany but by unconventionally straying from the narrative he’d been so strict to follow up to that point, playing with our notions of the narrator’s aesthetic as well as his personal development — and justifications.” I loved reading the narrator’s encounters with literature and authorship, and how they affected his downfall — as well as that of another of the school’s luminaries.
Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a very happy 2010.
— Trevor
I have a hard time whittling down my list of favorite books of the year to a mere ten, twenty, or even thirty. Nevertheless, I will attempt in this post to remember my ten favorite books I found this year (though only one was published this year). Here they are, presented in alphabetical order because if I tried to rank them there would be two problems: first, many of the books would tie for first, second, or third, and I’d probably never get to number four; second, I think I’d put The Ghost Writer on top, but then I’d feel very wrong because I couldn’t honestly say it is better than Revolutionary Road though today I’m in the mood to reread The Ghost Writer. So here they are with links to the original review in the title.
The Ghost Writer, by Philip Roth: This is the book that got me addicted to Philip Roth, and I think it might still be my favorite, though it was difficult to choose between this one and American Pastoral (which was definitely one of the best books I read this year, as were many other Roth books, but I figured I could lump all of the Roth I read this year here with The Ghost Writer). “Roth’s writing alone is so precise and so simple that experiencing just the diction, let alone the pain and wry humor, of one sentence after another left me giddy.”
First Love, by Ivan Turgenev: I hadn’t read anything by Turgenev before this one (haven’t read anything since – yet) but I’m glad I finally got over my fear of this particular Russian. I remember that I read this one during one day’s commute. “Despite the train noises and the people coming and going, First Love really affected me with its powerful depiction of innocent love teamed up with overwhelming passion and a desire to be a martyr according to the whims of the one you love.”
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson: Robinson was the only woman besides Toni Morrison to have a book considered the best book of the last 25 years by an American novelist. This was that book. ”Robinson’s tone thoughout strikes the right note for me. Somehow she injects into her prose the atmosphere of Fingerbone, with its foggy lake, along with the transiency of the characters. Though the town remains in place, it always seems to be drifting away into the past. At the same time, the past does not disappear – the lake remains, and somewhere down there is a wrecked train and car.”
Life and Times of Michael K, by J.M. Coetzee: I’ve read only three books by Coetzee: Disgrace, Waiting for the Barbarians, and this one. Though the one I hear least about, Life and Times of Michael K is my favorite. And I think Coetzee’s writing absolutely spoiled my reading of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger. “I’m not sure how it happens, but while reading this book - this book about war and about one man’s physical decline as he attempts to become invisible – during the day I looked around me and saw so many wonderful things.”
Liquidation, by Imre Kertész: Of the three Kertész books about Auschwitz and the years since, this one about the suicide of a child born in the concentration camp is still my favorite. “Despite the miracle of B.’s birth, years later he commits suicide. That is where the book begins. But for what reasons did B. commit suicide? That is where the book goes.”
The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh: Despite this book being most recent in my memory, I’m confident it will outlast many others I read this year – or in many years to come. “To get right to it, this is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, and one of the best.”
Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill: I’m in good company including this as one of the year’s best – both the New York Times Book Review and James Woods of the New Yorker included it in their list too (James Woods called this year’s Booker committee middle-brow, which brought back bad memories and reminded me that this is my only pick from this year’s Booker longlist). I still stand by this: “An interesting and entertaining (and pleasantly detailed) rumination on cricket in the United States, a contemporary variation on The Great Gatsby, probably the most convincing and nuanced post-9/11 novel I’ve read, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland (2008) is the best new book I’ve read in the last few years.”
Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates: My find of the year (I’d already found Roth). How did I make it this far in my life without having someone tell me to read this? This one will last this year’s top ten list to be on my all-time top ten list. “Yates’s writing is a reward in and of itself. His ability to make the reader and characters intimates is masterful. I felt their pain, not because I was recalling my own experience but because I felt like I was there, in their room. When they shouted, it hurt my ears and made my breathing shallow, my shoulders tense. I also felt hope at the sight of an unexpected smile.”
The Sea, the Sea, by Iris Murdoch: My first venture into the beauty and terror of Iris Murdoch’s prose, this book was purchased on a whim. I also started it one night thinking, I’ll just see how the first pages are. I didn’t stop. “Even though I found the story implausible and the characters unlikeable, I found myself reading this book compulsively, often when I should have been doing something else. It says a lot for Murdoch that I’d gladly spend my time in this man’s head.”
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides: My wife pointed me to this book, but since I didn’t like Eugenides’s Middlesex it sat on my shelf for about two years. Finally, I pulled it out this summer and was astounded by its quality in both form and substance. “Telling the story from the first person plural, a group of middle-aged men who, when adolescents, were neighbors of the Lisbons during the ‘year of the suicides’ and have never been able to get over the deaths. In fact, they’ve been obsessed, collecting ‘exhibits’ such as photos, shoes, retainers, anything they can get their hands on. Through the years they’ve interviewed everyone who can give them any details into the girls’ lives, including the poor parents. This book is their reflection, their report (though, don’t be frightened, it does not read at all like a report).”
This forced me to leave out Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy, J.G. Farrell’s The Seige of Krishnapur, and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, all books that I found delightful and highly recommend. It always says something when I finish a book and want to read whatever else the author wrote – all of these books created that desire in me.
There were a few books that I revisited in 2008 and reviewed on the blog. They are as good as many of the books I found this year.
- An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard
- Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
And here are somet titles of books I read but didn’t review because they were pre-July. Some of the reviews might come in 2009.
- The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith. One of the funnest books I read. Exquisitely amoral.
- All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren. I thought this would be a painfully written, idealistic vision of American politics. Painfully written? Beautifully written, rather. Idealistic? Tragic.
- The Winter of Our Discontent, by John Steinbeck. This is my favorite Steinbeck, and it is probably the least like other Steinbeck books.
- The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin. Here’s my shout out to the nonfiction genre. Though I read many nonfiction books during the year, my passion lies in fiction, so I haven’t even reviewed one piece I’ve read. That is not on purpose. Had I read this one while writing my blog, I would have reviewed it.
Happy holidays!
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