These are my books of the year, but none of them have been published this year. Obviously. I haven’t gone out and bought all the latest fiction hardbacks as soon as they hit the shelves.
These just happen to have been the best books I have read this calendar year, whether they were published one, ten, or 100 years ago.
1. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
In some ways this is a slight book in which, for the majority of its pages, very little happens. Eileen Dunlop lives with her alcoholic father, goes to work at the local prison, and makes a new friend. Eventually, something major does happen. But it’s not this incident which lingers. Rather, it’s the all-pervasive atmosphere of gloom and claustrophobia which lingers long after the book is back on the shelf. Probably the least-Christmassy book ever which set during the festive season, but none the worse for that.
2. The Muse by Jessie Burton
Sales of The Miniaturist are rocketing right now after the BBC adaptation over Christmas. But in many ways the author’s second novel is even more impressive than her debut. The sureness of touch remains in the writing, but the plot moves along with more pace, the scope is significantly grander, and the characters more engaging. Who would bet against another festive adaptation next year?
3. The Dust That Falls From Dreams by Louis de Bernieres
It must be extraordinarily hard for a writer to make the trenches of the First World War come alive in a way that hasn’t been done before. Sebastian Faulks and Pat Barker are just two of the authors to have mined that particular seam in recent years, and there surely can’t be much more to be written about the mud, the lice, the trench foot and the snipers,
And yet Louis de Bernieres (who also wrote about the war, specifically the Gallipolli campaign, in ‘Birds Without Wings’) manages to find more. Lots more. Partly it’s because his hero is a flying ace who sees the war from (literally) a very different perspective; partly it’s because the research is so rigorous; and partly it’s because he sets up the whole ‘perfect-family-about-to-be-torn-apart-by-war‘ thing so successfully.
4. This Must Be The Place by Maggie O’Farrell
Get ready to suspend your disbelief. A major film star manages to escape her life and start again, by the extremely simple method of moving to a cottage in Ireland. With kids in tow.
Sure, this seems highly unlikely to anyone who has ever seen ‘Hunted’, or indeed lived in the 21st century. No matter. Maggie O’Farrell makes you want the characters to pull everything back into place so much that you won’t care how they got there in the first place.
5. Roger’s Version by John Updike
To be honest, I think this might have been a re-read rather than a first read. I certainly didn’t remember the pages and pages of theological discussion, but it’s entirely possible I may have skipped them. To be fair, Updike does overplay the religious dialogue a tad. But it’s always rewarding to slip back into his world of academia, in this case in the 1980s, as theology professor Roger Lambert decides whether or not to have sex with his lascivious neice.
All By My Shelf 