1
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra (2015) – cross Tolstoy with David Mitchell and you begin to get close to what makes this novel of interlinked stories so unique and amazing.
2019 · Annual selections
Books of the Year 2019
Dear All,
47 flights taken; 55 novels read so far this year. Correlation or causation? In one of my non-fiction reads of the year, How Not To Be Wrong (by Joshua Ellenberg), this question is debated. The work says we should apply more common sense or ‘slow thought’ to solving the problems and deciphering the information with which we are presented. In these deeply uncertain times, this is wise advice.
Even if some of reading is “culture as class performance” where “literature [is] fetishized for its ability to take people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose journeys they liked to read about,” per Sally Rooney in another of my top reads of 2019 (Normal People), it still provides us with an incredibly useful framework.
2019 has been another vintage year both in terms of quality and quantity of works read. As ever, the list you will see below is highly eclectic, even if distinctly modern in terms of publication. To the extent there is a common theme that runs across the novels, then it would be one considering what it is to be human, and indeed ‘normal.’ There is an underlying Socratic principle that unexamined lives are simply not worth living. Many of the characters rightly show courage in their convictions and stand strong in the face of tyranny. Choosing and ranking the top-ten novels (which appear from favourite first) was far from simple, but here follows –
2
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (2014) – a work that you ‘inhabit’ more than read; a fine piece of speculative fiction where faith in the broadest sense is questioned.
3
The 7th Function of Language by Laurent Binet (2015) – authorial audacity, combining historic fact with page-turning crime fiction; a satire on intellectualism too.
4
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama (2012) – a cult Japanese novel about police corruption, a man’s personal struggle and the danger of applying simplistic labels to people.
5
Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash by Eka Kurniawan (2014) – a compulsive page-turner combining pulp fiction and magic realism, set in Indonesia.
6
Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018) – a coming of age novel set amidst class differences with some quite remarkable insights into human nature.
7
Applied Ballardiansim by Simon Sellers (2018) – J. G. Ballard may have died a decade ago, but his prophecies live on, merged here into a blend of fiction and critical theory.
8
Fear by Dirk Kurbjuweit (2013) – a gripping novel that asks troubling questions and poses intriguing moral dilemmas (I don’t want to give anything away).
9
Blood by Maggie Gee (2019) – a disturbing portrait of modern Britain by one of the country’s most under-appreciated authors.
10
The Last Samurai by Helen de Witt (2000) – an amazing novel of linguistic playfulness combined with the perennial quest narrative.
In terms of non-fiction, How Not To Be Wrong by Joshua Ellenberg (2014) and Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker (2017) were both stand-outs.