Books of the Year 2024

Magpie by Elizabeth Day (2021): a powerful, intense and all-consuming psychological thriller which had me gripped from page one. I did not see the reveal coming and nor did I expect to cry at the novel’s conclusion.

Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang (2024): a perfect zeitgeist novel; a thriller with an academic dimension about the tenuous arc of fame and failure as a literary celebrity and the extents to which one may go to maintain the highs.

Reservoir by Livi Michael (2023): another work where I had absolutely no idea for most of the read how it would conclude, this is wonderful and plausible meditation on the accuracy and reliability of memory couched in the context of a conference on criminal behaviour.

Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor (2010): a symphonic work of absolute originality shining a needed light on society’s outcasts, their journeys to their current situations and the curious bonds formed between them.

The Drinker by Hans Fallada (1950): a shocking (and largely autobiographical) account of the descent of a businessman into alcoholism and insanity couched in the extreme ruthlessness of Nazi Germany and their treatment of ‘degenerates.’

Bournville by Jonathan Coe (2022): a humorous and poignant state-of-the-nation novel, depicting the changes in Britain from VE Day through to its 75th anniversary. Coe is excellent on the faults of Brexit while the pandemic section of the work is quite haunting.

Lord Jim at Home by Dinah Brooke (1973): this is a grotesque (and often quite scatological) account of the decline of the British establishment post-1945, with knowing acknowledgement to Conrad’s work referenced in the title. The upper classes are wonderfully skewered.

The Romantic by William Boyd (2022): a beautiful and believable fictional biography of Caskell Greville Price, a panoramic sweep of an age that poses the essential of question of how we came to be as we are and the extent to which our legacies will endure.

Victory City by Salman Rushdie (2023): a fabulous display of literary showmanship full of hallmark technique from an established author. As the narrator says, ‘the miraculous and everyday are two halves of a single whole.’

Space: The Human Story by Tim Peake (2023): the UK astronaut demystifies some of the marvels of space travel, narrating how much of the early process was simply made up on the spot and how conflicts continue to arise between space agencies and their pioneering astronauts. Ultimately, we are all humans with unbounded curiosity.

“Why We Read” edited by Josephine Greywoode (2021): a self-explanatory title, this short work published by Penguin contains the thoughts of 70 contemporary critical thinkers on the sheer joy attached every time to opening a book – whether fiction or non-fiction. There is little more pleasurable, albeit that this is preaching to the converted.

Hungry by Grace Dent (2020): a memoir about growing up as a child in the 1980s, the highs and lows of being a famous food critic and watching a loved one decline with dementia. This work was both humorous and deeply moving.