Pechorin's Journal

I know, everyone else published their best of posts ages ago. What can I say? It’s fashionable to be late.

2025 was a great reading year for me. I’ve winnowed down my best of list to a baker’s dozen of 13 titles, but that was distinctly not easy to do. I’ve also included a few honourable mentions at the bottom because it’s my blog and I can cheat if I want to.

Anyway, without further ado and in date I read them order until we get to my best of the year at the end, here’s my 2025 best of!

Best short story collection somehow making the terrible beautiful: given the trend in recent years for Latin American writers using horror short stories as a means to explore history this is a more hotly contested field than it used to be. The winner for me though is Isaac Babel’s absolutely tremendous Red Cavalry, translated by the marvellous Boris Dralyuk. Based on incidents from Babel’s own life, it features him travelling with the Soviet cavalry during the Polish-Soviet war circa 1920. It’s brutal and often uncomfortable, but also extraordinarily well written. Very highly recommended, but then what in my best of list won’t be?

It’s not actually clear to me by the way to what extent the Babel is actually fiction. My impression is the stories are basically true, but a bit tidied for publication. Any insights welcome.

Best memoir involving displacement and the benefits of celebrity: when I first read Teffi, one of her short story collections, I wasn’t that taken. Jacqui however gifted me this memoir of Teffi’s escape from Russia following their revolution and it is simply brilliant. Harrowing, again extremely well written, very human. It brings home the sheer chance that goes with who gets to tell their tale, plus the great advantage Teffi had in effectively being a celebrity of the period so having access to doors others couldn’t have opened. For all that, her journey is not an easy one. It is though an easy read. Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler so you know you’re in safe hands.

Best slim, bleak and ultimately horrifying novel: Badenheim 1939, by Aharon Appelfeld and translated by David R Godine. Appelfeld is a new author to me and what’s interesting here is much of the heavy lifting of the book’s atmosphere is done by the title. The Jewish population of an Austrian town are scheduled to be deported to Eastern Europe by the ‘Sanitation Department’. They respond in a variety of ways, many convincing themselves it won’t be so bad or even could be better. Of course, the title and our knowledge of history makes it quite plain what’s happening. A slim, quiet and devastating book.

[Edit: Apparently I got the translator wrong and should have credited Dalya Bilu.]

Best comic novel by an immensely underrated comic novelist, thankfully after all that bleakness: Of course it’s Barbara Pym with her simply wonderful Jane and Prudence. Vicars! Matchmaking! Love and life! It’s lovely. Pym should rightfully be up there with Wodehouse.

Best novel about music and totalitarianism: Speaking of underrated writers, here’s another. Julian Barnes became part of the literary establishment fairly early in his career which I think has led to him becoming a bit part of the furniture. He really is very good though. In the Noise of Time recreates three episodes from Shostakovich’s life and his interactions with Soviet power, opening with the real-life period where every night he waits outside his apartment with a suitcase so that if the secret police come to arrest him they won’t disturb his family. It’s surprisingly funny, because Barnes knows how to tell a sly joke, but also raises profound questions about the compromises people make to survive.

Best angry yet effervescent novel: Spring, by Ali Smith. I read her seasonal quartet seasonally, each book in the season to which it relates. Any of them could have made it into my end of year (except Winter which was 2024), but I chose Spring as I loved its mix of politics, outrage, humour, art and sheer playfulness. Smith is a fairly new discovery for me and already a favourite. Just loved this.

Best noir darker than a Black Forest Gateau in an unlit coal cellar: Speaking of recent discoveries, Dorothy B. Hughes is another author I’m fairly new to. This is a marvellous tale of intrigue and betrayal among European refugees in World War 2 era America. Hughes is one of the best noir writers I know, introduced to me I think by Jacqui Wine who’s read a fair bit of Hughes and a great discovery.

Best ancient world novel in modern vernacular: A narrower field than it should be this one, and a genre I didn’t know I wanted. Remarkably, Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits is a novel partly based on a real incident in the Ancient Greek colony of Syracuse. Captives of a defeated Athenian army are being kept in what is essentially a concentration camp in a local quarry. Two Syracusan likely lads decide to use them to put on a theatrical performance, because while they hate the Athenians they do love their writing. Even before you get to the language this is excellent, a story about war, atrocity, art and friendship. The language though! It’s written in modern Irish vernacular and it just sings. It brings ancient Syracuse to life as a real place, modern and of the moment. It’s just remarkable and was a solid candidate for my book of the year. It’s already won all the prizes though so doesn’t need one from me.

Best classic Chinese novel in a new translation: Monkey King, translated by Julia Lovell. This is so good. Funny, fresh, lively, one of the absolute classics of Chinese literature. Over 400 years old and still a delight. I know, something this old with its mix of magic and religion and myth isn’t the easiest sell, but trust me it’s great. I did compare translations and Lovell is to be complimented on how good hers is, how fluid and fresh.

That latter photo is a map from the frontispiece of the book.

Best novel about murder, fresh starts, pest control and responsibility for our actions: Time of the Flies, by Claudia Piñeiro and translated by Frances Riddle. Piñeiro is always a marvel and is pretty much always on my end of year lists. Here Inés has reinvented herself as a pest controller after finishing her sentence for the murder of her husband. A new client asks her to supply poison to be used in a fresh murder and offers a lot of money. Does the client have another agenda though? And anyway, can you really escape responsibility for a crime even if all you did was supply the means by which it could be carried out? Part of what’s so great about Piñeiro is her books while ostensibly crime are always about far more than the crime itself, and this is no exception.

Best novel about loneliness and the dangers of careless good intentions: A View of the Harbour, by the marvellous Elizabeth Taylor. And what a cover quote! I’ve not actually read much Taylor and I need to correct that because she is always great. I particularly liked this one. A coastal town out of season. Ordinary secrets and intertwined lives. Bertram, a retired naval officer who fancies himself a painter taking it upon himself to ‘help’ people then dropping them when he gets bored. It’s a quiet novel but incredibly well observed. I’ve also read Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont and At Mrs Lippincott’s. Recommendations for other Taylors to try gratefully accepted.

Best Halloween read but much more than that: Beyond Black, by Hilary Mantel. Lots of people have told me how good Mantel is and they were right. This was superb. A tale of a medium working the commuter towns near London along with her clever and perhaps a bit too controlling assistant. The ghosts are real, at least some of the psychics are, but underlying that are some very real-life hauntings of memory and past trauma. Despite the darkness at its core it’s often incredibly funny. Long but very rewarding and I absolutely considered making this my book of the year.

Best I have absolutely no idea actually what this is: The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read this due to a Backlisted podcast on it. It’s quite hard to describe. Essentially it’s an anxiety dream about a famous pianist who arrives at a Central European city to give a lecture they consider vital to their cultural reinvigoration. At every stage however things get in the way, he’s carried off course, new demands are placed on him and everything he tries is somehow frustrated. It’s very much a novel of those dreams where you’re writing an exam but nothing comes out on paper or you stand up to talk and discover you’re naked. It’s often highly disquieting and requires a bit of faith as for the first fifty pages or so I was fairly lost. Ishiguro though knows what he’s doing and despite the stress of it all it’s another one that manages often to be very funny. Just marvellous.

Max’s book of the year 2025, the best novel about 18th Century Polish Jewish life you’re likely to read for some time (if only because it’ll take some time to read it): The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Jennifer Croft. This is a truly vast novel. Less a book you read than one you inhabit. I read it in January ’25 by the way, which shows the impressive shadow it cast over the year. A (real-life) fake messiah emerges among the Jews of 18th Century Poland and leads a mass movement that sparks crackdowns and pogroms. This book bursts with life. It moves from smoky Polish shtetls in which Jews live in poverty later to growing wealth and periods in Vienna and beyond. It shows the growth of the Enlightenment. It’s incredibly rich. I know it sounds a hard sell. Not only is it 928 pages long it’s taller and deeper than most paperbacks meaning it’s actually longer than 928 pages sound. I had to keep a guide to Polish pronunciation handy so I could have a sense what the character names sounded like. It’s a very alien world in many ways, more so than most of the SF I’ve read. It is though an extraordinary achievement and I cannot praise it too highly (though interestingly Tony of Tony’s Reading List didn’t include it at all in his end of year list when he read it).

And that’s it! Some honourable mentions go out to Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford which is warm and funny and lovely; The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly which is a British Library Crime Classic set in a pottery factory with great characters and story; and to Days in the Caucasus which is a memoir of growing up in pre-Soviet and then suddenly-Soviet Azerbaijan that anyone who likes Teffi would love.

Late I know, but in case anyone is curious I thought I’d share my 2024 end of year list. I like to do these in January in case I have a great late December read, which this year I did!

So, without further ado, here we go! These aren’t in any particular order until we get to the end and my best of 2024 read.

Best SF crossover novel: In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes.

This is blisteringly good. It deservedly won the Arthur C. Clarke award, but reached far beyond SF to find a much wider readership. It did that because it’s extremely well written and works as a piece of literary fiction just as well as it does as SF. It’s very, very rare to pull both those off in the same book. I often say when I praise SF works that they’re not ones for those who’re new to SF. That isn’t true here. If you’ve no interest in SF at all you might well still enjoy this.

Best long-form Californian novel in verse: The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth.

Novels in verse are always a bit of a tough sell but this is just a delight. It’s a tale of some fairly ordinary twenty-somethings living in San Francisco in the 1980s. As you’d expect of Seth, it’s beautifully written, the characters are expertly drawn and at times it’s very funny. Very, very strongly recommended. Emma of Bookaround did a great review of this here. It took me a decade after reading Emma’s review to finally get round to this, but it was well worth the wait.

Best novel that’s simply lovely: Scattered All Over the Earth, by Yoko Tawada and translated by Margaret Mitsutani.

This is a charming tale set in a sort-of-future but not really. Japan has disappeared (this is totally not explained or explored) and Hiruko is the only person left with any real memory of it. Accompanied by a mixed group of friends she goes on a quest to find Japan, but as the cliché goes the real treasure is the friends we find along the way. The group is multi-national, multi-gender, multi-gender identity (if you have a thing about ‘woke’ this may not be the novel for you…) and their quest is utterly charming. Honestly it’s hard to oversell how lovely a book this is. There’s great reviews of this from both Radhika here and Tony here. I agree with Tony that it’s stronger than Tawada’s first novel (much as I enjoyed that) and I’m delighted to hear there’s a sequel.

Best novel featuring extraordinary architecture: Piranesi, by Susanna Clark.

I loved Susanna Clark’s epic Jonathan Strange & Dr Norrell which I continue to view as one of the few genuinely innovative fantasy novels. This is much shorter and in many ways much stranger than JS&DN, yet very readable. The main character, Piranesi, lives in a solitary world consisting of a seemingly endless house filled with great statues and the sea rushing in on the lower levels. It had me hooked right from the opening line: “When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule to witness the joining of the three Tides.” Piranesi believes he is one of only 15 people who have lived in the world, only one of whom known as “the Other” didn’t die years before.

Interestingly Piranesi is not an unreliable narrator, he’s scrupulously honest, but he is a very badly informed narrator. Part of the joy of this beautifully crafted novel is how much the reader can see that Piranesi can’t, but with the why remaining utterly unclear. The answers, when they come, are satisfying and the book as a whole is exceptionally well paced. Honestly this was very close to being my book of the year and even if the idea of reading fantasy makes you reach for your gun I’d still press it upon you.

Best absolutely harrowing but important read: My Fourth Time, We Drowned, Sally Hayden.

I tend to have two books on the go at any time. One is my main read, the other a bedtime read. I started this as a bedtime read. Don’t do that; I had nightmares.

This is the non-fiction account of the harrowing journeys faced by refugees coming across Africa into Libya and then hopefully onto Europe. It’s an extraordinary, harrowing and difficult read. Systematised torture and sexual assault, mass exploitation of vulnerable people, appalling abuses, often documented in the refugees own voices. This won the Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize and rightly so. It’s not an easy read but it is one of the few books I’ve ever read that changed how I see the world.

Best comic novel set in Cold War east Berlin: The Short End of the Sonnenalee, by Thomas Brussig and translated by Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson.

This is a very slim and very funny novel set prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Misha is a teenager living pretty much next to the wall, so close that when his first love letter is blown out of his hands by a gust of wind it lands in the death-strip between East and West. He didn’t even get it to see whether it was from the girl he has a crush on, or the one he definitely doesn’t but who does have a crush on him. It’s full of wonderful characters like the uncle who smuggles items over from the West but who always brings things you can already buy in the East…

There’s not huge plot here. It’s a mix of teenage pranks and a movie-style crush on a cool pretty girl who only goes out with boys from the West. Interestingly, while early on she seems not to have too much actual personality of her own and to just be a vehicle for his desires, later it becomes apparent that’s because you’re only seeing her through his image of her, and in fact she does have her own voice. It’s cleverly done. There’s a nice review of it on Lizzy Siddal’s blog here.

Best novel about how the past is another country and they do things differently there: A Little Luck, by Claudia Pineiro and translated by Frances Riddle.

Those who know me will know I’m a huge Pineiro fan. That hasn’t changed. Here the narrator, Mary, is travelling from America to Argentina to carry out a school inspection as part of an international accreditation scheme. What nobody knows but her is that the school is in the suburb she grew up in, her local school in fact, and while at first it’s not clear why she expects nobody there to recognise her. What is clear is that if they did that would be disastrous, as she did not leave on remotely good terms.

As ever with Pineiro it effortlessly combines page-turning readability with intelligence and genuine depth. Such a good writer.

Best epistolary novel: Lady Susan, by Jane Austen.

I had thought this was an incomplete work, whereas it’s just an early one. It’s far from peak Austen, but even lesser Austen is better than most and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The film adaptation, oddly titled Love & Friendship which is a totally different Austen story, is also excellent by the way.

Best novel with a highly questionable narrator: The Light of Day, by Eric Ambler.

Typically Ambler has his hero be some fine upright British chap drawn unsuspecting into international intrigue. I’m not knocking it, it works, though it gets to be a bit of an obvious device.

Here instead we have a British-Egyptian minor conman drawn way in over his head through his own greed. He’s greedy, petty, and not particularly bright. The result is huge fun as he finds himself working simultaneously for a gang of international criminals (possibly terrorists) and the Turkish secret police…

Best novel featuring intelligent cephalopods: The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler.

There’s actually more intelligent octopi and squid in SF than you might think so this is a potentially hotly contested category. This is a very good first contact novel where the ‘aliens’ are a group of intelligent octopi living off the coast of a Vietnamese island. The novel follows a marine biologist’s attempts to communicate, but the octopi aren’t that keen. In fact, they’re downright hostile possibly because to them were strange monsters coming from outside their world and destroying their habitat.

It becomes a novel about the nature of consciousness and of our relationship with the environment. Genuinely exciting SF. There’s a very good Guardian review here.

Best novel that was much better than I ever thought it would be: A Room With A View, by EM Forster.

For some reason I’ve long thought of EM Forster as a rather worthy novelist. No idea why. Like most classics there’s a reason his books are still read.

I’m not sure this one needs any introduction, but I found it lively, funny, and richly human. I’ve been missing out and I’ll definitely be reading more Forster. If you’ve not tried him this is one of the shorter ones and it worked very well for me as an entry to his work.

Best Rabelaisian read: Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, by Matthias Enard and translated by Frank Wynne.

Enard is always great and this is no exception. This is an initially straightforward tale of a young anthropologist ensconced in deepest rural France to investigate local customs, but before too long it’s a raucous and dizzying examination of mortality, morality, suffering and pleasure. For a novel in which death is ever present it’s rammed through with life, not least in the extraordinary banquet sequence of the title.

This is an end of year summary so I can’t remotely do justice to this seemingly sprawling yet actually carefully crafted novel. Fortunately, I don’t need to as Radhika has written well about it here. As ever with Enard, clever and rewarding.

Drumroll please! Max’s best book of 2024: For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain, by Victoria Mackenzie

Such. A. Good. Book. This is a novel about the historical encounter between 14th century English mystics Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, both women in an age when women’s voices were not generally heard. Their’s were.

Julian was an anchoress, highly educated, well respected, though being a woman she had to hide her writings about her visions. Margery by contrast was an illiterate merchant’s wife prone to bouts of prolific sobbing and subjected to accusations of heresy. Margery dictated her life and visions to a scribe, making both her and Julian rare insights into medieval mysticism from a female perspective.

Both women’s voices are sharply drawn and utterly distinct. In a very slim novel Mackenzie brings the concerns of fourteenth century England and of these women to vivid life. It’s tremendously well done.

I appreciate a meeting between medieval mystics may not sound like much of a page-turner, but it’s my best of the year for a reason and against some very stiff competition.

And there you have it! Honourable mentions go out to Alexander Lerner-Holenia’s Count Bagge, JA Baker’s The Peregrine and Roberto Bolano’s rather good The Skating Rink, but hard choices had to be made…

July and August were pretty great reading months. There were a few that didn’t quite hit the mark for me, but many more that did.

Project chunkster continued, helped by a July holiday in Italy with lots of train journeys. Then in August I did WiTMonth again . I still find it rewarding and it pushes me to broaden my reading.

JULY

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

Love that cover.

What a book! I mean, what an absolutely brilliant book! And so unexpected too. This has quite a daunting reputation but really undeserved. Mostly it’s a rambling shaggy dog tale with Ishmael sharing his thoughts on life, whaling and whatever else crosses his mind.

We’re 100 pages in before Ahab even makes an appearance, and the whale doesn’t turn up until you’re near the end of the book. I’d thought the whole thing was grim pursuit, and that’s in there but it takes its time to set out the characters and their world and that pays dividends as it starts to accelerate.

At times it’s very funny and Ishmael is a wonderful narrator, not least for his habit of creating his own pseudo-academic categorisations of types of whales none of which are borne out by any kind of real science even of the time. His bromance, and frankly quite possibly outright romance, with Queequeg is nicely observed and there’s just a richness here which is really rewarding.

Oh, and Call me Ishmael isn’t the first line. There’s a whole bunch of whale-related quotes and an in-book foreword. You’re quite a few pages in before you get to Call me Ishmael. So one of the most famous first lines in literature it turns out isn’t.

Anyway, it’s genuinely brilliant. I’m sorry if you had to study it in school and that spoiled it for you because it’s just such a good book. Rather obvious trigger warning though of cruelty to animals – the scenes where they hunt and kill whales are genuinely hard reading. On the plus side it does mean that when the clash with the White Whale does arrive I was pretty sure which side I was on…

Saint Peter’s Snow, by Leo Perutz and translated by Eric Mosbacher

At first I thought this was translated by the translation fairy, since Pushkin rather shamefully don’t seem to have named the translator anywhere in the book. I eventually found the actual translator on their website. Anyway, that aside this is a marvellous psychological thriller about a man who may have discovered a terrible conspiracy threatening Europe or may just have suffered severe hallucinations following a traffic accident.

This becomes a clever psychological study, a proper page-turning read and quite a nice observation of the forces pushing the rise of fascism in the early 20th Century. It’s my second Perutz and like his Master of the Day of Judgment highly, highly recommended.

I was reminded of how Pushkin Press used to regularly reintroduce lost European treasures to the English speaking world. I think that mission may have moved on but it’s nice to see it still occasionally happens.

The Dark Forest, by Liu Cixin and translated by Joel Martinsen

Second of Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem trilogy, and for me now that I’ve finished probably the weakest (though that’s often the case for the middle book of trilogies).

In the first book, humanity discovers it’s not alone. Our nearest neighbouring system contains an advanced civilisation and unfortunately it’s not friendly. The thing is, statistically that’s incredibly unlikely. Space is vast and there are around 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone (many more by some counts). Unless civilisations are extremely common the odds are pretty high against there being one right next door.

The Dark Forest answers that question and in the gloomiest way possible. Here, civilisations are in fact extremely common. They’re just also extremely quiet and for very, very good reason. Letting anyone know where you are is a great way to go extinct (this is also a real world theory by the way, and if correct not a good one for us as a species).

If you’re not already intimately familiar with the Fermi Paradox then this isn’t the book for you. If you are though there’s some great ideas. Characterisation isn’t a strength, but nor is it really the point of this kind of novel.

Kick the Latch, by Kathryn Scanlan

Slight change of pace and distinctly more down to earth. I had to be talked into reading this one as I’ve not only no interest in horse racing, I’m actually a bit hostile to it on animal welfare grounds. A novelisation then of the life of a racetrack trainer wasn’t an obvious read for me.

Jacqui finally pushed me over the line to read this, but honestly I’m very much last to the party and a lot of people have already talked about how great it is. And it really is. It’s spare, lean prose is absolutely captivating and brings out a life and a world (and a world in many ways more alien to me than that of Cixin Liu’s aliens). Don’t let the subject matter put you off. This is the good stuff. Here‘s Jacqui’s review and here‘s Radz Pandit’s which I also thought very good.

Last Summer in the City, by Gianfranco Calligarich and translated by Howard Curtis

This is another one I can thank Jacqui for. It’s a lovely slice of Dolce Vita-esque Italian drama and a great summer read, if not perhaps a terribly cheery one. It’s also translated by Howard Curtis which if you know your translators is definitely a good sign.

It’s a well written story of a romance between two people both of whom are lost and perhaps too far gone to save each other. It’s melancholic, even despairing, but beautiful. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes Alfred Hayes as there’s some tonal similarities. Jacqui’s review is here (and looking at it again I see Jacqui also made that Alfred Hayes connection).

Termush, by Sven Holm and translated by Sylvia Clayton

I loved this. It’s another reason why July was such a strong month. It’s a Swedish novel about the rich survivors of a nuclear war, safely ensconced in a luxury hotel. It was first published over fifty years ago, but in its examination of 1%ers trying to opt-out of the end of the world it’s sadly surprisingly relevant.

There’s a surreality to the situation – the hotel management taking care of guests who’ve paid for a package to keep them safe while billions die. What next though once the apocalypse has happened? What sense does this transaction make when there’s no longer an economic system underpinning it? And what happens when other survivors who didn’t pay turn up to this bolthole asking for help?

Jacqui’s review here is excellent (it’s clearly link to Jacqui week for me). While this is technically SF it’s very much about people and situation rather than concept and would make a very good autumn/winter read.

Ten Planets, by Yuri Herrera and translated by Lisa Dillmann

Yuri Herrera is one of my favourite authors and Lisa Dillmann is a hugely talented translator (and well done And Other Stories for putting her name on the cover). All the more of a shame then that I really didn’t take to this.

Basically it’s a Borgesian short story collection, using fantastical elements to play games with language, character and situation. Grant makes an interesting comparison to Stanislaw Lem here which also makes sense to me.

Unfortunately I just found it slim stuff. I’ll still pick up Herrera’s next with interest and enthusiasm, but for me clearly he’s a novelist and essayist rather than short story writer.

AUGUST

The Twilight Zone, by Nona Fernandez and translated by Natasha Wimmer

I loved Nona Fernández’ novel Space Invaders so no great surprise I loved this too. It’s a sort of autofiction but about someone other than the author, here a torturer who became a whistleblower of the atrocities behind Argentina’s disappearances.

It’s a difficult, powerful and angry read but for me was quite breathtaking. It lifts the veil on horror, not the horror of ghosts and monsters and all that but the real horror of state-sponsored murder and systematised brutality.

Not an easy read, but a rewarding one and as Grant says in his insightful review here it avoids the trap of becoming merely accusatory. Instead it tries to understand, both the times and the people involved. Superb.

The Dry Heart, by Natalia Ginzburg and translated by Francis Frenaye 

I’ve been wanting to read Ginzburg for a while now and this seemed a good way in, partly as it’s quite slim but also because it has a tremendous opening. It’s an examination of why the narrator murdered her husband (she does it on the first page, it’s not a spoiler), and through that of her life and their relationship.

It’s a sparsely written novel of a woman trapped by her times and society who escapes through marriage only to find herself trapped by that too. It’s horribly sad. Were it true it’s easy to imagine how the narrator would be demonised by the press, and to be fair she does commit murder, but the choices available to her never led to anywhere worth going.

Our Lady of the Nile, by Scholastique Mukasonga and translated by Melanie Mauthner

This is why I like WiTMonth. I’d had this tale of tensions at a private girl’s school in 1990s Rwanda for a while but hadn’t got round to reading it. My mistake because it’s very well written and has that marvellous thing where you take an enclosed environment – a hotel, a school, a boarding house – and it becomes a microcosm of wider society.

Our Lady explores colonial legacies, the value placed on women, and class and ethnic tensions. It’s has memorable characters and a good exploration of how a few strong-willed chancers can drive people to terrible outcomes. Stu wrote a bit more about this here.

Celestial Bodies, by Jokha Alharthi and translated by Marilyn Booth

This wasn’t my book but the fault was mine rather than Jokha Alharthi’s. It’s a multi-generational family saga and that’s simply never been a genre that interests me, even when as here it’s well done.

We follow three generations of Omani women seeing both the changing role of women in Omani society and the changes to Oman itself. I’ve actually been to Oman a couple of times by the way and it’s lovely and very chill, so even if this wasn’t quite me I do still recommend the country.

Grant wrote about this here and his reaction was very similar to mine. It’s skilled and to use Grant’s phrase there’s a great deal of craft, but it’s telling a family’s story and that’s just not something I’ve ever been that interested in. A good book then that deserved the attention it received, but not my book.

Ms Ice Sandwich, by Mieko Kawakami and translated by Louise Heal Kawai

I absolutely loved Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven and I felt like something bite-size after the saga that is Celestial Bodies, so this Kawakami novella felt just right. It’s the story of a boy who has a crush on a woman who works at a sandwich counter, and so it’s a story about growing up.

The boy has a girl he’s friends with but he misses her signals that maybe she’d like more. His grandmother is bedridden and he’s coming to terms with the idea of losing her soon. The sandwich woman is safe in all this because in a sense she’s not real, she’s a dream he’s built around a woman he knows nothing about, but underneath his idea of her there is of course an actual person.

It’s much slighter than Heaven and less memorable, but I enjoyed it and I thought the narrative voice captured early adolescence well. Tony was perhaps a little less taken in his review here. Not prime Kawakami then, but worth a read.

The Forgery, by Ave Barrera and translated by Ellen Jones and Robin Myers

My last read in August and an absolute delight. It’s a tale of an artist trapped by debt into forgery and then literally trapped by his rich but very dodgy patron. It’s huge fun, from a cliffhanger opening to the series of unlikely yet somehow inevitable events which draw our hero Jose in far, far over his head.

Barrera writes well on art and architecture, both of which are central to this, but it’s the characters that make it sing. Grant writes well about this here and I think it has a good chance of making my end of year list.

And that was my Summer reading! Not bad and nor was Autumn, but that’s my next post…

Another mixed bag of a month. The June chunkster isn’t below as though it took a fair bit of June reading time I didn’t finish it until July.

Rosewater Insurrection, Tade Thompson

Second volume of Tade Thompson’s rather good Rosewater trilogy. Nigeria-based sf with genuinely alien aliens and great human characters.

Thompson is a talent and this was up to his usual high standards. I particularly enjoyed the political struggles between a populist mayor and the national government. Aliens may land, our survival as a species can be threatened, but politics continues through it all.

Familiar Things, Hwang Sok-Yong (translated by Sora Kim-Russell)

This was a June highlight. It’s a Korean novel about a 13-year old boy who goes to live with his mother on an island rubbish dump (the now ironically named Flower Island). They join a community of rubbish pickers who are paid to sort through the waste. The higher your status the better the waste you have access to…

The book showcases people living at the absolute margins without ever losing sight of their humanity. Impressively, it does so without becoming too heavy handed or at all mawkish. In fact it’s quite an engaging read.

There’s a supernatural element in the form of the ancient spirits of the island who are increasingly crowded out by the ever expanding refuse. It works well both straight as a twist to an otherwise realist narrative and metaphorically as an emblem of our impact on our environment.

The characters are well drawn and their dramas are small but involving. Overall, I really liked it. Tony of Tony’s Reading List does a good review of this here and I do recommend you read his piece.

The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin (translated by Ken Liu)

This is one of the most influential sf books in years and one that introduced a vast array of Western readers to contemporary Chinese sf. This is big screen stuff about first contact and the nature of intelligence in the cosmos.

In many ways it’s like classic American sf of the 50s and 60s with all the good and bad that implies. Deep ideas, shallow characters. If you enjoy old school sf you may well enjoy this. If you don’t, you won’t.

Sidewalks, Valeria Luiselli (translated by Christina MacSweeney)

After mega-scale Chinese SF I needed something a little more down to Earth. I chose this slim but enjoyable essay collection by Valeria Luiselli. Tony in his review here uses the word musings and I think that’s a good description. The pieces here are light, bite-size even, yet pleasantly discursive.

It’s a little hard to say what it’s about. There is an often melancholic theme even though it’s not a sad read. Bicycling comes up a fair bit. Cities and travel. It’s like a walk with an interesting friend sharing what’s on their mind.

As well as Tony’s review linked to above, Jacqui did a good review of this here. Unlike Tony and Jacqui I probably won’t return to it but I’m happy to have read it.

The Sing of the Shore, Lucy Wood

Lucy Wood is a Cornish writer that I’m something of a fan of but who nobody else on the blogosphere seems to read. You’re missing out!

This is a slightly more grounded collection than Wood’s debut Diving Belles. There’s less of the mythic elements that worked so well there and more of the everyday issues facing Cornwall, in particular the impact of seasonal employment and getting priced out of your own community by second-home owners.

For all that, my favourite story was the darkly comic A Year of Buryings in which an unnamed and likely ghostly narrator comments on the various random deaths over a year. Some entries are just a sentence long (“Lenny always said he’d fix that loose rung on his ladder.”) Most are around a paragraph.

If you pay attention there are connections between the stories, making the whole greater than the parts. Lucy Wood for me is under appreciated and I look forward to whatever she does next.

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler (narrated by Ray Porter)

This is an accidental reread. I noticed I had an audiobook of it so thought I’d listen to a few minutes to see what it was like.

Obviously I finished it. It’s Chandler. Such good prose and it simply never gets old. Read (or listen to) a page and it’s hard not to read all of them.

Ray Porter did the vocals on the audiobook version (I moved between audiobook and kindle copy, though I’ve also a hardcopy because it’s The Big Sleep). I thought he did a pretty good showing of it though sadly his version doesn’t appear to be on the Audible store anymore. Anyway, it’s The Big Sleep and it’s one of my all time favourite novels.

This is arguably a little late coming out. Still, here we are.

May was a mixed month. One book carried over from April that I loved, a couple that I liked, then several I really didn’t connect with. Still, the one I loved was very good so overall it wasn’t too bad.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke

This was my April/May chunkster and it was an excellent one. It’s a fantasy novel set in an alternative early 19th Century (basically Austen but with faery). It is quite genuinely one of the most innovative fantasy novels in years. It expands the genre. Most fantasy fiction, good or not, is of interest only to existing fantasy fans. This I would recommend to those with no other interest – it’s a landmark. It’s also often very funny which helps the pages speed by.

Top tip, this is one to read in hardcopy rather than ebook or audiobook. The reason is it’s full of footnotes citing made up historical references or providing commentary. They’re where a lot of the humour lies and they just don’t work as well outside of print.

Grief is the Thing With Feathers, Max Porter

I read Ted Hughes’ Crow ahead of this. It’s a short novel where a family deal with grief following the loss of the wife and mother. A crow, perhaps real, more likely metaphoric, moves in and brings with it disorder and emotional chaos.

Lots of people absolutely love this. Unfortunately it wasn’t me and I don’t remember enough of it to really say much.

Men in Space, Tom McCarthy

Another I can’t really recall much of, save that I didn’t finish it. While I enjoyed his Remainder, it’s becoming clear to me that I’m not Tom McCarthy’s reader.

This one is a sort of shaggy dog tale set in Eastern Europe, but through a modernist lens. For me it needed a bit more propulsion, but in fairness that’s me wanting a book other than the one McCarthy set out to write.

Belt Three, John Ayliff

I needed a bit of light relief after Feathers and Space so read this short sf first novel by game designer John Ayliff. Earth and the rest of the inner solar system have been destroyed by self-replicating alien machines that are slowly moving outwards threatening the surviving remnants of humanity. Society has stratified into a large slave-clone population and their natural-born elite masters. One such clone, masquerading as his former master, falls in with a pirate obsessed with attacking the invaders.

It’s actually pretty good. There’s perhaps a few too many unlikely escapes from peril, but the setup was interesting and I liked the utter indifference of the enemy and the bleakness of the setting (the implication is very strongly that this isn’t targeted at us, it’s everywhere and only just now reached us).

Atlas of Remote Islands, Judith Schalansky

This is absolutely charming. It is literally an atlas of fifty remote islands. For each there’s a diagram, a timeline of events in the island’s history, and a bit of evocative text. Many of the islands are uninhabited. It’s an exercise of imaginary travel and there’s something very likeable about it.

John Self wrote a review of this back in the day here. He rightly pulls out the understated theme of climate change and environmental damage that runs through the text, perhaps unavoidably so. Even with that it remains quite charming and it is beautifully produced. Highly recommended.

One Day all this Will Be Yours, Adrian Tchaikovsky

I thought I’d end the month with ever-reliable and ever-inventive sf author Adrian Tchaikovsky. Well, I say ever-reliable but while this was inventive I didn’t much like it so he’s now demoted to mostly-reliable Adrian Tchaikovsky…

Our hero is a survivor of the time war living in a sort of no-when because we broke the timeline. That’s fine and quite fun. Then he discovers that time isn’t as ended as he thinks and finds himself in a very personal war against a woman that travel to the future shows he will fall in love with. He’s no intention of letting that happen.

It’s actually a pretty good set up and in fairness looking at Amazon I’m about the only person who doesn’t like this. I just found the wisecracking tone a bit smug and samey (but then it is essentially an sf rom-com). Otherwise though 1,361 ratings on Amazon as at the time of writing and almost all of the very few negative ones are just complaining about the price rather than the book itself so I’m very clearly an outlier here.

And that’s it! I’ll try to get June and July up before the end of August, but I make no promises…

Late I know, but I was ill and I’ve been busy. I’m no longer ill, though still pretty busy. Even so, the ever-growing TBR pile won’t read itself.

April had lots of enjoyable reading, dominated by a book that’ll actually be in my May roundup. My year of long books project continues and some of those books are long enough they straddle months…

More on that soon. In the meantime, here’s the books I did finish in April.

The Fell, Sarah Moss

Sarah Moss has been on a bit of a roll recently with short and highly topical novels. She’s mastered a neat trick of books that are very rewarding as narratives in their own right, but that also have deeper contemporary resonances. Ghost Wall deals in issues of resurgent nationalism; Summerwater speaks to Brexit and xenophobia.

The Fell explores our recent collective experience of lockdown. Kate is in her 40s with a teenage son and going stir crazy. One night she decides to go out for a run on the local fells. It’s a breach of lockdown rules and if she’s caught there’s potentially serious fines. While out, she slips, falls, and needs rescuing.

It’s a brilliant scenario. We get her perspective, her son’s wondering whether to call for help as it gets later and later, her next door neighbour and a volunteer rescue worker. It’s tense, Kate will die if she’s not found in time, but more than that it captures something elusive about a time that already seems to be being almost wilfully forgotten. That sense of everyday dread, eroded trust, but also of the extraordinary efforts some made to keep others safe.

I loved Ghost Wall, liked Summerwater (though I remember it very clearly which speaks well of it). Here I think Moss is on top form and if you can bear to revisit 2020 I’d strongly recommend this.

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen

I adored this. It’s easily the funniest book I’ve read in a while. It’s a satire on the gothic novel featuring Catherine, who being a young woman of no particular distinction is an unlikely heroine. The novel largely consists of her staying a while in Bath, visiting a country house with a very welcoming family, and taking some carriage rides out with a young man who is perhaps fonder of himself than he is of her.

What makes it so fun? Because everything is written in the most portentous and dramatic style, but then nothing much really happens. The author’s voice will warn that Catherine little knows what dire consequence may soon befall her, then next chapter she’s fine because actually nothing has happened. What is the dark secret of Northanger Abbey? There isn’t one, it’s a perfectly pleasant place.

It’s probably fair that this isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Emma or P&P, but it’s still masses of fun. Also, it’s quite short. I’m not sure it’s best as first Austen, but it’s certainly not just one for completists.

Territory of Light, Yuko Tsushima (translated by Geraldine Harcourt)

A young mother moves into a top floor apartment with her toddler daughter. She’s separated from the father and making a new life. The apartment has massive windows and is flooded with light, hence the title.

This is one of those novels where in a sense not much happens. The woman struggles to adapt to being a single parent, has to juggle work and childcare, suffers from isolation and perhaps depression. That’s life though sometimes isn’t it? It’s a situation as worthy of exploring as any other. Most importantly though it’s beautifully, superbly written.

This is a clear candidate for my end of year list. Jacqui wrote about it here and captures it well. Very, very highly recommended.

The Hunter, Richard Stark

Slight change of style and pace. This is the first of the Parker novels, there’s over twenty of them. Parker is a career criminal left for dead by one of his crew. He wants his money and he wants revenge, and he doesn’t care that the guy who betrayed him is now a somebody in ‘the ‘The Outfit’.

What follows is a brutal and propulsive thriller. Parker is essentially an animal, amoral and savage. He takes what he wants and god help anyone who gets in his way. It’s very much a man’s world, women aren’t treated well or given much agency. Then again anybody who’s not a criminal is basically an extra. I wouldn’t call it literature, but it’s great pulp (as you’d expect, given Richard Stark is really Donald E. Westlake).

Shards of Earth, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Space opera! I can’t recall why I picked this up next but I enjoyed it. It’s over 500 pages and the first of a trilogy which is a bit daunting, but Tchaikovsky is very good at big-screen SF.

In the far future, much of human space including Earth itself has been destroyed by massive planetary sized alien craft of unknown origin. The war ended leaving a shattered humanity, but is the enemy now returning? Of course they are or there wouldn’t be a trilogy. If this is the sort of thing you like then you will definitely like this. If you’re SF-curious this probably isn’t the place to start.

Hotel, Joanna Walsh

This is an interesting one. On its surface it’s a book about hotels, mostly high end ones. In fact it’s more a mix of memoir and reflection about the narrator’s failing/failed marriage. The book consists of vignettes, postcards even, featuring at times Freud and his patient Dora and other famous hotel-guests.

If you were to read any of it as an excerpt it might be amusing. Collectively it becomes terribly sad. What is home after a major break-up? Whatever it may become in future, in the immediate aftermath you’re in a non-place surrounded by seemingly familiar objects robbed of comfort.

Suspicion, Friedrich Dürrenmatt (translated by Joel Agee)

There are two Inspector Barlach novels and I was something of an outlier in not enjoying the first, which I found contrived. No such concerns with the second.

Inspector Barlach discovers evidence that a prominent doctor may in fact be a Nazi war criminal and determines to bring him to justice. He does this by the arguably imprudent tactic of submitting himself to the doctor’s care as a patient in his clinic. What could go wrong?

I’ll leave you to find that out for yourself if you’ve not already read it. As with the first novel, but for me much more successfully, it becomes an examination of moral choice and of moral purpose versus nihilism. It’s also a very tense read as Barlach becomes perilously aware quite how vulnerable a position he’s put himself in.

And that’s it! I’ll try not to leave it too long before writing up May.

In just before the end of April!

My 2023 goal of reading longer books continues, which means that while I read a fair bit in March there’s not that many titles to talk about. It is satisfying though to have engaged with some really lengthy works and it makes a change from my usual reading and my fondness for novellas and short novels.

So, without further ado:

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (translated by Rosamund Bartlett)

I had mixed views on War and Peace. You’re not really supposed to say that, but it’s true. It was rich, epic, but also had lengthy non-fiction sections where Tolstoy shared his ideas on historical theory which sometimes robbed it of momentum.

No such concerns with Anna Karenina. This is an extraordinary and rewarding work packed with complex and fascinating characters. Bartlett’s translation is lively and I highly recommend it. She avoids ‘smoothing’ Tolstoy’s prose where the original was jarring or repetitive. (It was an intentional technique on his part, often ‘tidied’ by translators. Lispector has had the same issue).

Seriously, this is superb. Yes it’s a classic of Russian literature which can be a bit daunting, but the pages flew by. Money back guarantee if you don’t like it*.

Thanks to Guy whose post here made me pick up this translation.

Intimacies, Lucy Caldwell

Lucy Caldwell is a fairly recent discovery for me. She’s a Northern Irish writer and an absolute master of the short story form (apparently her recent novel is pretty good too).

This collection is about parenthood, motherhood really, and it’s exceptional. I don’t have kids and barring surprising advances in science it’s pretty unlikely I’ll ever be a mother. Even so, the sheer quality of the writing, the emotional intelligence and the ability to see the drama of the everyday meant that I absolutely loved this.

Further info in Jacqui’s review here.

Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez (translated by Megan McDowell)

I loved both of Mariana Enriquez’ short story collections, but even so like many I was taken aback when she went from short stories to a 700+ page behemoth.

Enriquez is still using horror to explore Argentina’s past, but on a larger scale. A cult dedicated to an entity known as the Darkness lives in extraordinary wealth and privilege, sacrificing children and perpetrating horrors to maintain their position. The Darkness devours its sacrifices, who literally disappear into it never to be seen again. What could that be referencing?

The story opens following a medium, Juan, a large and handsome man and a skilled sorcerer. The cult depend on him as he can summon the Darkness which is key to their rituals. They believe that they can use the Darkness to achieve immortality by passing their consciousnesses on to children’s bodies, and they plan either to transfer Juan’s into his son Gaspar’s body or to make Gaspar into their pawn in Juan’s place.

Gaspar later becomes a character in his own right as we see him grow up and the slow battle between the cult and Juan over Gaspar’s future unfold. I enjoyed this, but then I enjoy horror. Here I think the horror elements are more to the fore than the social and historical aspects. The metaphors are clear enough, but on this scale you’re spending more time in the actual situation of the characters than what it reflects in Argentinian history.

Oddly, most reviews I’ve seen have taken it as read that the immortality thing works. That’s not in the novel though. Juan is concerned it might but there’s no clear evidence it will, just that his son will be harmed as the cult tries. For him the Darkness is a mad god, if it’s even an entity at all, forever hungry and he believes the prophetic messages the cult think they receive from it are just self-delusion. It makes for a more ambiguous book and perhaps a better one, since the cult’s real motive is more plainly perpetuating their own power.

As is probably apparent by now, it’s a hard one to sum up. I enjoyed it which is good at over 700 pages, but I’m not sure it actually needed all that space or quite what the point of it all was. I’ll definitely read more Enriquez but I hope she goes a bit smaller scale next time.

Final caution, this very much is horror. It involves scenes that are genuinely difficult to read including the torture and maiming of children. The passages of real world historical barbarism are no better than the cult’s magic-fuelled psychopathy, which of course is intentional. If you do decide to try this one, be prepared for some strong content.

And that’s my March reading! Few books, but rewarding ones.

*Terms and conditions apply. Cash refunds may be replaced with unsatisfying apologies at blogger’s discretion.

This is my year of reading longer books and so far that’s going ok. I’ve gone back to Proust who I hadn’t read since 2018. I’ve also gone back to Tolstoy and I’ve just finished Maria Enriquez’ rather huge Our Share of Night.

That does mean there’ll likelier be fewer books in each of these updates, but hopefully some very good books.

Emma, Jane Austen

I mean what is there to say? Firstly I suppose that it really is very, very good. It’s tremendously well written, remains very readable and is often pretty funny too. Mr Wodehouse’s utter solipsism is particularly hilarious.

Anyway, highly recommended. I know it’s not exactly original to recommend Austen’s Emma, but there’s a reason this remains so popular.

The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville

China Miéville is an immensely talented writer of what for want of a better term I’ll call literary fantasy (though I think he’d just say fantasy). Miéville avoids tired post-Tolkien pastiche, instead embracing the freedom that use of the fantastic can bring.

Here we’re in a world where the Second World War has continued after 1945. Something strange happened in Paris, giving life to figures and symbols from surrealist art and creating a nightmare city where surviving Nazi forces battle impossible beings. The novel follows a French resistance fighter as he wearily continues his small part of the war while working with one such creature, the elegant corpse as shown on the cover art.

If you’ve any knowledge of surrealism it’s a lot of fun, and honestly it is if you don’t too plus there’s an appendix which explains the many references. Don’t let the fantasy label put you off here – this is a clever novel which deserves a wider readership.

The Captive, Marcel Proust (translated by Scott, Moncrieff and Kilmartin)

Gosh this gets dark. I had no idea. In this volume the narrator effectively imprisons his girlfriend Albertine in his apartment, obsessively tracking her movements and interrogating her friends and driver out of an obsessive jealousy. He is manipulative and controlling, more focused on preventing Albertine having any life than having one of his own.

Emma at bookaround describes this here as claustrophobic, and it’s absolutely the right word. It’s a very difficult read, as you’re absolutely immersed page after page after page in what is frankly a sick mind.

Emma is great on how this works in the French, which is fascinating. It’s the language of property and of domination, not of love. The irony, and again Emma touches on this, is that in imprisoning Albertine he imprisons himself too. Life as her jailer is too all-consuming to allow time for anything much else. He disappears from society because to take part in it would mean stopping his ceaseless observation of Albertine.

As ever I love Proust as a writer, but this is one of those where the quality of the writing if anything makes it even harder to read. I suspect most readers don’t get this far or I’d expect more discussion of quite how extraordinarily challenging this volume is.

Tokyo Express, Seichō Matsumoto (translated by Jesse Kirkwood)

After the Proust I needed some light relief. This is a lovely Penguin imprint of a classic Japanese murder mystery. It’s actually one that could only take place in Japan in fact, because the entire plot hangs on the intricacies of the Japanese rail system and whether or not a suspect’s alibi stands up or if somehow they could have used the rail network to cross the country in time to commit the crime.

Once in Japan I was on a platform where a train was 30 seconds late. People got restive, checked their watches, looked concerned. In the UK I think we still define within 15 minutes as being on time. It’s fair to say this novel’s plot wouldn’t work in Britain.

It’s fun, well written and absolutely classic golden age crime stuff. Stu did a nice write-up of it here. If you’ve any liking for the genre you’ll like this. Also, did I mention it’s a lovely imprint? Penguin have done Matsumoto proud.

Italian Ways, Tim Parks

Continuing with the trains theme, this is a non-fiction book by novelist and academic Tim Parks in which he explores the culture of his native Italy through its railway system. It sounds dry but is actually often very funny, and if you’ve spent any decent length of time in Italy you’ll recognise a lot that he discusses.

Parks has written several books about Italy. For me this was one of his best. Perfect if you have an Italian holiday coming up involving some rail travel…

Sisters, Daisy Johnson

After all that light relief I was ready for some dark again. Who better than Daisy Johnson? After all, I liked both her short story collection Fen and her first novel Everything Under. Johnson is a very physical writer, bringing out the body and all its mess in her fiction. Here she uses gothic horror to examine the relationship between two sisters, one dominant, manipulative and daring and the other shyer and more cautious.

Johnson is never less than interesting as a writer, but for me this wasn’t quite the right book at the right time. It’s well written and I see why people are excited by it, but it wasn’t me. It is though another interesting example of the recent trend of female writers successfully using the horror genre to explore psychological and societal issues.

The Judge and his Hangman, F. Dürrenmatt 

Time for a bit more crime. Here we have a Swiss classic from 1950. A police officer is found shot dead in his car. Inspector Barlach, terminally ill with stomach cancer, leads the investigation.

Initially it seems straightforward enough. Barlach is a highly experienced detective but with personal problems in the form of his illness and a perception that he’s past his prime, all of which impact his investigation. Quickly however, it becomes apparent this is less a murder mystery and more a moral inquiry.

Jacqui wrote about this here and talks about the dilemma at the heart of it. For me, it didn’t quite work. I thought the whole scenario just a bit too unlikely and the killer a bit incredible in his motivations. Jacqui llked it much more and to be fair this isn’t entirely my genre, so I’d encourage you to read Jacqui’s review.

Stealing for the Sky, Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts is one of the more intelligent SF writers about today. His books often push genre boundaries and display a sharp intelligence with a keen sense of people and their motivations (many SF writers are much better on the science than they are the fiction, Roberts can do both).

This is the lighter side of Roberts. It’s an intentional homage to Richard Stark’s novels with a Parker-esque near-future hero who’s been paid to steal an ex-soviet rocket capable of getting a new micro-state its own spaceflight capability. It’s fast moving high-octane stuff and lots of fun. It leaves very clear room for a sequel and I’ll definitely read the next one.

The Fugitive, Marcel Proust (translated by Scott, Moncrieff and Kilmartin)

Back to Proust! I have to admit I returned to Proust with a bit less enthusiasm this time, after the challenges of The Captive. Happily this isn’t quite so grim. Albertine’s left the narrator and he’s working through that, then through conflicting emotions of grief balanced against the refreshed interests provided by his return to society.

The narrator is still a creep. His attitude to women even for the period isn’t great, but because he’s back in society we’re back with Charlus and other classic characters and back to Proust’s marvellous observations. Emma wrote this one up too, here, and like me found it a welcome breath of air after The Captive.

The Girl with all the Gifts, M.R. Carey

Post-Proust wind-down was this now classic horror novel by MR Carey, later turned into a very successful film. Humanity has succumbed to a fungus-driven zombie apocalypse (this helped create that particular fictional trend rather than cashing into it). A military base is working with children who are infected but not mindless, engaging in horrific experiments in the hope of finding a cure.

Unsurprisingly it all goes a bit wrong and soon a handful of survivors and one of the infected children are out in the world with very little to keep them safe. The wonderfully sinister chief scientist, played superbly by Glenn Close in the film wants to dissect the infected girl but her teacher sees her humanity and wants to protect her.

For a novel involving the end of the world and an awful lot of biting it’s very well done and I can see why it was such a hit. It’s pacy, cleanly written and while it’s less original now that’s only because it’s been much copied. A great palate cleanser if you don’t mind a few people getting eaten in your fiction.

And that’s my January and February! I’ll try to update on March before too long, the month of Anna Karenina…

I’ve been crazy busy since the start of the year and likely will be for another month or two yet, so my usually late posts may be even later. I’m temporarily covering for an extra team while its new head is being recruited and it makes for not a lot of downtime. It’ll pass though. On to my best of last year!

2022 was a bumper reading year, not least because of a decent length holiday in July involving several long train trips. I read a lot, 101 books in total, though that includes a fair few novellas and a small number that I abandoned part-way in.

For 2023 I’m changing tack. I’ve a few absolute chunksters I’d like to get stuck into: Anna Karenina; Ulysses; A Suitable Boy; The Books of Jacob and more. Each will probably take weeks so my reading count at end of 2023 is likely to be much lower, but quality rather than quantity really is the thing here.

One wrinkle with reading longer books is that more of them will be on kindle. Porting an 800 or 1,000+ page tome on public transport isn’t that great an experience; Moby Dick doesn’t easily fit in a pocket. It’s a shame as I do prefer hardcopy, but realistically most really long books just won’t get read in hardcopy.

Anyway, that’s the plan for this year. Here though is my best of the year just gone. My top choice of the year is at the end but otherwise these are in the order I read them.

Best book that shouldn’t really be on the list: The Gate of Angels, by Penelope Fitzgerald

I loved this, but then I’m not sure there’s any Fitzgerald’s I haven’t loved. I also read her At Freddie’s this year which I think is actually in many ways the better book, and should really be on the list instead of this one. This though won the prize for its mix of innocence and romance and as ever very dry humour. A gem.

Best Renaissance romance: Tell them of Battles, Kings and Elephants, by Matthias Enard (translated by Charlotte Mandell)

Of course it’s not really a romance in any meaningful sense at all. I just adore alliteration. Instead it’s another Enardian exploration of the gulfs between east and west and between people, here told through the lens of an imagined trip by Michelangelo to Constantinople. Brilliant, and also bitesize which makes it not a bad Enard entry point.

Best mixed audio/text experience: Border, by Kapka Kassabova

I read three books last year that I had both on kindle and audible. Sometimes I actually read, sometimes I listened while walking. It wouldn’t work for everything but when it does it works pretty well.

This is non-fiction, a travelogue exploring the history, folklore and complex present of the Bulgarian borderlands. It’s very good, not what I’d normally read but even so I plan to read more by Kassabova.

Best book most people wouldn’t read if it weren’t by Ernaux: Happening, by Annie Ernaux (translated by Tanya Leslie)

What is there to say on this one? An unflinching report of an illegal abortion that Ernaux had as a young woman. It’s unsentimental but not unsympathetic and for me easily one of Ernaux’s best. I know the topic is difficult but this really is excellent.

Best book I didn’t think would be on this list: Cold Enough for Snow, by Jessica Au

I found this a bit slight when I first read it, but it’s held up well in memory. It’s beautifully written with a little but not too much ambiguity. It’s a lovely exploration of a mother-daughter relationship and overall very atmospheric. A slow burner but a keeper.

Best book about bullying, adolescence and meaning: Heaven, by Meiko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd)

This was my first Kawakami and confirmed me as a fan. The central character is the subject of brutal bullying and makes friends with a girl in his class in the same situation. Is that really enough to found a friendship on though? This is another difficult read, mostly for the descriptions of bullying, but it pays off. The scene where the protagonist asks one of the bullies for an explanation of why he thinks it’s ok to behave like that remains absolutely sharp in my memory.

Best book that I most regret buying on kindle rather than hardcopy: Cursed Bunny, by Bora Chung (translated by Anton Hur)

I genuinely considered this for my book of the year. Typically I buy short stories on kindle because I mostly read them in bed. This was no exception but I just liked it so much I like the idea of it sitting on the bookcase. Irrational, but then desires largely are.

There’s been a bit of a genre recently of short story collections using fantasy or horror elements to explore contemporary lives, particularly women’s lives. This for me is the best of them, the book that pushes past the limits of form to do something genuinely interesting. A keeper.

Best evocation of a dying order: The Leopard, by G.T. di Lampedusa (translated by Archibald Colquhoun)

I was lucky enough to read this on the train to Sicily. It’s an extraordinary book, widely and rightly praised. The characters are as richly drawn as in any Russian classic, the grandeur and decline of the old Sicilian order is vividly painted and overall it’s a bit of a triumph. Another strong candidate for my book of the year.

Best book about nuns abroad: Black Narcissus, by Rumer Godden

I took a fair bit of persuading to read this and I’m not sure why. It was recommended by readers I trust and it opens well. Eventually I did take the plunge and I’m glad I did. The evocation of the mountain, the tensions of the small community of nuns far from anywhere they have any good reason to be, it’s marvellous. Like quite a few mid-20th Century female novelists Godden deserves a much greater profile than she has.

Oddly enough this isn’t my only book in the nuns abroad category, because of that sf series by Lina Rather I’ve been reading about a convent inhabiting a living spaceship and dealing with their internal issues against a backdrop of interstellar war. One of the more original sf premises I’ve come across in a while.

Best blackest noir: Ride the Pink Horse, by Dorothy B. Hughes

And this one really is black. This was my first Hughes and it was very impressive. Three characters, a town in fiesta, heat, dust, death and stark moral choices. It’s all here. If you’ve any fondness for noir this is an absolute classic.

Best novel that wasn’t what I expected: Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth (translated by Charlotte Barslund)

My first Hjorth was her Long Live the Post Horn! It’s a gently comic tale involving public service and an EU postal directive. Turns out it’s not necessarily representative of Hjorth’s other work and while this was great it wasn’t quite the wry and charming tale I was expecting.

Here we’re in territory of family trauma, conflicting narratives and how you move forward when people won’t even accept what happened to you because it changes the narrative of their own childhoods. It’s a powerful book that may need a bit of a trigger warning for some. A trigger warning of course doesn’t mean don’t read it, just that it may be worth knowing some of what’s coming.

Best sheer loveliness: Some Tame Gazelle, by Barbara Pym

Barbara Pym!

That is literally the only explanation needed for this being on my end of year list.

Best choral novel: Space Invaders, by Nona Fernández (translated by Natasha Wimmer

This is a really impressive little book. It’s about Pinochet’s Chile and uses a semi-choir of childhood voices and the metaphor of the then-current space invaders game to capture the brutality of life under the regime. Fernandez creates an incredibly effective dreamlike collage of memory, metaphor and dread. Absolutely superb and I’ve already bought her novel The Twilight Zone.

Best book of the year: Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan

Because it just had to be. I read some truly great novellas in 2022, some of them listed above. Regardless of length though this is simply a masterpiece. It’s an examination of history, moral responsibility and moral choice and yet it’s written with a jewel-like clarity and precision. Keegan’s Foster is also brilliant but I try to have no more than one book by an author in my end of year regardless of how great (and Keegan really is great).

This and Foster are also ones I regret buying on kindle to be honest. They’ve since come out in rather nice paperbacks and they’re just so good. If you haven’t read this then I urge you to do so.

And that’s it! I’ve a small number of honourable mentions that on another day might have made the list: Guy Gunaratne’s In Our Mad and Furious City (with a superb audiobook adaptation by the way); Elisa Shua Dusapin’s The Pachinko Parlour; and my perennial favourite Arthur Schnitzler’s Casanova’s Return to Venice. End of year lists mean hard choices though and the ones above aren’t too bad a selection.