Most of the books I read this year were classics that have remained in print for a long time or have recently been brought back to life by publishers like the New York Review Books. It's unrealistic to expect the novels and story collections from any one year to stand up well against any list of top-ten classics, but I read several books published or first available within the last year (some novels first published in Europe took a year or so to reach American readers) that could stand the test of time - maybe not a top-ten list but a top-eight at least, arranged alphabetically:
Early Work, by Andrew Martin. Martin's cleverly titled debut novel, about a group of 20-something aspiring writers with varying degrees of talent and commitment is one of the few contemporary novels I've read that gets better as it moves along (with most, the opposite is true).
Florida, by Lauren Groff. This collection of stories sets forth the key themes in Groff's writing: women in distress and suffering or about to suffer because of
mistakes in judgement, female protagonists with strong personalities and
opinions - so strong that they tend to alienate friends and even family,
and portraits of a neighborhood, establishing a real sense of place, particularly in the environs of the University of Florida.
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, by Denis Johnson. In this final collection, we see what makes Johnson at his best so great: He describes a world -
often one of drug addiction, despair, imprisonment, and ruined lives -
that is nothing like the world that we, that is, most of his readers,
have ever experienced and he makes us believe in it completely.
Last Stories, by William Trevor. Trevor was without doubt one of the greatest English-language writers of
our time, in particular for his short stories, the closest any
English-language writer has come to the tone and style of Chekhov. Everyone interested in the art of
the short story should read his collected stories and then Last Stories
as a sad coda.
The Ninth Hour, by Alice McDermott (2017, I actually read this in December 2017 but too late to appear on last year's list). This novel beautifully depicts life in a small convent of urban nuns helping the
impoverished in their community. Those who
long for the days before Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, Social Security,
DCYF and case workers, CHIPs, SNAP, and so on should take a look at the
world McDermott re-creates to see if things were better for the poor
and the outsiders, and then think again.
Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward. Though I couldn't buy into all the ghost voices Ward uses, particularly late in the novel, I was moved and impressed by her use of first-person voice to establish a number of radically different
characters, her understanding of the difficult life in rural poverty in
the Mississippi delta, her information about the horrors of abuse in a
Mississippi work prison, and her ability to create characters who are deeply flawed
while maintaining her (and our) sympathy and compassion for them.
Solar Bones, by Mike McCormack (2016). This tour de force novel follows the flow of the thoughts and
remembrances of the narrator in what appears to be a single day
or perhaps a single afternoon - though his mind roams freely back and
forth in time, including recollections from his childhood right up to
present-day events, crises, and issues.
Trick, by Domenico Starnone (2016). Starnone does in 200 or so pages what Knausgaard and fellow Neapolitan Ferrante do in thousands: delineate the struggles - personal, political, aspirational, and familial - in the life of an artist.
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