The 10 best novels I read that were published in the current decade (2010-19)

Continuing with yesterday's post on the Best Books I read in the 20-teens (2010-19) - yesterday, the top 10 short-story collections and works newly translated into English; today, the top 10 novels I read that were published in the 20-teens (including works in English translation written and first published in the 20-teen decade):

At Night We Walk in Circles, by Daniel Alarcon (2014). A complex and powerful novel about political and literary radicals in a Latin American country much like Chile; Alarcon is an American author, writing in English, but his style is deeply influenced by Latin American authors - and for the betters. This book is one of the few recent novels both politically engaged and powerful as a narrative.

A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson (2016). Yet another novel about Britain and World War II? Yes, but this one rivals Atonement as one of the best on this well-trodden ground. A portrait of a whole family, over the span of a century – and much more readable than its companion volume (Life After Life). 

War and Turpentine, by Stefan Hertmans (2013, translated 2016). A novel in the Tolstoy tradition when it comes to warfare: Battles aren't won by brilliant leadership and strategy, as warfare is chaotic and unpredictable, but rather by the personal strength and valor of individual soldiers - war as seen from the combatants' point of view. Hertmans shows how the experience of warfare shaped (or distorted) the surviving soldier's view of life - and by extension, how the war affected an entire generation and culture: a truly ambitious novel that is sharp and poignant in every scene. 

Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, volumes 1-5 (2009-11, translated 2012-18). Setting aside the somewhat disappointing volume 6, Knausgaard's monumental achievement in the first five volumes recalls in startling detail the course and the events of his difficult life, specifically his struggle to be both a unique and talented person - a writer - and be just an ordinary guy who fits into his society, his family, and his marriage.

Preparation for the Next Life, by Atticus Lish (2016). An incredibly powerful, tragic debut novel about two social outsiders – a combat veteran suffering with PTSD and a Chinese immigrant without documentation – who try to make a life together against great odds.  

The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason (2018). Mason can't resist showing off his knowledge of medical history, languages, and other arcana, but he builds from these details a good story set during the first World War that centers on character and that establishes a milieu and historical setting that's  far from most American fiction, contemporary or otherwise. 

Solar Bones, by Mike McCormack (2016). This tour de force novel follows the flow of the thoughts and remembrances (in one single book-length sentence!) 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.

Nemesis, by Philip Roth (2010). Roth's final book - he publicly retired from writing in 2012 and he died in 2018 - was one of his best, providing both a final reflection on the world of Newark in the 1940s that was the marrow of Roth's literary contribution and a sly commentary on the Holocaust, as seen from the U.S. 

My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent (2017). It’s not always a compliment to describe a writer's style as cinematic, but in this case, yes, Tallent has a cinematic way of building to a complex, tension-filled dramatic climax; his debut novel altogether comprises an unusual mix of high style and vivid dramatic action – but be forewarned, this novel is extremely violent at times.

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward (2018). Though I couldn't buy into all the ghost voices Ward uses to tell her multi-layered story, 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. 

20 Best Books I read in this decade - Part One

The current decade, the 20-teens, comes to an end in a month and, following the lead of the New York Times, it's time to take a brief look at what I've read over the past 10 years. I can't really post on the best works of fiction I've read since 2010; that list would consist of many truly monumental novels - Moby-Dick, Madame Bovary, Sentimental Education, Don Quixote, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Middlemarch, Bleak House, Invisible Man, In Search of Lost Time, et al. - but the list would probably be the same or similar in any decade and would not offer any insight into this decade per se. With that in mind, here is part one of the 20 best books from the 20-teens that I have read:

7 Best Short-story collections from the 20-teens:

Gryphon, by Charles Baxter. 2011. This collection of new and previously published stories shows novelist and old friend Baxter's great skill and broad range in short fiction.

The New Yorker Stories, by Ann Beattie, 2011, gives a complete overview of Beattie's remarkable contribution over so many years to American short fiction.

Can't and Won't, by Lydia Davis. 2015. Very short stories from a completely unique stylist (and excellent translator) - some are moving, some hilarious.

Dear Life, by Alice Munro. 2012. Though she seems to have retired from writing, Munro is without question the greatest living English-language writer.

Tenth of December, by George Saunders. 2013. Saunders is our most imaginative, funny, and disturbing short-story writer, and this collection measures up to his best work.

Selected Stories (2010) and Last Stories (2014), by William Trevor, make it clear that without a doubt Trevor was one of the greatest writers of our time.

3 best Works in Translation I read in the current decade (these are works of fiction published in English for the first time in the 20-teens):

Walter Kempowski, All for Nothing. 2006, tr. from the German 2018, which has everything a reader of literary fiction could want or hope for in a book: historical veracity, family and human drama, fully rounded characters, crisp pacing, highly dramatic action, excellent writing line by line without excess or flourishes.

Lucky Per, by Henrick Pontoppidan. 1904, tr. from the Danish in 2019. This book gives us all we'd want in a major novel: complex and fully rounded characters - particularly the central character - who interact with one another and grow over time, set against a well-realized socio-historic background.

The Door, by Magda Szabo. 1987, tr. from the Hungarian in 2015. Through the course of the narrative, we begin to see how rivals, antagonists with strong and wilful personalities, can clash but also can come to depend on each other. 

In tomorrow's post: The best novels I've read from the current decade (2010-2019)

The flaw in Taylor's portrayal of the romance novelist Angel

Hilary Mantel has some insightful comments in her Foreword to Elizabeth Taylor's 1957 novel, Angel, most notably (and hilariously) noting that Angel is an novel by a shrewd, funny, observant novelist about a novelist who is none of the above. The eponymous Angel, start to finish, in this novel that covers the span of her life, is a narcissist, devoid of wit and humor, a tyrant in the household, cold in every way to family and to her husband, and the author of novels that are at best romantic potboilers, often in poorly rendered exotic settings or distant eras, but that are completely removed from the events and experiences or he life or for that matter in anyone's life - a bad writer. As Mantel further notes, there always will be good writers and bad writers - and the bad writers usually make more money. (Mantel has done all right, though.) And that observation is true only to a point: Angel has her time, but lives far beyond it, and her final books have only minuscule sales (not clear why they're still being published, for that matter). As noted in previous posts, Taylor has inoculated herself against criticism, in that any mistakes she might make in her portrayal of her bitter protagonist pale against the foundational mistakes that Angel makes in her writing - yet I have to say that I think T is fundamentally off base in her characterization of a romance writer. My experiences have shown me that all writers of fiction struggle and suffer and deal w/ failure and frustration - and that as a result writers are almost universally generous and supportive of one another, regardless of genre or talent or sales level. We all know it's so damn hard! (Angel suffers while writing but seems able to produce at will by shutting herself away from the world; she would have been a better writer has she been more open to the world.) John Cheever allegedly said to JP Donleavy, who was being a real asshole during a visit to the Iowa Writers Workshop, that the only real writer who was a shit to other writers was Hemingway, and he was known to be insane. Cheever was right on point I think - and the character of Angel, while a great stalking horse, who provokes in us not only ridicule and hatred but also sorrow and pity, is also off the mark, not, in the end, credible as a writer.

Does Angel grow or evolve over the course of Taylor's novel?

Elizabeth Taylor's novel Angel (1957) is one of the many, many English novels of the 20th century (even the 21st!) to build part of most of its plot around events of the first World War, whether in battle or on the home front. In ET's case, however, the war is largely offstage altogether: Angel's husband, the unfaithful and egocentric would-be artist Esme, volunteers to join the forces (in part to get away from his cold marriage and miserable life in the remote English countryside); we see no direct depiction of the war, though we catch a glimpse of Esme on home leave having lunch with an attractive young woman - Angel doesn't know why he never gets home leave as so many others do, and now we - and his sister/Angel's friend Nora - know why. We have a quick jump to after the war, w/ Esme now home and wounded, having lost the lower half of a leg. Predictably he morose and miserable and a profligate, blowing through a wad of money at the races and the card tables and slithering up to Angel asking if she can pay off his debts. She, however, has no ready cash - sunk it all into renovating their manor house - but she secludes herself in her bedroom for weeks, maybe months, to write a novel. Why she puts up w/ Esme is almost beyond belief but does show once again Angel's strange dependence on the only man she ever loved, if she even loved him; she seems to have little sense in her life of happiness and partnership. At the end of section 4 (of 6, though the last 2 are much shorter than the others) Esme shoots himself to death - with a rifle, it seems, which is almost impossible to do, but never mind, these are like the wayward facts that ET ascribes to Angel's writing, so ET can get away w/ some herself as well (or maybe I'm wrong on this point, wouldn't be the first time). All told, this novel continues to be a good read a sorrowful (if unsympathetic) portrait of a talented yet unlikable woman; she doesn't have the depth of a Wharton or James character, and the last sections will show whether she learns anything from her experiences, whether she grows, gains insight, or whether she dies as lonely and offensive as she has been throughout.

Elizabeth Tayor's novel Angel and its literary antecedents

At its best, Elizabeth Taylor's novel Angel (1957) reminds us of Wharton or even Wharton's friend Henry James, a tale of a young woman who finds through her efforts and talents and in opposition to many, mostly male, disbelievers, finds worldly or artistic success (of both) but suffers for lack of love, or the ability to love, and marries the wrong guy, someone who will exploit her for her money and mistreat her throughout. That's the story of Angel, who becomes a highly successful writer of what today we would call romance novels, ridiculed by critics but not by readers, lifting her at first to wealth but she seeks more: acceptance by high society (which she doesn't attain, at least through the first half of the novel - the London "scene" invite her to many events but is put off by her coldness and eccentricities) and the love of a good man. Unfortunately for Angel, she has no capacity to a snake in the grass when she sees one. She falls in love - based on a one-hour meeting - with a would-be artist, Esme, whose aesthetic is completely opposed to hers - he paints scenes of urban and industrial squalor, which makes him somewhat avant-garde except that he's a phony and lazy and and exploiter of women in every possible way. He sees falls for Angel because of her wealth, but at about the midpoint of the novel, on their honeymoon on the Continent, it's obvious that the marriage is doomed: Angel has no interest in sex and is unable to express any love toward Esme, nor he to her. Unlike most novels w/ similar plots there's no counterpoint to Esme, no man whom Angel should love and should have accepted into her life; she's a lonely and bitter character throughout and it seems Esme is the only man she's ever known at all. At times the novel veers toward the implausible - notably in Angel's complete infatuation with this phony - but it's almost as if the novel is self-inoculated: Any time the narrative veers from probability of verisimilitude we can only reflect that it's far more credible and natural than the writings of the eponymnous Angel (Taylor gives us no more than a sample of her writing, but we get the point: ludicrous settings in an imagined Ancient Greece, e.g.).

The sorrow and pity, as well as the hatred, we feel for Elizabeth Taylor's Angel

The title character in Elizabeth Taylor's 1957 novel, Angel, is hard to like and hard to hate. She's obviously a troubled young woman who, when we meet her at age 15, seems to be friendless, ashamed of her working-class family, aspiring to an upper-class life w/ servants etc., and turning away from the realities of her life and losing herself in her writing, filling many notebooks w/ what she calls her first novel - like thousands upon thousands of young men and women then and now. The only difference is that she has some talent and she has a tremendous ability to focus and actually completes her novel and then sells it. We have a sense that the book is a trashy neo-gothic romance (we never see any significant portion of Angel's writing), but it turns out that her publisher was right and, despite put-downs and disdain from the literary press, her book and several follow-ups become successful romance novels. This success allows Angel to fulfill her dreams, sort of, and move into a country mansion with servants - but she remains a troubled young woman, still without friends of companions save for a vicious dog (in one great scene her dog kills a much smaller pet and Angel refuses to take responsibility). As noted yesterday, we would today recognize Angle as one with disabilities, probably some kind of autism - she seems completely unable to empathize, and she has no sense of humor. In the second (of 6) parts of this novel, Angel meets a young man her age, an aspiring artist, Esme, whose work runs counter to everything in Angel's writings - he does pictures of urban squalor, for ex. - and of course she falls in love w/ him, but from afar: He goes off w/ his sister to Italy, and toward the end of section 2 the sister returns, befriends Angel (who had spoken highly of the sister's poetry in a press interview - she had never read the poems and has no interest in the sister, but she did this to draw the sister, and she hopes the brother, back into her life) and learns that Esme has been a cad and a terrible person, running up and running away from debts, impregnating a young woman and abandoning her: He's so far removed from Angel's life, but we know that he will connect w/ her in some way and ruin her as well. In part, we feel: She deserves it. She's nasty to her mother and her aunt and pretty much to anyone who tries to connect w/ her. But we also feel sorrow and pity for her, a tortured and troubled soul in an era when there was no help for someone in her condition (the novel, btw, is set in  or at least begins in the early 20th century).

A little-known English author who merits re-discovery

Who knew that Elizabeth Taylor was a novelist? Well, not that Elizabeth Taylor; this one is among the slew of mid-20th-century British novelists who wrote primarily about women and women's issues and were extremely prolific and most of them quite well-read - but for some reason ET was never known in the U.S. as well as some of her contemporaries, Murdoch, Pym, Stark,  et al. Now she's yet another of the authors re-discovered by the great New York Review Books series, and judging from the first third or so of her 1957 novel, Angel, she deserved much greater renown in the U.S. In this novel, the eponymous Angel is 15 at the outset, attending a private school in a remote industrial English city. She is deeply ashamed of her family background - her mother runs a little grocery stores, father deceased - and she tells other students at the school that she lives in a mansion w/ many servants, etc. (in fact, her aunt is a maidservant in such a household - btw, this theme was central to a recent season of the Spanish series Elite). When the truth comes out, she pretty much fakes her way out of school by pretending to be ill, opens a huge rift with her mother and her aunt, and spends her days writing a novel in longhand in a series of notebooks. She sends the completed work to various publishers; of course we know it will be over-written and puerile - but amazingly one of the publishers makes her an offer; we see that they think the book will get a lot of attention because it's so over-written and self-indulgent and full of archaic language (the publisher and editor joke about how many pages contain the word "Nay!") - the foresee a hit much like "Springtime for Hitler," a work so bad that it's good, or at least popular. And that's kind of what happens - but the key is ET is sharp and sensitive about Angel and her troubled behavior. Today, we would clearly say that she has autism of some sort - all the signs are there, she has absolutely no sense of humor and is unable to communicate at any length with strangers, yet is bold and uncompromising about things that matter to her - for ex., she refuses to make any editorial changes in her mss (and gets away w/ it!). The first third of the novel covers about 2 years of her life, as her book has some success and she embarks on a 2nd and a 3rd, while the rift between her and her mother and aunt widens and she seems to have no friends whatsoever - a sad story for sure, but not w/out some wry amusement and literary gossip In publishing, things have changed: Imagine sending a novel mss to a publisher's slush pile and expecting - and getting! - a response within a few days.