Claire’s and Tim’s Top Books of 2022

/ Claire Fuller

I didn’t read as many books in 2022 as in previous years, but #LibrarianHusband (Tim) and I did move house. Who could have guessed that clearing out a house, organising packing, and unpacking equates to about twenty-five books? Still, it’s quality, not quantity, and this year, I struggled again to decide on just ten.

As with last year, one of my books – Monogamy by Sue Miller – was an audio book, so I’ve mocked up an actual book in the photos. And Tim and I shared two books in our top tens: West by Carys Davies, and The Swimmers by Chloe Lane. In Memoriam by Alice Winn won’t be published in the UK until March.

But, if you’re interested in pre-ordering In Memoriam or buying any of the books in Tim’s or my lists I’ve set up a Bookshop.org list, so that UK readers will be able to buy them easily while supporting UK independent bookshops. Readers in other countries will have to find the books themselves, but I do urge you to use your local independent or Bookshop.org rather than Amazon.

You can see previous year’s lists here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

My Top Three (in no order)


A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

This will almost be my final read of 2022 read and not only has it made it into my favourite books of the year but my top three. It is funny and clever, and the writing is sublime. It’s Barbara Pym crossed with Barbara Comyns crossed with The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff with a little bit of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas thrown in too. It’s 1946, and in the shabby end of an English seaside town live a group of neighbours who know (almost) everything about each other. Bertram, a painter, who is trying to capture a view of the harbour is staying at the pub and inveigling his way into these people’s lives. Meanwhile the beaming eye of the lighthouse illuminates them all. As the book came to a close I kept thinking how is Taylor going to end this but then she brings in the most brilliant and perfect last paragraph.

Burntcoat by Sarah Hall

Extraordinary and devastating. This is a story about disruption and its consequences. Edith is 59 and preparing to die. As she goes about buying an orange tree and various other preparations she remembers firstly when she was eight and her mother suffered a massive brain bleed, and they both in different ways had to learn to function again. And she remembers when she met and fell in love with Halit, a Bulgarian Turk who ran a small restaurant in the town where Edith lives. Edith is a sculptor (and having been one myself, once, it was wonderful to read about making art which rang true), and lives in Burntcoat, the building where she has a huge studio to create her monumental pieces, and apartment above. Halit and Edith become lovers very quickly – the sex is also brilliantly written – and then a global pandemic strikes. It’s worse than the one we’ve just lived through, and what Halit and Edith suffer made me cry, made me finish the book and sit for half an hour, thinking. Passionate, sexy, tragic. Goodness, I loved it.

The Swimmers by Chloe Lane

Intense, darkly funny, desperately sad, a little bit weird (in the best way). Just all the feelings. And also, brilliantly written. Erin, 26, lives one day at a time, without much thought for consequences or the future. She goes to visit her aunt, where her terminally ill mother is staying, and learns that her mother is planning to take her own life next Tuesday. Finally, Erin has to look ahead. Highly recommended.

And the rest in no particular order:


West by Carys Davies

I loved this novella about a thirty-five year old man, Cy, who travels West in the 1830s to find the ‘giant’ animals he’s read about in newspaper. He leaves behind his ten-year-old daughter in the rather slack care of his sister and journeys accompanied by a male native American, who has the brilliant name of Old Woman from a Distance. It’s pretty much perfect, with the endless terrible journey and struggle to survive. Davies switches point of view in an interesting way, and even the rather surreal and unlikely ending, I loved..

Nonfiction by Julie Myerson

Searing and tragic, cleverly layered, and thought-provoking. This novel about mothers and daughters also considers guilt and responsibility, fiction and truth, and addiction. It took me to the dark interior of family relationships and left me heartbroken. A mother addresses her daughter who is addicted to drugs and we learn the extremes of emotion she and her husband went through. Although this is a novel, Myerson examines what real-life experiences a writer calls upon to write fiction and where truth and imagination blend.

Monogamy by Sue Miller

This was my first (finished) read of 2022, and it was a five-star book. Why, I wondered, had I only just heard of Sue Miller? At least now I have her seven previous novels to go and read. I listened to this while doing the world’s hardest jigsaw. It’s read by the author and is absolutely wonderful – detailed, precise emotions that Miller gets down in such a tender moving way. Really not much happens. Annie meets Graham at the opening of his bookshop in the 1980s and they fall in love and marry. He is a fat man and greedy for everything life brings: food, women, love. This is the story of their thirty-year marriage and what happens afterwards. Devastating. Brilliant.

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor

Absolutely riveting. One of those books that I read at every snatched opportunity. Three parts, three difficult adventures. In the first, Doc, an old hand at Antarctic sojourns makes some poor choices when he’s out on the ice with two beginners, and then suffers a stroke. In the middle section, Doc’s wife, Anna, must find a way through what’s happened. And in the third, Doc must find his own way. It has tremendous humanity and wonderful writing. I was lucky enough to meet Jon at an event at Hungerford books, and as well as writing brilliant books, I’m pleased to say he’s a very lovely man.

Animal Person by Alexander MacLeod

I don’t give star ratings to those books I read and write cover quotes for, but for the record, this would absolutely be a 5-star book. I loved it. Eight short stories, each one satisfying and complete but still open enough that I was left thinking about the characters and the situations after I finished. They all have a kind of yearning, a voice that is intimate, often troubled, but each shines a light on relationships good and bad. Actually, I loved this so much, I probably need to come back and write a better review – I certainly need to read them again to see how MacLeod does it. Favourites were: Lagomoth, The Dead Want, Everything Underneath, The Closing Date. 
In Memoriam by Alice Winn

Alice Winn has pulled off a remarkable feat in making these men and the horrors of the First World War come so viscerally alive. It was like looking at a black and white photograph which has been colourised, and suddenly you understand that these shadowy people from the past also dreamed and cried and breathed just as we do now. I was completely absorbed, moved, and transported.

The Letters of Shirley Jackson edited by Laurence Jackson Hyman

This is a must read for any Shirley Jackson fans, and for anyone interested in writers and writing. It’s a whopper at 600 pages, and covers her letters from the age of 21 until she died in 1965, age 48.

What is so wonderful to see, although I suppose not that surprising is that she writes about different things to different people. We hear about how well her children are doing when she writes to her parents, about needing more money from her publishers when she writes to her literary agent, and perhaps with more truth about her life when she writes to a fan who becomes a friend. Then, suddenly there is a letter to her husband, Stanley which was probably never sent. The shock of this letter is tremendous.

I also loved getting snippets about how her writing was going, especially those about my favourite Jackson novel, We have Always Lived in the Castle.

There was a nice five degrees of separation moment for me when Jackson’s son, Barry meets the son of the English sculptor, Anthony Caro, when Caro was teaching at Bennington where Stanley taught. Barry goes to stay with them in England. Many years later, when I was studying sculpture at Winchester School of art, I met Caro when he came and gave a guest lecture.

Tim’s Top Three (in no order)

1. Son of Svea by Lena Andersson (translated by Sarah Death)

This novel would probably be in my top 1 of the year. It’s an unlikely masterpiece telling the story of Sweden’s industrial welfare state in the 20th Century from the perspective of the Johansson family. Svea is rooted in the past with her baking, cleaning and canning of all kinds of food. Her son, Ragnar, becomes obsessed with the type of modernity that involves washing machines and pre-packed convenience food. As time passes Ragnar’s daughter, Elsa represents, to him, the future – while at the same time a slow realization comes over Ragnar that as he’s growing older – and his time has come and perhaps already gone. I can’t recommend it enough.

2. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Last year my book of the year was Rodham by the same author. In an attempt to persuade Claire that I could read something based in the world of US politics that doesn’t involve Hilary Clinton, I jumped on this when it appeared in our Free Little Library. It’s the story of a whole life – Alice Blackwell’s – who just happens to become the First Lady. It’s a zippy novel about politics, class, wealth, race and essentially every political issue you can think of. Extraordinary. Sittenfeld’s writing is, as always, nothing short of brilliant. Hooray for this one.

3. Inlands by Elin Willows (translated by Duncan Lewis)

This was my leftfield pick for our book club. It wasn’t just me that loved it. It’s a novel where nothing really happens – always plus for me. A young woman from Stockholm relocates to her boyfriend’s village in the far north of Sweden. The relationship has ended by the time she arrives. Inlands is a story about loss and change and examines the mentality of a small community and the relationship between freedom and loneliness. Beat that! Sparse, beautiful, glacial and very Swedish. Hooray again.

And the rest

6 thoughts on “Claire’s and Tim’s Top Books of 2022”

  2. I have long admired Sue Miller’s novels – and I think ‘Monogamy’ is my favourite so far. For me, she echoes the skills of Ann Patchett and Anna Quindlen of writing so simply yet profoundly about families and the complexities of those relationships

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