I read 90+ books this year, while promoting The Memory of Animals, and finishing a draft of my sixth novel – there’s still lots of editing to do on that though. People often ask how I read so many and whether I read while I’m writing, and my answer is always, if I didn’t I wouldn’t read at all because I’m always writing. And I read while eating breakfast and lunch, I read before I go to sleep, and I usually have a physical book and audio book on the go at the same time. I’m in a book club which I help organise, and although the majority of the books are selected by me, it does push me to read books I wouldn’t necessarily pick up because I’m also thinking about what the other members might enjoy.
So, here are my and Tim’s favourite books of the year. We share two: Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter, and The Dry Heart by Natalie Ginzburg. One of mine was an audio book (Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens) so I’ve mocked up a physical copy. I also set myself a rule of only one book by each author because I read several books by Carys Davies and Sue Miller this year, and I could easily have all of these in my top ten, but then there wouldn’t have been such a wide selection.
All of these books can be bought from my list on Bookshop.org, which will support UK independent bookshops.
Let me know if you’ve read any and which catch your eye.
You can see previous year’s lists here: 2022 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.
Claire’s Top 3 (in no order)
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
| Crying on the M25. Not very safe, but I was listening to the ending of The Great Believers and I couldn’t help it. So good. So good I went out and bought a physical copy so that I can more easily go back to it. The novel begins with Nico’s funeral in Chicago in 1985. He has died of AIDS his younger sister, Fiona and his friends – including Yale – are devastated. We follow Yale through his work acquiring art for a gallery and his relationships as those around him die, and his friendship with Fiona. And thirty years later we follow Fiona’s trip to Paris to try and find her estranged daughter. I guess underlying all of this story (and brilliant writing) is the question of how much responsibility we have for keeping alive the memory of those who have died. Highly recommended. |
Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter
| Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter This book hits a sweet spot that I just love in fiction: beautifully written and with a little bit of mystery and darkness. Theresa and Jackie are neighbours and best friends. They go to dieting cub together, their families socialise together, two of their children are in a relationship, and Jackie is having an affair with Theresa’s husband. And then Theresa is found murdered on the floor of her garage. Yes, there is some tension over who did it, but really this is a literary novel (told brilliantly through many different voices) about the consequences of that terrible event. |
Lessons by Ian McEwan
| Lessons is the story of the life of Roland Baines, cash poor, house rich, part-time bar pianist, looking back to when he was eleven and went to boarding school, moving forward into his seventies, and sometimes sideways into other people’s lives. And throughout there is comment on the times Roland is living through. The novel is ambitious, sweeping, and wonderful. Roland and all the people who come and go in his life have filled my head for several days as I read voraciously during any spare moment. I hope they will stay for longer. Roland has three significant women in his life: his piano teacher, Miriam, his ex-wife Alissa, and his second wife, Daphne. There is a reckoning to be done with all of them, although the last is really not her fault (there is a brilliant scene where he fights over her ashes with a junior minister on a bridge in Yorkshire and loses). Miriam seduces Roland when he is only fourteen and changes the course of his life. Alissa walks out on him and their eight month old baby, and becomes a famous and successful novelist. McEwan clearly draws much on his own life with this novel (North Africa, boarding school, discovered brother) but as Alissa says, everything is fair game. I liked how McEwan plays with this, and I also love the questions he raises around a woman leaving a husband and baby in order to create a masterpiece. It doesn’t happen often, is it worth it? |
And Claire’s next 7
Family Pictures by Sue Miller
| Family Pictures is topped and tailed by the first person voice of Nina looking back on her childhood and adolescence in a family with six siblings and two parents. One of the siblings is severely autistic and this has repercussions for everyone. The middle sections of the book is told from the POV of various members of the family in third person (including Nina). It doesn’t really have a strong narrative thread but doesn’t suffer from that lack. I absolutely loved it and was fully immersed in this family and their lives. (This novel isn’t available in the UK, so you might need to source a second hand copy) |
All That is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay
| It’s ten years since Landay’s previous novel, Defending Jacob was published and here is his next brilliant book. A mother of three children disappears one day and the police suspect her husband of foul play, and gradually two of the children come to believe the same, creating huge fractures in the family. The novel is divided into four sections from different points of view. I wasn’t sure what Landay was up to with the second section. it’s a bit of a risk but has a very clever pay-off. This is an absolutely compelling read with the perfect blend of nuanced and affecting writing and being a real page-turner. Highly recommended. |
Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
| Oh, I loved this poignant, slow-moving, funny, tender, gem of a book. I listened to it as an audiobook read exquisitely by Ell Porter. The story is narrated by Blanca, a ghost who died in the fifteenth century when she was fourteen. Four hundred years later she is still haunting the same charterhouse near a Mallorcan village when the French author George Sand arrives with her two children and Chopin. Blanca falls in love with George, and is able to inhabit all the characters’ heads and read their history and see their future. It has to be said that not a lot happens, but it’s full of beautiful unrequited yearning, yet written in contemporary English (which really worked). We also get to hear Blanca’s story and how she came to die. Don’t read this if you want a traditional pacey scary ghost story, but do read it if you want wonderful writing, brilliant characters, and a bittersweet ending that will stay with you. |
The Weaning by Hannah Vincent
| How did this novel not win all the prizes when it was published in 2018? Half way through I was punched in the gut, and gasping, had to be comforted by a hug from #librarianhusband. (I hope you know the wonder of a hug after book-related trauma.) The writing is clean and crisp – which I know is difficult to do – it was easy to forget I was reading. Bobbi is a childminder for Marcel, with two teenage children of her own (they are so perfectly written in all their grumpiness), as well as occasionally looking after Jade, the daughter of a couple who attend Life Skills classes. Bobbi begins a relationship with her neighbour while all the time also trying to keep him at bay. I’m not going to tell you what made me gasp and cry (of course – you have the read the book), but it wasn’t what I was expecting. (It’s not one of ‘those’ nanny books.) Highly recommended. (Buy direct from the publisher) |
Cheri by Jo Ann Beard
| Cheri jumped straight onto my top books of the year as soon as I read it, except is it a book, or a novella, or even a short story? Is it fiction or biography or narrative non-fiction? Who cares, it’s amazing. Cheri is about the final days of a woman’s life. She’s dying from cancer and her two adult daughters have come to stay to look after her. It’s very short – 76 pages- but has everything – life, death, memory, love. I cried. A lot. Thanks to Julie Myerson for the recommendation. |
Clear by Carys Davies
| In the 1840s newly married John, a poor clergyman, leaves his wife Mary behind to take a job which involves travelling to a remote Scottish island where he must ‘clear’ the single remaining inhabitant, Ivar, whom the landowner is going to replace with sheep. Soon after his arrival, John has an accident and is found unconscious by Ivar who despite their lack of a common language cares for him and the two form a bond. This is a wonderfully tender love story to the land, a disappeared way of life and human relationships. I loved it. And if you haven’t read Davies’ novel, West I urge you to read that too. Highly recommended. |
The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginsburg
| This is the first Ginzburg I’ve read and why have I waited so long? The Dry Heart (translated from Italian by Frances Frenaye) is written in a very spare, factual style that is never cold. It was first published in 1947 but feels so contemporary. The young female narrator tells us on the first page that she has shot her husband between the eyes with the revolver she took from his desk drawer. She goes out for a coffee and time spirals back to what brought her to this position. A lonely young woman, she falls in love with the idea of Alberto as much as the man himself, and from the start the marriage is not a good one. The books in only 108 page long but contains a whole world and a whole life. |
Tim’s Top Reads of 2023
Tim’s Top 3 (in no order)
Those People Behind Us by Mary Camarillo
| I read Mary Camarillo’s previous novel ‘The Lockhart Women’ this year too. I loved them both but rules dictate that I can only have 1 in my top 10. All Camarillo’s characters are real, funny, annoying and complicated all at once. This one is set in 2017 in a sunny suburb of LA with a cast of characters who pass in and out of each other’s lives and daily business. It felt as though I was reading lots of Raymond Carver short stories all at once, which is perfect if you run out of Raymond Carver stories. Housing crisis, social status, 2017-Trump landscape all the rest too. |
What You Need From The Night by Laurent Petitmangin
| A very tense, very short, and heartbreaking novel translated from French. ‘What You Need From The Night’ reads like a new Dardenne Brothers film, which is always a place I want to be. A thoroughly immersive slice of family reality and heartache set in a damp and grey corner of northeast France. Ultimately, a bit of a downer. Perfect! |
The Archive of Feelings by Peter Stamm
| I love everything Peter Stamm has ever written. He’s my hero. In his latest novel, the paths of childhood sweethearts head off in very different directions. Reflection, angst, regret and hope in not quite equal measure. Just brilliant |
And Tim’s next 7
