Books Of The Year:

Last year, I rediscovered my love of reading.  I re-read old classics and discovered new favourites. The final total was 67 books.  I thought, I’ll never have to do that again.  Then the world went to hell in a hand sanitiser.  I generally find ‘best of’ lists subjective and didactic in their nature.  Nevertheless, here we go.  Reading is one way I’ve kept my brain active in 2020.  I’ve drawn a line between fiction and non-fiction. I’ve also included a few books that were published in 2019 but are worthy of your attention.

Fiction:

Book of The Year, no questions asked is Grown Ups by Marian Keyes.  An ingenious, delicious piece of comic prose.  Starting with an ‘inciting incident’ and working backwards, it’s also a fantasy of how 2020 should have been, with festivals, holidays and parties.  Her hero, PG Wodehouse would be proud.  Close to that, but for different reasons, Actress by Anne Enright has not a word, or a line out of place.  A short novel, with a simple idea but with Enright’s skill and Kubrickian distance. 

Emma Jayne Unsworth is a novelist with growing skill and wit to match.  Adults tells a story of Jenny, obsessed by social media and ignoring the downward spiral of her own life.  Acrid, but with playful warmth and passages of great eloquence. 

David Mitchell returned with Utopia Avenue.  It was that rarest of things, a novel about a fictional band, with the drive and characterisation that they usually lack.  Place this against the Ubernovel that Mitchell has been working on (human beings as collateral damage in a war between supernatural ones) and add its simple structure (a song and the story behind it) and this makes it a notable read.  Agency by William Gibson is the second of the Klept trilogy.  Subsequently, it bore the scars of severe re-writing- a Hilary Clinton presidency – but had a story flitting between time zones and chapters like shots of hot, black coffee.

Coming late last year, Tempest was the final book in The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman.  If this is Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neil’s farewell to comics, it’s a sweet goodbye.  Mixing style and genre on each page, it’s as much a celebration of literature as it is a parody of it. 

Non-Fiction:

Stuart Cosgrove has always been a witty, eloquent writer.  He’s also a brilliant historical one – Cassius X takes Cassius Clay’s conversion to Islam as a prism to explore politics, sport, faith, music and a million other subjects.  Factor in a tight, economical page count and you can see why I loved it.  Vesper Flights was slated as a sequel to H is For Hawk, but it was more than that.  Helen MacDonald’s writing on nature is delicious, but the kind that works in single pieces or as a unified whole.  Finally, coming late last year and sadly ignored: A Game Of Birds And Wolves. Simon Parkin revels in the mundane details of The Battle Of The Atlantic, with Scouse WREN’s wargaming it with matchboxes, string and cotton wool. Film rights bought by Spielberg, the book itself is available at a bargain price if you look hard enough.