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I’m not going to sugarcoat – this has been a tough year.
Not because someone died or my world imploded dramatically in some way; it just felt like all the pressures of work, which was ridiculously and unrelentingly frenetic, ganged up on me, to the point where I almost felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t tire of seeing friends or blogging or any of the things that make my life so rich and technicolour full, but under the pressure of work, they all suddenly felt like dead weight, like I was dragging an elephant uphill through molasses so that everything, EVERYTHING, felt like work.
Even the things that shouldn’t.
So, thank goodness for reading, which unique among my pop culture interests this year, stayed feeling like an escape, like a very special place where the rules are different and happiness persists unhindered even when it is under assault elsewhere.
It’s always been that way for me, I guess, but this year, it felt the most pronounced it ever has for me as an adult, and while, yes, I gravitated to more escapist fare this year and let the much-hyped serious novels give someone else great pleasure, I kept trying to keep a diverse roster of books on the go.
I didn’t exactly conquer the TBR to be fair; at the rate I buy books, I think that for the 120 books I read this year, I bought at least that again – that’s one thing I want and need to change next year and my purchases shall be fewer and better – but I at least justified the purchase of over 100 of them, and that, if nothing else, makes all the reading this year worthwhile.
But of course it meant more than just digging into the TBR – reading gave my solace and bliss and joy and introspection and it gave me safe place where the world doesn’t go away exactly but where it is at least at bay for a while and that is a fortunate and very good thing indeed.
The Map of William by Michael Thomas
Reading as William blossoms and grows into a man who not only knows good, but lives it, is a thrilling thing to be a part of, and a delight, and though there are some exceeding dark parts to the story including its complex and harrowing finale, The Map of William is at heart an emboldening and encouraging story of what happens when good men don’t stand by and do nothing.
There’s great evil in the world, and its sorely evident in 1909 W.A., but there’s also great good and kindness too, and as William comes to grips with that in The Map of William, you are inspired by what happens when one young man, and those who formed a caring and strongly supportive family around him, one which does precisely what it preaches as important, learns and grows and becomes the kind of person who you are sure will leave the world a better place than what he found it.
The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn
A slowly unfurling and richly told novel, The Door-to-Door Bookstore celebrates the undeniably seductive idea that books are far from just bound printed pages with a fetching cover and an enticing back cover blurb.
It says instead that books have the power to knit us all together, to bring people who might otherwise not come into contact with each other, and in The Door-to-Door Bookstore that is almost all of them isolated as they are for a host of reasons in their homes and in one case a convent, and bind them together into one big, inclusively supportive family who, in the book’s final act, prove pivotal to the future direction of Carl’s life.
It is the community made by books and Carl’s great love for them – he has a heart of gold and it’s his love for people that makes a huge difference in addition to the deliveries he makes – that form the enormous heart at the centre of The Door-to-Door Bookstore and which leave you feeling as if the world can be a better place and that reading may just be what makes that happen.
Beyond the Burn Line by Paul McAuley
McAulay knows that within the most audacious of ideas and the preposterous of premises sits the seat of a humanity that may change its face and its civilisational trappings but which wants many of the same things – to be loved and known for your authentic self, to do things that matter and to fight for what you value most even if it costs you something to do that.
It’s this innate sense and understanding of humanity that informs and infuses the novel and gives its more fantastically imaginative elements a grounded sense of familiarity and truth.
It might go to some truly amazing places, all of which will leave you speechless with the thoughtful imagination to come up with them in the first place, but it always, always, anchors everything in a central humanity which means that no matter where Beyond the Burn Line heads, it is always in the service of understanding what makes us, or whoever are the people of the day, who we are.
Beyond the Burn Line feels at every turn like a future that could happen, and that something so outlandishly out there much of the time can feel that is testament to the power and skill of McAulay’s writing and to his understanding that while the look and feel of civilisation might change, the core of what makes sentient beings do the things they do does not, and will ensure continuity, if carefully handled, no matter how great or expansive the change may be.
The Great Undoing by Sharlene Allsopp
The Great Undoing is a feat of wondrously envelope-pushing storytelling because it melds a thrilling tale of escape and a rush to hoped-for safety with messaging that is intense in one sense but necessarily so because Scarlet’s entire world is about being both sure and unsure of who she is and how this impels her to find out who she is and where she belongs, not just physically but at the very heart of her being.
That something so personal and truthful takes place amidst the end of the world – it is partial (some parts of the world simply didn’t sign up to BloodTalk and are relatively unaffected) and possibly temporary but who honestly knows? It certain feels like all the touchstones of civilisation have been lost forever – is fantastically audacious.
And yet it works, and works brilliantly, because with real empathy, heart, truth and honesty, all told with words groundedly human and heartstoppingly poetic, The Great Undoing cuts to the very core of why we must know who we are and where we belong, of how history is construct of facts and fabrication, and how untangling it all and arriving at the truth, whatever that may be, is an urgent and deeply necessary that must take place no matter how crazily chaotic the world in which it happens might be.
The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey
For a novel that wears its acknowledgement of the darkness of the world well and truly on its beautifully written sleeves, The List of Suspicious Things also embraces a great deal of life’s kindness and generosity too.
While lesser authors might’ve been tempted to apply some sort of sparkly fairytale polish and sheen to Miv’s story, taking all that darkness, sadness and loss and waving a narrative wand so it’s not so bad, after all, Godfrey balances the dark and the light perfectly, letting each breath as they need to.
The result is a novel which delves deep into society’s underbelly and which knows there are no easy fixes to any of it, but which also keeps a firm and compelling eye on the fact that in the midst of distress and chaos and societal lowpoints, there is the possibility of connection, belonging and maybe even love.
These might seem like trite, cutesy things to inject a story of dark, troubling substance, but in the hands of Godfrey, these qualities are muscular and meaningful, adding a hopeful depth to The List of Suspicious Things which persists and grows throughout its utterly beguiling length, and reminding us with poignancy, bright humour and a grounded positivity, that though life can be dark and terrible indeed, there is light at the end of the tunnel and hope that things can and will, in life-changing ways, get better.
Frank & Red by Matt Coyne
This is a book that holds forth the promise of what can follow after the worst moments of your life, but which also doesn’t minimise or trivialise them, and in so doing, makes the joyful happily-ever-after that results feel like the stuff of real life and not some hopeful fever dream committed to paper.
Frank & Red is a joy and gem, one of those novels that isn’t just funny, heartwarming and delightful to read, and it most certainly so with two lead characters who are thoughtfully and richly real, but which looks at life, knows how fearsome an enemy it can be but which reasons, quite rightly as it turns out, that friendship, true friendship, is more than a match for it and may not make all the difference in two very fractured worlds.
Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life by Helen Fisher
The great pleasure of Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life is not so much that he is beautiful human being, though he is (but also grounded and normal too with Fisher taking care not to turn him into some sort of flawlessly perfect human being simply because of his likely neurodiversity), but that she doesn’t wrap him in cotton wool and lets him out into the real world, where, yes, some cruel things can happen but also some quite delightful things too.
That’s the key lesson here, beyond, of course, taking people exactly as they are; while comfort zones can provide great pleasure and soothing sanctuary, leaving them can be quite wondrously good too, changing things for the better in ways you might never have happened.
Comfort zones restrict your view of the world and life beyond them, and the only way to see what else might be out there, is to take a bold step out in the unknown, and while Joe isn’t happy to do it at first, he has his books, and his family and friends and that, in the end, makes all the difference in his life-changing, unexpected adventure far from the safety and security of certainty and routine.
Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life is far more than just an inspirational read, though it most certainly is that; it’s a love letter to the power of taking risks and venturing beyond, and to the community of people who makes those kinds of great leaps into the unknown not only possible but also often highly successful and how they make life possible every bit as much our willingness, and bravery, to see what else might be out there.
The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers by Samuel Burr
We all long to belong, we need to belong but we also need to do that on the basis of knowing who we are, who we truly are; while community is a joy and a calm place for the soul in the sea of uncertainty that is life, it only really impacts us and become truly worthwhile if we know intrinsically who we are.
There’s no question that Clayton has benefited hugely from the community that adopted him and which continues to love with fierce and uncompromising love and loyalty, but it’s all happened with some fairly major question marks hanging over him.
In the aftermath of unimaginable loss, Clayton is given the chance to make his place in that community more known and full of a strong sense of self, a journey which informs and delights The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers which is never less than sweetly funny, warmly alive, honest about the glories and the pitfalls of the human condition and which reassures us, with a sense of inventive and caring humanity, at every turn that when we know who we are alone we become so much in community, something which not only brings us alive but which enriches those around us too, now and well into the future.
How to Solve a Murder by Kristen Perrin
It’s tough to meld the tried and tried hallmarks of murder mystery fiction with some post-modern humanist knowingness, but How to Solve Your Own Murder manages it with highly engaging aplomb, its dialogue shark sharp and clever, its characters a considerable beyond being cardboard cutout territory, and its story as apt to take a deep dive into the cold and cruel things people, even those who love each other, can perpetrate, as to take another step closer to solving the burbling mystery to hand.
How to Solve Your Own Murder is pleasingly and happily brilliant, a thoroughly inspired and magnificently imaginative story that delivers on what the murder mystery genre promises while serving up some real, often, moving drama that elevates the story far above Midsomer Murders territory and into a place that delivers weight and emotional gravitas to its fantastically well-realised and never-less-than utterly satisfying whodunnit.
The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
It’s rare that a book this intelligently crafted and clearly very well thought out can feel so grounded and accessibly, affectingly human, but it does, combining stellar writing with an incisive ability to dissect what makes us and our society, or what’s left of it in this instance, tick.
News flash! It’s not all that good; it’s not so much the murder that gives that away since it’s a given that killing someone else is not exactly a civilisational highlight, but the many things that emerge over the course of Emory’s deductive tour de force across, next to and through the underground heart of the island which not only eventually gives a killer but make it patently clear that something is, indeed rotten in the metaphorically apocalyptic state of Denmark.
You will come to love Emory, be appalled by the callousness of some of the characters and energised by a whodunnit which is astoundingly and breathlessly involving, imaginative as hell and complex to the nth degree and yet accessible in a way that makes its solution, even if you haven’t arrived at it first, so incredibly satisfying and worth the time you put into reading this breathtakingly good book.
Funny Story by Emily Henry
Indeed, many of the favourite passages of Funny Story come about as a result of Daphne and Miles’ repartee which in inspired, clever and very very funny when they’re at their best and haltingly, darkly insightful when they are not.
Even when they are stumbling around trying to articulate what ails or delights them, the dialogue is captivatingly, happily alive and joyfully zesty, elevating all matter of scenes with the kind of conversation we all wish we could summon at the drop of brightly yellow beanie hat.
So good is this back and forth dialoguing that it’s hard not to fall in love with these two opposites yourself, and bolstered by fulsome characterisation of people like Daphne’s caring mum, Miles’ outgoing, spontaneous sister and Ashleigh, Daphne’s divorced, single mum bestie from work, Funny Story comes sweetly and beautifully alive, a story full of wishful, fairytale romance but also a wondrously enveloping sense of community, belonging and supportive love.
Each and everyone of Henry’s books (Beach Read, Book Lovers, Happy Place) are an unalloyed joy, but there’s something about Funny Story that really warms the heart, soothes the soul and makes you laugh and grin so hard that, even though it embraces how sad, difficult and complex life can be, you feel as if anything and everything possible and that even the worst of times and things can miraculously and with fizzy chats and heartfelt admissions, be made gloriously whole again.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
The novel also does an exemplarily immersive job of exploring what it is like for everyone in the novel both those from the past and those stuck firmly and always in the present, to deal with pasts, presents and futures.
We all have to do it, and while there’s a big difference between what’s happened to Gore and his “Bridge”, the truth is that they are each in their own lost and uncertain about who they are, who they once were and where they can head, and each one must find a way to make an accommodation with some very ruminatively demanding things indeed.
Dancing between the fantastical and the emotively mundane, and flitting between intense thriller and somewhat fun-filled rom-com territory (though still with a great deal of understandable existential weight), The Ministry of Time is a magnificently good and clever book that takes some incredibly BIG ideas and doing intimately small things with them, asking as it does so whether we can defy history and what effect it has on people to have it all rammed into one intense period where expectations are huge, characters are beguiling and hearts are every bit as much on the line as a slew of far more prosaically pressured concerns.
Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal
Throughout the narrative, which both goes and doesn’t go where you expect it to, which is a joy in any book you read, Charlotte and Dan have to grapple in their own ways with what community and belonging mean to them and whether Tuga offers that to him after lives which has diverged heavily, in different ways, from the societal worldview in which they now find themselves.
Maybe the good people of Tuga are a little too suffocatingly attentive to others and their demands sometimes onerous but they are a rich and inclusively warm and supportive community overall, and as Charlotte especially lets down her barriers and accepts that maybe belonging somewhere, wholeheartedly and completely, is not such a bad thing after all, we are taken in Welcome to Glorious Tuga on a richly warm, funny and intensely emotional ride from isolation to connection and into the bonds of community which have the power to bring powerful and personal lasting change.
The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks
If you have even been forced to confront the fact that everything you believe about something isn’t true, and so untrue in fact that you will have to wholesale change how you see the world to embrace and accommodate it, then The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands is your novel.
It is a luxuriant challenge to the idea that we can ever lock down our understanding of the world nice and tight and that we can never know everything there is to know and to act, without incident, on those assumptions.
The truth is that we can’t and while a great many people find a false security in rigid religious belief or fossilised dogma, the truth of the matter is that it’s all paper-thin illusion and that it only takes the truth breaking in, as it most manifestly does in The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands as whatever is outside the train very much wants in, to rip it to shiny shreds.
You have a choice then, as do the people on the train – either reject the truth of what is right in front of you, or embrace and have your life and worldview be utterly changed, a scenario which confronts everyone in The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands and which elevates it to not simply a journey across geography and time but also the mind and the heart with the final destination, in all its transformative, liberating glory, bearing no resemblance to the one everyone assumed, once upon an ill-informed time, they would one day reach.
The Lifeline by Libby Page
Perhaps the biggest lesson to emerge from The Lifeline is that while we toss around hackneyed phrases like “no man is an island”, we don’t always embrace community like we should and that need to do that because it just makes so much better.
Going through life at all is hard, but near impossible alone, and while Kate and Phoebe are struggling along just enough as The Lifeline opens, they aren’t really ALIVE, and it’s not until they become part of the river swimming group and form close bonds with people who change their lives for the better, that they really rejoin the best and most connected parts of the human race again.
The Lifeline is a joy because of its reminder to be connected, to be known, to be emotionally honest and vulnerable and to never fear being close to others because far from judging us, they can often be the ones who unconditionally love and embrace and who help us reinvent who we are and where we want to go on a life journey that suddenly seems so much more alive and possible.
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston
It’s impossible not feel absolutely swept off your feet by this gloriously charming story which is a fairytale of sorts but one with grit and emotional substance, which understands that while happy-ever-afters are possible in life, they often follow great pain and sadness, and there’s never an assurance that everything will work out after all.
Does our selfless protagonist get a much-deserved happy ending? Ah, you will need to read The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife to truly find that out, but suffice to say, this is a novel with heart and soul to burn, characters, especially a lead one, who captured your heart and seize your emotional imagination, and a story that reminds us of how precious belonging and conditional love is, and how wondrous it is when they are ours and we get to keep them from now until the end of our life.
The Betrayal of Thomas True by A. J. West
It is clear in West’s deftly-written novel, which is heavy on the messaging without it once feeling forced or burdensome, who the real monsters are and who it is real and true and practising love in its most beautiful form, but it is touch-and-go much of the time if any justice will ever be done.
As the novel surges and races to its emotionally intense final act, with ups and downs on a quite graphic scale, you will be on the edge of your seat and with your heart in your mouth, hoping and praying that Thomas will find his optimism justified, that Gabriel will succeed against the forces arrayed against him, and that in a world which seems to routinely abhor and punish those who are different, that truth and authenticity will have their day and that true love of a most wonderfully same-sex kind will be allowed to find its true place and home and be safe for as long as the two beautiful men at the heart of this story live.
Read my full review.
The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
But then the robot’s past comes rising up to meet her and we have to wonder if you can truly leave who you were destined to be behind you and stay the person you have become. Is the world ever really that kind or accommodating?
That question can only be answered by reading this wholly delightful novel, but suffice to say, for all the ups and down of the narrative, what really becomes clear is how much you can gain by simply taking things on face value and embracing them for who they are.
The animals end up doing just that, and the result is lives transformed, a community built and enriched and worlds turned right on their heads in the very best of ways, with The Wild Robot a warm hug of a book that might reassure the soul and bolster the heart but which knows life can be tough, challenging and its darker elements hard to prevail against, but that with the people you love around you and the capacity to change for the better that anything is possible.
Who knows then, in the most wondrous of ways, where you might end up?
Saltblood by Francesca De Tores
De Tores bring Read vigorously and wondrously alive, powered by writing which is factually rich and highly informative but not at the expense of telling a complex story imbued with a compelling amount of humanity, which lifts someone often the pages of history and gives her form, vigour and quite relatable motivation.
Mary is a wonder to behold, but while her tale is enthralling and her exploits immersively fascinating to a neverending degree, she is also a person, albeit it a wholly remarkable woman, who takes what little she is given and makes something quite extraordinary out of it.
Power by a need to survive but also to passionately know and explore the world on her unique terms, Mary Read is the beating heart and soul of Saltblood, a fulsomely-realised, and gorgeously written piece of work which takes this most amazing of women, and not only pays homage to the factual events of her life, but which also brings her alive in such a way that you can well understand why someone with the capacity for so much life would not be content to simply sit by and let others define that experience for her.
Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd
But thrilling thought it all is, and it’s thrilling in a quietly nuanced but boldly fun way which does involve drama but not overwhelmingly so – all the best spies eschew drama in favour of deadly cold calculation and execution, in the shadows if at all possible, what really draws you into Gabriel’s Moon is the journey he is on as a person.
It is, in fact, his humanity, broken but hoping to be knit back together, that is centre stage in the novel when he is out on his missions, which rarely go quite to plan, or when he is home trying for something approaching normal life.
Boyd amps up the impact of the storyline, not by driving events to a narrative frenzy, but rather by focusing on the people involved and why they do what they do, most particularly of course, Gabriel, who is our eyes and ears on this world in the shadows and what it is like to be drawn into it with little to no warning and no real preparation.
Gabriel’s Moon is a seductively fun and clever piece of writing that reads a like a dream, tells a story that mostly but not always lives in the more dark and nightmarish parts of life, and which draws you in, yes, with its espionage tales and geopolitical intrigue, but more compellingly because its eponymous protagonist is trying to figure out who he is and what his life should be, fairly ordinary existential maneuvering that takes place in quite extraordinary circumstances, his humanity on display always, no matter the events, in ways that prove profoundly affecting and all but unforgettable.
Love at First Book by Jenn McKinlay
You are there in the rom-com trenches with Emily and Kieran, but also with Siobhan and her new assistant, the former becoming the mother Emily always wanted and needed, and while yes, the usual rom-com fairytale wand is waved, it comes with real emotional import and the kind of authenticity that grounds Love at First Book in real life.
The big difference here is that the dead hand of real life doesn’t have the upper hand, and that all the things Emily hoped this change of life might be do happen and her wishes, hopes and dreams actually find living, breathing, warmly inclusive and supportive form.
Flawlessly, seamlessly wonderful, Love at First Book never once put a foot wrong, gifting us with characters who sparkle with weight, meaning and fun, situations that crush the heart even as they bring it marvellously back to buoyant life, a supporting cast and a town you most definitely want in your corner and your life, and a storyline that, yes, ticks all the usual rom-com tropes and cliches, but which does so with vivacity, joy and an original zest that makes Emily’s move from the States to Ireland, from the known to the unknown, an epically wondrous joy that will you deliriously giddy with joy at the end but also contentedly happy that life can defy the odds and be this wonderful.
The Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks
You cannot walk away from this extraordinarily good novel without having the truth of this seared into you.
Our increasingly individualistic world fumbles and staggers when it comes to elevating the good of the many over that of the one, but in The Way Up Is Death makes it clear in ways intimate and epic but always profoundly emotionally impactful, that we are better when we stand together.
We may not always get the outcome we want, and indeed the lottery of The Way Up Is Death is that nothing, absolutely nothing, is guaranteed, and that any sense of control and influence over our lives is largely illusory – though it’s evident that what we choose to do has a heavy bearing on what happens to us; we are not simply victims of fate – but for life to matter, for our experiences to matter, especially under extreme, death-haunted duress, we need each other in ways than transcend trite meme-heavy messaging.
If you take anything away from this enthrallingly good, terrifyingly intense and emotionally rich novel, let it be that we are far stronger as one, and that when we prioritise community over self, we not only achieve great things, temporary though some maybe, but we transform ourselves in the process, and for however long that lasts, that can be the greatest gift we ever give ourselves and others.
The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry (Sunderworld Vol. 1) by Ransom Riggs
It’s exuberantly immersive and emotionally intimate, a novel that soars to the heights of possibility and falls into the chasm of disappointment but above all, it’s about raw, broken and hopeful humanity with The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry, the first in what is a continuing series, leaving you feeling as if someone really gets what grief is like, and that even though you want to save the world, it may not even begin to work out the way you expect it to, and maybe, just maybe ordinary is all you have.
Or, and here’s the kicker, IS IT?
Winnie-the-Pooh: Winter in the Wood by Jane Riordan (illustrations by Mark Burgess)
The book which takes us from autumn through winter, and thus Christmas into the New Year, is a sheer and unadultered delight with every character feeling very much like themselves, the cadence and rhythm of the conversations feeling just right, and the love sense of belonging and being loved for exactly who you are, carrying each and every page.
Burgess’s illustrations match Shephard’s original artwork to a tee and yet still feel wonderfully their own, and part of the joy of Winnie-the-Pooh: Winter in the Wood is seeing the story weave in and around some beautiful tableaus which a whole story in and of themselves.
Such as the one on 78-79 where Christopher Robin looks lovingly on as as Winnie the Pooh stands a little down the path, looking at the Christmas present he’s been given with wonder and delight, happy to open it, or not, on his own when he’s home because “Having a Secret Surprise to open is my best thing in the world”.
Winnie-the-Pooh: Winter in the Wood is the perfect marriage of words and art, a sublimely lovely evocation of Milne at his best by an author who subtlely injects her own flavour to the story while making it wondrously clear that here we are, quite marvellously, with Pooh again and that we’re lucky enough to celebrate Christmas with him and his wonderful, very special found family.
Home For Christmas by Heidi Swain
Swain is masterful in her ability to gradually bring Jude and Bella together in a way that feels as grounded as these sorts of stories get; they are two people with issues to deal with, and while the tug of festive love is unmistakable, you can’t assume that the pieces will just smoothly fall into place.
There must be decision and indecision, back and then forth, forth and then back, and it must be done in such a way that it doesn’t feel frustratingly half-baked because nothing kills the thrill of Christmassy love that two people who are chaotic messes driving in an endless of emotional stupidity.
Fortunately, Swain is too bright a writer to let that happen, and what you get in Home for Christmas is a coming together that feels reasonably real, honest and true but with all the frothy fairytale trappings of the genre and the warmth, colour and festive vibrancy of the season.
It is a joy to read, not only because the story is told so well, but because Swain understands the magic and possibility of the season, and uses it brilliantly good effect throughout Home for Christmas which is one of the best romcoms of this year’s tinsel-draped and fair light-strung crop.
This is a fun review of the best books of 2024 …