Year in Review: 2019
This year I did a few final readings from Army of the Brave and Accidental, my retelling of The Odyssey, though the best moments came when I was invited to Thin Air, a Winnipeg literary festival in the fall of 2018. I’m still feeling proud of the book and while it wasn’t quite the response I hoped for, the book didn’t go without acknowledgement. I wrote some thoughts on it for Goodreads, mainly to include some comments from a Canadian Notes & Queries review by Alex Good that was really positive.
Here’s my annual list of books I enjoyed this year, including fiction, short stories, nonfiction and graphic novels. [image error]
Novels: It was a little hard to be patient with the slowly unfolding plot of Brooklyn (Colm Toibin) but ultimately it’s easy to enjoy as a well-written novel and a great example of a pace that allows characters to feel real.
Speaking of Ireland, The Wonder (Emma Donoghue) forges a very compelling novel out of real historical incidents: someone believing they don’t need to eat because God sustains them. Compelling and carefully written.
The Bookshop (Penelope Fitzgerald) is concise and meaningful, subtle, deeply British and enjoyable, even if the ending leaves the reader wanting more.
The Little Snake (A.L. Kennedy) is a quite remarkable short fable, clearly written in the modern age but designed to be timeless. The writing is very precise but I was most impressed with Kennedy’s way of capturing the kind of human she admires, even if the mirror-image appalling human is basically left out, their military aggression mysteriously unexplained. Perhaps that’s fair, as there’s no decent explanation, is there?
The Pleasure of My Company (Steve Martin) is a small, quiet and pretty much perfect novel. The Magician (Maugham) was utterly compelling with subtle meaning, as usual for Maugham, and I was reminded I’m really impressed when I read one of his novels, this one apparently based on Aleister Crowley. Bottled Goods (Llewyn), is a concise novel that employs a bit of magic realism in telling the story of struggles in 1970s communist Romania.
Titus Groan (Peake). An opening paragraph demonstrates how superbly and carefully written it is, even as it creates a world of its own. A remarkable book that’s quietly and deeply symbolic of different elements of society, and part of a trilogy I hope to continue soon.
Assorted Canadian Novels: The Sisters Brothers (DeWitt) was really well written and something I thoroughly enjoyed, particularly as someone who loves Westerns. Inventive, entertaining and grim with real-feeling characters, this felt to me a little like watching a Coen brothers movie.
Small Claims (Kaufman) has a character in personal crisis even as he’s mildly obsessed with the fairly pitiful struggles found in small claims court. It always gets on my nerves a little when novelists write novels about people writing novels, but ultimately like a good poem this hints at some important ideas about the daily struggles we face as humans.
Dear Evelyn (Kathy Page) is an impressive, empathetic account of a long marriage that has remarkable moments bringing the characters – and humanity with all its flaws – to life, even as I found it a little unsatisfying for the jumps in time that required the reader to resettle fairly routinely.
All My Puny Sorrows (Toews) is loaded with empathy for the characters it creates, and the world in general, and tells a compelling tale of a close family. Sometimes I’m tempted to resist when a novel so thoroughly and plainly tugs on my heartstrings, but I did ultimately enjoy this one.
Congratulations on Everything (Nathan Whitlock). I don’t think it’s as easy as it looks to write a concise, everyday epic that includes characters, dialogue and events that feel quite real even as insights are slipped into a straightforward narrative (Simply put, a character opens a bar and meets assorted people along the way). Whitlock provides the occasional sublime line, but the reader gets the sense he prefers a straightforward style, and story. In fact, overlong and overdone novels get a jab at one point, when a character is reading one: “It was the size of a small briefcase, and so heavy it made her wrists ache when she read it.”
I suspect Whitlock likes everyday people and quiet heroes. Stalin gets a mention, but only because a character is reading a plump biography of him. For once, the historic personalities are in orbit of the everyday people living their lives, trying to carve out a bit of space to be happy while the clock ticks, aware they have a finite amount of time: “Their father didn’t like to talk about getting old. Getting old was getting old — what alternative was there? It was as pointless as trying to imagine the forms life might take at the far end of the universe. We’ll know when we know.”
Short stories: Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (Richard Yates) was sad and beautiful and superbly written. The kind of good writing that didn’t draw attention to itself. The Ways of White Folks (Langston Hughes) was both a historical lesson and a superb set of stories. How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? (Lau) is an inventive and well-written set of stories. I’m not going to pick a winner here as all three come highly recommended.
Graphic novel series: Irredeemable (Mark Waid) imagines a Superman-like hero turned evil and destructive and it’s very compelling (ten volumes), though his destructive acts are so appalling (particularly the first one) that later attempts to explain and humanize him don’t quite work as well as they might be meant to work. Wild’s End (Dan Abnett and I.N.J Culbard, who is among my favourite illustrators) puts an anthropomorphic twist on The War of the Worlds in a story set in and around small English villages and it’s gripping stuff (three volumes). Sweet Tooth (Lemire) is a grim, post-apocalyptic tale of struggle and survival well suited to the art Lemire produces. I found it compelling, even if I had to brace myself to read another volume.
Stand-alone graphic novels: Twists of Fate (Paco Roca) is a superb account of a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and then World War Two, using first-hand accounts of the events as told to the artist after meeting an alert, elderly veteran everyone assumed to simply be the local eccentric.
I’ve continued to really like Black Hammer (a refreshingly different take on the superhero genre) but Frogcatchers by Jeff Lemire is precise and poignant: at once accessible, profound, and like a meaningful dream.
Quiet Girl in a Noisy World: An Introvert’s Story (Tung). Simply put, this thoroughly enjoyable series of anecdotes from an introvert helps explain introverts, and might actually help extroverts understand. We don’t dislike people, all right? It’s like having an inner battery that runs down, and then we’re emotionally wiped.
Memoirs of a Book Thief (Tota) may or may not be loosely based on a real story, but it’s a compelling story of a curious character entering the literary life of Paris in what would appear to be the 1950s. Not, apparently, the story of a famous writer but the story of the guy who was hanging around.
Clyde Fans (Seth) was promoted as decades in the making, and it was worth the wait. It’s a superb, subtle, poignant and beautiful story of two brothers over the decades and the fan company they ran. There’s something very Canadian about it, though not in a heavy-handed way. It’s nothing that ruined the experience, but in a handful of moments the print was too small for me to read, so I do wonder if it could’ve been packaged differently.
Nonfiction: Typhoid Mary (Anthony Bourdain) is a concise and readable account of an unfortunate life.
On Writing (Stephen King) is accessible, enjoyable, useful and curmudgeonly, beginning with the statement this is a shorter book because most books about writing are filled with “bullshit.” And here’s another line: “When it comes to scene-setting and all sorts of description, a meal is as good as a feast.”
Born a Crime (Trevor Noah) is an immensely readable account of life in apartheid Africa. Noah is skilled at both writing well and leaving out irrelevant moments, so that it’s both a personal journey and historically interesting.
Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (Valeria) is “structured around the forty questions the author translates and asks undocumented Latin-American children facing deportation.” It would be hard to overstate how insightful and important this book was. I have a better understanding from this brief book, even as I continue to feel helpless.
James Baldwin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations was a short book that routinely sent me looking for my highlighter given the number of remarkable quotes from Baldwin, particularly on life in America.
The Great War and Modern Memory (Paul Fussell) is a book I’m glad to have finally finished. I started it years ago and thought some of the anecdotes lifted directly from the experience — Fussell was among the first to go through diaries and journals from the war, some still with mud on them — were the most remarkable and memorable I’d read. For some reason I didn’t finish the book, maybe because it becomes more dry in the second half, but as a more mature reader I found it remained fascinating throughout.
Memoir: Born Standing Up (Steve Martin) reflects on his experiences working out his standup routines and how the experience was sometimes useful later in life when acting. More importantly, Martin is good company, briskly moving through interesting anecdotes. Not My Father’s Son (Alan Cumming) is a troubling (considering what Cumming went through) but well-written memoir of growing up in Scotland. There’s immense sadness here, and yet a struggle to understand.
Genre: Semiosis (Sue Burke) is an impressively imagined, compelling story of a human colony on another planet, each chapter taking place a generation later. Not only does this allow for the long view, in terms of the decisions characters make and the consequences – not even in their lifetimes – but each chapter becomes like a related, well-realized short story. Or it feels that way until the final chapters detail the fate of the entire brief civilization in some of the most compelling reading I’ve done in years. Don’t believe online reviewers saying the science overwhelms the plot. A few dull passages aside, Burke knows the science should be the spice, not the main course.
The Fireman (Joe Hill) had a great premise: a new plague has people simply burning up, quite literally, and society is in chaos as a result of all the spontaneous combustion. Hill creates memorable characters and presents a stark reality that blends well with a society headed for climate disaster: choose if you’ll be meeting the problem with grace and dignity or panic and prejudice.
Moonraker (Ian Fleming) was, I thought, one of the better Bond books I’ve read, with only a light smattering of the sexism that sits in some of his other books like lumps in your oatmeal.
Sherlock Holmes: last year I really enjoyed a new Holmes novel called The House of Silk but this year I found The Patchwork Devil (Cavan Scott) to be a pleasant surprise. It ain’t easy to play with the toys created by the giants of literature and manage to look pretty good, but I found lots to appreciate here: a brisk pace, a style that feels like Conan Doyle, and a 1919 setting that allows for some commentary on life after the war, even as the Great War isn’t simply used casually for backdrop but portrayed as the appalling loss of life it was. Add to that a bit of a distinct, older and somewhat more sassy Watson narrating the story, and a crossover with another famous genre novel (possibly franchise would be the word) you can probably guess from the title. On top of that, clearly some research went into portraying the setting and the era. This was an excellent diversion laced with some meaning as well, and so thoroughly enjoyable on more than one level.
Poetry: Bad Habits (Fraser Sutherland) is a new collection broken down into a dozen subjects, and carefully measured poems. I also really enjoyed How to Avoid Huge Ships(Julie Bruck), and very much look forward to the new Chris Banks collection.
One final note if you’ve made it this far: search “Tor.com” for affordable, inventive and well-written SF short stories, and “Vintage Short” for another impressive series, this one a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.
