Year in Review: 2021
Fiction: Seven Down (David Whitton) was my favourite novel of the year. It’s a witty, sharply written and concise story told in seven interviews (with seven people) about a failed assassination attempt. Whitton is skilled at reproducing the imperfect way people often speak, and I found it a strangely delightful dose of cynicism and a story that unfolded in a fascinating way.
The Sea (John Banville) has an impressively original narrative voice and finds profound moments of consideration. Some novels have no patience for small talk, and this is one of them. Winner of the Booker.
Convenience Store Woman (Sayaka Murata) is a novel written in a fairly charming and convincing voice, even as it examines societal norms and expectations. I only wish I could have read it without it conjuring up rotten memories from when I worked in retail.
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore is the kind of novel I really enjoy: poignant, concise, and loaded with arresting images. Looking forward to reading more of her books.
Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow (Jason Heroux) is concise and just the right amount of experimental for my taste: different enough to be interesting but far from incoherent.
Loving (Henry Green) is interesting for conveying a lot through dialogue, generally dropping even descriptions of characters, and Green is a smart, witty writer. When brief moments of description arrive it’s often startlingly good: “The room was dark as long weed in the lake.”
I went on to read Back (also Henry Green) about a WW1 soldier returning to England and found it slow-paced — almost meditative — but involving.
Why Birds Sing (Nina Berkhout) is a novel that seems to understand life can be both appallingly difficult and sublime, even as the story is engaging and the characters feel quite real.
The Student (Cary Fagan) had characters that felt immediately real and a compelling story that interestingly (for me, anyway) includes snapshots of Toronto, starting in the 1950s.
Catching Desire (Carmelo Militano) was a concise, compelling and personal novel about Modigliani, and as Militano is a friend there’s a One Question Interview below to be found earlier on the blog.
Fauna (Christiane Vadnais) is a climate disaster novel that has startlingly good moments of description and inventive twists. It’s a fascinating blend of realism and fiction in a far-sighted way. Here’s a moment a character has a vision: “She feels the sun and the moon blinking, faster and faster, as if the earth’s rotation has sped up and days contracted to mere hours, minutes, seconds. The sun seems to cross the sky at breakneck speed … Laura has found the secret to seeing how the townspeople are born and die by the hundreds, like the crackling of some eternal fire.”
Graphic novels: Rust (Royden Lepp) is four volumes but reads as a quick, compelling reimagining of history: a First World War with robots, though really the aftermath and a family’s struggle to survive on a farm provides the backbone of the story, done in a skilled, highly filmic way.
Stay (Lewis Trondheim) is not, I hope, based on a true story about a woman trying to continue to enjoy a vacation spot after her partner is almost immediately killed.
Slaughterhouse-Five (Ryan North) is a superb graphic novel adaption of the novel by Vonnegut.
Victory Point (Owen D. Pomery): beautiful artwork accompanies a story about returning home.
Big Black: Stand at Attica is a graphic novel memoir of a 1971 rebellion against the injustices of the prison system, and a historical moment that should not be forgotten.
The Stringbags (Ennis, Holden) is the true story of antiquated biplane torpedo bombers used by England in WW2 that nevertheless enjoyed some important successes. Well illustrated and compelling.
Graphic novel biography: Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula (Koren Shadmi) is an excellent graphic novel (by the same creator as Twilight Man about Rod Serling).
Orwell (Christin, Verdier) looks at the life of one of my favourite writers and only really stumbles in the opening pages with a sweeping statement about “woman’s novels” being “sad and sentimental.” Hey, I like a good solid dose of sad and sentimental.
Lon Chaney Speaks (Pat Dorian) is another worthy graphic novel biography, though because parts of his life are a mystery the book is forced to dwell, at times, on his assorted films.
Genre: I finally read The Lord of the Rings (not a huge fan of fantasy) which I generally called Lord of the Onion Rings as I read it to my daughter in the evenings. I had to fast-forward through some of the remarkable amounts of description, and it felt a little like trying to show her a TV show from fifty years ago in terms of the pace, but there are also remarkable moments in the description and she found the story and characters compelling, particularly Frodo and Sam. I was nearly moved to tears when reading aloud Gandalf’s wonderful return, and the moment Frodo and Sam say they’re glad to be with each other “at the end of all things.”
Consider Her Ways and Others (John Wyndham): inventive speculative fiction stories from an author I admire, though sometimes the kind of story or general idea we’ve seen produced as a film in all the decades since.
Dr. No (Fleming) suffers from the usual sweeping generalizations (culturally speaking), but I can’t imagine who’d read it as an accurate portrayal of Jamaica – particularly all these years later — it’s an entertaining Fleming novel.
Hombre (Elmore Leonard) is a gripping story told in precise, straightforward language I found myself admiring.
Stories: Zero Gravity (Sharon English) is a superb set of stories: well written without being flashy and meaningful without being heavy-handed. I’m fifteen years late to the party, but a great book is a great book.
Tiny Deaths (Robert Shearman) was a dark (and by that I mean really dark) inventive collection I enjoyed.
Instruction Manual for Swallowing (Marek) is another inventive collection I found refreshingly original and unpredictable. My favourite was about a huge talking centipede full of regret.
Nonfiction: On Decline (Andrew Potter) clarified some important ideas for me, including the idea that when media outlets post bizarre articles (that sometimes left me scratching my head) the outrage is the point. It’s concise, and part of the new Field Notes series by Biblioasis.
A Walk in the Woods (Bill Bryson): don’t know how I took this long to read Bryson, but this is funny, thoughtful, charming and immensely readable. It was perfect summer reading at a cottage.
My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer (Christian Wiman) had me reaching for my highlighter frequently: “I never truly felt the pain of unbelief until I began to believe.”
Unreliable Memoirs (Clive James): James is good company here, though I would not consider it his best book. I also picked up Poetry Notebook: Reflections on the Intensity of Language and enjoyed it.
The Unreality of Memory and other Essays (Elisa Gabbert): a set of impressively thoughtful, articulate essays that addresses, in particular, our deeply troubled times.
Poetry: Manual for Emigrants (Fraser Sutherland) is a book I enjoyed and found skillfully done, but more importantly a book very kindly signed and dropped in the mail to me by Fraser a few months before he passed away early in the year. He was a talented poet and a supportive friend. I’ll always remember him editing my first book of poems and calling it “Good stuff,” as well as insisting on buying me every coffee on a patio, saying “The writer doesn’t pay” (though of course he was a writer as well). I’m glad I made it to the launch of his 2019 poetry book, and that his book about his son (The Book of Malcolm) was completed and will be out in 2022.
Looking back on the year I’m surprised at how many poetry books I read even as I drifted away from writing poetry: Elephant Rocks (Kay Ryan) We Can’t Ever Do This Again (Amber McMillan), Mere Extinction (Evie Christie), All the Daylight Hours (Amanda Jernigan), Strangers (Rob Taylor), A Tunisian Notebook (Russell Thornton), The Id Kid (Linda Besner), The Suicide’s Son (James Arthur), Dunk Tank (Kayla Czaga), How Long (Ron Padgett) Lucifer at the Starlite (Kim Addonizio), The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, Troubled (R.M. Vaughan).
I revisited The Stovehaven Poems (Rick Patrick) and below on this blog I’ve reviewed the debut book The Pit (Tara Borin).
Books for young kids: Through with the Zoo (Jacob Grant) was, remarkably enough, a book about being an introvert as far as I can tell, and really the first one I’ve come across in ten years of reading to my kids. Other books my young son enjoyed included Bear Meets Bear (Jacob Grant), On the Other Side of the Forest (Robert, DuBois), The Barnabus Project (Terry Fan) and a series called Big Words Small Stories (by Judith Henderson).
