My favourite reads of 2024

Let’s do it! A look back over a year of books, starting with Martin MacInnes’ In Ascension because it was one of the first books I read in 2024, which is an amazingly strong start by anyone’s standards. I’m enjoying the fact that Barack Obama also has good taste by picking it as one of his reads of the year.

These books that somehow create an intimacy yet take place on an epic scale, contrasting the inner life and the vastness of societies – they are so difficult to do, and so wonderful to read. Different genres provide various ways to make it work. Where In Ascension did it with SF, Mariana Enriquez’s Our Share of Night did it with horror. There are sections of that book I’ve run over and over in my mind. It’s all about the way the reader is placed within the world that’s so absorbing.

I’ve found a lot of horror in my favourite reads this year, not always stridently so, but sometimes to brilliant, surprising effect. I loved Jenn Ashworth’s Ghosted, Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts, and Samantha Schweblin’s Little Eyes. Conchita De Gregorio’s The Missing Word was heartbreaking and so strong. At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop is stunning. Also Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife, which was published in October in the UK and suited a muddy autumn. These books were all somehow rooted in reality even when dealing with the worst or the strangest things, and all had the magic ingredient: I had to know what happened next.

What did happen next? I revisited some of my favourite authors, and treated myself to Rupert Thomson’s first novel, Dreams of Leaving. Yes, he was even brilliant back when he wrote this, his first novel. Rachel Cusk’s Parade was just beautiful in its shape and ideas. Jorge Luis Borges’ The Book of Sand contained a story so apposite, so completely tied up in things I’m thinking about right now that I’ve reread it multiple times. It’s called Utopia of a Tired Man.

While I’m thinking about short stories, I’ll also just mention Verity Holloway’s collection Cheer the Sick, filled with wise tales that aren’t afraid to turn in unexpected directions. Laura Mauro’s one-off story in The Dark magazine online, Wiremother, is just perfectly creepy and sad and very much pushed all my buttons.

There was the thrill of discovering a writer from the past, and feeling as if they were speaking directly to me: Elizabeth Jenkins’ The Tortoise and the Hare was funny, sharp, bitter, and I finished it and immediately got a copy of another novel of hers, Harriet, which is based on a shocking murder case from 1877 (Harriet was published in 1934). It’s a fascinating novel, which puts the reader into the minds of the murderers in really uncomfortable ways. It’s so weird to think of how the reporting of crime has changed since then, and reflect on the differences.

I’d read Olaf Stapledon before, years ago, but I got reacquainted with him this year when someone gave me a copy of his novel about a genetically altered dog, Sirius, from 1944. It’s not something I would have chosen to pick up, but as soon as I started reading I was sucked in, and I love its unerring focus on moral issues without sacrificing emotional weight.

Back to the here and now – well, sort of. I haven’t read Sandra Newman’s new book yet, but I caught up with The Heavens from 2019. That mixture of past and present, events affecting each other, and the way people change because of how they perceive their history, was brilliantly done.

Finally, a graphic novel: Monica by Daniel Clowes feels like both a classic and something so far out there that you need to scoop your brain up after reading. That ending.

And on that ending, I’ll end.

Looking back over these names, these voices, I’m hugely grateful for their work and their companionship. Have a great Christmas and I hope you’ve found both new and familiar writers to keep you company through the year, and onwards into 2025.