Welcome to the fourth instalment of The Year in Books. Given the nature of the last couple of years, I have tended to begin these pieces with some sort of moan. I do a lot of moaning regardless, and there’s been a lot to moan about since…well, for a while. I’ll try not to do that this time.
I have gone through some pretty seismic changes in my personal life this year, and I have struggled to read (or write) as much as I would have liked. Luckily I didn’t have to deal with any of this against the backdrop of lockdowns. The Covid waves that ebbed and flowed in 2020 and 2021 receded. Pubs stayed open. Thank the Lord.
Much like last year, though, I did most of my reading at home, before, during and after work. I set myself a target of 30 books for the year. Loyal readers keen of memory will remember that I had the same target last year and fell short. I fell short again. Previously this sort of failure would have been a source of frustration for me, a sense of unfinished business lingering over the Christmas and New Year celebrations, driving me into January with purpose, with motivation. This year, I don’t really care. Too much has happened and it’s an arbitrary target anyway.
So, leaving aside the sheer pointlessness of it all, I suppose I should get to the books. According to my notes (Goodreads), the first book I finished this year was Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen. January feels like it happened about 10 years ago. I really enjoyed Freedom, as I have enjoyed other Franzen novels. It contains everything you’d expect from the bird-loving, Twitter-baiting novelist: family dynamics, social investigation, humour, tragedy, sweeping narrative arcs that crisscross back and forth between generations and locations. Most of the characters are unlikeable, but it is to Franzen’s credit as a writer that with unlikeability comes a sense of empathy for the mistakes everybody makes as they muddle through life. I actually totally forgot that I’d read Freedom this year because so much has happened since then, but it reminds me that I ought to read something else by Franzen next year, too.
Next — or, I think, simultaneously — I read a short, pamphlet-sized book containing six essays by George Orwell. Books v Cigarettes muses on everything from the titular debate to time spent battling serious illness and medical sadism in a Paris hospital. I don’t really need to add anything here to how compelling Orwell’s prose style is. There is one essay on the censorship of literature that recalls his best fiction writing, and the staggering thing about these essays — published in the late 1930s and early 1940s — is just how relevant they seem to today’s world. The merits of literature against other forms of entertainment, the insidious nature of censorship, the broken education system. You can read the timelessness of these essays in two ways. One: in awe at Orwell’s prescience and insight into our cultural failings. Two: in despair at society’s complete inability to solve its challenges. However you read it, I would recommend that you do, in fact, read it.
Sticking with non-fiction, I read Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams next. This is a book which attempts to impress upon the reader the importance of sleep, including the staggering health impacts a lack of it can have. It certainly worked for me, although I haven’t done any of my own research to find out if there are competing claims. What I can say from a craft point of view is that Walker is very adept at extracting a compelling story from what is essentially a chronicle of scientific study. Some of its lessons have stuck with me, such as that driving while sleep deprived can actually be worse than driving drunk. Put it this way: I’ve been doing my best to get 8 hours ever since.
Good as that was, I needed a fiction fix for my next book. From the science lab to Lagos – I sailed through Welcome To Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo in no time. This is the story of a Nigerian army deserter who joins forces with a ragtag band of misfits in Nigeria’s capital, each with a different backstory but similar goal: freedom, life, fulfilment. Along the way they somehow managed to become embroiled in a national political scandal. There’s a lot going on here. For a second novel, it really does handle multiple themes and story strands very well, and Onuzo paints a portrait of the bustling metropolis of Lagos in fantastic, shimmering detail. It is a sweetly optimistic and occasionally cheesy novel which is a thoroughly enjoyable story of courage and survival.
Next, I picked up Godspeed by Nickolas Butler, a Christmas present which I had requested after listening to an interview with Butler on The Writer Files podcast a few months earlier. I finished this book in mid-February, so my reading speed up to this point in the year was pretty impressive for me. Godspeed is a true ‘page-turner’, as nauseating as that phrase is. It is brilliantly paced, segueing from nail-biting set-pieces to poetic passages of reflection and character exploration. The story goes like this: three friends and construction partners get the job of a lifetime building a mansion in the mountains. The timeline for completion is tight — it’s very much make or break, and the novel observes the gradual fraying of relationships as the pressure and the tension mount. This was an early frontrunner for my book of the year. The characters are incredibly well-drawn, the location descriptions really very evocative and the themes are handled with a masterful sleight of hand.
Back in time next, to the satirical world of Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh. This is a short novel satirising Fleet Street’s hectic and desperate pursuit of the latest and hottest scoops. Following hapless war correspondents in the Abyssinian-Italian war, Scoop is exuberant, irreverent and written with the kind of zip and wit characteristic of other master satirists, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Kingsley Amis. A perfect read for those who love period novels with some humour.
My next book took me about 2 months to finish. It is quite a long book, in my defence, but I also moved into a new flat in March. My reading pace slowed dramatically around that time. The stress of moving, combined with the fact that the decor of the new flat makes it feel like a holiday home, meant that I was doing more drinking than reading to unwind. Also, Liverpool FC began a quest for an unprecedented quadruple that was ultimately doomed to failure. I spent more time in the pubs than the pages around this point of the year, and circumstances would transpire that meant I either read very little, or struggled to concentrate when I did.
Anyway, the next book I read was L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy. Having seen and relished the film adaptation, I came to this knowing what to expect and came away still being surprised. The prose style is difficult to latch onto at first, and there are so many plots and subplots woven with such complexity that it makes for quite a slow read. That said, it is an incredible, epic story of corruption, violence, greed and justice. It is a dark and harsh world with richly-layered characters and locations you feel you can reach out and touch. As with any novel of such grandiose scale, the movie adaptation leaves quite a lot to the side — including much of Jack Vincennes’s story — but still retains all of the seediness and corruption of the novel. You don’t have to enjoy one to enjoy the other — but I would definitely recommend consuming both.
Another 2 months passed before I finished The Night Manager by John le Carré. There were more life upheavals during this time that I won’t go into. But I did realise this year that, for all that literature can be a great escape from the drudgery and occasional trauma of life, it’s easy to get swept up in the drama of the everyday and forget the balm that great fiction can bring. I must try to remember that next year.
Anyway, The Night Manager. I have read a few le Carré’s before — largely his earlier spy novels like The Spy Who Came in From The Cold and A Call For The Dead. The Night Manager was published in 1993, more than 30 years after A Call For The Dead. You can tell. There is definitively an evolution in le Carré’s style, if not necessarily in theme. The prose is richer, more descriptive, and it is both broader and deeper in scope. It’s an excellent book and, perhaps because I took so long to read it, it feels like one of the more memorable I’ve read this year.
At the start of the year I began reading Liverpool: The Rise, Fall and Renaissance of a World Class City by Ken Pye. I read it in fits and starts alongside other books, which is probably not the best policy, because I can’t really remember much of it. It is admirably researched and comprehensive as it charts the history of the best city in the world. Pye is able to show great affection for Liverpool and its people without shying away from some of the more reprehensible aspects of its history, such as its involvement in the slave trade. It’s not much of a page-turner, but is a really good resource for anyone wanting to learn more about Liverpool.
From the longest read to the shortest: I Have More Souls Than One by Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa was a Portuguese poet who passed away in 1935. This short pamphlet-size book contains poems written from the perspectives of four different narrators who are, mainly, indistinguishable from one another. The coexistence of the four narrators is an externalisation of the internal struggle taking place within Pessoa. The tortured, melancholic poet does battle with the stone-faced stoic, and Pessoa is great at emphasising the way in which we are all simply a collection of warring desires, fears and influences. He also obviously smoked like a chimney as well, which gets my seal of approval. You can finish this collection in an hour or two, but it will stay with you for much longer.
Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion by Matt Zoller Seitz provided me with the perfect opportunity to re-watch the second best TV show in history. Every episode comes with its own essay, dissecting the themes, narrative fabric and acting of the show. Its analysis is both micro and macro in scale, and it really did add to the experience of watching. I have watched Mad Men about 4–5 times already, but this companion helped me notice things I had previously missed. It also provides incredibly detailed social and historical context, illustrating just how intricate and deftly thought-out the show was.
We’re now entering mid-July. I laboured through W. Somerset Maugham’s Collected Short Stories: Volume 1, mostly in parks or beer gardens. I say laboured not because these are hard to read (previous readers may remember my effusive praise for Maugham’s longer works) but because I simply had other things on my mind. Oppressive heat. Depressive funk. The need for a pint. These short stories are a mixed bunch. Some of them recall Maugham’s virtuosic capacity for drawing fully-formed characters, but others are too short to do so, or else rest on not-particularly-interesting conceits. I enjoyed the collection overall, but I would not say that this is a good entry point for Maugham newbies. Instead, go and read Of Human Bondage, which is lengthy but quite possibly my favourite novel going. You won’t regret it.
In August I travelled to Estonia to visit an old friend who lives there. He furnished me with a copy of Exile On Main Street: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones by Robert Greenfield. I’m a big fan of The Rolling Stones’ music, especially the seminal album which the title refers to. But this book isn’t really about that. It’s less about music than it is salacious stories of hedonism and debauchery, which are interesting enough, and do put the circumstances of the album’s creation into startling context. It’s remarkable anything got done during that time, really.
In need of some levity, I turned to an old favourite next, in P.G. Wodehouse. I had previously read some of his Jeeves stories, so I was glad to snap up a copy of Life At Blandings from a classical bookshop in Eton. This consists of three separate books: Something Fresh, Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather. Wodehouse is just such an excellent humourist, and his characters are so enjoyable to spend your time with. He is also excellent at plot, weaving intricate and finely-perched narratives that ebb and flow with the desires and foibles of his characters. This definitely cheered me up, and I was loath to finish it.
My next two books were both collections of short stories. And perhaps that tells you something about my attention span at this point of the year. It was September by this time, and I had decided I needed a month off the booze in order to row back from the mental (and physical) cliff edge I felt like I was hovering over. My reading picked up pace again. I would come to enjoy quiet mornings with coffee and a short story before work.
First, I rifled through What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Raymond Carver’s short stories mostly go nowhere and end on ambiguous notes, but that is kind of the point. These are slice-of-life stories, and what is life but a seemingly endless road to nothing, to no satisfying conclusion? There are stories here about yard sales, door-to-door salesmen and bingo nights, but what permeates them all is the quiet desperation of suburban life, and that resonates every bit as much now as it did when Carver was writing.
The next collection was quite different, but just as enjoyable. Ben Pester’s debut collection Am I In The Right Place? carries the title’s sense of uncertainty, of something being a little off, right through each story. Everyday things are thrown slightly off-kilter, and the supernatural and weird are rendered oddly mundane. I really did appreciate these stories, but I felt that the collection as a whole was slightly unbalanced. The stories were front-loaded, so the second half of the collection fails to match up to the first, or perhaps by that point I had become inured to those characteristics which surprised and delighted me at first. Either way, definitely a collection to pick up, if you’re into that sort of thing, and a writer to keep your digital eye on.
My third book in September was another loaned to me by the aforementioned Estonia-dwelling friend: Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen. Skinny Dip is a darkly humorous crime pastiche set in the Everglades region of Florida. A guy tries — and, crucially, fails — to murder his wife on a cruise, and she decides to get even. She allows him to believe she is actually dead, and sets about picking apart his life piece by piece, until it’s in ruins. This was simply an incredibly fun novel to read. Hiaasen is brilliant at rendering the absurd, surreal and beautiful Florida landscape, as well as the half-feral greed of some of the people that dwell there. The story is simple, and Hiaasen makes the prose accessible enough for this to be a 2-day read, if you’ve got the time. A great introduction to a writer I’ll definitely be revisiting.
After moving to Crystal Palace in March, I received The Crystal Palace: The Diary of Lily Hicks, London, 1850-1851 by Frances Mary Hendry as a birthday present. This is a short, fictionalised account of real events, told from the perspective of one of Joseph Paxton’s maids around the time that the titular palace was being constructed. It’s actually more of a children’s book than anything else, an easily digestible snippet of history which does well to draw a portrait of class distinctions in the 19th Century. It’s relatively enjoyable if a little bit lightweight. I read it mainly because it was a gift and held some local interest, but I am definitely not the intended audience for this.
Having read Olive Kitteridge last year, I decided to return to Elizabeth Strout, this time for one of her other famous protagonists. Oh William! follows Lucy Barton as she reflects on the evolving relationship with her ex-husband. It is a novel of interiority. Strout is extremely adept at rendering common imperfections, at expressing the anxiety and self-doubt of her characters. She does this with a realism and an honesty that really binds you to Lucy. Despite the difficulties thrown in her path there is a charming optimism to her narration which gives the novel an uplifting momentum which I very much needed at the time. It’s also pretty short, which was a boon to my (ultimately failed) attempt to reach 30 books for the year.
I returned to another favourite author of mine for my next book, too. Perhaps the uncertainty of life in 2022 led me to subconsciously retreat to what I knew. On Beauty is Zadie Smith’s third novel and was something of a return to form after the (relative) disappointment of The Autograph Man. It’s not as jaw-droppingly good as White Teeth or NW, but at times it reaches the same rarified heights, especially when it lays bare the unintentional hypocrisy at the heart of many of our actions.
Coming towards the end of the year now, I began to reflect on the books I’d read in preparation for this piece. There’s a pleasant mix of eras, perhaps not as much world literature as I would have liked, and a decent balance of fiction and non-fiction (though not enough poetry). I don’t really know what any of this means, except to demonstrate my own internal anxiety that I’m not reading enough of the right books. The concept is, of course, complete bullshit, but we live in a judgemental age and who better to judge than oneself?
Tangent over; I read one more book before the end of the year: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. It’s a short and relatively undemanding comic novel, which tells the story of two feuding Ukrainian sisters, who must overcome their differences to save their ageing, decrepit father from the clutches of his new, gold-digging girlfriend. Lewycka tackles themes of family dysfunction under a veneer of dark comedy, and she does it well. The characterisation feels, at first, one-dimensional, particularly with regards to Valentina, the ‘gold-digging hussy’ seeking the riches and comforts of Western life. But as the novel wears on, she treats us to a more nuanced development of her antagonists and protagonists alike. A solid debut.
And that’s it for 2022. I’ve currently got two other books on the go: A Special Providence by Richard Yates (he of Revolutionary Road fame) and Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos by Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa. I’m enjoying both of them, but Christmas by the seaside being what it is (an accurate summary of what it is, is essentially: pubs), I’m unlikely to get either one finished before the end of the year. So you’ll have to wait with bated breath until 2023’s edition of The Year In Books. If indeed there is one.
So that brings the year to a close — definitely one to forget from a personal perspective, but some of these books will stay with me for a long time. I’ve no doubt I’ll read some of them again in the future, but in the meantime, I’ll be reading as much new (to me) literature as I can. Thank you for reading these ramblings, and do let us know if you have any recommendations.
See you next year.
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James McLoughlin is a creative editor at New Critique.
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