Month: December 2023

Of those published this year, the novel that perfectly matched my tastes was Biography of X by Catherine Lacey. It’s a fictitious biography of an artist skilled in creating diverse stage (and off-stage) personas, and as it’s written by her wife it’s a conceit that allows for insights into both characters whilst struggling to remain objective. Beyond that, it mixes Pale Fire-esque metafiction and alternate history politics reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Two other recent novels covered similar metafictional territory, but with very different results. Conquest by Nina Allan (2023) is another sort-of fictional biography and sort-of private investigation, and incorporates non-fiction articles and SF short stories to great effect. I love Nina Allan’s short fiction, and this fragmented novel harnesses her skills wonderfully.

Three Eight One by Aliya Whiteley will be published in January 2024, but I was lucky enough to read an pre-publication ARC. Though it’s a fantasy quest narrative, it remains resolutely down to earth even in its wildest moments, and it features footnotes written by a scholar many decades later, which comment and interrupt the primary action, undermining and enhancing in equal measure. I think the novel works equally as well as epic fantasy as it does as a pure allegory about maturation, and when it made me cry, it was partly because I didn’t want it to end.

Speaking of which, the only other novel that reduced me to tears was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022). The framing of the real world as operating according to the mechanics of videogames is its most arresting aspect, but the cast of characters all trying to muddle through life, and the lack of antagonists, is perhaps what makes the novel so very life-affirming.

Ten Planets by Yuri Herrara (translated by Lisa Dillman, published by And Other Stories, 2023) was a great discovery. It’s not only one of the most enjoyable short story collections I can remember, it’s also one of the most inspiring books I’ve read in years, and it’s affected the style of my own short fiction. Though they’re nominally SF stories, these are truncated, magical tales more in line with works by Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino.

Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead (2023) is a note-perfect Golden Age locked-room mystery featuring stage-magician-turned-detective Joseph Spector, who reappears in the excellent sequel, The Murder Wheel, and with more mysteries to come.

In Lamb (2023), Matt Hill allows the weirdness that’s inflected his recent novels to come to the fore. Like Aliya Whiteley’s Three Eight One, it comes across almost as a parable, and its tortured characters and murky setpieces will linger with me for a long time.

The Shane Meadows TV adaptation led to me to read The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers (2017) finally this year, and I cursed myself for not doing so sooner. It’s a vicious book, less because of any actual violence but more due to its violent prose. It’s the most viscerally affecting book I’ve read this year. In contrast, Myers’ The Perfect Golden Circle (2022) is a warm hug, strongly reminiscent of Mackenzie Crook’s TV show The Detectorists in the pairing of its central characters.

Similarly calm and unassuming is Brian by Jeremy Cooper (2023). Upon his retirement from his council job Brian settles on the British Film Institute on London’s South Bank as his new haunt, where he encounters like minds and an entire world via screenings of classic films. Like Rónán Hession’s Leonard and Hungry Paul, usual expectations about plot or character development don’t apply here, and the pleasures of this novel relate to witnessing an awkward personality finding peace in unlikely ways. Brian’s responses to the films he watches are a lovely insight into the effect that fiction can have on impressionable minds.

Moving away from recently-published books, the novels that had the biggest impression on me were The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas (1963), a Norwegian coming-of-age tale that reminded me of a snowy Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950), which of course is nothing like the Hitchcock adaptation, and being Highsmith it’s murkier and more compelling than other thrillers of its, or perhaps any, era.

Now for some other books I particularly enjoyed, which were published fairly recently. Black Lake Manor by Guy Morpuss (2022) is just my sort of high-concept mystery, deploying time travel most effectively. Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson (2019) had been waiting patiently on my shelf for years, and didn’t deserve to be ignored – it’s a fresh, strange and brilliant representation of Shelley’s classic. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark (2020) is second only to The Gallows Pole in terms of startling directness and, often, glorious ugliness. The Hood by Lavie Tidhar (2021) continues Tidhar’s Anti-Matter of Britain Quartet begun in By Force Alone, this novel dealing with the legend of Robin Hood and weirding its familiar subject satisfyingly.

Many of the older books I loved this year were mysteries, and many were books I’d anticipated as known quantities but which surprised me. Though I knew the ‘trick’ of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926), I found it enormously effective – it was probably the book I read fastest this year. I also finally got around to reading the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy L. Sayers, beginningwith Strong Poison (1930) and Whose Body? (1923) andwas taken as much by her Wodehousian wit as her character and mysteries. Another mystery novel I loved was A Helping Hand by Celia Dale (1966), recently reprinted by Daunt Books and a far nastier tale than I’d anticipated.

I did read books without mystery plots, too! The ones I most enjoyed were the post-apocalyptic literary fantasy The Road to Corlay by Richard Cowper (1978), and The Princess Bride by William Goldman (1973) – another metafictional novel, so something of a theme this year! – and a wonderful fix-up novel concerning art and authenticity, Pictures of Fidelman by Bernard Malamud (1969).

I read only two graphic novels this year, but both were excellent. Inside the Mind of Sherlock Holmes, written by Benoit Dahan and illustrated by Cyril Lieron (2023), is a pleasingly faithful rendering of Holmes and Watson that focuses on Holmes’s ‘mind attic’ and his processing of clues and which asks readers to fold pages or hold them up to the light in order to reveal hidden connections. Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel (2015) is a terrific account of the boom of American non-fiction podcasts such as This American Life and Radiolab, with plenty of insights into the craft.

Most of the non-fiction I read this year related to novel research. The best non-fiction book I read purely for pleasure was Writing the Future, edited by Dan Coxon & Richard V. Hirst (2023), continuing the terrific series from Dead Ink Books. It contains essays about SF by Aliya Whiteley, Adam Roberts, Nina Allan, Una McCormack and more, many of which are wonderful, perhaps even essential, and which, I think, will inform many SF novels yet to come.