But here is the Top 10 Books I have read this year:
10. Richard Powers, The Overstory (W.W. Norton and Company)
I am not quite done this but I am confident that this will be on my top ten and could very well be near the top. Powers book has made many top ten lists and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and maybe would have won if not for the fact that Americans had won the previous two years. The story is structured like a tree, with 8 stories (roots) introduced separately to merge (trunk). An homage to the great lifeforms that are trees, Powers prose is elegant and rich and entrancing. By the time I finish, I may claim the work is a masterpiece.
9. Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Heads of Colored People (Atria)
The best short story collection I read this year, Thompson-Spires dives deep into the contemporary African American experience, with a strong grasp of politics, pop culture, history. Funny and engaging, each story leaves one chuckling or astonished. Looking forward to future work of hers.
8. Esi Edugyan, Washington Black (Serpent's Tale)
Edugyan won herself a second Giller Prize for this story of an escaped slave who sets of on a fantastical journey that forces him to confront the price freedom brings as well as the limits it presents to a black man, even one incredibly talented. Edugyan's story is told in spell binding prose and paints rich characters, even if the story at times the story is a bit too apocryphal. Nonetheless, its an adventure story like no other, a powerful retelling of the slave narrative, that will have longevity as a text for many years to come.
7. Sigrid Nunez, The Friend (Riverhead)
The Friend follows a woman dealing with the death of her good friend who has left her an aging Great Dane to take care of. Emotionally wrecked, she quickly finds solace in the dogs embrace and restructures her entire life to meet the needs of him. This slim book packs so much as it offers a powerful lamentation about death, grief, and how we process the most difficult moments in our life. A pleasant surprise winner of the National Book Award last month.
6. Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Penguin Press)
Moshfegh is the master of writing the most engaging characters who are simultaneously disgusting and offputting. Here she gives us an unnamed narrator, lost and bewildered as her parents have died, who decides to confront her existential anxiety by sleeping for the year. Filling herself with drugs prescribed by a hilariously frightening psychiatrist, she tries to sleep away her sorrows only to find herself doing things while she is out. Funny and sharp, Moshfegh delivers her best work yet.
5. Julian Barnes, The Only Story (Vintage)
Barnes tells an emotionally devastating novel about a young man who begins an affair with a much older married woman and tells the story of their relationship as it descends into chaos as addiction and depression overtakes all feelings of lust and love. Beautifully told and executed perfectly, Barnes' only story is one of sadness but also one that speaks to many truths about love and loss.
4. Nick Drasdo, Sabrina (Drawn and Quarterly)
The first ever graphic novel longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Sabrina tells the story of the aftermath of a young woman's murder, following her sister, her boyfriend and her boyfriend's childhood friend as they try to process what has happened while the lunatic world of conspiracy theories shows its fangs in response to the death. The drawing is stunning, flat and cold but fitting of the chilling story being told. Panels are allowed to convey silence and loneliness, capturing perfectly the world that has left so many vulnerable to violence and pain. Graphic novels are expensive so if out of your budget get it from the library!
3. Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers (Viking)
Also did a full review here. Makkai delivers the big social novel of the year about the AIDS crisis in the mid 1980s, taking place in the heart of Chicago's gay community, where Yale, a young donations solicitor for a university affiliated art gallery is watching his friends die off. Flash thirty years into the future, Fiona, one of Yale's friends, who was a caregiver for many of the dying, deals with consequences of death and loss in her early life as she searches for her missing daughter. This book is a punch in the gut and a faithful retelling of a shameful period in American history, where an entire community was ostracized and left alone in their most vulnerable moment. Already shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, don't be surprised to hear this one winning the Pulitzer Prize in April.
2. Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry (Simon & Schuster)
I did a full review for this already here and it is one of the most contested and talked about books to have been released this year. Told in three seemingly unconnected parts, loosely depicting a relationship a young Halliday had with a much older Phillip Roth in the early 2000s, an Iraqi American being held in London on his way to visit his brother in Iraq, and the Roth character's appearance on a famous BBC radio show, this book is both tender and poignant but also revealing of so much, whether the nature of power dynamics of a relationship like the one depicted but also the disjointed world the early 2000s produced. Not for everyone, but if you connect with it, totally rewarding.
1. Sally Rooney, Normal People (Faber & Faber)
Rooney introduced herself with Conversation With Friends but she confirmed herself as the next big thing with this amazing delve into modern romance, which was criminally not shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It is so simply written but don't let that fool you for how deep and profound Rooney's prose is. You will power through this novel and fall in love with both Connell and Marianne and come feeling rejuvenated at the end. Won't be released in Canada and the US until April 2019 but do not hesitate when it does.
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