Only a few days left so I figured I better get my shit together and finish this countdown. I've spent the last few days incessantly juggling the order of the Top 10 and, really, but for the top three there could have been any permutation of what's below. So, here they are: my ten favourite books of the... um... I still have no clue what it's called. Bring on the 20s!
10. The Jesus Trilogy by J.M. Coetzee (2013/2016/2019)
Okay, okay. I know I'm cheating here. But it wasn't until I'd read the final instalment that I came to understand Coetzee's greater project with his Jesus books and I now consider it impossible to view them individually. Indeed, if you do, The Childhood of Jesus (the first salvo) really collapses in the second half and wouldn't stand a chance of making this list on its own. Viewed as a whole, however, it's truly breathtaking and completely puts to rest fears that he had somehow diminished after moving to Australia. Using the surreal fable form that made Waiting For the Barbarians so incredible, Coetzee lands a hefty blow to the soul with this examination of life's true value. The Schooldays of Jesus reads like a philosophical murder mystery and The Death of Jesus rivals any of the great existential novels of yesteryear. Think Sartre's Roads to Freedom trilogy but more magical, timeless and, dare I say better. Read as one, I now suspect Jesus might be Coetzee's masterpiece.
9. What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell (2016)
My 2016 Book of the Year, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs To You is an unrelenting, lustful, homoerotic carnival of obsession and sacrifice. Kicking off with a tawdry quick fuck in the toilet cubicle of Bulgaria's National Museum of Culture, it follows the unnamed narrator's descent into near-madness as he falls for Mitko, an opportunistic rent boy who swans in and out of his life. It might seem an unlikely setup for an insightful examination of the modern human condition but let's face it, we all live in a world of anomie and unfulfilled desire. And Greenwell demonstrates a capacity for profound understanding that most philosophers would kill to possess. His new book, Cleanness comes out soon and promises to "revisit and expand" the world of his debut and I, for one, could not be more excited!
8. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (2012)
There have been some great war novels in the last ten years, the majority having been written by returned soldiers. Phil Klay's Redeployment (ok, it's short stories but whatever), Roy Scranton's War Porn and David Abrams's Fobbit immediately spring to mind. But none shook my soul like Kevin Powers's incendiary debut. The Yellow Birds draws on his own life as a poet and active soldier to craft a riveting tale of one man's struggle to come to terms with the death of his friend during service in Iraq. Not a single war cliche pollutes the perfect prose. The emotion is raw, the anger palpable, the depth of humanity staggering. Check out my original review here.
7. Melisande! What Are Dreams by Hillel Halkin (2012)
Another quiet book that has firmly lodged itself in my heart, Melisande! What Are Dreams? is a book that seems to have been mostly overlooked but thoroughly deserves to be considered a classic. It is, to my knowledge, the only novel written by the acclaimed translator of the Hebrew and Yiddish greats, and one that he wrote quite late in the game. Little surprise then that it is so deeply imbued with the kind of cultural and literary intelligence that very few debut novelists could ever muster. A melancholic story of a marriage in decline, Melisande! What Are Dreams? is one of the most tender meditations on the nature of human relations that I have ever read.
6. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (2018)
By now the story behind Nunez's National Prize-winning breakthrough is well known. A distinguished, decades-long career of consistently excellent but commercially unremarkable novels and then, suddenly, she's heralded an overnight success. As I wrote in the previous post (I only read it this year), The Friend is all the feels you could hope to find in a book. The story of a woman who is left to care for her friend and mentor's oversized dog after the friend's suicide, it is in turns tragic and funny but always warm and insightful. There is a mind-bending twist, so cleverly executed that it spoils nothing to mention it here; only to note that it is a moment of true narrative genius. I can see myself returning to The Friend over the years like one would a favourite song.
5. The Town by Shaun Prescott (2017)
A debut novel published by a small local press, The Town might just be my favourite Australian novel of all time. It's hard to describe this surreal masterpiece in a way that comes close to doing it justice. Suffice to say, this story of an unnamed writer working on a book about disappearing towns who turns up to a small unnamed town just as bits of it begin to disappear, ranks up there in the pantheon of brilliantly absurd works by Kafka, Bernhard and Borges. Picked up by Faber in the UK and FSG in America (it is finally getting released in 2020), it was my 2017 Book of the Year and came very close to being my favourite of the decade. Check out my Book of the Year citation here.
4. Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill (2014)
It's funny looking back over my top ten lists from each year and thinking that, while I didn't get the order wrong at the time, some books have edged their way up in my memory such that they have lasted in a way that others on the same list simply have not. In 2014, Jenny Offill's masterpiece in miniature landed at number five. Half a decade later and it remains a book that I treasure more so than most that were above it. This autopsy of an ordinary failed marriage is so exquisitely rendered that I melt every time I spare it a thought (which, I should add is often - basically, I'm 60% puddle). Not a wasted word to be found. Check out my original review here.
3. The Infatuations by Javier Marias (2011/13)
When was the last time you read a novel that you thought was worthy of being held up alongside the traditional classics? Marias's sprawling story of love, friendship, death and mourning was my 2013 Book of the Year and probably stands as the most distinguished of the decade. It is a big book, both in size and substance, but one that is endlessly rewarding. As I said when I first reviewed it, it's the only time I've had an inkling of how it might have felt to be alive when Crime and Punishment or A Tale of Two Cities were first published, Oh, and Marias should have won the Nobel before Handke. Just saying.
2. Trieste by Daša Drndić (2012)
If I had to name the book that had the greatest impact on me as a writer and influenced the way I viewed literature, it would unquestionably be Daša Drndić's unrelenting revelation of a novel, Trieste. Framed as the reminiscences of an old woman waiting for a son she had long thought dead, it expands endlessly into a kaleidoscopic overview of 20th century horrors. Structurally innovative, encyclopaedic in knowledge and unflinching in its indictment of human depravity, Trieste proved Drndić the true master (yes, above Sebald) of the documentary fictional form. If this list were about literary achievement alone, Trieste would be my definite number one. It most certainly was my Book of the Year for 2012, the best year for fiction in the entire decade. I only wish she was still here to laugh at me saying all this. Check out my Book of the Year citation here.
1. Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball (2014)
I expect it comes as a big surprise to just about nobody that Jesse Ball would have written my favourite book of the decade. Hell, he was responsible for three of my books of the year (2011, 2014 and 2018). Of those, it was Silence Once Begun that I've picked as the greatest, a bona fide work of staggering genius (sorry, DE) that pays homage to Abe and Endo then transcends them both. The central conceit - a man walks into a police station and confesses to a string of disappearances (and, one is made to assume, murders) before consigning himself to absolute silence. Thus he remains throughout questioning, throughout trial, after conviction, all the way to execution. And se we hear the "testimony" of other players in the story, some likeable, some sinister, all with varying degrees of reliability. You can check out my original review here but, seriously, get off your computer and read the novel instead. Silence Once Begun is the distillation of all that is great about Jesse Ball, and cemented him as the single most exciting novelist of our times. If you haven't read it you pretty much wasted the... um... Jesus Christ can someone just tell me what we called that decade?
Showing posts with label Best of the Decade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best of the Decade. Show all posts
The Worm Awakens: The Decade In Review (Part 1)
on Friday, December 13, 2019
Well, it’s been close on a year and my resolution to reinvigorate this here blog has come to naught. Almost a hundred and twenty books down and not a peep from me, even when Jesse Ball put out something new. Seriously, I might as well have been in a coma. Anyhoooo... a few days ago I woke from a fever dream with the revelation that I was ready to start again, to venture back out from my hole of literary self-absorption (I’ve spent the last two years galavanting about the place spruiking my own book) and write about some novels I’ve loved. And what better way to start than with a decade in review: my top 20 books of the… um… teens? Post-naughties? Pre-twenties? Shit, has anyone actually worked out what we call the last ten years? But I digress.
On average, I read about 120 books (overwhelmingly novels) a year. Sometimes more than that, occasionally fewer. I used to keep a detailed book diary but, being the technological troglodyte that I am, it was on the local drive of my old computer that one day just cacked it on me and, well, here I am, left to rely on my 8th grade maths skills. So can we all just smile and agree I've read somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 books since 2010? Sifting through my Bookworm posts, I’d forgotten quite how much I'd loved some of them and now I’m desperate to reread them. If only I had the time. Guess I’ll have to settle for splashing about in the jacuzzi of nostalgia that is a Top 20 list.
Before I do, though, I want to give a quick shout out to three non-fiction books that absolutely blew me away. First up, Patti Smith’s stunning memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids (2010). Has there ever been a better reflection on New York's countercultural boom? Ten years on and I still think about that beautiful friendship, its triumphant marriage of art and humanity, and how tragically it ended. Next up, Behrouz Bouchani’s incendiary prison memoir (is that even the right category?), No Friend But The Mountains (2018). A damning indictment of contemporary Australia, made even more relevant in the wake of the current regime’s doubling down on inhumanity. Bouchani is the true north to Australia’s moral compass, and his book is as important as Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago or Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man. Finally, one of the few books that have fundamentally changed the way I think about the world, Who Killed My Father (2019) by Édouard Louis. I’ll have more to say about this in the coming weeks, but Louis’s J’Accuse against France’s capitalist structure and the collateral damage it makes of its workers is heartbreaking, infuriating and as close to downright perfect as any modern political tract could possibly ever be.
Alright, on to my Top 20 of the Decade. Now, I'm not claiming these are the best books written in the past ten years but they are most certainly my favourites. Kicking things off with numbers 20 to 11:
20. Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander (2014)
Hands down the funniest book of the decade. The premise alone is downright hilarious - neurotic Jewish guy escapes to a dilapidated house in the country only to find an elderly Anne Frank hiding in his attic, working on the follow-up to her diary. But it is the battle of wits that follows that will have you howling with laughter, with the odd pause to wonder just how sacrilegious Auslander’s whole undertaking really is. Unadulterated, irreverent genius.
19. An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine (2014)
This beautifully wistful novel about an old woman locked in her basement in war-torn Beirut, dutifully translating classics got me right in the feels. Aaliya is one of the most endearing characters I’ve met in a book, and her witty, sometimes cutting opinions on literature and life are just marvellous. Read it and feel better about the world. Full review here.
18. How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (2010)
A lovelorn time machine repairman reminisces about his life and the relationships that have shaped it. And how he might use his shitty job (it ain’t as glamorous as it sounds) to change it. Yu has been disappointingly quiet of late but, hey, when you pull out a masterpiece this early in your career, why not sit back and take a break? Or, you know, shoot yourself far into the future and let the people of 2374 enjoy your next outing. Full review here.
17. A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (2015)
In the year that everyone fell over themselves to praise Hanya Yanigihara’s massive gut punch, A Whole Life, it was a similarly titled, much smaller book that really did it for me. Seethaler’s quiet, spare tale of an unremarkable man watching the horrors of the 20th century unfold around him in the Austrian alps is absolutely extraordinary. A masterclass in narrative containment.
16. The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray (2016)
I don’t know what it is with me and these bonkers science-tinged benders, but god I seem to love them. Maybe it’s just that their subjects tend to be so far out of my wheelhouse, or that they touch on familiar themes in new and exciting ways. Or just that, when done right, they are a magnificent joy to read! Whatever. All you need to know is this: John Wray wrote the best of them. Taking in everything from theoretical physics, kooky cults, pickling (of the gherkin variety), the Holocaust and the culture wars, The Lost Time Accidents absolute floored me. It’s a riveting, joyous romp of a read. Full review here.
15. The People In The Trees by Hanya Yanagihara (2013)
Yeah, yeah. You loved A Little Life. You thought it was the best book of the decade. Well, you’re wrong. Fight me. Granted, it was pretty good but face it, Bucko, it wasn't THAT good. It wasn’t even Yanagihara’s best book. That honour goes to the morally complex, deeply unsettling The People In Trees, in which Yanagihara asks one of the most important questions of modern times: how much can we forgive genius for the moral failings of its vessel? And trust me, when it comes to this particular genius - a scientist who discovers a tribe who might possess the secret to eternal youth - the failings are colossal. Full review here.
14. Black Rock White City by A.S. Patric (2015)
Winner of the 2016 Miles Franklin Award, Black Rock White City is one of the greatest invocations of immigrant life in Australia ever put to paper. Wrapped in a carapace of existential mystery, this astounding novel is ultimately a meditation on displacement, marginalisation, casual racism and what it means to be Australian in the wake of national and personal trauma. It was my book of the year in 2015, and remains a favourite that I revisit from time to time. Full review here.
13. Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf (2015)
I was late to the Haruf party. He’d already died before I read a word. But there was something about the collective grief at his passing, and the air of celebration about this, his swan song, that left me with no choice but to pick it up. Simple in what it has to say - two elderly neighbours find companionship (or is it love) following the deaths of their partners - it is Haruf’s delicate style and gentle, gorgeous prose that renders this little book a masterpiece of human connection and compassion. Full review here.
12. The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard (2011)
You know how some books just lodge themselves in your soul and refuse to leave? How they keep ebbing and flowing in the tide of your consciousness, causing you to suddenly think of them at the least likely of times? Well, I can’t think of any book that does this more for me than Hannah Pittard’s incredible debut. The novel traces the lives of a group of small-town kids in the years following the abduction of their friend. From teenage life into adulthood, it tracks the ripples of grief while proffering some truly profound insights into the way our moral understanding evolves over time. A remarkable book, and one of the finest debut novels I’ve ever read.
11. Census by Jesse Ball (2018)
There are many ways to honour the memory of someone you have loved and lost but nothing I’ve read comes close to the surreal beauty of Census, Jesse Ball’s homage to his brother. The references are oblique; this story of an old man taking his son across a strange landscape as he tries to make a census of its populace captures the spirit of Ball’s love more than any straightforward memoir could possibly have done. It is a novel of enormous heart, and one that chokes me up every time I venture back into its pages. Full review here.
Well, that's enough to digest for one sitting. Check back soon for my Top 10.
On average, I read about 120 books (overwhelmingly novels) a year. Sometimes more than that, occasionally fewer. I used to keep a detailed book diary but, being the technological troglodyte that I am, it was on the local drive of my old computer that one day just cacked it on me and, well, here I am, left to rely on my 8th grade maths skills. So can we all just smile and agree I've read somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 books since 2010? Sifting through my Bookworm posts, I’d forgotten quite how much I'd loved some of them and now I’m desperate to reread them. If only I had the time. Guess I’ll have to settle for splashing about in the jacuzzi of nostalgia that is a Top 20 list.
Before I do, though, I want to give a quick shout out to three non-fiction books that absolutely blew me away. First up, Patti Smith’s stunning memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids (2010). Has there ever been a better reflection on New York's countercultural boom? Ten years on and I still think about that beautiful friendship, its triumphant marriage of art and humanity, and how tragically it ended. Next up, Behrouz Bouchani’s incendiary prison memoir (is that even the right category?), No Friend But The Mountains (2018). A damning indictment of contemporary Australia, made even more relevant in the wake of the current regime’s doubling down on inhumanity. Bouchani is the true north to Australia’s moral compass, and his book is as important as Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago or Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man. Finally, one of the few books that have fundamentally changed the way I think about the world, Who Killed My Father (2019) by Édouard Louis. I’ll have more to say about this in the coming weeks, but Louis’s J’Accuse against France’s capitalist structure and the collateral damage it makes of its workers is heartbreaking, infuriating and as close to downright perfect as any modern political tract could possibly ever be.
Alright, on to my Top 20 of the Decade. Now, I'm not claiming these are the best books written in the past ten years but they are most certainly my favourites. Kicking things off with numbers 20 to 11:
20. Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander (2014)
Hands down the funniest book of the decade. The premise alone is downright hilarious - neurotic Jewish guy escapes to a dilapidated house in the country only to find an elderly Anne Frank hiding in his attic, working on the follow-up to her diary. But it is the battle of wits that follows that will have you howling with laughter, with the odd pause to wonder just how sacrilegious Auslander’s whole undertaking really is. Unadulterated, irreverent genius.
19. An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine (2014)
This beautifully wistful novel about an old woman locked in her basement in war-torn Beirut, dutifully translating classics got me right in the feels. Aaliya is one of the most endearing characters I’ve met in a book, and her witty, sometimes cutting opinions on literature and life are just marvellous. Read it and feel better about the world. Full review here.
18. How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (2010)
A lovelorn time machine repairman reminisces about his life and the relationships that have shaped it. And how he might use his shitty job (it ain’t as glamorous as it sounds) to change it. Yu has been disappointingly quiet of late but, hey, when you pull out a masterpiece this early in your career, why not sit back and take a break? Or, you know, shoot yourself far into the future and let the people of 2374 enjoy your next outing. Full review here.
17. A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (2015)
In the year that everyone fell over themselves to praise Hanya Yanigihara’s massive gut punch, A Whole Life, it was a similarly titled, much smaller book that really did it for me. Seethaler’s quiet, spare tale of an unremarkable man watching the horrors of the 20th century unfold around him in the Austrian alps is absolutely extraordinary. A masterclass in narrative containment.
16. The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray (2016)
I don’t know what it is with me and these bonkers science-tinged benders, but god I seem to love them. Maybe it’s just that their subjects tend to be so far out of my wheelhouse, or that they touch on familiar themes in new and exciting ways. Or just that, when done right, they are a magnificent joy to read! Whatever. All you need to know is this: John Wray wrote the best of them. Taking in everything from theoretical physics, kooky cults, pickling (of the gherkin variety), the Holocaust and the culture wars, The Lost Time Accidents absolute floored me. It’s a riveting, joyous romp of a read. Full review here.
15. The People In The Trees by Hanya Yanagihara (2013)
Yeah, yeah. You loved A Little Life. You thought it was the best book of the decade. Well, you’re wrong. Fight me. Granted, it was pretty good but face it, Bucko, it wasn't THAT good. It wasn’t even Yanagihara’s best book. That honour goes to the morally complex, deeply unsettling The People In Trees, in which Yanagihara asks one of the most important questions of modern times: how much can we forgive genius for the moral failings of its vessel? And trust me, when it comes to this particular genius - a scientist who discovers a tribe who might possess the secret to eternal youth - the failings are colossal. Full review here.
14. Black Rock White City by A.S. Patric (2015)
Winner of the 2016 Miles Franklin Award, Black Rock White City is one of the greatest invocations of immigrant life in Australia ever put to paper. Wrapped in a carapace of existential mystery, this astounding novel is ultimately a meditation on displacement, marginalisation, casual racism and what it means to be Australian in the wake of national and personal trauma. It was my book of the year in 2015, and remains a favourite that I revisit from time to time. Full review here.
13. Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf (2015)
I was late to the Haruf party. He’d already died before I read a word. But there was something about the collective grief at his passing, and the air of celebration about this, his swan song, that left me with no choice but to pick it up. Simple in what it has to say - two elderly neighbours find companionship (or is it love) following the deaths of their partners - it is Haruf’s delicate style and gentle, gorgeous prose that renders this little book a masterpiece of human connection and compassion. Full review here.
12. The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard (2011)
You know how some books just lodge themselves in your soul and refuse to leave? How they keep ebbing and flowing in the tide of your consciousness, causing you to suddenly think of them at the least likely of times? Well, I can’t think of any book that does this more for me than Hannah Pittard’s incredible debut. The novel traces the lives of a group of small-town kids in the years following the abduction of their friend. From teenage life into adulthood, it tracks the ripples of grief while proffering some truly profound insights into the way our moral understanding evolves over time. A remarkable book, and one of the finest debut novels I’ve ever read.
11. Census by Jesse Ball (2018)
There are many ways to honour the memory of someone you have loved and lost but nothing I’ve read comes close to the surreal beauty of Census, Jesse Ball’s homage to his brother. The references are oblique; this story of an old man taking his son across a strange landscape as he tries to make a census of its populace captures the spirit of Ball’s love more than any straightforward memoir could possibly have done. It is a novel of enormous heart, and one that chokes me up every time I venture back into its pages. Full review here.
Well, that's enough to digest for one sitting. Check back soon for my Top 10.
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