I have gotten through an inordinate amount of new/contemporary fiction this year: of a total of 82 books read between January and December, 37 were published in 2007 (a further 14 in 2006). * I think that must be some kind of record for me, accounted for by a) the number of books I have reviewed external to Alexandria and, b) my two prize-reading challenges, the Orange and the Booker. I'm not sure whether it is good for me or not, this taste for 'now-ness'. Probably not, but certainly it has been interesting. Sometimes it has meant reading a recent release by an author new to me (like Jonathan Coe, or Cormac McCarthy) rather than one of their established classics, and being turned on or turned off them because of it; other times, it has meant reading a writer I would never ordinarily have touched (Karen Connelly, or Sarah Bower, for example).
I suppose reading to the moment is much more a game of literary chance, a gamble that can be more exciting than sitting down with a classic novel you fully expect to appreciate. I like the feeling of touching the fresh earth of a first page: there is something to be said for being a pioneer, a prospecter. I think probably that is why so many of the books I have enjoyed most this year are recent releases. [Links are to my reviews, where relevant.]
- The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak (January) - I bought this last New Year on a whim and read it almost immediately; it was one of those books that simply demanded my attention. It went on to make me cry. A lot. I think I cried almost non-stop for the last 50 pages, a cathartic sob-fest unmatched since my soggy teens. Set in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, and sombrely narrated by Death, it tells the story of Liesel, a ten year old 'book thief' recently adopted by the Hubermann, a family with a Jew named Max hiding in their basement. It is a delightful and tragic book, stark and vivid and not a little painful but ultimately life-affirming. Probably it would be best described as a 'cross-over' from children's to adult fiction, and I think it is the most successful I have ever read (possibly excepting Philip Pullman).
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy (February) - The best book of my year, no doubt. McCarthy's terrifying post-apocalyptic vision - of an America blasted dead by some cataclysmic event - is so perfectly executed, so moving and so devastating as to be unequalled. Of all the books I've read this year, this is the one I'd tip to last. Give it ten years, and it will be a staple of the high school and university syllabus, in the same league as Toni Morrison's Beloved.
- Nova Swing by M. John Harrison (February) - This is not one of my favourite reads of 2007, but it is definitely one of the best. If I were drawing a venn diagram, with books that I admired in one circle, and books I enjoyed in another - the overlap containing books that, joy of joys, fell into both categoris and which I loved - Nova Swing would be pride of place in the 'admired' segment. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award earlier this year, and it absolutely deserved to, being a tour de force of genre pastiche in elegant prose. Once grasped, it turned out to be a great cerebral pleasure.
- The Needle in the Blood by Sarah Bower (March) - You may remember my ecstatic post on this book from earlier in the year - it sits firmly in the 'enjoyed' category. When I looked in my little black journal, I was surprised to see I read it way back in March. It feels much more recent than that, probably because I've been talking about it almost incessantly since. My copy has made the rounds at work, and I've given away a few too, as well as recommending it left, right and centre. I don't care how many people jibe me about peddling womens' historical romance - a good book is a good book, and that's that.
- Don Quixote by Cervantes (May-November) - Don't groan. Admittedly, there were times when my heart sank at the prospect of reading another page of Cervantes' masterpiece but by the end I was convinced of its vital place in the history of the novel. Reading it is like reading a manual on how to write fiction - all the strategies and styles and narratorial tics of the next 400 years are in it. Its influence is clearly enormous, up there with the Bible and Shakespeare as staple literary fodder, and yet still dripping invention. I'm glad I read it, and maybe some day I'll even re-read it.
- The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly (June) - You'll notice that none of the Orange Prize shortlisted books made my list. To be honest I didn't think the field was brilliant this year - I'd recommend Jane Harris' The Observations as a fun read and I liked Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk but neither were best-of-the-year material. The Lizard Cage, however, which won the New Writer's Award was something special and, as it turns out, very topical this year, what with the recent uprisings in Burma.
- Darkmans by Nicola Barker (August) - I wish it had won the Booker Prize, I really do, but perhaps it was too ambitious and too otherworldly for that. Impossible to summarise, and impossible not to admire.
- Splinter by Adam Roberts (September) - I think this is probably Roberts' most accesible novel, particularly for an audience less au fait with the topos of SF. It is also, for me at least, his most concertedly literary. A colleague at work thought it was 'banal'; I think a better word for it is 'provocative'. Incidentally, were I to choose an Author of the Year, it would be probably be Roberts, whom I have found both challenging and highly enjoyable.
- The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (September) - I wasn't a big fan of The Electric Michelango, Hall's Booker-prize shortlisted novel of 2004. I thought it was ornate and baggy. The Carhullan Army is shockingly sparse in comparison, but much better for it. Set in Cumbria, at a grey and authoritarian future time, it meditates on gender, autonomy and the question of ideological pacifism vs. violent activism through the life of Sister, a member of an all-woman army.
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (December) - Need I say more? One of my biblio-lutions of 2008 is to read more Dickens.
- Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (December) - This is probably the most surprising novel I read in 2007. Despite a thoroughly mundane plot, and a grouchy, dislikeable protagonist, Petterson (and his translator, Anne Born) manages to spin a luminous and humane narrative. It is writing with a flavour of Woolf about it; concerned as it is with capturing the weft of the internal life.
~~Victoria~~
* If you're interested, here is the full statistical break down (the exactness of the men/women ratio was in no way planned but is incredibly pleasing):
Books read: 82
Books by men: 40
Books by women: 40
Books written by men and women together: 2
Fiction read: 61
Of the Fiction:
Novels: 56
Short stories: 4
Graphic novels: 1
Poetry: 0
Plays: 0
Speculative/SF: 20
Historical (ie. set 30 years in the past from time of writing; not including flashbacks): 10
Most works by the same author: 3 (Adam Roberts)
Nonfiction read: 19
Of the Nonfiction:
Essays: 2
Biography /Memoir: 8
History: 4
Literary Criticism: 4
Religion/Atheism: 1
Books in translation: 3
Books that were re-reads: 1
Books that were written before 1900: 7 [shameful!]
Books that were written after 2000: 62