It’s my favourite time of the book blogging year – seeing everyone’s Best Of lists, and compiling my own. As usual, I have stuck to one book per author, and haven’t included re-reads. I’ve read more than 200 books this year (including 60+ audiobooks), so I had lots to choose from. As it turned out, there were really one or two absolutely all-time brilliant reads, and then lots of very good ones.
Something I didn’t realise until I finished the list was that the top three books had all been on my shelves for about 10 or 15 years before I read them. A lesson never to cull, because every book’s moment could come!
Here we are, in reverse order…
12. Because of the Lockwoods (1949) by Dorothy Whipple
Because I’d read a few of Whipples not-quite-as-brilliant books, I’d forgotten quite how wonderful she can be. I read two Whipples this year, and They Were Sisters could equally have taken this slot – both are long, moving, compellingly enjoyable and poignant tales of family life.
11. Delicacy (2021) by Katy Wix
A brilliant memoir by this comedian – about cake and death. She considers significant moments in her life through cakes that remind her of them, and along the way covers deaths of close family and friends. I listened to the audiobook, which is a curiously sombre reading, so that even the undeniably funny sections come across with a certain sadness.
10. Four Gardens (1935) by Margery Sharp
Claire from the Captive Reader recommended this Sharp novel forever ago, so it was a delight to have her on episode 102 of Tea or Books? to compare it with D.E. Stevenson’s Five Windows, both reprinted by Furrowed Middlebrow / Dean Street Press. Sharp is always brilliant, and this story of a life through four gardens has stayed with me.
9. Remainders of the Day (2022) by Shaun Bythell
All of Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller series are a delight – and this volume is no different. I raced through his latest diaries of running a secondhand bookshop in Scotland, with his sardonic comments on customers always a joy to read. I missed Nicky this time, who had moved on from the shop, but there are new people to get to know.
8. War Among Ladies (1928) by Eleanor Scott
This is the first British Library Women Writers title in some time that wasn’t my recommendation, but it was a wonderful choice – I read it a couple times this year. It’s about the teaching staff of a failing girls’ school, and is quite sad – but Scott’s dry tone, and some brighter moments, prevent it from being a miserable read.
7. Gentle and Lowly (2020) by Dane Ortlund
Subtitled ‘The heart of Christ for sinners and sufferers’, this is the best Christian book I’ve read for years – well, excepting the Bible. Chapter by chapter, he illuminates the character of Jesus in the gospels, and I found the book inspiring and comforting without disregarding the reality of a fallen world.
6. The Home (1971) by Penelope Mortimer
The picture in the collage above is a little spoiler – this will be coming out from the British Library Women Writers series soon. When they asked me to come up with something from the 1970s, I was a bit worried – I don’t know much about that decade. But I wanted to explore more Mortimer, and this semi-autobiographical book about separation after a marriage is darkly comic, ironic and just brilliant. It’s been described as a spiritual sequel to The Pumpkin Eater, and I can see why.
5. On Color (2018) by David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing
An unusual read for me, but a brilliant one – Kastan and Farthing go through the seven colours of the rainbow, as well as grey, black, and white, and look at the significance of the colour in history, culture, science. Usually they associate one colour with one theme, and cover a wide range here – from art to race to politics. An ambitious and brilliantly realised book – free on audiobook if you have an Audible subscription.
4. A Town Called Solace (2021) by Mary Lawson
She wrote my number one book last year, and her latest novel is brilliant too – a bit more packed with incident, though still feels quite calm and reflective. It’s the 1970s, and Clara’s sister has gone missing – and a strange man has moved into the house next door, with his own history to the small town in Canada. I suppose A Town Called Solace is a mystery of sorts, but it feels more like another of Lawson’s gentle musings on what it means to be a human in relationship with other humans.
3. Paying Guests (1929) by E.F. Benson
Benson is on top form with this boarding house of squabbling, pretending, brittle and brilliant people. One of the best Bensons I’ve read, it’s all about the big stakes of insignificant lives – how point-scoring and face-saving can dominate everything in their little worlds. Deliciously funny.
2. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door (2012) by Etgar Keret
A collection of very odd stories, mostly set in Israel and translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston and Nathan Englander. Some of the stories have supernatural elements – e.g. somebody unzips themselves to reveal somebody else beneath – whereas others are simply surreal, like the title story about a gunman turning up and demanding a story. Keret is overflowing with ideas, and knows exactly how to translate those ideas into moments of perfection.
1. A Jest of God (1966) by Margaret Laurence
For the second year in a row, a Canadian novelist comes out top. In A Jest of God, Laurence narrows her focus to Rachel – a woman living in the same house where she grew up, teaching at the school where she was a pupil. Her claustrophobic life is dominated by an uneasy relationship with her mother and a complete lack of hope about the future – until Nick, an old schoolmate, returns to the small town. I read another of Laurence’s Manawaka series this year (unrelated books in the same region of Canada) – The Diviners, much more sprawling in terms of time and place and page count. I thought that was brilliant too, but found Laurence was superlative in miniature. An extraordinary success.
