Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante, tr Jenny McPhee (Penguin Modern Classics)
This spellbinding, 800-page family saga—which recounts the torments and tribulations of three generations of Sicilian women—was originally published in Italy in 1948, but this is the first unexpurgated translation into English, and Jenny McPhee has done a magnificent job. It’s narrated by 25-year-old Elisa, a young woman who’s spent the past 15 years indulging in an imaginary world, conjuring up stories about the lives of her now-dead family members, but the death of her guardian finally releases her to confront the real-life tragedies that marred her mother’s and her grandmother’s lives; both of whom had ill-advised marriages and suffered as a consequence. This is a book about women’s lives, radical when it was published: “Dissatisfied women, malicious women, and jealous women” reads my favourite chapter title. And if you need further convincing, I should mention that the great Elena Ferrante is also a fan.
Sleeping Children by Anthony Passeron, tr Frank Wynne (Picador)
If you like the work of Annie Ernaux or Édouard Louis, then Passeron’s haunting debut should be on your reading list. It’s a decidedly French novel in that—as in Ernaux’s and Louis’s work—it takes autobiographical material and moulds it into something that has the shape of fiction, while also commenting on class and culture. Passeron combines the personal history of his uncle Désiré’s heroin addiction—which eventually led to him contracting HIV, which in turn led to his early death—with the broader public story of the public health crisis in the 1980s surrounding intravenous drug use and the emerging AIDS epidemic. Not, perhaps, the most uplifting of reads, but it’s beautifully written and translated, and it tells an incredibly important and moving story.
Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape)
This was the book on this year’s Booker shortlist that I wish had won the prize. Choi is a brilliant writer, and this is her sixth novel, yet until now she’s remained far better known in America than here in the UK. Flashlight is the story of a family tragedy, shrouded in mystery: the presumed drowning of 10-year-old Louisa’s father Serk, a Korean émigré who’s been living in America (though the incident occurs while he and his wife and child are on holiday in Japan). Choi examines the fallout of the event—specifically on Louisa as she’s forced to grow up in the shadow of this loss—but her narrative also unspools backwards, through the family’s complicated past and the ways in which people’s fates were dictated by the bigger events in 20th century history.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton)
Twenty years in the writing, this is Desai’s third novel and the follow-up to The Inheritance of Loss, which won the 2006 Booker Prize. No surprise, then, that this one made it onto this year’s Booker shortlist—and rightly so. At its heart, it’s the love story between the two titular characters, which begins in the form of an attempted set-up by meddling grandparents in mid-1990s Allahabad but spans both decades and continents as Sonia and Sunny each navigate a variety of obstacles to their eventual coming-together. Both a smattering of magical realism and Desai’s thoughtful commentary on the place of the contemporary Indian novel in Western culture ensure that this is an unforgettable modern epic.
The Original by Nell Stevens (Scribner)
Nell Stevens’s second novel is about power, money and the question of who’s allowed to tell their own story, all wrapped up in a hugely entertaining yarn involving art forgery, family imposters and forbidden desires. It’s set at the turn of the 20th century, in 1899, on a once-grand estate in Oxfordshire, the heir to which has been lost at sea for many years. His cousin, Grace Inderwick—a poor orphan who’s been living in her aunt and uncle’s house since her parents’ deaths, and is both well versed in keeping secrets and the art of fakery—watches on in interest when a man arrives claiming to be her long-lost cousin Charles.
Flesh by David Szalay (Jonathan Cape)
This year’s Booker Prize winner might not have been my personal pick from the shortlist, but I can see why the judges chose it. Szalay introduces us to István—one of the great enigmas of the modern novel—a Hungarian man so passive that he’s apathy personified. “Okay” is his stock response to pretty much any question he’s asked. His adolescence is spent in a juvenile detention centre, after which he joins the army and serves in Iraq. Then he winds up in London working in private security, and—through an advantageous marriage—rapidly scales the social and economic ladder. Szalay’s prose is as cool, detached and pared-back as his protagonist, but it’s extremely compelling, as is István and his story.
On the Calculation of Volume: III by Solvej Balle, tr Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (Faber)
This is the third volume of what’s shaping up to be one of the most exciting and acclaimed artistic achievements of the current moment. Balle is a Danish writer who made a name for herself back in the 1990s but then disappeared from the literary scene for nearly 30 years, before returning with this one-of-a-kind tour de force. The premise is simple: Tara Selter, an antiquarian book dealer, is trapped in a Groundhog Day-like time loop. Every day she wakes up, and every day it’s 18th November again. Having set the scene in the first volume and explored the nature of time in the second, here, in the third, Tara discovers that she’s not the only one facing this predicament. To say more would be to spoil it, but don’t jump in here; this is one where you do have to start with volume one.
Ripeness by Sarah Moss (Picador)
Sarah Moss continues to prove herself one of the very best of our contemporary writers with her latest novel. It’s a split narrative: back in the 1960s, fresh out of school and preparing to go up to Oxford, bluestocking Edith is sent from her family’s farm in Derbyshire to Italy, to look after her older sister Lydia, a ballet dancer and free spirit, who’s awaiting the birth of an unwanted, illegitimate baby. Decades later, in present-day Ireland, Edith—happily divorced, a mother to her own grown-up child, and living a contented life—is thrown back into her memories when her friend Maebh learns that she has a brother she never knew anything about.
Spent: A Comic Novel by Alison Bechdel (Jonathan Cape)
This one was a delight. The story of a fictional comics artist named Alison, who lives in rural Vermont with her partner Holly, dealing with daily life during the pandemic and after—thus loosely based on Bechdel’s own life—but it also stars previously loved characters from her Dykes to Watch Out For (1983-2008) comic series. This motley band of once-radical youths has mellowed somewhat with the passing of the years, though they’re still embracing threesomes, activism and attempts to live ethically. The portraits are painted longingly, but Bechdel’s not taking it all too seriously, rather she’s poking gentle fun at everyone—herself included.
To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong (Les Fugitives)
This debut novel by a talented 25-year-old writer took me by surprise earlier this year. It’s narrated by an unnamed psychology student in the final year of her degree at an unspecified university in England in the early 2020s. She’s one of those “vaguely disembodied cerebral girls”—as Armstrong puts it here—whom we see in a lot of contemporary fiction; overthinking everything she reads, sees and says. So far, so familiar. But Armstrong takes this trope—and the oft-associated deadpan, spare prose—to such heights that the end result feels strikingly and unsettlingly original. Without doubt, she’s one to watch.
