It’s just as difficult to write a page turner as it is to write fiction that brings a new perspective and meaning to the world. achieving both in one work is a feat accomplished only by the best writers, but the 2010s produced multiple works that will go down in history as propulsive and profound, moving and timeless.
Ten in particular stand out: Jennifer Egan’s visit from the Goon Squad and George Saunders’ December 10 predicted the near future with eerie accuracy. Sing, Unbuded, Jesmyn Ward’s Sing and Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys mined the recent past with devastating effect. the most imaginative and absorbing fiction of the decade engaged us and made us reflect on ourselves: where we have been and where we must go.
You are reading: Best books last decade
These are time’s picks for the top 10 fiction books of the 2010s, in order of publication year. also read time’s list of the best nonfiction books of the decade.
a visit from the thug squad, jennifer egan (2010)
Jennifer Egan’s visit from the goon squad feels even more significant now than it did when it was first published nearly a decade ago. the book’s groundbreaking structure, switching between different characters in each chapter, has become a favorite trick of modern novelists. But it’s egan’s foreknowledge of technology that has truly stood the test of time. one memorable chapter is written entirely as a daughter’s powerpoint presentation about her family, a demonstration of the way technology filters personal stories. it also posits a future in which young children become social media influencers and run pop culture, a prediction that in recent years has come true. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel has proven to be more than just a formal achievement and a benchmark of technological trends. it also captures something timeless: how aging and the ways we try to cope with it can wreak havoc on human connection.
buy now: a visit from the thug squad
my brilliant friend, elena ferrante (2011)
Two girls, Lila and Lena, become friends when one of them drops the other’s beloved doll into the scariest pit she can find and, furious, the other does the same. together they have to face their fears and recover them. and so begins a story in which the two hurt, love, incite and envy each other, running the spectrum of interpersonal behavior from cruelty to absolute tenderness. One of the most dazzling aspects of My Brilliant Friend is that readers can never tell exactly who is Brilliant and who is a friend, and neither can Lila and Lena. Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, with a deep historical understanding of 1950s Naples, the book (like the three more installments in the Neapolitan series that followed) was a sensation from its original publication in Italian in 2011, on All because the true identity of the author Elena Ferrante is still uncertain. Like the motives of her protagonists, Ferrante’s motives are difficult to determine, but her account is as clear and brutal as falling glass.
shop now: my brilliant friend
lost girl, gillian flynn (2012)
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Author Gillian Flynn did not invent the unreliable narrator. But before lost babe, readers had never met a character like amy dunne: provocative, profane, mercurial, and fully capable of delivering a monologue (the infamous “cool girl” speech) to all the girls. ages. It’s much easier to gauge the impact of Lost Baby now than it was in 2012. The novel’s famous twist, in which it’s revealed that neither Amy nor Ella’s husband, Nick, are what they seem. made the story difficult. for critics to analyze when it was released. but since then, lost girl has defined the value of a generation of mystery novels and spawned countless imitators, many with “girl” or “wife” in the title. Unlike many of its imitators, gone girl seriously grapples with complicated questions of victimhood, femininity and marriage, against the tense backdrop of the Great Recession. the qualities of a good thriller – crackling prose, a palpable sense of dread, sharply drawn characters – are present in gone girl. But Flynn elevates the novel above pulpy clichés, presenting a story that is both sharp feminist criticism and captivating work of literature.
buy now: lost girl
americanah, chimamanda ngozi adichie (2013)
a literary prodigy who published her first book, purple hibiscus, at age 25, chimamanda ngozi adichie cemented her place as one of the greatest novelists of her generation with americanah. the protagonist of ella ifemelu de ella, like the author, is a young writer who travels from her native nigeria to the united states. pursue an elite education and learn what it means to be a black woman in a country built on white supremacy. Intertwined with her story is that of her high school sweetheart, Obinze, whose failed attempt to join her sets him on a darker and more dangerous path in England. the question of whether everyone is better off at home or abroad looms over their experiences on three continents in what is both a page-turner and a novel of ideas, a sharp analysis of blackness in america and a presentation warm and witty period tale about finding your place in a world that keeps growing. americanah stood out in a decade in which the art she inquired about identity in general and race relations in particular helped define the terms of a legitimately passionate cultural conversation.
buy now: americanah
life after life, kate atkinson (2013)
ursula todd dies over and over again in kate atkinson’s life after life: falling off a roof, drowning, succumbing to the flu. but deaths are just a device: this is a book about living and, above all, finding new ways to do it until you finally get it right. Atkinson made a name for herself as a mystery writer, but life after life defies the genre. The novel spans more than half a century, and Atkinson’s time shifts deepen its narrative, allowing readers to experience the effects of the characters’ extensive cast of choices: a marriage abandoned or saved, a soldier surviving or die It is also a defining account of wartime London, as Ursula experiences the devastation of the bombing from several perspectives, highlighting the senselessness of the bombing. the story of her many lives is both poignant and light-hearted, full of comic asides and evocative language about life’s many joys and sorrows. Despite the obvious tragedy, Ursula’s unconventional existence is ultimately an affirmation, as she reminds us that “we must try to do the best we can” even as we face our own mortality.
buy now: life after life
december tenth, george saunders (2013)
Great writers rarely earn their place in history through short stories. Exceptions include Poe, Chekhov, Borges, Munro, and, since the publication of his fourth collection December 10 in 2013, George Saunders. In 10 immersive fictions that seemed topical at the time but reveal even more insight six years later, the veteran Syracuse professor mixes reality and surrealism in a heady cocktail, blending sci-fi concepts, human emotions, and biting humor. “The Semplica Girl Diaries” imagines a world in which girls from developing countries are brought to the United States to serve as living garden decorations. “Escape from Spiderhead” takes place in a futuristic prison, where inmates are used as test subjects for drugs designed to make them fall in and out of love. each of these darkly comical tales cuts to the chase, backed by urgent moral conscience and well-justified anxiety about what happens as technology begins to overtake humanity. In a 2013 Time 100 Tribute, Mary Karr called Saunders “the greatest short story writer in English.” Since then, she has inspired many imitators, but none the same.
buy now: December tenth
the total sale, paul beatty (2015)
the plot is absurd: the hottie narrator and protagonist is a quality-obsessed farmer in dickens, california, a primarily black and latino neighborhood in los angeles. Previously a prosperous town, the decline of Dickens has led to its downgrading to an unmarked neighborhood, and the narrative is primarily driven by Bonbon’s attempt, along with his slave corn, to save Dickens from further dissolution by re-segregating the town. local high school. As with all great satirical and absurd literature, the Man Booker Award winner is hilarious, not for laughs, but in the service of revealing scathing truths about the world. paul beatty quotes burn with the heat and density of a neutron star, filled with keen social observation, illuminating historical and contemporary references, deeply felt anger and love of life in 21st century america and, more than anything else, the type of refinement. -avant-garde humor that makes you laugh but also makes you want to cry.
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buy now: the sale
sing, sing unburied, jesmyn ward (2017)
Few authors have had a more impressive career in the 2010s than Jesmyn Ward. Raised in Mississippi and committed to documenting the unacceptable realities of black life in the South, Ward won the National Book Award for her second novel, the 2011 Hurricane Katrina Meditation Salvage the Bones. >. two years later, she published men we reaped, a harrowing memoir tracing the deaths of five young black men who played an indelible role in her life. The culmination of these achievements was 2017’s Sing, Unbuded, Sing, which made Ward the first woman to win two National Fiction Book Awards. A lyrical ghost story of a novel, Sing follows a frail black drug-abusing woman named Leonie on a road trip with her two children to bring the children’s white father home from prison. As that seemingly simple journey becomes increasingly arduous, the book moves fluidly between the present and the past, gradually uncovering the race-related trauma that has shaped this interracial family.
buy now: sing, dig up, sing
little fires everywhere, blue ng (2017)
Little Fires Everywhere begins as a whimsical fantasy (who set fire to the rich richardson family’s house in shaker heights, ohio?) and unfolds in a dizzying, multifaceted examination of abortion, motherhood, identity racial and class struggle. The members of the Richardsons believe that Shaker Heights is an American utopia, but their worldview is challenged when a poor artist and her teenage daughter come to town with their own conceptions of self-esteem and achievement. i> romances flourish. secrets are exchanged. bitter rivalries are formed. As the two families become deeply entangled in each other’s lives, the differences between them become too great to handle. Author Celeste Ng, who lived in the highlands as a child, weaves a tightly constructed mystery, currently being adapted into a Hulu miniseries starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, with an unflappable and unsentimental hand. in doing so, she creates a fiery reading that leaves ashes on your brain.
buy now: small fires everywhere
the nickel boys, colson whitehead (2019)
Colson Whitehead is an accomplished storyteller, and in The Nickel Boys he exerts his command over character and narrative in the service of dramatizing the Jim Crow years of the American South to penetrating effect. His brilliant 2016 novel, The Underground Railroad, won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, only the sixth to do so, but The Nickel Boys is arguably even more powerful. maybe it’s the book’s proximity to current circumstances in the us. uu. reading it in a world just a generation removed from the traumas of jim crow requires engaging with the harrowing experiences of the characters, kids in a florida jury, not as the unfortunate outcome of an unknown antediluvian society, but as true to our own. “A piece of art really works when you see yourself in the main characters and you see a glimpse of yourself in the villains,” Whitehead told Time this year for a cover story. “You see yourself in the main and supporting characters where, if it weren’t for a quirk of fate, you could be there with them, that could be growing up as a black man in america.”
shop now: the nickel boys
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