One of the pleasures of the novel is its endless capacity for reinvention, and in 2017 fiction writers tried new approaches and new forms. the man booker winner was a debut novel from an author with 20 years of short stories to his name: george saunders’ masterful lincoln in the bard (bloomsbury), recounting death and the most Beyond Abraham Lincoln’s Young Son is told through fragments of Civil War memoir and a cacophony of feuding ghosts, it was a fantastically inventive exploration of loss, grief, and the power of empathy. There was also an injection of the fantastical in Mohsin Hamid’s exit west (hamish hamilton), which added the device of magical portals opening all over the world to its sober and devastating portrayal of the victims of war. creating a unique parable about modernity, migration and the place of the individual in the world.
jon mcgregor has always written about communities; in the acclaimed reservoir 13 (4th estate), he deepened his search for a collective voice, encompassing both the natural and human worlds in a cyclical account of the years spent in an ordinary English village wounded by disappearance of a girl Each of Nicola Barker’s books is a world unto itself; with goldsmith award-winning h(a)ppy (william heinemann), he pushed the novel toward objet d’art, using color and wacky typography to conjure a visionary dystopia of surveillance and control in which creativity and individuality refuse to be restricted.
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There were notable returns and some new directions of the biggest names in fiction: colm tóibín reproduced the Greek myth in house of names (Viking); John Banville channeled Henry James in the sequel to The Portrait of a Lady Mrs Osmond (Viking); salman rushdie returned to realism in the golden house (jonathan cape); and alan hollinghurst superimposed historical snapshots of gay life into the sparsholt affair (picador), a beautifully written chronicle of art and love in a changing britain.
jennifer egan followed up her speedy pulitzer winner with a visit from the thug squad with a more conventional novel of american dreams, manhattan beach (privateer); while arundhati roy’s second novel appeared barely two decades after the first: the ministry of greatest happiness (hamish hamilton) was a kaleidoscopic fable about love and resistance in modern india. roddy doyle outdid himself with smile (jonathan’s cape), a typically bittersweet novel about a middle-aged man’s memories of his school days that pulls the rug out from under the reader’s feet . and in june we said goodbye to the prodigiously talented helen dunmore, who died shortly after the publication of her haunting last novel, birdcage walk (windmill), set in an 18th-century bristol where revolution it’s up in the air.
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Of the many classic reboots, the most interesting was home fire by kamila shamsie (bloomsbury circus), which contrasts the role of the modern state with the timeless bonds of love and loyalty by reproducing the myth of Antigone through the story of two sisters and their jihadist brother. Hogarth Press’s project to novelize Shakespeare continued, with master stylist Edward St Aubyn recasting King Lear as a media mogul’s downfall at Dunbar. Debutant novelist Preti Taneja set the fierce and carefree version of her, we who are young (beggar in a top hat), in contemporary India, with riveting results.
The autofiction trend continued, with two searing novels fueled by personal history: When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy (Atlantic) brutally exposed the violence of an abusive marriage within the constraints of Indian society; and Édouard Louis’s The End of Eddy, translated by Michael Lucey (Harvill Secker), is a wild tale of growing up poor, gay and victimized in rural France. Meanwhile, the intimate horrors of a toxic marriage, and toxic parents, were skewered on Gwendoline Riley’s sharp first love (granta).
Two frighteningly thin volumes lingered in mind: Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin’s fever dream, translated by megan mcdowell (oneworld), was a gloriously creepy fable dealing with body swapping, maternal fear and the dangers of transgenic crops. in small hands by andrés barba, translated from spanish by lisa dillman (portobello), the arrival of a traumatized girl in an orphanage is the trigger for an explosion of love, hate and repressed desire. both are read quickly, never forgotten. another gem in translation was flights by olga tokarczuk, translated by jennifer croft (fitzcarraldo), who, along the lines of wg sebald, weaves together fragments of fiction, narrative and reflection to meditate on human anatomy and the meaning of Travel – This is a delicate and witty book that is constantly making new connections.
if you’re looking for the juiciest pleasures of a reality buff, pick up amanda craig’s sly portrait of bitter marriage divisions and the united kingdom: the lie of the country (small, brown ) sees a privileged couple who feel too poor for London move to rural Dorset. there they find out how the other 90% live in an elegantly written exposition of all the things the elite would rather not consider about poverty, inequality, food production and class, complete with a biting mystery.
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Debuts to celebrate included yaa gyasi’s ambitious multi-generational saga of the effects of the slave trade, homegoing (penguin); the intense story of abuse and self-determination of gabriel tallent in the woods of california, my absolute love (fourth power); and sally rooney’s clever anatomization of modern attitudes in post-crash dublin, conversations with friends (faber). Spoils (Jonathan Cape) by ex-US soldier Brian Van Reet was a brilliantly written account of kidnapping and conquest in the early stages of the Iraq War; For the Iraqi perspective, head to Muhsin Al-Ramli’s The President’s Gardens, translated by Luke Leafgren (Maclehose), which follows a group of friends who grew up under Saddam Hussein.
The year’s short stories tended toward the dark and unsettling: standout collections included sarah hall’s madame zero (faber), elegant tales of sex, motherhood and transformation, and room june caldwell darker’s little (new island), a supercharged gothic debut from an irish writer to watch. another debut, the attribute of eley williams. and other stories (influx), cornered the brain fun market.
Finally, two novels that are appropriate reading for the season. the winter break by bernard maclaverty (jonathan cape), about an elderly married couple on a mini-break in amsterdam, may put you off the festive sherry – his portrayal of the tight vice of alcohol addiction has no parallel. but its deep exploration of love, companionship, faith, work, and our search for meaning in life made it a tender masterpiece and one of the essential reads of the year.
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ali smith (hamish hamilton) is the second of her seasonal quartet, following the booker-shortlisted fall, and once again tackles the biggest issues with the finest touch. light. A spacious and generous shapeshifter from a novel that takes Greenham Common and Barbara Hepworth, Shakespeare and global migration, juxtaposes art with nature and protest with apathy, finding surprising alliances in a family torn apart by feuds. It is a book with Christmas at the center, in all its familiarity and estrangement: about time, and outside of time, like the party itself.
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