In a year marked by intense debates around identity and belonging, and continual breaking news about violence and division, the best of fiction helped us process. Established and emerging authors cut through the noise with stories of transcendent love, courageous confrontations with power, and stories not to be forgotten, offering books that show us who we are, who we have been, and who we must strive to become.
here, the best fiction books of 2019.
You are reading: Best fiction books 2019
who should be time’s person of the year in 2019? cast your vote in the reader poll.
10. drive your plow over the bones of the dead, olga tokarczuk (trans. antonia lloyd-jones)
Olga Tokarczuk, the 2018 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, trains her imaginative mind on the story of Janina, a sixty-something-year-old Polish woman with an unearthly appreciation for animals. it’s a love that, to her indignation, goes against the most popular activity in her small Polish town: hunting. When the town is hit by a series of murders, Janina is sure there must be a connection to the slaughter of animals. As the misunderstood protagonist meddles in the police case, Tokarczuk raises essential questions about whose voices are privileged over others.
buy now: plow your plow over the bones of the dead
9. topeka school, ben lerner
The novelist, essayist, and poet combines the perspectives of a fast and ruthless high school debate champion, his psychologist parents, and a fellow misfit at topeka school, a poignant examination of the ” toxic masculinity” and its manifestations in speech. Adam Gordon, a character first introduced as a grown man and poet in Lerner’s debut novel Leaving Atocha Station, is a deft talker, a chameleon so comfortable dominating his school’s social scene. as it is in his parents. ‘ home. Adam’s winning approach to the competition, subjecting his challengers to “the spread,” where they are forced to respond to an explosion of ideas to the rhythm of drinking from a fire hose, deftly mirrors the disappearance of civil discourse.
buy now: topeka school
8. where reasons end, yiyun li
A devastating story born out of real-life angst, Where Reasons End by yiyun li features a mother in conversation with her son after losing him to suicide. li wrote her original and deeply moving novel after the suicide of her own son. In the book, the narrator visits 16-year-old Nikolai in a liminal world created by Li, somewhere between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. As the two relive their old ways of being together and speaking to each other, Li develops a poignant meditation on the limitations of language, a tool that is equipped to convey neither life’s most agonizing pain nor its fiercest love.
See Also: Gabriel Allon – Book Series In Order
buy now: where the reasons end
7. on earth we are briefly beautiful, ocean vuong
Emerging poet Ocean Vuong made a dazzling entry into fiction this year with his semi-autobiographical novel, On Earth We Are Briefly Beautiful. Vuong brings his mastery of evocative lyrical language to the story of a puppy, a Vietnamese-American boy growing up in Connecticut with his Vietnam War survivor mother and grandmother, and bearing the brunt of inherited trauma. In the form of a letter to his illiterate mother, who was violent towards him as a child, the little dog recounts his harrowing upbringing, a life-changing relationship with the opioid-addicted grandson of a summer employer, and the last consolation he discovered in the books. and writing.
buy now: on earth we are briefly beautiful
6. trust exercise, susan choi
In the hormone-charged, pressure-filled world of a performing arts high school, two acting students find themselves swept up in a heady romance, only to be watched, judged, and influenced by their peers and even their acting teacher. theater, a man with questionable motives. National Book Award winner Susan Choi creates a visceral teenage world rife with tension, sexual and otherwise, and presents the accompanying insecurity with excruciating realism. that is, until she introduces a perspective shift midway through the novel that undermines the veracity of the story. With a boldly unconventional structure, Choi points out essential truths about power and who gets to control the narrative.
buy now: exercise trust
5. black leopard, red wolf, marlon james
Marlon James invents ghoulish and brilliant new worlds in perhaps the most ambitious novel of the year, the fantasy epic Black Leopard, Red Wolf. The first book in a promised trilogy draws from African mythology and history to create a deeply immersive universe filled with over 80 characters: shapeshifters, vampiric birds, translucent children, mermaids, vengeful hyenas, and more. Tracker, a mercenary known for his unrivaled sense of smell, navigates these treacherous green worlds and joins a team assembled to find a missing child. James, who won a Booker Award for A Brief History of Seven Murders, his novel featuring Jamaican Patois, writes in dense, inventive language, defiant at first, then utterly absorbing.
buy now: black leopard, red wolf
4. the need, helen phillips
It’s a classic opening: a woman hears an intruder in her home while her husband is away, grabs their two young children and hides in terror. But the true power of Helen Phillips’ brilliantly paced thriller emerges when Molly, a paleobotanist, comes face to face with the only person in the world who can change her identity as a mother, one who leads her to question her own identity. reality of her. Phillips taps into the overwhelming anxiety that comes with love in its deepest and truest form, a sense of fierce protection that one doesn’t have to be a parent to understand.
See Also: Inspirational Books for Cancer Patients & Survivors | Cxbladder
buy now: the need
3. lost children archive, valeria luiselli
In a year when family separations regularly made headlines, valeria luiselli found a profound way to delve into history through fiction. In her first novel written in English, the Mexican author sends a blended family of four—a daughter and her single mother, married to a single father and a son—on a road trip across the states. United. from new york to arizona. The man and woman fell in love over a shared task, documenting the audioscape of New York City, and their appreciation of sound adds an evocative texture to Luiselli’s lush prose as they travel. But on the trip, designed in part to take the husband to his next project in Apacheria, in part to allow the mother to search for a friend’s daughters who have been detained at the border, the bonds of family are tested. .
buy now: lost boys archive
2. the testaments, margaret atwood
Thirty-four years after publishing her classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood returns to the Republic of Gilead to further her exploration of oppressive regimes. Where the original novel depicted Gilead’s totalitarian theocracy through the claustrophobic perspective of one woman, Offred, The Wills expands to tell the rise and fall of the regime through the eyes of three. Agnes Jemima is growing up in Gilead, preparing to learn the duties she will inherit as a privileged but severely restricted wife. daisy is a vibrant teenager living in canada protesting against the maligned society that looms south of her hometown. And Aunt Lydia, a vicious family leader in Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale, is developing a more complicated relationship with the regime than the original novel suggests. The result is a thrilling and worthy continuation of Atwood’s indelible dystopia, yet another warning that totalitarianism is always lurking just around the corner.
shop now: wills
1. the nickel boys, colson whitehead
Whitehead builds on his award-winning story of American slavery on the Underground Railroad with another journey through painful history, this time revisiting the Jim Crow era. the nickel boys follows elwood and turner, teenage boys sentenced to an inhumane florida reform school (based on the shocking true stories of abuse at the arthur g. dozier school for boys). Along with their peers, Turner and Elwood wrestle with their disparate and often dispiriting ideas of what the country will offer them when they come of age as black men in the 1960s. Whitehead’s rich prose leaves behind the elements magical realism of The Underground Railroad, which won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and instead evokes the brutally realistic hopes, shattered dreams and resilience of its characters. presents a terrifying world in disarming terms, lovingly guiding its reader to recognize the lasting impact of a cruel age.
shop now: the nickel boys
write to lucy feldman at lucy.feldman@time.com.
See Also: Chris Pavone – Book Series In Order