“it was the worst of times, it was the worst of times…” from his first line autumn by ali smith (hamish hamilton), written and published at high speed to become The first Brexit novel, it met Britain’s sometimes desperate mood in 2016 with humor and grace. this being an ali smith novel, she also found solace in the consolations of friendship and art, weaving a typically light-hearted meditation on mortality, mutability, and how to keep your head in hard times around the story of a young insecure and his old childhood friend. .
but times were good for fiction: these were a rich 12 months, with many big names and great ideas, although not always wrapped in the same package. The year began with an elegant portrait of Shostakovich’s life under Stalin by Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time (Jonathan Cape), and a captivating tale of Cold War espionage by Helen Dunmore, >exposure (windmill). other big hits were don delillo with zero k (picador), a chilling investigation into cryogenics and father-son relationships; the dry philosophical investigation of jm coetzee the schooldays of jesus (harvill secker); and Javier Marías delving into desire and guilt in This is how it starts badly (penguin, translated by Margaret Jull Costa). rose tremain was in top form with her nuanced analysis of emotional and political neutrality, gustav’s sonata (chatto & windus), while al kennedy tenderly anatomized london and loneliness in serious sweet (jonathan cape) and ian mcewan had fun in in a nutshell (jonathan cape), a slightly crisp jeu d’esprit whose narrating fetus shows a precocious appreciation for poetry and the good wine.
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towards the end of 2016 came sebastian barry’s landmark days without end (faber), an intense and visceral novel that brings to life the violence and terror of 19th century america; and zadie smith’s most pessimistic swing time (hamish hamilton), which explores friendship and failure, isolation and identity, distraction and the power of dance: what it’s like to look back at the place where you come from and not knowing where you want to go. Smith’s fifth novel may not have gone as deep as his previous books, but it did contain some brilliant writing about growing up in London.
in the middle, the penultimate volume of karl ove knausgaard’s cycle of autobiographical novels, some rain must fall (vintage, translated by don bartlett), focusing on his 20 years and the fight for invent yourself as a writer. And novelists continued to reinvent Shakespeare, with Howard Jacobson, Anne Tyler, and Margaret Atwood reviving The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest, respectively; Atwood’s typically playful hag-seed (hogarth), with Prospero, a theater director, staging The Tempest in a prison, was the highlight.
there was a lot of american fiction, from annie proulx’s vast ecological saga about the environmental degradation of the last 300 years, bark skins (fourth estate), to the scant regard for love elizabeth strout’s mother, my name is lucy barton (viking). we had new books by edmund white and jay mcinerney, dave eggers and lionel shriver; while viet thanh nguyen brilliantly explored the legacy of the vietnam war in the pulitzer prize-winning the sympathizer and jonathan safran foer published his first novel in a decade. The lengthy here I am (hamish hamilton) covers topics as important as america, israel, marriage and masculinity, with deviations towards obscene uses for a doorknob.
and in the third year of eligibility, an American author won the man booker award for the first time. Paul Beatty’s The Sellout (Oneworld), a no-holds-barred satire on the history and legacy of racism in America, saw 18 rejections from cautious publishers. This cerebral roller coaster ride of a novel was praised to the skies in the US, but it caught British attention for a Booker list that was full of surprises, and it also gave small publishers a welcome boost. ironically, the smallest fish on the list, his gory project by graeme macrae burnet, published by scottish indie criminal wing saraband, turned out to be the most accessible and commercially successful of the bunch: it’s a puzzle about murder and motivation in a 19th century farming community that keeps the reader guessing.
some bold experimenters returned this year. eimear mcbride followed a girl is a half-formed thing with a coming-of-age story about an irish drama student in london, lesser bohemians (faber). Though some found the contrast between her fractured main narrative voice and the inclusion of a more conventionally told story of abuse jarring, with her second novel alone she has accomplished the near-impossible: finding a new way to write about sex and intimacy. Paul Kingsnorth continued his Buckmaster trilogy in Beast (Faber), jumping 1000 years from the Norman England of the stele to a man alone on a moor, trying to overcome his own insecurities. Rachel Cusk’s (Jonathan Cape) transit, the second installment in a trio of novels that funnel disparate voices through their narrator’s consciousness, was even better than the 2014 draft.
china miéville went from science fiction to fable with the creepy and elusive this census taker (picador), while cult irish writer mike mccormack made a welcome return in solar bones . (vagrant press), the swirling, single-sentence evocation of an ordinary man on the last day of his life, a well-deserved winner of the goldsmiths award for groundbreaking fiction. On Booker’s shortlist, David Szalay advanced the dividing lines between novel and short story in All That Is Man (Jonathan Cape): Linked Accounts of European Masculinity in Crisis, whose effect is monumentally somber, but which contain some of the best prose to be found in English this year. and deborah levy’s hot milk (hamish hamilton) probed mythical and psychoanalytic archetypes for an in-depth exploration of a damaged relationship between mother and daughter.
among a promising array of offbeat debuts, two caught my eye: nothing on earth by poet conor o’callaghan (doubleday ireland), a highly contemporary slice of gothic exploring atomization of modern life. , set in an irish ghost estate and infinite terrain by martin macinnes (atlantic), a metaphysical mystery about the disappearance of a man with shades of conrad and borges. both display tremendous poise and control.
sarah perry took an unusual journey with her second novel: from her bizarre 2014 debut, after me comes the flood, to something much more conventional in appearance, but without sacrificing any of her singular sensibility. set in the 1890s, the essex serpent (serpent’s tail), a glorious and rich history of folklore and science, myths and beliefs, friendship and love, is the book I will wrap the most of copies this Christmas. , and it also comes with a magnificent cover.
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there were great conceptual successes from colson whitehead, who turned the slave escape network into a veritable rail tunnel system in the underground railway (fleet), a loaded and important novel that pushed the frontiers of fiction while documenting historical atrocities, and naomi alderman, who imagined women as the strong sex in power (Viking). the result is as clever and thought-provoking as it is furiously readable.
The infinitely inventive sudden death of Álvaro enrigue (harvill secker, translated by natasha wimmer) explored the bloody clashes of the spanish empire against the aztec, the old world against the new, through a match of tennis played by Caravaggio. At the other end of the literary spectrum, Jo Baker’s cool and understated A Country Road, A Tree (Doubleday) performed the unlikely feat of successfully channeling Samuel Beckett’s prose style into a powerful novel. biography that illuminated his work. with the French resistance and the difficult fruition of his genius.
We say goodbye to a master of the story, William Trevor, who died in November; And the same month saw the UK introduction of a leading American practitioner of the form: The Privilege To Visit by Joy Williams (Tuskar Rock) showcases her limitless talent in darkly funny, heartless stories. and compassionate. in turns.
Finally, if Christmas triggers thoughts of escape, here are two books that are guaranteed to transport you to other times and places. francis spufford’s fictional debut, golden hill (faber), is bright and funny: an adorable recreation of 1746 new york, where a mysterious stranger arrives from england and gets into trouble every day. ever deeper. and despite a long suspicion of wacky, fluffy animals, I was captivated beyond measure by the bright & amp; by kevin macneil; forever (polygon), a surreal comedy that centers on a literary festival on a Scottish island where humans and talking alpacas coexist uneasily. In difficult times, an alpaca to write stories never hurts.
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lists of the best books of 2016
- best fiction
- best crime and thriller
- best science fiction and fantasy