On my old blog, at the end of each year I would select the five best books I’d read during the preceding twelve months. I’m going to do something a little more free-form here, not a list of five best books, followed by a number of honourable mentions, but a sort of ramble about the books I most enjoyed and/or admired. These are not necessarily books published in 2021, just ones I happened to read between 1 January 2021 and now.
I had a pretty good reading year, I think. A mix of old favourites, new discoveries, new books by old favourites, old not-what-I-would-call-favourites-by-any-stretch-of-the-imagination-but-never-mind, and, er, books I’m not entirely sure why I read.
Here are the ones I thought the best, in no particular order…
I forget where I first saw mention of Agustín Fernández Mallo’s Nocilla trilogy, and the movement in Spanish literature it inspired, but I read the first two books when they appeared in English and was much impressed. I bought the third, Nocilla Lab (2009, trans. 2019, Spain), as soon as it was published in translation, but it got left behind in storage when I moved to Sweden — and it was only this year I picked up an ebook copy and read it. I’m not convinced the format did the novel any favours — the last section is a comic strip and I don’t think it was rendered properly. But never mind. Nocilla Lab was even more my kind of thing than the two preceding books. Not just its Moebius strip of a story, but the way it wraps its own genesis into itself, and then goes off and tells an entirely different story, which is just as strange, and just as inevitable, as the story it’s telling about itself. If that makes sense. An excellent end to a powerful trilogy. I have another novel by Fernández Mallo on the bookshelves. I’m looking forward to reading it in 2022.
Another author who stretches the definition of “fiction” is Laurent Binet. And Civilisations (2019, trans. 2021, France), is also the third — novel? whatever… I’ve read by the author. It’s framed as a series of historical incidents, beginning in the tenth century with the Norse exploration of North America, continuing through Columbus’s death during his first exploration of the “New World”, and ending up in early seventeenth-century Spain, where the Incas and Aztecs battle for supremacy in Europe. It’s a pure hit of alternate history, with only a thin layering of story laid on top. (Readers of my own fiction may spot a pattern here and in the book mentioned above.) Civilisations may not possess the tongue-in-cheek audacity of Binet’s previous novel, The 7th Function of Language (2015, trans. 2017, France), and it may in parts read like one of those “counter-factual” essay collections historians seem to enjoy publishing, but it’s certainly audacious in its choice of history to rewrite.
The two books above were not published as genre, although one of them certainly qualifies as genre. The Ordinary (2004, USA) by Jim Grimsley was published by a genre imprint. I bought it when it was published but didn’t read it until 2021, seventeen years after it was published. The annoying thing is, I’m pretty sure I would have loved it just as much had I read it in 2004. It’s a LeGuin-ish science fiction sequel to a straight-up secondary world fantasy. And it works. It might even be considered sui generis. I can see its flaws — its pace is uneven, and its story feels a little forced toward the end — but the mix of fantasy and science fiction is masterfully done. And that’s from a reader who thinks one of the worst thing you can do in genre fiction is mix science fiction and fantasy.
Clearly, I consider myself a genre fan — but when I use the term “genre”, I’m generally referring to science fiction, fantasy, and maybe a little bit of horror. Western is, of course, also a genre. And while I do like me some 1950s and 1960s cowboy movies, the more Hollywood the better, it’s not a genre in which I’ve read much. However, Lonesome Dove (1985, USA) by Larry McMurtry was on offer as an ebook, and… I’d honestly not expected it to be funny. It’s grim and dystopic, in the way many modern novels of the so-called “Wild West” are. But in Gus McCrae it has a remarkably likeable, witty and sympathetic lead. Despite the depressing picture it painted of its time and place, I really enjoyed reading Lonesome Dove. And it felt like its characters got the ends they deserved. So few novels these days can say that. Lonesome Dove is not entirely problem-free, and its depiction of Native Americans has been questioned by others far more knowledgeable than myself — but, to be fair, all historical novels by white authors from the US, and the UK too, should probably be considered questionable at best.
When a book is said to “make an impact” that’s not usually a function of its weight, but XX: A Novel, Graphic (2020, UK) by Rian Hughes, best known for his work with comics — I recommend Dare (1990, UK), which originally appeared in Revolver, and then Crisis, comics (who remembers those?) — and some later non-fiction works about illustration… Well, XX: A Novel, Graphic is an absolute monster-sized book, a veritable brick in hardcover. Its story is somewhat over-busy, which tends to bury the central really neat premise in a less interesting near-future “genius hacker” narrative. But the book is nothing if not ambitious. While some of the typographical tricks are not unexpected given Hughes’s career, although still effective, the embedded sf novelette works extremely well. An impressive genre debut.
All of the books mentioned above are by male authors, which wasn’t deliberate. I do indeed read women writers — more than a third of the books I read in 2021 were by women — and some of my favourite writers are female. I really liked The Switch (2017, UK) by Justina Robson, an author whose previous books I’ve enjoyed and admired. I’ve grown tired of the high body-count and callous uber-violence of present-day science fiction, and while some of that exists in The Switch, it’s carefully rationalised and positioned. It is, in fact, part of the plot. Far too much current sf seems almost sociopathic in its casual use of violence to make the most banal of points.
The True Queen (2019, Malayasia) by Zen Cho, on the other hand, mixes fantasy, a genre I probably love to hate more than I love, and Regency historical (koff koff romance), a genre I really do actually like. And does it exceedingly well. There were perhaps too many dragons in this sequel — not a complaint I ever foresaw myself making — and not enough comedy of manners, but this series (at least, I hope it’s a series) provides an entertaining and fascinating perspective on a pair of genres that have for far too long been predominantly about the white and privileged.
Piranesi (2020, UK) by Susanna Clarke is about as sui generis as it’s possible to be. I’m a little surprised this novel has done as well as it has. It’s beautifully written, by an author who clearly knows their craft. But it’s about a guy abandoned in a world modelled on Piranesi’s drawings, and I’m not sure every reader of the novel knows what that means; and while it’s thin on plot initially, its explicatory narrative draws on a huge wellspring of English occult writings I’m not convinced most of Piranesi’s readers know anything about. Which is not to either disparage or minimise their response to the book — but it does suggest Clarke’s skill is perhaps even more impressive than they had realised.
There are several other books worth mentioning. Kazuo Ishiguro mines a hoary old sf trope in his Klara and the Sun (2021, UK). He’s a subtle writer and this is as subtle as anything else he has written. It misdirects like a champion, but it’s very much a novel about the last two years. Pincher Martin (1956, UK) by William Golding may well have been shocking when it was published but time has not been kind to its premise. It continues to impress because Golding had major writing chops. Another novel with a non-standard narrative is Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual (2021, UK), which takes as its starting point the single most lethal strike by a V-2 in World War 2 London (did you know more people died building the V-2 than it actually killed?), when one of the missiles destroyed a department store, and then imagines future histories for several of those killed in the strike. It’s a curious mix of alternate history and contemporary fiction — or perhaps, near-historical fiction — which might well be sui generis, although I’ve a feeling a lot of literary fiction falls into the same bailiwick. Except those literary novels are making points intrinsic to their characters and for Light Perpetual it’s extrinsic. Or something.
Next is Utopia Avenue (2020, UK) by David Mitchell, which appealed because I have a soft spot for the music it describes — but I’m not convinced Mitchell’s strategy of making all of his novels part of one long fractured genre narrative is either wise or useful. John Fowles’s Daniel Martin (1977, UK) was not the historical novel I was expecting, but a very readable, if middle-brow, post-modern novel about a successful scriptwriter who was, like the author, trying to reconcile his nationality, his recognition that taxes pay for good things and things from which he has benefitted, and his desire to minimise what he pays in taxes to the state that made him what he is. It’s probably a Boomer thing.
Finally, two quick mentions. Lavie Tidhar re-imagines the Matter of Britain by way of Guy Ritchie in By Force Alone (2020, Israel), and perhaps I’d be less forgiving if a) Ritchie hadn’t already done it and done it really badly, and b) this was by someone other than Tidhar, who manages to ring changes out of material no sane person would have imagined were there. And America City (2017, UK) sees Chris Beckett, a British writer, tackle the problem of social media head on, come off only slightly dented, and still produce a novel that seems a better exploration of present-day US character than most US genre authors have attempted. I am not, I admit, American, so both Beckett and myself are outsiders, but what he has written rings true to me. Perhaps someone born and bred in the US could read the novel and confirm.
We shall see what 2022 brings, reading-wise. The strategy I adopted in 2021 toward buying books — see what’s on offer on ebook, occasional purchases of collectables otherwise — seems to have worked quite well. So I’ll continue that. I still have a large TBR, of course; and a few authors whose oeuvres I want to work my way through.
No promises, however; just hopes.
