Like many bloggers, I’m irresistibly drawn to the new books released each year. However, I consistently find that many of my more memorable reads were published earlier – most of these happen to have been published between one and a few years ago, with the ‘oldest’ being from 2004. These dozen selections – alphabetical within genre but in no particular rank order – together with my Best of 2023 post (coming up tomorrow), make up about the top 10% of my year’s reading.
Fiction
Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt: The heart-wrenching story of a woman who adopts her granddaughter because of her daughter’s drug addiction. The prose is stunning as Boyt traces the history of this complicated, makeshift family. The title has a wry double meaning, but also connotations of anticipatory grief. There can be love even where there is estrangement, or eternal separation. That is one of the enduring messages of this gem of a short novel.
Homesick by Jennifer Croft: Each vignette – some just a paragraph long – is perfectly chosen to reveal a family dynamic and a moment in American history. What Croft does so brilliantly is to chart the accretion of ordinary and landmark events that form a life. In the end it didn’t matter whether this was presented as memoir or autofiction, so true was it to the experience of 1990s girlhood, as well as to sisterhood and coming of age.
Search by Michelle Huneven: When middle-aged restaurant critic Dana Potowski is invited to be on the search committee to appoint the next minister for her California Unitarian church, she reluctantly agrees but soon wonders whether the experience could be interesting fodder for a new book… The setup might seem niche but will resonate with anyone who’s had a brush with bureaucracy. Pure pleasure; lit fic full of gossip and good food.
Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey: Researchers identified Big Burr, Kansas as the most homophobic town in America. An Acceptance Across America task force descends on the rural backwater for a two-year program promoting education and friendship. Each chapter in the linked short story collection is a first-person, present-tense confession from a local or a queer visitor, whose stories interlock. Laskey inhabits all 11 with equal skill and compassion.
The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry: This utterly immersive novel examines Thomas Hardy’s relationship with his first wife, Emma Gifford. It opens on the morning of her death. The couple had long been estranged, but Hardy was instantly struck with grief – and remorse, his guilt compounded by what he found in her journals. A universal tale of waning romance, loss, and regret. Beautifully understated; perfectly convincing for the period but also timeless.
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout: As Covid hits, William whisks Lucy from her NYC apartment to a house at the Maine coast. She’s an Everywoman recounting the fear and confusion of the early pandemic. Isolation has benefits: the first ‘room of her own’ she’s ever had, and time to ponder her childhood trauma and what went wrong in her marriage. Astute on American politics and writers’ inspirations; an effortless voice and emotional intelligence.
Nonfiction
Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince: Ince was meant to undertake a stadium tour in Autumn 2021, but a Covid resurgence put paid to that. Not one for sitting around at home, he formulated Plan B: 100+ events, most of them in independent bookshops, over the course of two months, criss-crossing Britain and hitting many of my favourites. He’s not just a speaker at them but, invariably, a customer. I sensed a kindred spirit in so many lines. Witty and open-minded.
A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors: Nors lives in rural Jutland along the west coast of Denmark – little visited and largely unknown to foreigners. This can be both good and bad. Tourists feel they’re discovering somewhere new, but the residents are insular. Local legends and traditions, bird migration, reliance on the sea, wanderlust, maritime history, a visit to church frescoes, and more. Gorgeous writing and atmosphere, despite the bleakness.
Here and Now by Henri Nouwen: This collection of micro-essays under themed headings like “Living in the Present” and “Suffering” is a perfect introduction to the Dutch Catholic priest’s theology. I marked out many reassuring or thought-provoking passages. I was taken by his ideas that the life of compassion is one of “downward mobility” and that inner freedom comes when you don’t judge anyone. Peaceful and readable; a good bedside devotional.
Poetry
Ephemeron by Fiona Benson: Exquisite poems about the ephemeral, whether that be insect lives, boarding school days, primal emotions or moments from her children’s early years. The book is in four discrete corresponding sections but themes and language bleed from one into another and the whole is shot through with astonishing corporeality and eroticism. The form varies but the alliteration, slant rhymes and unexpected metaphors make each poem glisten.
Leave Me a Little Want by Beverly Burch: Burch’s fourth collection juxtaposes the cosmic and the mundane, marvelling at the behind-the-scenes magic that goes into one human being born but also making poetry of an impatient wait in a long post office queue. Beset by environmental anxiety and the scale of bad news during the pandemic, she pauses in appreciation of the small and gradual.
Making the Beds for the Dead by Gillian Clarke: Full of colour and nature imagery, profuse with alliteration and slant rhymes, relishing its specialist terminology, and taking on the serious subject matter of manmade disasters. Several sequences are devoted to gardening and geology; some pieces are ekphrastic, or dedicated to particular poets. The title sequence tackles the 2001foot and mouth disease outbreak. “The Fall” is on 9/11. Very affecting stuff.
My overall favourites were: in novels, Search and The Chosen (one contemporary and one historical) and in poetry, Ephemeron.
What were your best backlist reads this year?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
Some of these should be on my TBR too. Our local indie bookshop was on Robin Ince’s itinerary, and he gave all of us who went to his evening talk a right good time!
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I’d particularly recommend the Dorthe Nors to you.
I didn’t know Ince as a public personality at all, but I got on so well with this that I’d be interested in trying more of his books, or seeing him in person.
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He’s a bundle of frenetic energy who just chats away engagingly with no notes. The Dorthe Nors is on the list. Thanks.
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Bibliomaniac sounds good! I really enjoyed Uncultured – review is here: https://legalmamareviews.blogspot.com/2023/04/review-uncultured-by-daniela-mestanyek.html . I wish that I had gotten more books read this year – but that’s always a goal of mine!
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A must for book lovers, for sure!
We place so many obligations on ourselves as readers. Just to enjoy what you read is goal enough.
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Search and Loved And Missed both sound absolutely wonderful. Is Search available in the UK at all? Summary and cover design make it seem a very American book.
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Alas, Search is not available here. I bought it with a U.S. Bookshop.org voucher and had my sister bring it over in her suitcase last Christmas. Only one from Huneven’s backlist seems to be available in the UK: Round Rock, which I was given a secondhand copy of this year.
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Historical fiction is not my usual thing but you’ve convinced me to try The Chosen.
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That’s quite the compliment, thank you!
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I normally avoid historical fiction too but I’m also going to try The Chosen. Could go either way!
Favourite backlist books for me – Field Notes by Maxim Peter Griffin, Fifty Mysterious Postcards by Kathryn Baird and Unofficial Britain by Gareth E. Rees.
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Let me know how you like it 🙂
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I’m very keen to read Bibliomaniac, especially! And obviously these would all count as alarmingly new to me 😄
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Ha ha! Yes, I hardly ever read older stuff. Your year clubs are a great excuse for me to pick up some classics!
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I also loved Homesick, which almost made it onto my Commended list this year – I was a bit let down by the second half, but adored all the childhood material.
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I’m pleased the Women’s Prize highlighted it this year.
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The Dutch House by Patchett was a particularly good backlist read for me. I read quite a lot of 2023 books – a lot for me, anyway!
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I guess you kept getting tempted by new library books 🙂 I still have a couple of Patchett’s early novels to read.
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The only one I’ve read is Lucy by the Sea, but The Chosen sounds really interesting to me.
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I know you’ll want to read it for its Walter Scott Prize shortlisting.
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Yes.
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By the time I get to reading anything, it’s basically a backlist. I put them in a great big pile that starts in a cabinet by my bed and continues to piles on the floor, and then I read them in order, with some rearranging, of course. (Occasionally I sneak a new book to the top of the pile.) Then I am usually about a month or more ahead in my blog posts. So, by the time I review them, they’re usually backlists.
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I have about 80 “set-aside” books on shelves in my office that I have let languish there for months or years. Most of them were review copies. I do feel bad about not reviewing them in a timely fashion!
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That’s why I’m not doing NetGalley anymore. I have a few places that send me books, but not too many.
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Finally purchased the Nors book–I’ve loved her stories–and can’t wait to start.
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A lovely book I enjoyed more than I expected to.
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What a good assortment! I’m behind with Strout but also like knowing she’s waiting. The Chosen appeals to me, too.
There were quite a few good backlisted books in my stacks this year, including one by one of my favourite writers, Madeleine Thien (Dogs at the Perimeter), but I’ve not looked closely at my spreadsheet yet for the year….soon, though!
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I skipped the second Amgash novel and it didn’t seem to make a difference.
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I read Under the Rainbow via NetGalley so it wasn’t backlist then. Let’s have a look at my spreadsheet which I’ve kept open while I try to catch up with best-of blog posts … Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series, Bernardine Evaristo’s Manifesto, Amrit Wilson’s Finding a Voice, Richard Llewellyn How Green Was my Valley, Imogen Binnie’s Nevada (how did I miss that off my 23 in 2023??), Kit de Waal’s My Name is Leon.
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Great stuff!
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[…] Why I have it: Not usually into historical fiction but Beck has tempted me. […]
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