Best Books from 2023
Keeping it simple again this year with one post covering all genres: the 24 (or, actually 26) current-year releases that stood out the most for me. (No rankings; anything from my Best of First Half that didn’t make it through can be considered a runner-up, along with The Librarianist.)
Fiction
The New Life by Tom Crewe: Two 1890s English sex researchers (based on John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis) write a book called Sexual Inversion drawing on ancient Greek history and containing case studies of homosexual behaviour. Oscar Wilde’s trial puts everyone on edge; not long afterwards, their own book becomes the subject of an obscenity trial, and each man has to decide what he’s willing to give up in devotion to his principles. This is deeply, frankly erotic stuff, and, on the sentence level, just exquisite writing.
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff: Groff’s fifth novel combines visceral detail and magisterial sweep as it chronicles a runaway Jamestown servant’s struggle to endure the winter of 1610. Flashbacks to traumatic events seep into her mind as she copes with the harsh reality of life in the wilderness. The style is archaic and postmodern all at once. Evocative and affecting – and as brutal as anything Cormac McCarthy wrote. A potent, timely fable as much as a historical novel.
Counting as one this thematic trio of women’s true crime pastiches; I liked the Makkai best.
Penance by Eliza Clark: A compelling account of teenage feuds and bullying that went too far and ended in murder. It’s a pretty gruesome crime, but memorable, not least because it coincided with the day of the Brexit vote. I loved Clark’s portrait of Crow-on-Sea, a down-at-heel seaside town near Scarborough, and the depth of character that comes through via interviews and documents. She also nails teenage dialogue and social media use, podcasts, true crime obsession and so on.
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll: An engrossing story of a Type A sorority president whose perfect life goes askew when a serial killer targets the house and kills two of her friends. She and the domestic partner of one of his previous victims are determined to see “the Defendant” brought to justice. 1970s Florida/Washington were interesting settings, and I liked the focus on the victims. The judge in the Defendant’s case lamented that such a bright young man would come to grief; think of the bright young women he extinguished instead.
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai: When an invitation comes from her boarding school alma mater, Granby, to teach a two-week course on podcasting, Bodie indulges her obsession with the 1995 murder of her former roommate. Makkai has taken her cues from the true crime genre and constructed a convincing mesh of evidence and theories. She so carefully crafts her pen portraits, and so intimately involves us in Bodie’s psyche, that it’s impossible not to get invested. This is timely, daring, intelligent, enthralling storytelling.
Sidle Creek by Jolene McIlwain: In this debut collection of 22 short stories, loosely linked by their location in the Appalachian hills in western Pennsylvania and a couple of recurring minor characters, McIlwain softens the harsh realities of addiction, poverty and violence with the tender bruises of infertility and lost love. Grief is a resonant theme in many of the stories, with pregnancy or infant loss a recurring element. At times harrowing, always clear-eyed, these stories are true to life and compassionate about human foibles and animal pain.
Mrs S by K Patrick: Patrick’s unnamed narrator is an early-twenties Australian butch lesbian who has come to England to be a matron at a girls’ boarding school. Mrs S is the headmaster’s wife, perhaps 20 years her senior. A heat wave gives a sultry atmosphere as hints of attraction between them give way to explicit scenes. Summer romances never last, but their intensity is legendary, and this feels like an instant standard. Not your average coming-of-age story, seduction narrative or cougar stereotype. It’s a new queer classic.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld: Through her work as a writer for a sketch comedy show modelled on Saturday Night Live, Sally Milz meets Noah Brewster, a pop star with surfer-boy good looks. Plain Jane getting the hot guy – that never happens, right? In fact, Sally has a theory about this very dilemma… As always, Sittenfeld’s inhabiting of a first-person narrator is flawless, and Sally’s backstory and Covid-lockdown existence endeared her to me. Could this be called predictable? Well, what does one want from a romcom?
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng: In 1921, “Willie” Somerset Maugham and his secretary/lover, Gerald, stay with old friends Robert and Lesley Hamlyn in Penang, Malaysia. Willie’s marriage is floundering and he faces financial ruin. He needs a story that will sell and gets one when Lesley starts recounting the momentous events of 1910: volunteering at the party office of Dr Sun Yat Sen and trying to save her friend from a murder charge. Tan weaves it all into a Maugham-esque plot with sumptuous scene-setting and atmosphere.
Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain: At age 15, Marianne falls in love. She imagines her romance with Simon as a grand adventure (and escape from her parents’ ordinariness), but his post-school life in Paris doesn’t have room for her. Much changes over the next 15 years, but never her attachment to her first love. This has the chic, convincing 1960s setting of Tessa Hadley’s work, and Marianne’s droll narration is a delight. It put me through an emotional wringer – no cheap tear-jerker but a tender depiction of love in all its forms.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn: Heartstopper on the Western Front; swoon! Will Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt both acknowledge that this is love and not just sex, as it is for so many teenage boys at their English boarding school? And will one or both survive the trenches of the First World War? Winn depicts the full horror of war, but in between there is banter, friendship and poetry. Some moments are downright jolly. This debut is obsessively researched, but Winn has a light touch with it. Engaging, thrilling, and, yes, romantic.
Nonfiction
All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett: A lovely memoir about grief and gardening, caring for an ill child and a dying parent. The book is composed of dozens of brief autobiographical, present-tense essays, each titled after a wildflower with traditional healing properties. The format realistically presents bereavement and caring as ongoing, cyclical challenges rather than one-time events. Sitting somewhere between creative nonfiction and nature essays, it’s a beautiful read for any fan of women’s life writing.
Monsters by Claire Dederer: The question posed by this hybrid work of memoir and cultural criticism is “Are we still allowed to enjoy the art made by horrible people?” It begins, in the wake of #MeToo, by reassessing the work of film directors Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. The book is as compassionate as it is incisive. While there is plenty of outrage, there is also much nuance. Dederer’s prose is forthright and funny; lucid even when tackling thorny issues. Erudite, empathetic and engaging from start to finish.
Womb by Leah Hazard: A wide-ranging and accessible study of the uterus, this casts a feminist eye over history and future alike. Blending medical knowledge and cultural commentary, it cannot fail to have both personal and political significance for readers of any gender. The thematic structure of the chapters also functions as a roughly chronological tour of how life with a uterus might proceed: menstruation, conception, pregnancy, labour, caesarean section, ongoing health issues, menopause. Inclusive and respectful of diversity.
Sea Bean by Sally Huband: Stories of motherhood, the quest to find effective treatment in a patriarchal medical system, volunteer citizen science projects, and studying Shetland’s history and customs mingle in a fascinating way. Huband travels around the archipelago and further afield, finding vibrant beachcombing cultures. In many ways, this is about coming to terms with loss, and the author presents the facts about climate crisis with sombre determination. She writes with such poetic tenderness in this radiant debut memoir.
La Vie by John Lewis-Stempel: The author has written much about his Herefordshire haunts, but he’s now relocated permanently to southwest France (La Roche, in the Charente). He proudly calls himself a peasant farmer, growing what he can and bartering for much of the rest. La Vie chronicles a year in his quest to become self-sufficient. It opens one January and continues through the December, an occasional diary with recipes. It’s a peaceful, comforting read that’s attuned to the seasons and the land. Lewis-Stempel’s best book in an age.
All of Us Together in the End by Matthew Vollmer: In 2019, Vollmer’s mother died of complications of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Months later, his father reported blinking lights in the woods near the family cemetery. Although Vollmer had left the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in college, his religious upbringing influenced his investigation, which overlapped with COVID-19. Grief, mysticism, and acceptance of the unexplained are resonant themes. An unforgettable record of “a collision with the ineffable.”
Otherwise by Julie Marie Wade: Nine intricate autobiographical essays reflect on risk, bodily autonomy, and poetry versus prose. A series of meditations composed across Wade’s thirties arranges snapshots of her growing frustration with gendered stereotypes. In particular, she interrogates her rosy childhood notions of marriage. As she explored feminism and accepted her lesbian identity—though not before leaving a man at the altar—she found ways to be “a secular humanist by day and a hopeless romantic by night.” Superb.
Eggs in Purgatory by Genanne Walsh: This autobiographical essay tells the story of the last few months of her father’s life. Aged 89, he lived downstairs from Walsh and her wife in San Francisco. He was quite the character: idealist, stubborn, outspoken; a former Catholic priest. Although he had no terminal conditions, he was sick of old age and its indignities and ready to exit. The task of a memoir is to fully mine the personal details of a situation but make of it something universal, and that’s just what she does here. Stunning.
Poetry
More Sky by Joe Carrick-Varty: In this debut collection, the fact of his alcoholic father’s suicide is inescapable. The poet alternates between an intimate “you” address and third-person scenarios, auditioning coping mechanisms. His frame of reference is wide: football, rappers, Buddhist cosmology. The word “suicide” itself is repeated to the point where it becomes just a sibilant collection of syllables. The tone is often bitter, as is to be expected, but there is joy in the deft use of language.
Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan: This follow-up to Flèche takes up many of the same foundational subjects: race, family, language and sexuality. But this time, the pandemic is the lens through which all is filtered. At a time when Asian heritage merited extra suspicion, English was both a means of frank expression and a source of ambivalence. At the centre of the book, “Ars Poetica,” a multi-part collage incorporating lines from other poets, forms a kind of autobiography in verse. Chan also questions the lines between genres. Excellent.
Lo by Melissa Crowe: This incandescent autobiographical collection delves into the reality of sexual abuse and growing up in rural poverty. Guns are insidious, used for hunting or mass shootings. Trauma lingers. “Maybe home is what gets on you and can’t / be shaken loose.” The collection is so carefully balanced in tone that it never feels bleak. In elegies and epithalamiums (poems celebrating marriage), Crowe honors family ties that bring solace. The collection has emotional range: sensuality, fear, and wonder at natural beauty.
A Whistling of Birds by Isobel Dixon: I was drawn to this for its acknowledged debt to D.H. Lawrence’s Birds, Beasts and Flowers. Snakes, bees, bats and foxes are some of the creatures that scamper through the text. There are poems for marine life, fruit and wildflowers. You get a sense of the seasons turning, and the natural wonders to prize from each. Dixon’s poetry is formal yet playful, the structures and line and stanza lengths varying. There are portraits and elegies. The book is in collaboration with Scottish artist Douglas Robertson. A real gem.
Standing in the Forest of Being Alive by Katie Farris: This debut collection addresses the symptoms and side effects of breast cancer treatment at age 36, but often in oblique or cheeky ways – it can be no mistake that “assistance” appears two lines before a mention of hemorrhoids, for instance, even though it closes an epithalamium distinguished by its gentle sibilance (Farris’s husband is Ukrainian American poet Ilya Kaminsky.) She crafts sensual love poems, and exhibits Japanese influences. (Discussed in my review essay for The Rumpus.)
The House of the Interpreter by Lisa Kelly: Kelly is half-Danish and has single-sided deafness, and her second collection engages with questions of split identity. One section ends with the Deaf community’s outrage that the Prime Minister’s Covid briefings were not translated into BSL. Bizarre but delightful is the sequence of alliteration-rich poems about fungi, followed by a miscellany of autobiographical poems full of references to colour, language, nature and travel.
Hard Drive by Paul Stephenson: This wry, wrenching debut collection is an extended elegy for his partner, Tod Hartman, an American anthropologist who died of heart failure at 38. There’s every style, tone and structure imaginable here. Stephenson riffs on his partner’s oft-misspelled name (German for death), and writes of discovery, autopsy, sadmin and rituals. In “The Only Book I Took” he opens up Tod’s copy of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking – which came from Wonder Book, the bookstore chain I worked at in Maryland!
Okay, twist my arm … if I had to pick my overall books of the year, I’d concur with the Times in picking The New Life. In nonfiction: Monsters. In poetry: Standing in the Forest of Being Alive.
Have you read any of my favourites? What 2023 releases do I need to catch up on right away?
Nonfiction and Poetry Review Catch-Up: Carson, Dixon, McLaren, Sharpe
Today I’m finally writing up four review copies that came my way quite a while ago (last year in one case). A bereavement memoir about a friend lost to opiate addiction, a nature-rich poetry collection, a practical book about being part of positive movements whether led by religion or not, and an eye-opening work of cultural criticism about Black art and suffering.
The Dead Are Gods: A Memoir by Eirinie Carson (2023)
When I was back in the States in May for my sister’s nursing school graduation, I got a chance to talk to her best friend, who is a library assistant. During the never-ending reading-out of names (it was a whole-college ceremony, as opposed to the one earlier in the day just for the nursing cohort), I read Hello Beautiful on my Kindle, tucked inside the graduation program; this friend openly read a library copy of The Dead Are Gods on her lap. When I teased her that at least I kept my book hidden, like I do at church inside the hymn book, she said (re: church), “Or you could just … not go?” (On which, see the McLaren review below!)
Anyway, it was nice to see this book out and about in the world, and it reminded me to belatedly pick up my review copy once I got back. As a bereavement memoir, the book is right in my wheelhouse, though I’ve tended to gravitate towards stories of the loss of a family memoir or spouse, whereas Carson is commemorating her best friend, Larissa, who died in 2018 of a heroin overdose, age 32, and was found in the bath in her Paris flat one week later.
Carson wrote this three years afterward, yet the feeling is still raw. Addressing Larissa as “you” for much of the book, she loops through their history in short chapters that hop around like memory does. They met as teenagers in London and bonded over being Black models and rock music fans. After their wild years, their paths started to drift apart. Carson moved to California and married and had children; Larissa relocated to Paris and, apparently, kept partying. Her dependency came as news to Carson – all the more ironic because her father, too, is a heroin addict and mostly not present in her life.
Anyone who has suffered a loss will find much that resonates here, no matter the circumstances or timing. Carson puzzles over the difficulty of making a narrative out of death and grief (“How should I remember you? Am I doing it right? Is this enough?”), of even comprehending the bare facts of permanent absence. She’s working towards understanding, and desperate to let people know about the marvel that was Larissa. Apart from in the title chapter, the language does not stand out so much as the relatable emotion. (And it’s hard to take their pet name- and typo-strewn e-mails seriously.) Still, I marked out lots of passages to save: “It is frustrating when the one person who could answer all of your many, many questions is the dead person. … Searching for meaning in the most meaningless event in our lives feels a little stupid but I still search.”
With thanks to Melville House for the proof copy for review.
A Whistling of Birds by Isobel Dixon (illus. Douglas Robertson) (2023)
Dixon was a new name for me, but the South African poet, now based in Cambridge, has published five collections. I was drawn to this latest one by its acknowledged debt to D.H. Lawrence: the title phrase comes from one of his essays, and the book as a whole is said to resemble his Birds, Beasts and Flowers, which is in its centenary year. I’m more familiar with Lawrence’s novels than his verse, but I do own his Collected Poems and was fascinated to find here echoes of his mystical interest in nature as well as his love for the landscape of New Mexico. England and South Africa are settings as well as the American Southwest.
Snakes, bees, bats and foxes are some of the creatures that scamper through the text. There are poems for marine life, fruit and wildflowers. You get a sense of the seasons turning, and the natural wonders to prize from each. Dixon’s poetry is formal yet playful, the structures and line and stanza lengths varying. “Tirrick” is full of wordplay relating to Arctic terns; phrases flit across the page to mimic flight in “the bats”; “Hummingbird ~” mixes Latin names with vivid descriptions: “the oil spill of God’s glory / taking wing” and “sweet-wrapper glamour scrap / hovering shadow-gloss”.
There are portraits and elegies; moments where the speaker is present versus fable-like omniscient warnings or teasing. I particularly loved “River Mother” (an ode to a pregnant crab), “The Guests” (about a “festival of frogs” after rain), the praying mantis depicted in “A Missionary in Neon Green” (“Soul on stilts, / a gog-eyed alien”), and the everyday ecstasy of “On First Spotting a Snake’s Head Fritillary.” The book is in collaboration with Scottish artist Douglas Robertson, who provided 12 black-and-white illustrations, and is a real gem.
With thanks to Nine Arches Press for the free copy for review.
Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed and the Disillusioned by Brian McLaren (2022)
McLaren is one of the important gurus in my life. This follows on closely from his previous book, Faith after Doubt, which I reviewed last year. You might think that the title question is only rhetorical and the answer is a firmly implied Yes. But what’s refreshing is that the author genuinely does not have a secret agenda. He doesn’t mind whether you continue to consider yourself Christian or not; what he does care about is inviting people into a spiritual life that includes working towards a regenerative future, the only way the human race is going to survive. And he believes that people of all faiths and none can be a part of that.
But first to address the central question: Part One is No and Part Two is Yes; each is allotted 10 chapters and roughly the same number of pages. McLaren has absolute sympathy with those who decide that they cannot in good conscience call themselves Christians. He’s not coming up with easily refuted objections, straw men, but honestly facing huge and ongoing problems like patriarchal and colonial attitudes, the condoning of violence, intellectual stagnation, ageing congregations, and corruption. From his vantage point as a former pastor, he acknowledges that today’s churches, especially of the American megachurch variety, feature significant conflicts of interest around money. He knows that Christians can be politically and morally repugnant and can oppose the very changes the world needs.
And yet. He believes Christianity can still be a force for good, and it would be a shame to give up on the wealth of its (comparatively short) history and the paragon that is Jesus (whom he provocatively describes as “an indigenous man who prepared for his public ministry with a forty-day vision quest”). The arguments in this section are more emotional, whereas in the previous section they were matter-of-fact. However, McLaren poses a middle option between leaving the religion dramatically and remaining meekly; he calls it “staying defiantly.” My husband and I read this as a buddy read, and that will be an important concept for us: how can we challenge the status quo of our church, our denomination, this too often staid faith?
Part Three, “How,” offers ideas for how to build a resilient faith that prioritizes harmony with the environment and with others while sidelining economic concerns. He may not believe in literal hell, but he’s as end-times-oriented as any fire-and-brimstone preacher when he insists, “we have to prepare ourselves to live good lives of defiant joy in the midst of chaos and suffering. This can be done. It has been done by billions of our ancestors and neighbours.” He ends with a supremely practical piece of advice: ask yourself “whether your current context will allow the highest and best use of your gifts and time.” Lucid and well argued, this is a book I’d recommend to anyone questioning the value of Christianity.
With thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the free copy for review.
Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe (2023)
This work of cultural criticism takes the form of 248 numbered micro-essays, some as short as one line and others up to a few pages. The central topics are Black art and Black suffering – specifically, how the latter is depicted. The book kept slapping me awake, because her opinions were not what I was expecting. Her responses to her 2018 visits to two landmarks in Montgomery, Alabama, the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, give a taste of her outlook. The museum draws a direct line between slavery and mass incarceration; the memorial documents all known cases of lynching, and she’s in its graveyard when a white woman comes up to her, crying and apologizing. When people ask Sharpe why she didn’t reply, she says, “she tries to hand me her sorrow … to super-add her burden to my own. It is not mine to bear.”
Many of these early notes question the purpose of reliving racial violence. For instance, Sharpe is appalled to watch a Claudia Rankine video essay that stitches together footage of beatings and murders of Black people. “Spectacle is not repair.” She later takes issue with Barack Obama singing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of slain African American churchgoers because the song was written by a slaver. The general message I take from these instances is that one’s intentions do not matter; commemorating violence against Black people to pull at the heartstrings is not just in poor taste, but perpetuates cycles of damage.
The book is a protest, strident yet calm, but also a celebration of the Black humanities and an elegy to her late mother, who prepared her to live as a confident, queer woman of colour in a white world. Sharpe decries the notion that art by BIPOC is only of sociological interest, to inform white people about “identity” – this is both a simplification and a means of othering.
Books—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, theory, memoir, biography, mysteries, plays—have always helped me locate myself, tethered me, helped me to make sense of the world and to act in it. I know that books have saved me. By which I mean that books always give me a place to land in difficult times. They show me Black worlds of making and possibility.
And she mainly credits her mother for introducing her to the literature that would sustain her: “My mother wanted me to build a life that was nourishing and Black. … My mother gifted me a love of beauty, a love of works. She gave me every Black book that she could find.” I loved the account of their Sunday afternoon teas, when they had cake and each read aloud a short piece they had memorized by the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks or Langston Hughes.
I found the straightforward autobiographical material, particularly the grief over the loss of her mother, more emotionally resonant than much of the book’s theorizing. The scholarly register can occasionally be off-putting, e.g., “I write these ordinary things to detail the everyday sonic and haptic vocabularies of living life under these brutal regimes.” The other media include letters, headlines, lists, and photographs, creating an overall collage effect. That the book occasionally made me uncomfortable is, no doubt, proof that I needed to read it.
With thanks to Daunt Books for the free copy for review.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 