Here is my annual, highly personal list of the best books I read in 2014, which means that they
were not necessarily published in 2014.
Being a free-wheeling kind of gal, I do not present them in any sort of
order; nor do I force my choices to fit a numerical conceit (top 10, 5
favorite). So this is just a list of
books I happened to read this year that would immediately leap to my mind if
you were to ask, “Read anything good lately?”
Also, while I have many close friends who are superb writers
and I love to match-make their excellent books with readers, I have chosen not
to include on this list books by friends.
The Lost Weekend
by Charles Jackson. Ai-yi-yi…this is not
a cheerful novel! It’s a bare-naked,
honestly brutal account of an alcoholic descending through the depths and then
some. The author suffered from
alcoholism, and this was one of the first books to share the realities of this
disease—though, when written, people considered alcoholism more of a failing
than a disease. On the writing side, Jackson worked miracles with the
interiority of the story.
Jesus’ Son by
Denis Johnson. Late to the party here!
This collection of linked stories is cited by about a zillion other writers as
having been deeply influential, and I finally got around to reading it this
year…and found that it, well, deeply influenced my work. Brilliant on the sentence level, and brilliant
in its piercing look at the type of people we might usually look away
from. On the writing side, one of the
reasons that I finally picked it up is that I read somewhere that part of
Johnson’s process here was juxtaposing incidents that seem unrelated, which is
something I was trying in my own writing this year.
The Homesman by
Glendon Swarthout. I’ll never separate the experience of buying this book in post-AWP
Seattle at the famous Elliott Bay Book Company, during an afternoon of shopping
with the intention of buying something I had never heard of by a writer I had
never heard of. Another dark novel, set
in the Plains during the 19th century when several frontier women
lost their minds during a hard winter and had to be driven via wagon back east
to their families. An unattractive
spinster and a criminal with a heart of gold-ish should NOT scare you away:
this book is relentless and gut-wrenching as well as austerely gorgeous. On the writing side, the writer takes a huge
risk with a point-of-view shift that leads to an even huger risk; both moves
hit the jackpot, IMHO. (A new movie has
just been released…I’m curious but a little reluctant to mar the perfection of
my experience with the book.)
Dept. of Speculation by
Jenny Offill. An experimental novel that
examines a relationship through glittering fragments of writing that are in
turn clever, sad, hilarious, insightful, informative…and that are sometimes all
of those things simultaneously. Don’t
fear “experimental” here: this masterful book has heart, and you will (and
should) read it all in one delicious swoop.
On the writing side, this book demonstrates that even the most commonplace
story (“girl meets boy” etc.) can be fresh and feel utterly unique.
Astonish Me by
Maggie Shipstead. I discovered this book
after reading a stand-alone excerpt in One
Story magazine, and I had to read more.
It’s set in the ballet world, but the book is beyond ballet; it’s about
any artistic pursuit, and beyond that, about the hard choices life forces upon
us. The ending is so stunning that you’ll
want to flip back to the beginning and read it all again. On the writing side, the author broke rules
all over the place with regard to chronology and point-of-view, and it was exhilarating
for me as a reader to see it all work out—and comforting for me as a writer to
discover that yes, it was possible that my own non-chronological work might
have a shot at pulling together.
My Salinger Year
by Joanna Rakoff. I wrote here
in further detail about this memoir, for which I am surely the perfect
audience, since I love coming-of-age stories about literary young women in New
York. Throw in J.D. Salinger and I’m totally sold! On the writing side, I admired how the author
was able to find a shape to her life to create dual narratives that informed
each other, keeping the reader flipping the pages, wanting to know what happens
next.
Longbourn by Jo
Baker. So much could go wrong in what
might seem to be a simplistic “Downton
Abbey meets Jane Austen” set-up in this book about the servants who work
for Pride and Prejudice’s Bennet
family. And yet so much goes right
instead! The book is smart and perfectly
written and a page-turner, and no one will ever view laundry in quite the same
way. (Yay, washing machines!) The events
of P&P happen in the background and provide narrative structure for the story,
but I think even non-Austen fans (if there are any?) would still enjoy this
book without that double narrative. On
the writing side, this book is a poster child for the joys and benefits of
research. Also, who says women can’t
write about war?? These war scenes are among the most relentless I have ever
read.
Driving with the Devil:
Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR by Neal
Thompson. Every list needs an outlier,
something that doesn’t seem to fit, and this book is that. It’s a nonfiction account of the early days
and rise of NASCAR, which came about thanks to the young men who loved raising
dust on southern dirt roads hauling hooch.
Yes, NASCAR. Me. I loved it, and raced (haha) through this
book…and by the end, I was pondering how I could swing a trip to Daytona. On the writing side, this book had a strong,
smart narrative and read like a novel. But more importantly, reading this book
reminded me of one of the most important traits any writer must have (IMHO),
which is to be open-minded, and, really, simply open to the whole wide world, to
the prospect that any day when you learn something new, something you didn’t
know or had never thought before, that that is also the definition of “a good
writing day.” Be open to surprising turns!
So, a list of eight, and I know I said
that I wouldn’t try to push a numerical construct, but I guess I lied, because
I’m going to round out the list with an amazing short story I read and an
amazing essay so I can make an even 10:
“Antarctica” by Laura van den Berg
is found in the new edition of Best
American Short Stories, edited by Jennifer Egan, about a woman whose
problematic brother died while doing research at the South Pole, and her
attempt to find the truth of what happened there, and, well, the truth of a
number of things. On the writing side,
this story balanced present action and flashback beautifully, as well as balancing
scene and summary. (Okay, I can’t resist mentioning my other favorite stories
from this volume: “God” by Benjamin Nugent and “Long Tom Lookout” by Nicole
Cullen.)
“Grand Unified Theory of Female
Pain” by Leslie Jamison, from her collection of essays, The Empathy Exams. While I
enjoyed and admired other essays in that book, this is the one that leapt forward
for me (and is online, so you can read it too, right
here) because it explored sentimentality and pain and the clichés that
women writers battle, ultimately giving power to the female story, and then, on
the writing side, making sure that we understand that what it is, what we’re all doing, is writing the HUMAN STORY,
and making us feel essential for doing so.
Onwards! There are wonderful books
waiting ahead in 2015!
