I’m splitting my ‘books of the year’ into age categories again, as it is too difficult to compare them directly. Here are my top ten adult books of the year, in no particular order.
‘Babel’ by RF Kuang
After his mother dies, Robin is taken away from Canton by a mysterious benefactor, Professor Lovell, and raised in England towards the goal of entering ‘Babel’ – the prestigious institute of translation, based in Oxford.
Though Babel relies on foreign students for their knowledge, Robin discovers that Victorian Oxford is not particularly welcoming to people of colour, but he becomes friends with Rami, Victoire and Letty, who are all similarly looked down on for their nationality or gender.
Robin is exhilarated and grateful for the educational opportunities he has been given, but begins to realise that Babel is not the utopian hub of international cooperation it purports to be. As Robin learns, translation is always an act of betrayal. There is no way to directly translate from another language, word for word, without distorting meaning. And this interpretation gap is the spark that enervates the magical silver bars that power the empire and subjugates the colonies.
‘Babel’ completely lives up to the hype. The magic system is brilliantly conceived and the foundational concept of the Biblical ‘Tower of Babel’ transposes perfectly into the age of Empire while bringing the violence and injustice of colonisation into sharp focus.
‘Lessons in Chemistry’ by Bonnie Garmus
The synopsis of this book doesn’t sounds promising, and I utterly failed to sell my book club on it based on the blurb, but it has so many rave reviews that I couldn’t resist and I was so glad I did – I couldn’t put this book down!
Elizabeth Zott is a rare creature, a female scientist in the 1960s, and as such she is not taken seriously by the male members of her team, they take credit for her ideas and worse. Apart from one man, that is. Fast forward several years and Elizabeth Zott is the presenter of a hugely popular and subversive cooking show in which she inspires women to follow their dreams, under the cover of teaching them how to cook nutritious meals for their families.
Elizabeth Zott is a brilliantly compelling character suffering through a terribly tragic life. I wanted a happy ending for her more than any other character I’ve read about this year…
‘The Marriage Portrait’ by Maggie O’Farrell
Inspired by Robert Browning’s poem, My Last Duchess, ‘The Marriage Portrait’ tells the story of sixteen-year-old Lucrezia who was rumoured to have been murdered by her husband, the Duke of Ferrara, in 1561.
The story jumps back and forth between the fateful night when Lucrezia realises her husband plans to kill her, and the story of her life leading up to this moment as the unusual, overlooked and strong-minded middle child of the de Medici family of Florence. Lucrezia is a fascinating character, full of vigour and creativity, but ultimately betrayed by a society that viewed her as nothing more than property – of value only for her capacity to produce an heir for her husband.
Once again, Maggie O’Farrell fills in the gaps of history with incredibly rich colour and texture that brings the past to vivid immediacy. Perhaps not quite as emotionally devastating as ‘Hamnet’, but just as exquisitely crafted.
‘The Island of Missing Trees’ by Elif Shafak
I read this book on a bus and then a plane, and was still thoroughly captivated…despite the story being partially narrated by a fig tree!
A Greek boy and a Turkish girl fall in love and meet up in a taverna on the island of Cyprus in the 70s. The only witness to their conversations is a fig tree, until the day they are torn apart by civil war. Forty years later, in the UK, their daughter struggles to understand why her parents never talk about their past and have been entirely cut off from their Cypriot family. (A cutting of the original fig tree lives on in their garden…)
An empathetic and redemptive story about love, war and generational trauma. Brilliantly done.
‘The Book of Form and Emptiness’ by Ruth Ozeki
When fourteen-year-old Benny’s father tragically dies, he begins to hear inanimate objects talking to him. And thus begins a book that is narrated by…a book. You’d be right to assume this is a strange and experimental story, but that doesn’t mean that it is not plot-driven and emotionally engaging.
As Benny finds refuge from his grief, and the voices, in the large public library in town, his mother finds refuge in hoarding. On the other side of the world a Mari Kondo-style monk becomes the star of a TV show about tidying up your living space and your life. But this book never does quite what you expect it to do…
A wonderfully humane and heartfelt story, told in a witty and innovative style.
‘The Night Ship’ by Jess Kidd
Based on the real and horrific historical events surrounding the shipwreck of The Batavia in 1628, ‘The Night Ship’ tells the story of two children, separated by 350 years but linked by trauma and tragedy.
After her mother’s death, Mayken boards the Dutch East India Company ship, the Batavia, with her nursemaid to make the long journey to join her father in Batavia (Indonesia). En route, the ship is separated from the convoy and wrecked on a reef off the west coast of Australia. The survivors, including Mayken, battle for water and food on a tiny, desolate island.
In the 1980s, Gil travels to the same small island where Mayken was stranded, to live with his grandfather after his mother’s death. Gil is lonely and angry but feels some sense of kinship with ‘May’ the ghost a small girl who is said to haunt the island. And as each of their stories unfold, both Gil and Mayken face terrible darkness and danger.
‘The Night Ship’ is very different to ‘Things in Jars’, but just as compelling and darkly atmospheric. It’s a gripping and heartbreaking read that is somehow also weirdly redemptive, despite all the heart-of-darkness horror.
‘Nightbitch’ by Rachel Yoder
This is a controversial one and definitely won’t be for everyone.
One night, exhausted and frustrated with the mind-numbing tedium of looking after a two-year-old, an artist-turned full-time mother releases her inner ‘Nightbitch’.
A hilarious, angry and transgressive rant about motherhood. I think anyone who has ever had a baby can relate to some of the feelings expressed in this novel. The surreal style (as well as the bizarre content) reminded me of Sayaka Murata.
‘The Gifts’ by Liz Hyder
1840. London is full of rumours of angels and surgeons compete to find a genuine specimen. While in the countryside, a pair of wings miraculously grow from a woman’s back.
A tale of mysteries, miracles, difficult women and angels, set in Victorian London. There are a lot of characters and storylines to follow at first but all the threads tie up beautifully at the end. A captivating story, perfect of fans of ‘Things in Jars’ and ‘The Leviathan’.
‘The Golden Enclaves’ by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance #3)
I love an intensely complicated fantasy world, but The Scholomance series is on another level and I feel like I don’t understand half of the magic that is going on. But it is such a compelling world and El is such a brilliantly misunderstood, hilariously wry and self-destructively sincere character that I loved every minute of these books. Not to mention her relationship with the annoyingly heroic Orion who keeps saving her life, whether she wants him to or not.
And boy does it all pay off in Book 3. El, Orion and their friends spend all of books 1 and 2 trying to survive and then escape the Scholomance – their magical school that is trying to kill them – so I wasn’t sure where on earth the author was going to go with Book 3. And then there was that horrific, devastating cliff-hanger ending…
But despite all the carnage and tragedy, El has escaped the Scholomance with a spell book explaining how to build a ‘golden enclave’ – a legendary place of sanctuary – much superior to the current elitist and divisive enclave system that El’s mum has brought her up to revile. But before El can start building a better world, someone starts to attack the Enclaves and she is called in to protect the very system she wants to tear down. In the process she learns a horrific secret about the origins of the enclaves and finally begins to understand her own ominous destiny.
It is all explosively, dazzlingly and confusingly wrapped up by the end – with plenty of world-weary cynicism but also a tiny spark of hope for the future.
‘Legends & Lattes’ by Travis Baldree
The cosy D&D-style fantasy I never knew I needed!
Viv is an orc who has got tired of a life of violent adventuring and decides to settle down and open a coffee shop. But of course, even in this quiet life, she has to contend with local gangsters, jealous rivals and the twists and turns of fortune. Lucky for Viv, she manages to gather around herself a team who buy into her vision and support her in her dream.
A charming story of found-family and romance with lots of hilariously anachronistic Starbucks references. Absolutely captivating!
Nine PM Writer 