- The novel most enjoyed: New Writers:
Eliza Clark: “Boy Parts”; Marieke Lucas Rijneveld: “The Discomfort of Evening”; Bernadine Evaristo: “Girl, Woman, Other”; Olga Tokarczuk: “Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead” – are all wonderful, but Jessica Andrews’ “Saltwater” left the strongest impression
- The novels most enjoyed: Older Writers:
“Germinal”, “The Rainbow”, “How Late it was, How Late”
- The most enjoyable non-fiction work
The most enjoyable was Lanegan’s sort of biography – which was just insane. The most notable thing about was that he is still alive.
The ‘best’ in a broader sense of informative-ness, research, brilliance and writerly qualities would be a 3-way tie between: “Three Women”, “Men We Reaped” and “Men Who Hate Women”.
- Any novel that disappointed, or simply didn’t like
“The Testaments” Margaret Atwood – just shouldn’t have…
- The year’s most striking fictional character
Irina (Boy Parts) who “obsessively takes explicit photographs of average-looking men …scouted from the streets of Newcastle.” …and who is hiding a secret…
- …and the most-dastardly villain(s)
The authority figures in “The Nickel Boys”
- The best authors encountered for the first time this year
Eliza Clark, Jessica Andrews, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Emile Zola
- The most beautifully written novel
“Saltwater” – at times it flew like poetry can.
- Poetry most enjoyed: Roger Robinson’s “A Portable Paradise” has rightly taken plaudit after plaudit. I was fortunate enough to see him read in Leeds back in March just before lockdown when he read as part of a Peepal Tree Press evening and it was inspirational.
Diaz’s “Postcolonial Love Poem” can stand shoulder to shoulder with Robinson’s book, both in terms of the quality of writing and in terms of importance.
I never tire of reading Heaney or Oswald, and ‘local’ mentions to John Mills and David Wilson for their terrific collections.
Memorable passages or quotes from books read this year – all from Diaz poems:
Firstly, she has 3 stunning ‘prose poems / pieces’ in her collection about childhood basketball and the release found therein, this is from “The Mustangs” when she is watching her older brother’s school team:
“…They circled the court twice before crossing it and moving into a layup drill while ‘Thunderstruck’ filled the gymnasium. They were all the things they could never be – they were young kings and conquerors.
To that song, they made layup after layup, passed the ball like a planet between them, pulled it back and forth from the floor to their hands like Mars…”
And she writes love, with an urgency that speaks of enviable desire – from “Ode to the Beloved’s Hips”:
“I never tire / to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet- / dripped comb…Maenad tongue – / come-drunk hum-tranced honey puller – for her hips / I am – strummed-song and succubus.
…Imparadise me. Because, God, / I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth / for pear upon apple upon fig.”
Books 2020: Fiction:
Andrews, Jessica: Saltwater
Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid’s Tale; The Testaments
Barnes, Djuna: Nightwood
Barnes, Julian: The Sense of an Ending (x2)
Braithwaite, Oyinkan: My Sister, the Serial Killer
Burroughs, William: Ghost of Chance
Camus, Albert: The Plague (x3)
Carty-Williams, Candice: Queenie
Cather, Willa: The Song of the Lark
Clark, Eliza; Boy Parts
Dunmore, Helen: The Siege
Enright, Anne: The Green Road
Evaristo, Bernadine: Girl, Woman, Other
Ferrante, Elena: The Days of Abandonment (x2)
Flanagan, Richard: Narrow Road to the Deep North
Fortes, Susana: Waiting for Robert Capa
Hemingway, Ernest: The Old Man and The Sea
Hurley, Andrew Michael: The Loney
Jian, Ma: China Dream
Johnson, Denis: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Kay, Jackie: Trumpet
Kawabata, Yasunari: House of the Sleeping Beauties
Kawakami, Mieko: Breasts and Eggs
Kelman, James: How Late it was How Late (x2)
Kerouac, Jack: Maggie Cassidy (x3)
Lawrence, DH: The Rainbow
Le Carre, John: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
Levy, Deborah: The Man Who Saw it All
MacFarlane, Robert & Donwood, Stanley: Ness (x2)
Mankell, Henning: Depths; An Event in Autum
Modiano, Patrick: The Black Notebook
Moore, Alison: The Lighthouse
Murakami, Haruki: After Dark (x3)
Murakami, Ryi: Almost Transparent Blu
Myers, Benjamin: The Gallows Pole; The Offing; Pig Iron
Porter, Max: Lanny
Rijneveld, Marieke Lucas: The Discomfort of Evening
Seethaler, Robert: A Whole Life
Tokarczuk, Olga: Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead
Ward, Jesmyn: Salvage the Bones
Welch, James: Winter in the Blood
Whitehead, Colson: The Nickel Boys
Zola, Emile: Germinal
Poetry:
Simon Armitage: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Matsuo Basho: The Narrow Road to the deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Jay Bernard: Surge
Anne Caldwell: Alice in the North
Ciaran Carson: Belfast Confetti
Natalie Diaz: Postcolonial Love Poem
Tony Harrison: Newcastle is Peru; Polygons
Seamus Heaney: District and Circle (x2); Aeneid (book VI) (x3)
Juan Felipe Herrera: Every Day We Get More Illegal
Edward Hirsch: Gabriel: a poem
Derek Mahon: New Selected Poems
Martin Malone: The Unreturning
John Mills: No Guiding Star
Matt Nicholson: Small Havocs
Alice Oswald: Nobody (x3)
Roger Robinson: A Portable Paradise
Richard Skelton: The Look Away
Genevieve L Walsh: Dance of a Thousand Losers
Joe Williams: This is Virus
David Wilson: The Equilibrium Line
Non-Fiction:
Baldwin, James: The Fire Next Time
Bates, Laura: Men Who Hate Women
Hirsch, Afua: Brit(ish)
Lanegan, Mark: Sing Backwards and Weep
Macfarlane, Robert: Mountains of the Mind
Shafak, Elif: How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division
Taddeo, Lisa: Three Women
Tzu, Sun: The Art of War
Ward, Jesmyn: Men We Reaped
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