Library Journal's Best of 2018

You will have to wait until December to uncover LJ's list of best literary fiction for the year 2018 but I can tell you, as I was honored to be chosen as one of the judges, that fabulous fiction is being published just about every day. It is remarkable how many imaginative, lusciously written new novels we had to choose from.

My editor, Barbara Hoffert, asked me and one other reviewer, Josh Finnell from Colgate University, to send her our top ten favorites of the year. She added her own to the list and then the three of us had to read them all!! If you wonder why I've been missing in action here on the blog lately you can add this fact to the multitude of commitments I've made this summer. Last week we held a two-hour conference call and a lively book talk, eliminating some titles, defending others, until we were able to agree on the ten exquisite books that made the cut.

As you can imagine this exercise was high pressure but ultimately extremely rewarding as we were each introduced to writers who may not have previously been on our radar. Over the next month I will introduce you to some of them, beginning with the Irish novelist John Boyne, probably best known here in the states for "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas." (https://johnboyne.com/)

In November Hogarth Press will release "A Ladder to the Sky." You may want to put your name on the wait list now! Boyne's latest is just that good; it's a psychological thriller that will stir up bile in your stomach, and it's a book lover's dream, a novel about novelists, their insecurities, their outsized egos, their petty jealousies, and the lengths some will go to for fame and recognition. It isn't pretty.

Maurice Swift, a young waiter in a Berlin bierhaus, aspires to be a writer. All too aware of his physical beauty and gender-fluid attributes, Maurice flatters and seduces both men and women as he taps into their imaginations seeking stories he's incapable of conjuring up on his own.

The opening section of the book is told from the perspective of Maurice's first victim, Erich Ackermann, an older writer whose career is experiencing a rebirth since the publication of his first novel in years. Maurice is adept at pinpointing the older man's weakness, a desire for love that was subsumed years earlier after an unrequited affair ended in a tragic betrayal. Making himself both desirable and indispensable, Maurice becomes Ackermann's paid assistant, traveling from one literary festival to another, gaining access to elite writers, publishers, and agents.

Boyne has a gift for ratcheting up the tension. As readers, we begin to suspect Maurice of evil intent even as we think, no, he wouldn't, he couldn't, could he?Boyne reveals Maurice's character through the observations of others, even taking us to Gore Vidal's idyllic home on the Amalfi coast where Swift displays his true nature to the wiser, older writer.

Early reviews compare this novel of Boyne's to Patricia Highsmith's depiction of amorality in "The Talented Mr. Ripley." I wouldn't disagree. Literary and suspenseful, brimming with insider knowledge of the publishing industry, John Boyne deftly examines the effects of unbridled ambition and misplaced trust. I could not put this book down!