My First Five Favorite of 2020

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the year 2020, the annus horribilis, when we witnessed the most heroic and the most despicable actions from our fellow human beings. It was a year of remarkable resiliency and the discovery of innovative ways for the world to remain connected. Teachers, writers, performers, and just plain old bored families lifted our spirits with their Zoom creativity. Reading, once relegated to a few stolen moments of time, became the salvation of many an isolated soul.

Reviewing my favorite novels of 2020, I looked for a theme, a common message that might have run through them, and no surprise, in all but a couple of titles, the overarching emotion is loss tempered by hope. I find that I can no longer name favorites in the old way, numbered one through ten. My answer would be different depending upon the day or even the hour. But I have been able to alight on ten titles and authors that made me close the final pages and just say “wow!”

Ayad Akhtar’s achingly intimate novelized memoir “Homeland Elegies” made me laugh, despair, and gasp in shock as he tore at the wounds of a dark-skinned Pakistani-American’s struggle to assimilate in a post-9/11 New York, unable to understand his father’s blind embrace of all things capitalist, including D J Trump, even as both father and son succeed beyond their wildest dreams.

“Little Family” by former child soldier Ishmael Beah portrays five children, wise beyond their years, with exquisite tenderness as they band together for safety in an abandoned airplane that crashed in an unnamed African country. Forming a natural hierarchy the little family survives stealing food by day and telling stories into the long, nightmarish nights.

“The Death of Vivek Oji” is a haunting novel from Nigerian-born author Akwaeke Emezi which presents a searing examination of gender dissonance, sexual attraction, and familial love and loyalty. Through Vivek’s vivid flashbacks we meet a sensitive child prone to bouts of depression and angry outbursts that reflect his fear that his true nature may always have to remain invisible to the world.

Colum McCann’s “Apeirogon” renewed my faith in human nature during a year when I was losing it. Based on a true story, this exquisite novel about two fathers, an Israeli and a Palestinian, each wracked by the loss of their young daughters to the insane violence that pervades the middle east, form the organization “The Parents Circle” traveling the world, telling their story, and bringing their daughters back to life for anyone who will listen. (My deeper review here: http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2020/09/colum-mccanns-apeirogon.html)

“Migrations” knocked me out not only because this is the first adult novel by Australian writer Charlotte McConaghy but because it was so inventive. I kept having to go back and forth through the chapters to be sure I’d really understood what I thought I’s just read. It’s about climate change, specifically about the migration of the last living Arctic terns as they make their way from Greenland to Antarctica, but it’s also about love, those who stay and those who leave, and a woman, Franny Stone, whose peripatetic life was set in motion when she was abandoned by her mother at the age of ten.

Tomorrow I’ll share my other five faves. In the meantime, happy reading and my deepest hopes for a 2021 we can all be proud of.

Margot Livesey's The Boy in the Field

Three siblings, on the cusp of adulthood, lose their innocence over the course of a year when an act of violence infects their small town on the outskirts of Oxford. Meandering home from school, middle sister Zoe spots something in the field. Her brothers, Matthew and Duncan, follow behind her, at first puzzled, then horrified by the blood on the boy’s legs. A scene like this, Matthew thinks, is straight out of an Inspector Morse novel.

As Zoe holds the boy’s hand, quietly talking to him because somewhere she heard that that is the right thing to do, the boys get help and tragedy is averted. But the incident is the catalyst for a time of rude awakenings as each child grapples with the realization that no place is completely safe and secure, perhaps not even their own home.

Children cannot be fooled. Their intuition seems to be finely honed. Like the dog, Lily, that the family rescues, the children sense when someone or something is off. Matthew realizes that his girlfriend is not the person he thought she was and acts wisely on the information. Zoe rebuffs a reckless boy who might be putting her safely in jeopardy, and Duncan, dear Duncan, the youngest of the three, who has always looked and felt just a little bit different, whose dark skin and eyes are evidence of his adoption, decides it’s time to find his first mother.

Into this year of upheaval comes the added burden of the silence between their parents. Suddenly Hal has become moody, taking off for the weekends to pursue his photography, while Betsy throws herself into Greek lessons. Zoe sees her dad coming out of a coffee shop with a woman she doesn’t recognize, and Duncan overhears a conversation that weighs heavily on him.

Of course, every reader brings her own life experiences to a novel and what speaks deeply to one may not resonate with another. Still, I found that this book took me back to my teen years in a profoundly moving way, though I can say unequivocally that neither my brother, sister, nor I ever found a body in a field. I felt deeply connected to these young people and their parents. At a time when all the best sellers seem to be just copycats of “Gone Girl” or “Girl on a Train,” peopled with characters no one would want to waste a moment of their time with, “The Boy in the Field” is a deceptively simple, exquisite snapshot of a loving family facing the complexities of life with grace and courage.

Margot Livesey is one of those writers whose name may never appear on the New York Times top ten list. This is a fact about the publishing industry that will forever drive me right up a wall. So many authors working today consistently deliver novels of such nuance and lyricism but if not for librarians and bloggers their names will not likely become household words. This is Ms. Livesey’s tenth novel. Why not give her a go.

Queen Elizabeth as Sleuth in The Windsor Knot

If you’ve binge-watched The Crown or marveled at Helen Mirren’s Oscar-winning performance of The Queen, have I got a treat for you! Elizabeth watchers understand there is much more depth to Queen Elizabeth the second than meets the eye. No, the royal family’s history is not at all pretty, but Elizabeth is no light weight on the world stage. Just think of the prime ministers she has handled!

It seems that the British children’s author SJ Bennett (https://www.suffolklibraries.co.uk/posts/meet-the-author/meet-the-author-sj-bennett) arrived at the same conclusion while searching for a theme that would propel her into the adult fiction genre. “The Windsor Knot” has picked up lots of buzz and with good reason. This book is so much fun!

The Queen, at Windsor Castle for the Easter holiday, has a busy week ahead of her. The Obamas are coming for their final visit as president and first lady, there’s an important horse show scheduled in which she hopes her favorite filly will shine, and Charles and Camilla have asked her to host a last-minute soiree for a large gaggle of monied Russians from whom Charles wants a favor.

Imagine the queen’s dismay when her private secretary, the delightfully obsequious Sir Simon Holcroft, informs her the morning after the party that the handsome and talented pianist who had twirled her around the dance floor the previous evening, was found dead in his guest quarters, naked and hanging by the cord of his velvet robe.

Bennett’s plotting is intricate, this is no little cozy mystery. As the investigation gets underway, much is made of the case for secrecy, after all the royal family has a long history of poor relations with the press. MI-5 is brought in and the rush to judge the Russians is on, but the queen has her back-door channels, her own suspicions, and a whip smart assistant, Rozie Oshodi, whose previous service in the Royal Horse Artillery will serve her well as the two follow their own line of inquiry.

I cannot say enough about this witty, clever mystery, which combines historical details about the queen’s various castles with smart commentary on the current political climate in Great Britain and beyond. Bennett imbues the queen with a wry sense of humor and the ability to size people up in an instant, coupled with a personality that refuses to suffer fools gladly.

Best of all, it appears that this is the first in a series, “Her Majesty the Queen Investigates,” and the second novel set at Buckingham Palace is already in the hopper. I read an advanced copy provided by publisher Harper Collins. The hard copy won’t be out until March but place your holds now.

Library Journal Reviewers Weigh in on 2020's Best

The December issue of Library Journal just arrived and, as always, it's a bit of a thrill to open it up and see one's name in lights, so to speak. Here are the results of months of deep reading, much emailing back and forth, and then the final zoom meeting where Barbara Love and I got to finally "meet" each other. https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=best-books-of-2020-literary-fiction

Choosing ten finalists is always so difficult and personal. Four reviewers, multiple sensibilities, so many books that didn't make the cut. Some of them found their way to other "best books" lists and others were honored by the National Book Awards ("Interior Chinatown"), the Booker Prize ("Shuggie Bain"), and the Kirkus Prize ("Luster").

I can't speak for my cohort on this project but when I was finished all I wanted to do was overdose on light, breezy mysteries like the ones I'm in the middle of right now. "The Guest List" by Lucy Foley and "Big Summer" by Jennifer Weiner both involve celebrity destination weddings, a boggy island off the coast of Ireland and Cape Cod respectively, in which the brides and grooms are so unsavory and unlikeable that you almost don't care that something awful is going to happen to them. And be assured, from page one you know that couples this rich and golden and ecstatic with each other are way too good to be true!

Fear not though, I won't let my brain go to complete mush. As the perfect antidote for the final throes of the worst presidential term in my seventy plus years I am savoring Barack Obama's "A Promised Land." Hardly a book that you sit down to and read straight through, this is one to be dipped into and out of, maybe a hundred pages at a time, so that you can absorb it in increments. I won't even attempt to review this book, Chimamanda Adichie already went overboard in that department https://nyti.ms/3gn3kSu