10 best books of 2023

Great books stay with you, so it’s a good sign that I’ve read two of the top ten books of 2023 – Elizabeth McCracken’s. The hero of this booK and Sebastian Barris Time of the old god – in January. Both books made a big impression on me and rewarded my recent rereadings.

Barry’s novel is one of three Irish novels on my list, and any one of the trio would have been a better Booker Prize winner than his compatriot Paul Lynch’s novel. prophet’s song it was the weakest entry on a strong shortlist. Barbara Kingsolver co-wrote the year’s other major fiction prize, the Women’s Prize. copperhead demon, and long-awaited new novels from Zadie Smith and Teju Cole have arrived.

Inevitably, I reluctantly left some of my top ten. It also includes the work of J.M. Coetzee. The Pole and other stories, The second collection of stories by Thomas Morris. Open and Sarah Bernstein’s second novel Learn obedience. Bernstein and Morris were both present. Grantis a list of the best British writers under 40, published every ten years.

This year saw the death of several important literary figures, including Martin Amis, A.S. Byatt and Milan Kundera. At 73, Amis was the youngest of them all, and his death left readers devastated, knowing that we would never open another novel again or immediately recognize the brilliance of its sentences.

In 2023, it was all the better to see new talent emerge, including the two debut novelists featured here, who showed that the future is bright and diverse.

10. Roman stories by Jhumpa Lahiri.

American writer Jhumpa Lahiri fell in love with the Italian language many years ago and has been writing and translating her works into English for almost ten years. Despite her attachment to her adopted country, the best stories in her new collection, set in or around Rome, focus on migrants and refugees who face deep-seated racism there. Lahiri takes an outsider’s view of Italian society and describes how a few moments can impact your entire life and have devastating consequences.

Picador £16.99

9. “Lifestyle: Jim Eade and the Teapot Artists” by Laura Freeman

This biography of Jim Eade, founder of the Kettle’s Yard gallery in Cambridge and an early champion of great artists such as Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, is also a history of an important part of 20th-century British art. Ede believed that the presence of paintings and sculptures in our daily lives is crucial to happiness. He was as enthusiastic about helping people improve the arrangement of furniture and lighting in their homes as he was about bringing to life the work of European modernists. Ketel’s Garden is a monument to his principles, and Freeman’s elegant book embodies the profound joys of biography.

Jonathan Cape £30 |

8. The hero of this book is Elizabeth McCracken.

This short, poignant novel about family, loss, and literature will have me laughing all year. An American writer in her fifties, who shares a wicked sense of humor and a past with the author, visits London alone and wanders the streets and galleries, making brutal observations and reflecting on her relationship with her late mother, whose death she left to Relatives. behind. . and pursued.” Many authors blur the lines between fiction and autobiography, but McCracken does it here with compelling style and humor in the most quotable novel of the year. “The biggest regret of her life,” she says of her mother, “was the things she didn’t buy.”

Vintage £9.99 |

7. “The Time of the Old God”, Sebastian Barry

The retired “cruel old cop” from Sebastian Barry’s ninth novel finds himself embroiled in an investigation into historical sexual abuse in the Irish Catholic Church that intersects with his own childhood. We don’t always know whether he was experiencing events or imagining them as he wandered through his later life in the flow between reality and the dreams that Barry brilliantly depicts. It’s strange to recommend a book that contains heartbreaking scenes that you want to erase from your memory, but you should read Barry’s novel, partly because it deals with an important topic, but really because it is a writer’s work on the topic. his career is Powers.

Excellent £18.99 |

6. Bee Sting, Paul Murray

This is perhaps the most satisfying novel of 2023, as it draws you into the story of a small-town Irish family from the start and rarely stops in its 650-odd pages. It’s so entertaining that you’ll want to read it forever, and when you’re done, the characters will stay with you – the man destroying his family business, his frustrated wife, his teenage daughter and his troubled young son. Murray is ostensibly a comedy writer, but by the end of this novel he’s in the business of laughing in the dark, dealing with economic uncertainty, the climate crisis, and the secrets that can define a family even if some of its members don’t realize it.

Hamish Hamilton £18.99 |

5. “If I Survive” Jonathan Escoffery

Set primarily in Miami, this collection of eight overlapping stories follows Trelawney and his extended Jamaican family as they navigate childhood, Midwestern college, and the confusion of young adulthood. Escoffery reflects the indignity of poverty and the complexity of race. Sometimes it reads like an autobiographical essay, sometimes the stories are woven into the structure of the novel, which is one of the reasons the book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It is written in stilted prose, which stimulates reading and belies the fact that Escoffery spent ten years perfecting it to the utmost.

4. £14.99 off. |

4. Western Lane from Chetna Maru

This first novel tells the story of how 11-year-old Gopi finds solace on the squash courts of a north London leisure center after the death of her mother. This is a subtle book with a young narrator who is emotionally responsive to the adults around her and their different ways of communicating. This reaches a thrilling climax on the field, but it is Gopi’s poetic descriptions of spending hours “ghosting” (practicing squash strokes without a ball) that take on symbolic status for both her life and her work. An amazing and well-planned debut from an author of undeniable talent.

Picador £14.99

3. “Blackouts” by Justin Torres

Combining fiction, queer history, and the poetry of erasure, Justin Torres’ second novel tells the story of a wandering gay man in his 20s who visits his elderly mentor on his deathbed in a mysterious desert preserve called “The Palace.” The pair recount their experiences and gradually learn more about Jan Gay, a real-life lesbian sexologist whose pioneering research in the 1950s was hijacked by doctors who believed homosexuality was a disease. Disturbing, erotic and poignant, Torres reveals a hidden past and connects the disparate threads of his novel with a skill that makes it a work of artistic and political value.

Grant £14.99 |

2. “Stay Faithful” by Hua Xu

These memories of New Yorker The journalist may have gone unnoticed when he published it in the UK, but in the US it won a Pulitzer Prize. It’s an emotional journey through the East Asian American immigrant experience (Hu’s parents moved to the United States from Taiwan), the importance of music and fashion growing up, and finally Hsu’s grief after the murder of his best friend when she was still a teenager. college student. in Berkeley. It’s a quiet, sometimes funny, and ultimately devastating book: a time capsule of the 1990s, a meditation on memory and identity, and a memoir of grief in under 200 pages. This is the most moving and memorable piece of autobiography I have read this year.

Picador £10.99 |

1. Sailor Clare Kilroy

A young mother pushes her son’s stroller through the parks and supermarkets of her nameless Irish town, mourning the loss of her social life and resenting her husband (“Raising children is gender segregated,” she complains) in an almost unbearably claustrophobic opening. When she meets her ex-boyfriend and current father, the world opens up to her and she quickly realizes that the days are flying by too quickly. Kilroy’s first novel in a decade doesn’t waste a word, touching on themes of motherhood, time, language that find drama and intensity in everyday life. When a child wanders around Ikea, finding him is as exciting as a chase in an action movie. Enchanting performance.

Faber £14.99 |