Check out some of the best fiction books from 2020. Photo / 123RF
Check out some of the best fiction books from 2020. Photo / 123RF
Laura Battle selects her must-read titles.
Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell It's summer, and a plague is sweeping the country. Maggie O'Farrell's novel transports the reader back to 1596, and to Shakespeare's family — in particular his wild and mystical wife Agnes (as she is named here) and his ill-fated son Hamnet— in the years preceding the play that took his name. Motherhood and scenes of pastoral life are described in exquisite detail.
Real Life, by Brandon Taylor On the face of it, Real Life is a campus novel in the tradition of The Secret History or Normal People. But Taylor's story, which follows Wallace — a gay, black biochemistry student transplanted from his home in Alabama to a university in the Midwest — as he struggles amid wealth and white privilege, puts class, race and sexuality under forensic scrutiny.
To Be a Man, by Nicole Krauss Although women take the lead roles in these remarkable short stories, a dazzling cast of characters spin in their orbit. Themes of power, desire and familial crisis — often set within a wider context of Jewishness — are probed unflinchingly and, at times, with eerie prescience. "Future Emergencies", in which a New York couple source gas masks to protect against an unnamed hazard, was first published in 2002.
Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart Stuart has said that his debut novel — winner of this year's Booker Prize — was inspired by his own childhood in 1980s Glasgow, and the difficult life of his mother, to whom it's dedicated. We follow Agnes Bain and her young son, the eponymous Shuggie, as they struggle to survive poverty, addiction and neglect against a landscape of industry in decline. The story is almost unbearably sad but the telling of it is tender, moving — and, at times, even funny.
The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett, The fates of twin black sisters — Desiree and Stella Vignes — diverge when one decides to flee 1950s New Orleans and start a new life by "passing" as white. Moving back and forth over three decades, and the course of an intricately detailed plot, Bennett's superb novel takes the issue of race as the starting point for a deep exploration of identity.
Pianesi, by Susanna Clarke The long-anticipated second novel from the author of 2004's best-seller Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a philosophical fantasy. Piranesi (the name is one of several allusions to the 18th century) spends his days interpreting coded messages left around a labyrinthine villa filled with seabirds and symbolic statues. "Haunting, tantalising, enigmatic, profound — it is all these and more," according to the FT review.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Photo / Supplied
The Mournable Body, by Tsitsi Dangarembga Tsitsi Dangarembga concludes her trilogy — which began in 1988 with Nervous Conditions — about life in the years leading to and from Zimbabwean independence with a story set in 1990s Harare. Tambu, who was introduced to readers as a child, is now a grown woman, rapidly losing a grip on life as the country around her buckles under corruption. Her narrative, written in the second person, is vivid and compelling.
Mayflies, by Andrew O'Hagan Mayflies begins in 1986 — with working-class Ayrshire teenagers Tully and James joining friends for a joyful and heady musical pilgrimage around the clubs of Manchester — then cuts to the present day, when tragic news puts their friendship to the ultimate test. O'Hagan writes on youth and experience with wit and poignancy — and a terrific soundtrack.
Jack, by Marilynne Robinson The fourth and final book in the celebrated Gilead series picks up the story of John Ames "Jack" Boughton, prodigal son of Rev Boughton, and his relationship with a black woman named Della Miles in postwar St Louis. "Jack fits beautifully into the subtle weave of Robinson's Gilead books," wrote the FT's reviewer; "that said, it could perfectly well be read on its own".
Jack by Marilynne Robinson. Photo / Supplied
Inside Story: A Novel, by Martin Amis, Jonathan Cape Fiction blurs into fact throughout Amis's latest "novel", a rumination on life and loss, and in particular the author's relationship with three fellow writers, now deceased: Philip Larkin, Saul Bellow and Christopher Hitchens. Razor-sharp reflections are interspersed with wider — occasionally meandering — observations on US politics and the art of writing, and a quaint domestic charade.
Red Pill, by Hari Kunzru Part-thriller, part-farce, part-historical-fiction, Red Pill is also an inquiry into the importance of public and private selfhood. A New York academic accepts a fellowship to the mysterious Deuter Centre on the shores of a wintry Lake Wannsee only to find himself drawn into a web of paranoia — fuelled by alt-right activists — that leaves him questioning the very nature of reality.
Snow, by John Banville There's a colonel, there's a candlestick, and there's a body in the library. John Banville (having shed his crime writing alias "Benjamin Black") sets up a classic murder mystery with his latest novel, then expertly turns it on its head. The plot is thickened with eccentric suspects, shifting narratives and the socio-religious tensions of 1950s Ireland.
Summer, by Ali Smith, Hamish Hamilton The final volume in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet channels all the stress and unease of 2020. Covid and climate change jostle with timeless fears, and Daniel Gluck (whom we first met in ) is joined by a new cast of characters to explore themes of history, tragedy and — yes — hope. Rereading the whole series will, according to Simon Schama in his FT review, "leave you cumulatively transformed".
