Top Ten - and a few more - 2021

It's that time of year, for lists of the good and bad aspects of the last twelve months, so (as I love a Top Ten list) I'm joining in. My list is solely about the GOOD books of the year, though. 

As I started to put it together I realised what an eclectic sort of mix it was - literary, fantasy, sci-fi thriller, a slightly supernatural mystery, a family epic, and even one about lockdown 

Some year's it's hard to pick one book that stands out from the rest. This year it was easy for me. I totally loved Sarah Winman's  Still Life - a story which celebrates life, love, art, beauty, warmth, food, wine and all things Italian. An absolute joy to read.

 My next choice couldn't be more different. Five Minds by Guy Morpuss is a futuristic, dystopian thriller with shades of James Mangold's Identity, in which five personalities live in one body - and one by one they're being killed off. It's a gripping, original debut. 

Fantasy next.  The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec is a masterful re-imagining of Norse myths, placing a mother and her love for her three very strange children in the forefront of the story. Again, a wonderful debut.

In Lean, Fall, Stand  Jon McGregor takes his 'hero' on a roller coaster ride from the icy wastes of Antarctica, fighting for survival, to hospitals and stroke recovery centres where he faces a very different battle to regain normality and the ability to express himself. I've seen strokes from the outside - watching family members suffer - but McGregor offers a perceptive insight into how the victim themselves must feel in this strange new world

I spent a lot of the first lockdown watching 'pandemic' movies in which scientists battle to save the world from new bugs, or reading the sort of apocalyptic fiction in which a handful of survivors struggle on in isolation. The actual pandemic was very different to either scenario, and it's in that REAL world that Sarah Moss has set The Fell. Kate is an outdoors sort of person, not comfortable to be confined for long, so a fourteen day isolation period is proving tough. Then one late afternoon she decides to sneak up onto the Fell. No one will see her go. She'll meet no one up on the hill. What harm could there be in it?

Time for some humour, and escapist, improbable, action thrown in for good measure. Jonathan Pinnock's long-suffering hero Tom Winscombe is bad in Bad Day in Minsk . Kidnapped, sent under-cover into Belarus, kidnapped again (Belarusan mafia this time), getting caught in a fire fight - it's all become part of a day's work for Tom since he became in the increasingly complex affairs of dead mathematical geniuses the Vavasor twins. I love this series, and I'm glad to hear there are more books on the way.

Inspired by real-life tales of unusual happenings on British lighthouses,  The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex tells the story of three men who mysteriously disappeared from the Maiden lighthouse. The door was found locked from within, dinner laid out on the table, but no sign of the crew. Is there a better place than an isolated lighthouse to set a closed-room mystery?  A brilliant book which engrossed me from the first page.

Another brilliant debut - The Family by Naomi Krupitsky is a story of friendship, family, and Family (the American Mafia). Spanning twenty years, from 1920s to late 40s, it follows the ups and downs of the girls friendship, their lives always entwined with the fortunes of the wider Family. I loved this for its characters, its scale, the writing style which drew me in and hooked me, and the positioning of two young women centre stage in a business dominated by men.

Nick - Michael Farris Smith. Meet Nick Carraway, whose main claim to fame is being the neighbour of Jay Gatsby, and chronicling the summer in which Jay re-discovered his long lost love, Daisy, Nick's cousin. For how much he has to tell about Daisy and Gatsby, it's strange how little we actually know about Nick. This book aims to fill that gap. I'm normally a bit wary of spin-off books but this caught my imagination. 

Threaded with themes about being different, the unpredictability of love, of self-discovery, of the demands art puts on its creators, The Earthspinner  by Anuradha Roy centres around the burning desire to create something of beauty from the most basic substance - clay. As a teenager, Sara was taught pottery by an artist in her home village in India; now studying in the UK, she finds relaxation in its familiar demands and forms. The story moves between India and England, between Sara's teenage years and a period roughly 10 years later, between her story and that of Elango, the master potter. I haven't seen many other bloggers talking about this book but it's worth finding out.

In between these newly released books I took time out to catch up with some old favourites and some sadly neglected books from the to-be-read pile. From among these I'd like to mention a few

Re-visiting Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go was a delight. I've read both several times since they were first published and my reactions have changed over the years, my sympathies moving to lie elsewhere. Both were definitely worth catching up with again. 

Just Like You by Nick Hornby was a review book from a few years ago that had been overlooked; I'm not sure why, but I'm glad I DID read it eventually. Broadly speaking it's the story of a very mismatched couple - a young black man and older white women. Can mutual attraction form a basis for a long-term relationship, or do their many differences mean they're doomed to part? Nick Hornby's always good on the relationships but this time there's an added depth with, in various conversations scattered throughout, various characters discuss their feeling about the Brexit vote. It might be a bit dated (I wonder how many opinions would be the same now?) but it offers a rare balanced insight into why people thought and voted as they did.

Sarah Moss gets a second mention in this round up, as years after everyone else I've at last discovered Night Waking. It's a sharply observed account of a mother pulled this way and that by her children, and in fear of losing her 'self' as seen through her academic career. Add in a mystery when a child's body is discovered buried just outside the garden, and I can see why everyone rated it so highly.

Last, but by no means least, in the hiatus between rewatching the first Netflix series of The Witcher and the second one being released, I tracked down my Netgalley copies of The Sword of Destiny and The Lady of the Lake. Much as I love sword and sorcery just for the fantasy aspect, these books move beyond that. It's easy to see echoes of  the 'real' world in the treatment of elves, or the manipulation of women such to gain power. They don'y quite match up to the TV series, and The Lady of the Lake is the last in the series so carries spoilers, but if like me you're now waiting for series 3 or the Blood Origin spin off, indulge your Witcher cravings with a good read.