I’ve racked my brains to remember what I read last year. Very quickly (it’s not in my nature to be brief), my top 6 (see) books in 2010 were:
The case: without a doubt, my favourite of the year. The Lacuna is a colourful and graceful novel, intriguing for both its fictional characters and its portrayal of real people – Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Trotsky, that’s right, Trotsky, make more than fleeting appearances. The Lacuna asks what it means, and should mean, to be a public person. A good question, well asked… It also has the most satisfying, yet unexpected, ending I can remember reading since the Bartimaeus Trilogy.
The case: not the story of classics students overstepping the Dionysian mark, ala Donna Tartt, but The Secret History written by Byzantine scholar Procopius about the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (written in secret as the name implies and conflicting with his official and not-at-all secret histories). It’s not the easiest read but If Procopius is to be believed boy did those crazy Byzantine Roman imperial types get up to some tricks.
The case: uplifting, this is not and there is no way, no how that I will ever, ever see the movie. Ever. That said, Cormac McCarthy’s post apocalyptic father and son road trip squeezed me in all sorts of difficult yet ultimately worthwhile ways. It’s bleak, bleak but somehow still a little bit hopeful, despite the suicide, cannibalism and never quite spelled out environmental catastrophe. Something to read on a sunny day when you can step out into the world and see people playing sport in parks and being nice to each other.
The case: isn’t the title alone enough? Well then how about the unicorns, information pirates and Bob Dylan lyrics? Essentially a detective story about the search for the main character's mind. Haruki Murakami is master of the surreal and if you like your fiction based in reality, then this probably is not for you… if you don’t mind then this is nothing but delightful in a pleasantly baffling way.
The case: this is Henry VIII’s story told from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell. Usually cast as something of a villain (Cromwell was a strong advocate of the English church's break with Rome and instrumental in Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon), he has been re-imagined by Hilary Mantel as a sympathetic, clever and practical man, someone who rose from humble beginnings, got things done but still held onto his own beliefs. It’s gripping, elegantly told and I had to constantly remind myself that it is a work of fiction.
The case: would I have read this, were it not for family pressure (pressure, not from my in-laws who claim George Eliot/Mary Anne Evans as a distant relation, but from my father who read Middlemarch recently and, quite rightly considers it excellent)? Who can say. Am I glad I did? You betcha. It’s funny, well-observed and many of its observations, in particular those on marriage, feel very modern. It's also crammed with excellent character names: Tertius Lydgate, Dorothea Brooke, Humphrey Cadwallader... and I can't help thinking that if I were to get a pet in the near future, I'd be turning back to Middlemarch for inspiration.
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