Books of the Year - 2012

Last year I made a stack of my end of year picks and took a photo to head the post. This year, having moved house and with books scattered all over the place, I'd struggle to know where exactly to locate most of the books I want to bring to your attention and indeed it was a source of considerable anxiety to me that one of them, packed specially due to its unique qualities, went missing for nigh on a month before it was finally relocated and hurriedly placed on a special shelf for safekeeping.

Anyway, 2012 has been a year filled with enjoyable books, some of which have been very special indeed. Keeping up the blog has been a struggle at times but messages of support have turned up often just when I need them and the enthusiasm of others has always been helpful when a shot in the arm has been required. I'll be absolutely honest and say that next year really will see my posts becoming more sporadic but as long as you really want to hear what I have to say then I will try and make the effort when a book really demands it. Twitter remains an exciting place to learn and share about books and when I pretty much lost the ability to update the blog recently it was there that I managed to keep talking and enthusing about what I was reading.

Below you'll find my picks of the year, a varied collection as always, books that I found in a variety of ways. I've summarised why they made the cut below but please click on the titles to read my in-depth reviews and hopefully you'll find something that you hadn't wanted to buy... until now.

Absolution by Patrick Flanery

I read this debut near the beginning of the year but it has stayed in my mind as one of the year's best new novels, heralding the arrival of a nicely matured voice in fiction. Perhaps the most conventionally 'literary' novel on my list it actually has a rather complex structure with four narrative strands and changing viewpoints. Flanery tackles South Africa's fraught politics but also the weight of personal history and the very nature of truth itself. Ambitious and well executed it's a great read now and a very positive indication hopefully of what's yet to come.

Waiting for the Barbarians by J M Coetzee

It's not all about new books and this novel from Coetzee helped to cement him in my mind as a true master. This allegorical novel of violence, oppression and control is written with the kind of universality that makes it feel like a classic; names of people or places are not important, neither is a sense of when or where exactly the novel is set. The unflinching manner of Coetzee's approach makes for an exhilarating and uncomfortable read. A novel that challenges the reader with its views and opinions but leaves you to draw your own conclusions; what more could you ask for?




A Death In The Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Not many books made such an impact on me as this controversial novel and that's why when I was asked to pick just a single book from this year's output by Kim over at Reading Matters, this is the one I plumped for. Knausgaard made a Faustian pact when he decided to write about himself and his own family and the notoriety that has accompanied the publication of his six-volume, fictionalised autobiography is as impressive as the sales figures in his native Norway. Part one looks at drunken adolescence, the death of his father and the alcoholism of his grandmother. The final third is about as a grim a piece of writing as I have ever come across. A book that had me scratching my head about half way through had me itching for more when I finished the final page and with part 2 due next year I can only hope that there are plans to translate and publish the following four books.

Abbot Awaits by Chris Bachelder

Humour. Let's be honest, it's all too often missing from the books of many 'serious' readers apart from the odd flash here and there so when a book comes along that makes you actually laugh and smile with recognition throughout then what a joy that is. Bachelder's take on modern fatherhood is hilarious, beautiful, touching and true. Little vignettes, often of just a page in length cover the final three months of Abbot's wife's second pregnancy. Just the titles of some chapters are enough to elicit a laugh and the real skill is in not allowing the book to suffer any slumps along the way. A perfect gift for any men you may know who are perhaps expecting another arrival anytime soon.

All Quiet on the Western Front 
by Erich Maria Remarque

A genuine classic that will have you mouthing the familiar refrain of those who finally tackle one of those books they always knew they should have read: 'why didn't I read it sooner?' There's not much for me to say here about Remarque's classic war novel other than that it gave me something completely fresh to think about after I'd been performing in War Horse for a couple of years, that it was a distinct pleasure to give copies of it away on World Book Night and that it's exactly the kind of book that was never in any danger when I had a book cull before moving house recently.

Open City by Teju Cole

If I'd got my act together a little sooner then this book would have appeared on last year's book list (along with lots of other people's). It is a frighteningly accomplished novel, bursting with intelligence and written in the kind of fluid prose that makes you want to devour it in a single sitting. A man wanders the streets of New York, meets friends, has a picnic and at one point gets mugged, that's about all you'll get as far as plot goes, but this book is filled with ideas and culture that keep you're brain nourished throughout and there's even a twist of sorts near the novel's end that makes you think all over again about the man with whom you've been wandering.

Leaving The Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

Not dissimilar to the book above, this is another novel with little plot, a diary-like narration and lots of digression but poet Lerner's debut novel has a wicked sense of humour and a fairly repellent hero whom you can't help but be charmed by. An American poet abroad on a fellowship in Madrid smokes spliff, takes pills, experiences culture and generally bullshits his way around his research project. Along the way he questions his validity as poet, man and lover and we enjoy one of the most stimulating debuts since ... well, the book above.

Hawthorn & Child by Keith Ridgway

Championed by bloggers all over the place but none more so than John Self in the pages of The Guardian this is a novel that more than justified the fervour behind it. I had been looking forward to it after my first experience of his writing but I wasn't expecting it to be quite as a good as it was. Ridgway's own irreverence as a writer is either extreme humility or an indication that he, along with most of the reading public, doesn't realise exactly how good he is. The novel is bold and formalistically daring, written with an ease and brilliance that must make other writers want to give up and has a variety and scope that means each reader is sure to identify a different section or sentence as their favourite bit of writing this year. Believe the hype.


Swimming Home by Deborah Levy

My favourite read from this year's Booker list was a triumph for small publisher And Other Stories and I very nearly included another of their titles, Lightning Rods by Helen De Witt, in this list but decided to mention it here and free up one of these limited berths for another fabulous book (very briefly, Lightning Rods is a whip smart satire that is funny, clever and shocking - read this review for more). Levy's novel is slim but packed full of resonant images, enigmatic characters and telling details. There's a wonderful darkness that clouds proceedings and seldom has there been such an enjoyable sense of being unsettled.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Look, I don't know how many times I have to tell you to read Denis Johnson but will you please just READ DENIS JOHNSON. The fact that the Pulitzer board didn't award a fiction prize this year is bad enough but the fact that they did it when a novel(la) like this landed in their laps in downright scandalous. Johnson's collection of writings is so eclectic and varied that it's difficult to say exactly where this fits in the cannon but as a fan of his I can say that I was surprised by the richness and reward that came from such a slim book, previously published as a story in the Paris Review, thankfully given the proper treatment by Granta who had a storming year with three titles in this best of list.

Building Stories by Chris Ware

What to say about this extraordinary creation? This is the book I mentioned at the very top that went missing in transit and caused me moments of genuine anxiety as I worried that I might not be able to lay my hands on a replacement copy without bankrupting myself even further. Chris Ware opened my eyes to what the graphic novel could be when I read his first book Jimmy Corrigan. I am eternally grateful to him for that because since then I have derived so much pleasure from reading more and more graphic work. For him then to return with a ... I hesitate to call it a book because it is so much more than that ... with such a gift is quite astounding. A book which cements the place of the graphic novel amongst 'serious' literature and shows at the same time how limited its supposed superiors really are, this will no doubt be seen in years to come as a definitive work.


Also worthy of note: Mrs Bridge, Dr Haggard's Disease, Seven Years, Days of the Bagnold Summer and so many more.


Emperor's New Clothes: HHhH and The Yellow Birds.

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Leaving The Atocha Station - Ben Lerner

'life's white machine'

A book from a small press seemed to make a very big splash over the pond in last year's book roundups. Ben Lerner's debut novel (he is previously published as a poet) is published by Coffee House Press in Minneapolis and it seemed a lot critics, bloggers and readers were rather impressed. Now I don't want to bash a small publisher before I've even started (don't worry, I'm going to say lovely things about the book) but the book itself looks horrible. The design above is pretty inoffensive you're thinking but it comes with the high gloss cover that you tend to see on self-published books and so it all feels rather cheap. And it wasn't. Not for a reader over in the UK at any rate (If I'd been a little more patient then I could have picked up Granta Books edition available from Thursday of this week). This needn't be the case. Small independent publishers like Pushkin, Peirene and newbie Notting Hill Editions regularly produce beautiful books without charging the earth so there's no need for them to look awful and in an age where e-readers are everywhere and some people don't even think they should have to pay for the content they download to them, physical books need to make sure they earn their place on the shelf. It may not be enough any more to say that it's the content that really matters.

Anyway, I digress. And rather appropriately, because this novel, a little like Teju Cole's Open City, is another novel with minimal plot, an almost diarised narration, and plenty of intelligent, witty and entertaining digression along the way. Maybe calling it digression isn't quite right, this is an investigation of sorts, by a man keen to probe the limits of words, of genuine communication, of engagement with the modern world. Adam Gordon is an American poet on a fellowship in Madrid around the time of the bombings in 2004. His research is supposed to be on the country's civil war but under a cocktail of prescription drugs, alcohol and spliff smoke his fellowship has been sidelined by his 'project,' his enquiries into the validity of poetic expression, his own validity as a poet, a lover, a man, and the grand question of where he goes next.

In the 'first phase' of his research for example he has developed a little routine: wake, make coffee, roll spliff, drink coffee, smoke spliff, shit, shower, take white pills, get dressed, go to the Prado and stand in front of Descent From The Cross by Roger Van Der Weyden where coffee, spliff and sleep can compete within his system. One day however when he arrives to take up his usual position in front of the painting there is another man already there. This upset to his daily routine is completed when the man bursts into tears and Adam can't help but wonder whether he is having 'a profound experience of art.'

Insofar as I was interested in the arts, I was interested in the disconnect between my experience of actual artworks and the claims made on their behalf; the closest I'd come to having a profound experience of art was probably the experience of this distance, a profound experience of the absence of profundity.

When the man recovers only to lose it again in front of another painting Adam then contemplates the fate of the museum guards, sworn to protect the paintings from crazies, kids, 'or the slow erosive forces of camera flashes' but also presumably in a job whose only prestige comes from dwelling amongst cultural  treasures designed to provoke this very reaction. What a dilemma: take the man aside to assess his mental health and risk ruining a profound experience, or leave him be and risk endangering one's employment. Adam is far more moved by this than he has been by anything he's looked at in the gallery.

This scenario is typical of the way in which humour and insight combine from the most unlikely situations. Adam is an exposer of the phony but a compulsive liar himself. At one point he tells Teresa, the Spanish woman who will translate his poems and for whom he has a fancy, that his mother has died. This lie has a wonderful effect: sympathy, physical contact, further conversation and connection. It works so well in fact that he uses it again with Isabel, the Spanish woman with whom he begins a relationship. In fact his whole relationship with Isabel is based on not-quite truths, a relationship not lost in translation but created and sustained by it, by the gaps in between what Adam says and what Isabel thinks he says.

Except for our most basic exchanges. . . our conversation largely consisted of my gesturing toward something I was powerless to express, then guessing at what referent she had guessed at, and gesturing in response to that. In this, my project's second phase, Isabel assigned profound meaning, a plurality of possible profound meanings, to my fragmentary speech, intuiting from those fragments depths of insight and latent eloquence, and because she projected  what she thought she discovered, she experienced, I like to think, an intense affinity for the workings of my mind.

This is a great example of the way in which Adam is a narrator we are both repelled and charmed by. He is happy for example to pretend to be inspired by something in front of Isabel, because it fits into her conception of him as an American poet, but the idea of actually being one of those poets 'constantly subject to fits of inspiration' repels him and when he catches himself doing just that he feels shamed and we laugh along with him. He is disparaging of his own talent as a poet, his proficiency in Spanish (throughout the novel there is a hilarious distance between what Adam can understand and communicate and what actually might be being said and done around him), his status as a man but in the same breath he makes unambiguous his belief in art and artistic expression.

I tried hard to imagine my poems or any poems as machines that could make things happen, changing the government or the economy or even their language, the body or its sensorium, but I could not imagine this, could not even imagine imagining it. And yet when I imagined the total victory of those other things. . . the total triumph of the actual. . . I realized that, in such a world, I would swallow a bottle of white pills.

A quick word about pills and medication. Adam is a proficient self-medicator whether that be tranquillisers, alcohol or spliff and the danger with drugs, or talking about them, is that frankly they're not nearly as interesting as the people taking them think they are. Adam manages to avoid most of the pitfalls by not taking them too seriously as an aid to creative expression (although he comes very close) and focusing on the comedy. Those white pills for example don't seem to work for him the way they're supposed to: 'I always felt a few strains of rumination away from full orchestral panic', but then he does drink and smoke 'in a way that made tracking the specific effects of the white pills difficult.' The ritual of taking them however, the 'Eucharistic rite of self-abnegation' is important 'because they were a daily reminder that I was officially fucked up.'

He does describe the different effects on the creative process between his prescribed and non-prescribed drugs, but far more interesting are his ruminations on the ordinary engagement with art, the way for example, in which real time and the time of prose can merge when you read Constance Garnett's translations of Tolstoy on the train so that reading instead of removing one from the world can intensify one's experience of the present. This also connects with his appreciation of the poet John Ashberry in particular (who returns the compliment by providing a nice cover quote for Lerner), whose Collected Poems are never out of Adam's bag and whose work, or Adam's thoughts on it, provide the key to Adam as a character and possibly the experience of this novel as a whole.

The best Ashberry poems, I thought, although not in these words, describe what it's like to read an Ashberry poem; his poems refer to how their reference evanesces. And when you read about your reading in the time of your reading, mediacy is experienced immediately. It is as though the actual Ashberry poem were concealed from you, written on the other side of a mirrored surface, and you saw only the reflection of your reading, Asberry's poems allow you to attend to your attention, to experience your experience, thereby enabling a strange kind of presence. But it is a presence that keeps the virtual possibilities of poetry intact because the true poem remains beyond you, inscribed on the far side of the mirror: "You have it but you don't have it./ You miss it, it misses you./ You miss each other."

This goes back to Adam's experience in the Prado and his general way of observing life, the way in which he has maintained the disconnect, not just through medication but by culturing his status as an observer. Even when the bombings occur and people march in the street in their wake, when 'history came alive', Adam is sleeping in the Ritz after another failed attempt to play a role. But Adam's rejection of himself, of his talent, of his seriousness is challenged by the other characters around him so that towards the novel's end he is forced to accept that others at least think that he is real, that he has a place amongst them and genuine artistic merit. I'm still not sure about the way the book concludes and I am certain that plenty of readers will be put off enough by Adam as a narrator not to care about what happens to him, never mind what he pontificates about throughout the novel. I found lots to absorb along the way, particularly about the way in which we engage with art and to see a novel from a little publisher getting lots of attention (and a tasty printing over here) is always an encouraging thing. Maybe it is the inside that counts...

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