Books of the Year 2021 – Best and Worst
I reckon I bought more books than I read this year. It’s not my fault: Berlin is awash with second-hand English bookstores, their shelves laden with tantalising Taschenbücher in the three-to-five-euro range: The Maltese Falcon, The Dirty Dozen, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, No Country For Old Men, The Outrun. That’s right, I read none of those. They’re just sitting on a shelf, waiting for their moment in the limelight sometime in the far-flung acid-rain future of 2024. And by limelight I mean me tossing them into a burning oil drum for warmth.
Still, I did read plenty in 2021. Some stunners, some damp squibs, a couple of real lemons, mostly all fiction. Perhaps it’s the enduring effect of the pandemic or the abject failure of COP26, but I find myself drawn toward escaping this reality much more than leaning into it. And that’s why I enjoyed Ozzy Osbourne’s I Am Ozzy so much.
Anyway, the list.
The Good…
All The Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
If it was a supercomputer’s task to write a novel that would punch my dude buttons, this would be it. A study in hypermasculinity, violence and vulnerability. Spare, unwaveringly beautiful prose. Nature and humanity simultaneously in sync and at loggerheads. Animals presented in all their unique glory. Polysyndetic coordination from page one to page last. A scene involving a kid shoving a red-hot pistol butt into a bullet wound. There is nothing more I want from literature than these things, especially the last one.
Waiting for the Barbarians – J. M. Coetzee
Having never really been exposed to the myriad horrors associated with colonialism in school – thank you, UK school system (you ain’t gonna suppress it forever) – it falls to books like this to give me a little taste of what it’s like to get tortured by strappado if you start questioning the legitimacy of invading a country and subjugating everyone in it. Thank you, John.
A Mother’s Reckoning – Sue Klebold
Oh, this one was big for me. There I was, sitting in a café on the Cut in London with a beer, when the significance of this book – childhood depression and its various manifestations – struck me around the chops and almost sent me to the floor. As it was, I just sort of quivered for a while and kept reading until I finished it, and then went home and had a look in the mirror.
Deliverance – James Dickey
Doth the book inform thine reading of the film, or doth the film beget thy understanding of the book? Doth the question make sense? Nope. Anyway: Maybe it’s impossible by now to separate the film from the novel. It’s true that the movie trims the fat from the narrative (what’s going on with that first chapter where we learn the ins and outs of a small-town advertising firm? What was the editor doing on the day that was signed off on?), but James ‘The Dick Machine’ Dickey’s book has its own unique charm. I’m not sure if he’s riffing on Hemingway or just aping Papa’s style, but either way there’s a lot of sweaty homoeroticism to get stuck into.
Death’s End – Liu Cixin
Or, as I like to call it, ‘the book that probably ruined sci fi for me forever’. Once you bend time and space and matter, it’s a little difficult to get stoked by a novel where a bunch of Martians invade earth. Unless said Martians look like the old-style Cylons. Then I’m in.
Medicine Walk – Richard Wagamese
In the same vein as McCarthy, this one. It’s elegiac but hopeful, dusty yet vibrant, crushingly sad in a good way. Wagamese’s prose almost almost tips over into pastiche, but keeps its balance on the tightrope, elevating a story that has been told (in one form or another) a million times before into something quietly powerful and worthy of repeat readings.
The Bad…
J. G. Ballard – Crash
All I’m saying is that if I wanted to experience the entire world being reduced to men’s penises, I would give myself a full body shave and buy a membership pass to a certain industrial-style sauna on Mehringdamm. I thought Zadie Smith’s introduction was more interesting than the novel itself.
Miriam Toews – Women Talking
I’m not sure what was going on here. The actual true story – where women in a Mennonite colony were repeatedly drugged and raped for years – is one of the most horrifying things I could imagine, yet this fictionalisation of the aftermath is presented like the script for an amateur play. And it’s all told from a man’s perspective. I scratch my head.
Armistead Maupin – Babycakes
Oh, Armistead. I wanted to like this, just as I’ve enjoyed all the other Tales novels that have crossed my path, but this one wasn’t to be. Something about the cheerless depiction of My Beloved Albion, maybe, or the ridiculous coincidences that propel (or maybe nudge) the story forward. Or perhaps old Queenie effectively winking at the reader at the end. The parts with Mouse grieving over John are strong, though.
The Ugly…
Nina George – The Little Paris Bookshop
“Reading – an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind.”
Funny, because this book made me more irritable and mean toward the person who recommended it to me. So thank you, Nina George, for forcing me to make my mother sad.
Stick around for prizes and competitions and a lorra lorra laughs in the new year.
