The Fourteen Best Books I Read in 2013

As we near the end of 2013, I offer a list of fourteen books that I especially admired, loved, and enjoyed over the past year. They are all beautifully written. Eleven are novels and three are short story collections. Two were written by the same gifted author: Hester Kaplan. Two have the same title (“Life after Life”) but are very different novels by very different writers. Most but not all of them were published in 2013. They are listed in the order that I read and posted about them on this blog. After each title, I list the date that I posted on the book. Perhaps you will find ideas for last minute holiday gifts here! 1. “I Knew You’d Be Lovely: Stories,” by Alethea Black (1/18/13). 2. “The Edge of Marriage: Stories,” by Hester Kaplan (2/5/13). 3. “The Priory,” by Dorothy Whipple (2/22/13). 4. “Songs for the Missing,” by Stewart O’Nan (3/14/13). 5. “Life after Life,” by Jill McCorkle (4/20/13). 6. “Last Friends,” by Jane Gardam (6/22/13). 7. “The Tell,” by Hester Kaplan (6/29/13). 8. “The Gardens of Kyoto,” by Kate Walbert (7/13/13). 9. “Shakespeare’s Kitchen,” by Lore Segal (7/22/13). 10. “Life after Life,” by Kate Atkinson (8/6/13). 11. “The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox,” by Maggie O’Farrell (8/24/13). 12. “The Home Jar: Stories,” by Nancy Zafris (9/8/13). 13. “The Lowland,” by Jhumpa Lahiri (10/26/13). 14. “Someone,” by Alice McDermott (11/27/13).

Please Buy Holiday Gifts at Independent Bookstores!

For those of you doing holiday shopping, please consider doing so at independent bookstores. Books are such great gifts, and we need to support our independent bookstores, the numbers of which are shrinking. I have never republished one of my blogposts before, but today -- in order to summarize reasons to patronize independent bookstores -- I reprint below my post of 2/11/10. (Although I have to note an update: nowadays some of the chains have also gone out of business, and the main competition to independent bookstores is online sellers. But the reasons for sticking with independent bookstores remain the same.) "At the risk of preaching to the converted, I urge readers to spend their money at independent bookstores rather than at the large chains or online vendors. Some of the many reasons to do so are as follows: 1. Local, independent bookstores are more individualized, often more specialized. They are attuned to their local customers and their locales. They do their own buying, rather than having a national office make decisions for the whole country. 2. Booksellers at independent bookstores are usually more knowledgeable about books. 3. Independent bookstores often have great readings and classes. It is true that some chains do as well, but the local bookstores can focus on local authors and cater to local interests. 4. Independent bookstores are more community-oriented. They often have programs that benefit local schools and other community institutions. 5. Statistics show that a much higher percentage of profits of independent bookstores goes back into the local community; profits don't go to the national corporate offices as they do with the chains. 6. Chains are often predatory, moving in very nearby to existing independent bookstores, undercutting the prices of those bookstores (because they have the corporate resources to do so), driving them out, and then sometimes raising prices again. (I have seen this happen in the area where I live; a few years back we lost the beloved A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books, here in Marin County, this way.)"

"Living to Tell," by Antonya Nelson

Antonya Nelson’s novel “Living to Tell” (Scribner Paperback Fiction, 2000) is all about family, family, family. An older couple, their three grown children, and two grandchildren all live in the house in Kansas in which the children grew up. They are slightly aware of the oddity of the situation, yet proud of being a close family, taking care of each other. But there are big cracks in the closeness. The son, Winston, the golden boy, has just gotten out of jail for driving drunk and accidentally killing his much-loved grandmother; his father can’t seem to forgive him, although he does not show his feelings overtly. The older daughter, Emily, seemingly so calm and competent, has had her walks on the wild side, but now is taking care of her two children very well without the help of her immature ex-husband. Mona, the third adult child of the family, is emotionally unstable, has attempted suicide, had an affair with her brother-in-law and now is having another unsuitable affair with another married man. The father of the three adult children, “Professor Mabie” as the retired academic is always called, struggles with missing his sick and then deceased best friend from work, Betty, along with worrying about all of his children. His wife, Mrs. Mabie, tends her family fiercely, yet has withdrawn in recent years, sometimes seeming more connected to her garden than to anything or anyone else. There are other characters too, but the core of the story is the five adults in the Mabie house. The ambivalent connections among the family members are perhaps manifested in the family name Mabie (maybe?). This is a curious family story: the family sticks together, yet sometimes does not trust each other. And Nelson dares to make the five main characters not entirely likable. The reader feels torn between pulling for the family and pulling away from them. Nelson also dares to leave us with an ambiguous ending. This is an author I have come to count on as always writing something interesting, something different, and this novel does not disappoint.

"This is the Story of a Happy Marriage," by Ann Patchett

As I approached the counter to pay for some books a couple of days ago in one of my favorite independent bookstores, Books Inc., in Laurel Village, San Francisco (part of a very local mini-chain), I heard a customer ahead of me and a salesperson discussing Ann Patchett’s independent bookstore in Nashville. I said (horning in on their conversation, but they didn’t seem to mind), “Oh, I am reading her book ‘This is the Story of a Happy Marriage’ right now!” The customer enthusiastically replied, “Oh, me too! I love it!” So the three of us started talking about the book, and Patchett’s earlier books (including “Bel Canto” and “State of Wonder”), and her bookstore. We all are big fans. And we agreed that this latest book, “This is the Story of a Happy Marriage” (Harper, 2013), a collection of essays, is absolutely absorbing, and makes us feel we actually know Patchett. I think of this little episode (which is, by the way, the kind of thing that happens often in independent bookstores, one of the reasons I so love these centers of literature and community) as an example of how Patchett is not only a gifted writer, but an engaging one, and as the creator of an independent bookstore in Nashville when its other bookstores had closed, a heroine to those of us who are rooting for the survival of such local, special bookstores. I have now finished the book, and was absolutely caught up in it. Patchett writes about her childhood, her apprenticeship as a writer, her relationship with her grandmother, her childhood teacher (a nun) with whom she reconnects as an adult, her beloved dogs, her book tours, the controversy over her book about her late friend Lucy (the book was chosen as the assigned freshman book by Clemson University, and then protested by many conservative parents and others in the area), and much more. The title essay tells how, as the child of a family riven by multiple divorces over several generations, Patchett was reluctant to marry, and even when she found the right person, it took her eleven years to agree to marry; the couple is now -- as the title indicates -- very happy. In each essay, Patchett’s warm voice makes us feel we are actually in conversation with her. Of course the conversational style of the writing is deceptively simple, and is in fact extremely well-crafted…that is one of the marks of a true writer. I can’t help thinking, though, that no one could present such a seemingly candid and engaging self if she were not really like that. Is that naïve of me? In any case, for fans of Patchett, as well as for those who have not read her before, I strongly recommend this book.

"If I'd Known You Were Coming," by Kate Milliken

The short stories in Kate Milliken’s “If I’d Known You Were Coming” (University of Iowa Press, 2013) are full of quirks, hard edges, sharp angles, and surprises. The characters are often confused, and confusing, but still make witty remarks and offer sharp observations. The women characters in particular are very bright but sometimes make strange decisions, often about relationships. The narrator in “Man Down Below,” for example, moves away from her apartment in order to get away from a stalker neighbor, yet when she runs into him later, is strangely drawn to him. “No, no, no!” you want to exhort her, but being a mere reader, you are helpless to change the course of the story; you cannot sway her from her clearly unsuitable feelings and actions. Some characters appear in more than one story, allowing us to get to know them better on each appearance, yet still mysteriously changing and disappearing at will. The final story, “Inheritance,” starts off uneventfully, but after a while we see how sad and sick one of the main characters is, and must watch helplessly as she self destructs, but at least is supported by her new friend in his inherited house. And somehow, even in her self-destruction, this character manages to keep and display a flash of her personality, and make us wonder if she will perhaps survive after all.

"Someone," by Alice McDermott

I’ve just read a lovely novel: “Someone” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013), by Alice McDermott. “Lovely” is a word not commonly found in book reviews, but that is my response to this beautifully written story of an “ordinary” woman, Marie Commeford. Marie’s life is extraordinarily ordinary; it is the gift of the author to make her character’s story utterly alive, utterly compelling in its ordinariness. Marie grows up in Brooklyn early in the 20th century, the child of an Irish Catholic immigrant family. In this first person narrative, Marie tells of her family, her neighborhood and neighbors, her adolescence, her work in a funeral home, her marriage, her motherhood, and her old age. Particularly strong characters, besides Marie herself, are her mother, her brother, and her husband. Throughout Marie’s life, there are happy times, worrying times, sad times, and inconclusive times. We are immersed in Marie’s life; we live and breathe with her. To me, this making an “ordinary” woman’s life so individual, so distinct, and so compelling is what literature is all about. I was impressed by McDermott’s earlier novels, such as “That Night” and “After This”; “Someone” reaches new heights of revelatory writing.

"Topaz," poems by Brian Komei Dempster

My colleague Brian Komei Dempster has edited two moving collections of the memories of Japanese-American internees in the United States during World War II, thus preserving this sad part of history and allowing the now-elderly survivors of this experience to tell their stories in their own words. (See my post of 6/7/11 about the second of these books). Dempster has now published a stunning collection of his own poetry, “Topaz” (Four Way Books, 2013). I started reading “Topaz” (the name of the internment camp where some of the poet’s own relatives were incarcerated) one recent evening, planning to just dip into the book for now and read it more thoroughly later, but found I could not put it down until I finished it. The poems are beautifully written and gripping. In fact, they are amazing poems, touching on so many elements of family, history, ethnicity, connection, sexuality, youth, aging, illness, spirituality, anger, reconciliation, and much more. The thread running through all these topics is a fierce commitment to family and to claiming and remembering history, both personal and cultural. Throughout the collection, there is striking and beautiful imagery and there are provocative connections made. Some of the poems are meditative, some mournful, some quietly angry; many portray love in its many varieties. All brim with the life force. The poems, and the book, are incandescent.