It's six months since I started my books column for
Harpers Bazaar and in that time, I've read A LOT of books. (More, if anything, than I read judging last year's Costa Novel award). Here's my pick of the best so far...
One of the first books I read this year and, so far, still one of the best. The Groundhog Day-esque story of Ursula Todd, a
child born on 11 February 1910. And born again. And again. And again.
Each rebirth taking a different course until she gets it right. Or, more, until
she gains the courage and the self-knowledge to fulfil her destiny. Once you get
over the initial repetition of the baby years, Ursula’s story takes various
paths that are by turn visceral and shocking. I
guarantee Ursula will linger in your head long after you have turned the last
page (and probably turned it back again, a little frustrated…)
Having won the
Arthur C Clarke science fiction award for her second novel, Zoo City, South
African Beukes takes the concept popularised by The Time Traveller's Wife and
turns it inside out. Harper Curtis is a serial killer who travels between the 1920s and the
present day in search of the shining girls whose light he is compelled to snuff
out. Kirby Mazrachi is the one that got away. Beautifully written, skilfully plotted,
entirely original, this was Stephen King's beach read and I can see why.
3. The Interestings,
Meg Wolitzer (Chatto & Windus)
What makes one person succeed where another, seemingly just as talented, fails? That's the question Wolitzer (acclaimed author of
The Wife) sets out to answer in her ninth novel.
The Interestings of the
title are an ironically self-named group of creatively inclined teenagers at
summer camp in 1974. The novel follows the friends back and forth over the next
forty years. Wannabe actress
Jules fails and retrains as a therapist, golden boy Goodman crashes and burns,
while Ethan, the boy least likely to, cleans up. But why? And how much envy and disappointment
can a friendship stand? Wolitzer has some rather compelling answers.
A
biography of a book more than a person, academic and Fitzgerald scholar, Churchwell
analyses the gestation of
The Great Gatsby to produce an insightful, engrossing
and sometimes shocking portrait of a year: 1922, The year in which Gatsby was
written. And a place: prohibition era New York City. And none of it is as it
seems. An unexpectedly engrossing read, not just for Gatsby obsessives.
5. The Last Banquet
, Jonathan Grimwood (Canongate)
From the
moment I first encountered four-year-old Jean-Marie d'Aumout (over Jon's shoulder in Caffe Nero where he was writing this book), I was obsessed by this sensuous tale of one man's search for
the perfect taste. This affecting journey takes d'Aumout from dung heap to Versailles as he
mingles with the great, the good and the utterly corrupt in an 18th century
France heading inexorably towards revolution.
6. Firefly
, Janette Jenkins (Chatto & Windus)
From his
Jamaican mountain retreat of the title, an ailing, cantankerous 71-year-old
Noel Coward looks out over the bay and his life. It is a long hot summer in the
early seventies and wistful memories of the glamorous friends of his long-gone
London years intermingle with the implausible fantasy city that lives in his
manservant Patrice's dreams of becoming a waiter at the Ritz. Just add a
cocktail and I can think of no better poolside companion than this
pitch-perfect reimagining of a regret-tinged twilight of Coward's life.
Marta and Hector have been married a long time. How long, Marta is not sure, she struggles to remember her life before Hector. But she knows it's a long time and she knows she loves Hector because he tells her so. She also knows that since their son left home, things have started to go awry. And, Marta feels sure, she's starting to
remember. Cue a slight (in the best possible sense), dark and utterly bleak debut novel that will have you returning to the first page as soon as you finish.
There's a
reason this book spent several weeks on the
New York Times bestseller lists: it
is quite simply the ultimate brainy beach read. Split between sixties Rome as
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor embark on their infamously tempestuous
affair and contemporary Hollywood, it examines the birth of celebrity with the
lightest of touches.
And four that slipped through the cracks...
The Son,
Philip Meyer (Simon & Schuster) - a multi-generational American epic that's been described as
The Wire meets
One Hundred Years of Solitude...
The Flamethrowers
, Rachel Kushner (Harvill Secker) - Kushner's critically acclaimed novel set between the 70s New York art scene and an Italy in the midst of revolution...
Burial Rites
, Hannah Kent (Picador) - This eerie debut reimagines the true story of a convicted murderer sent to await execution in an Icelandic village in 1829...
Things We Need, Jennifer Close (Vintage) - the author of the undersung
Girls in White Dresses turns her attention to family, and what happens when we 'go home'.
See all my Bazaar on Books blogs at HarpersBazaar.co.uk.