Twelve books for 2017

It’s not January 1st quite yet, and yet I feel as if there have already been dozens of best of lists appearing, I love them, and it always makes me feel I need to get on with my own.

I’m trying to keep it simple – just one list, twelve books that I loved – I’m not claiming they are the best, just the books which spoke to me the loudest. Those books I wanted to thrust unceremoniously into the hands of others. As I began doing a few years ago I am sticking to twelve books for twelve months. Here they are in alphabetical order by title.

1. A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark – This was the second Muriel Spark novel that I read this year. I adored the characters and the odd little boarding house setting, it’s quirky, entertaining and often surprising, it definitely sowed a seed with me regarding reading more Muriel Spark.

2 A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin – It wasn’t all that long ago that I discovered that Philip Larkin had even written novels – only two sadly. A Girl in Winter is simply exquisite the prose is of course that of a poet. It is a novel of summer and winter, of war and exile, exploring the difficulties we sometimes encounter trying to fully understand the people in our lives.

3 An Avenue of Stone by Pamela Hansford Johnson – represented in the picture above by my kindle, on which I read it. An Avenue of Stone is the second novel in Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Helena trilogy. I read it breathlessly, loving every word and was sorry when it was finished. Sometimes that is all it takes to make an impact.

4 A Note in Music by Rosamond Lehmann – A Novel I had wanted to read for so long, I was afraid it might not meet my expectations, instead it exceeded them. Beautifully written, it is a gloriously nuanced novel, a portrait of marriage and the disappointments of an ordinary middle-class life.

5 A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankau – From its compelling opening, A Wreath for the Enemy is another superb novel from Pamela Frankau who I have come to admire hugely. It is a novel told in three sections, characters moving in and out of view – with some brilliantly plotted connections which make this a wonderfully clever novel.

6 Chatterton Square by E H Young I have loved E H Young’s novels for a long time, but this is the best of those that I have read. A multi-layered novel, the themes of this novel, those of marriage, provincial life and morality.

7 Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham was an enormous surprise to me. Sent to me as a review copy by Persephone books, I admit to having known nothing about it. However, I was blown away, by the beautifully, emotional story. Gwethalyn Graham explores the divisions and deeply entrenched prejudices which existed in Canadian society, through the story of Erica Drake and Marc Reiser who meet and fall in love.

8. Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves by Rachel Malik – A novel I bought by sheer chance, on something of a whim. It definitely has the feel of those vintage novels that I am always reading. The story is a fictional telling of a story from the author’s own family – two women brought together by war, a partnership spanning more than two decades, a scandal and a trial.

9 Scenes of Childhood and other stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner – I love short stories, and I completely love Sylvia Townsend Warner – so this collection was a joy. I have since read another larger collection of her stories, which I also loved, but this collection is probably perfect, as so many of the stories are autobiographical, the author seems to be present throughout the collection.

10 The Professor’s House by Willa Cather – This might not be Willa Cather’s best novel, but it was the last of her novels I had to read, and I think it’s a little masterpiece. The tender, introspective story of a college professor and the brilliant student Tom Outland who he remembers with affection.

11 The Spoilt City by Olivia Manning – the second book of the Balkan trilogy – I really couldn’t decide which of the first two books would make this list. I opted for The Spoilt City – because it has more drama than the first book, and I found it quite hard to put down. The atmosphere of people living in a precarious situation – as war rages on all sides and invasion becomes daily more likely – is just superbly drawn.

12. Winter by Ali Smith – Proof that waiting till the last minute to finalise a best of list is the best strategy – I finished this book on Christmas Eve, and have had to edit my list to include it. I only reviewed it yesterday, and I had to include it here for the simple reason that it stunned me. The way in which Ali Smith plays with both time and language is just superb.

So, that’s it twelve books for twelve months. I am slightly embarrassed by how typical (of me) this list is, how much like the lists of the last two years it is – and with no non-fiction on it, although there are two books actually published this year! Perhaps I can widen my reading horizons in 2018.

All that’s left for me to say is Happy New Year! to you all.