A guy reads some gals: Year-end mega-post

I thought I'd close the year by compiling all the reviews from my main thread into one handy mega-post. Enjoy!

THE SHORT LIST: BEST BOOKS READ IN 2013

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
The Rehearsal, Eleanor Catton
The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
Who Do You Think You Are?, Alice Munro
On Beauty, Zadie Smith

plus these honorable mentions…

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook, Eleanor Davis
How To Host a Dinner Party, Corey Mintz
Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Roger Scruton

THE LONG LIST: ALL BOOKS READ IN 2013

#001 Fun Home, Alison Bechdel
#002 Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel
#003 Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
#004 The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
#005 Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Roger Scruton
#006 On Beauty, Zadie Smith
#007 On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry
#008 The Lost Daughter, Elena Ferrante
#009 Exit Wounds, Rutu Modan
#010 The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy
#011 Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, Yoko Ogawa
#012 The Rehearsal, Eleanor Catton
#013 Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
#014 Red Doc>, Anne Carson
#015 The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook, Eleanor Davis
#016 White Teeth, Zadie Smith
#017 Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, Lucy Knisley
#018 Hotel World, Ali Smith
#019 The Other Typist, Suzanne Rindell
#020 How To Host a Dinner Party, Corey Mintz
#021 Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
#022 The (Uncensored) Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
#023 Night Film, Marisha Pessl
#024 Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, David Rakoff
#025 Cartwheel, Jennifer duBois
#026 The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism, Naoki Higashida
#027 NW, Zadie Smith
#028 The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
#029 The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
#030 Just Kids, Patti Smith
#031 Who Do You Think You Are?, Alice Munro
#032 Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
#033 This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Díaz
#034 A Person of Interest, Susan Choi

FOREWORD

My goal for 2013? Not merely to read a lot of books, but more specifically to read a lot of books by women.

This goal is not meant to have any grand ideological motivation behind it. I was simply feeling bothered by how disproportionately male all the books I've read seem to be, and this seemed like an easy way to begin to rectify that imbalance.

I am not going to hold myself to female exclusivity; rather, I am aiming merely to maintain at least a two-thirds majority throughout the year, which I think will keep me well enough on target while still allowing me the necessary flexibility to accommodate books I have to read, recommendations from friends, book club selections, and, of course, flights of whimsy. I am also not going to hold myself to making sure I definitely get through 75 books. It's a nice number to aim for, and I generally like arbitrarily set benchmarks, but it does seem like a lot, and I'd rather ensure the quality than the quantity of my reading.

I foresee this goal having many benefits. In particular, I am looking forward to finally getting around to reading a lot of excellent classics that I've somehow missed (all of Austen, Middlemarch, and the Brontës, to name a few), revisiting some female authors that I have read and loved (especially Woolf), and most importantly, discovering some new authors and books!

And with that, let the dames begin!

FULL REVIEWS

#001 Fun Home, Alison Bechdel || January 11

What a way to start off the year! Alison Bechdel's graphic novel memoir of her father and the complex relationship they shared is moving, erudite, and simply remarkable. Admittedly, some of my adoration was derived from the story's frequent parallels to facts about my own white, over-educated, small town New England upbringing, but Fun Home's appeal is hardly idiosyncratic. Bechdel masterfully weaves a compelling mnemonic narrative, using the medium to full effect, rearranging and reimagining her entire life of experience in an effort to better understand the man who was her father. This is easily one of the best graphic novels I've ever read, and an even better memoir. Recommended to all.

#002 Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, Alison Bechdel || January 13

This was definitely a strong book taken on its own, but it was hard for me not to read it in light of its thematic partner, Bechdel's previous work Fun Home, which I happened to have read just before this, and which, in my opinion, Are You My Mother? pales in comparison to. I am not quite sure what didn't do it for me this time. Perhaps it was this book's new emphasis on psychoanalysis, which transformed Bechdel's superb gift at mnemonic rearrangement into a seeming neurosis. Perhaps it was this book's looser focus, though this was reasonable, given the still-in-progress state of Bechdel's relationship with her mother. Or perhaps this book just seemed too inwardly directed. It was Bechdel's physical and emotional remove from her father---her inability to ever fully understand him, because she was not him---that made Fun Home so fantastic. Are You My Mother? all but unites subject and object, and the result, though stunning and moving and artful, just didn't quite reach the heights of the previous work for me.

#003 Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson || January 14

A stunning novel in verse which, like all great poetry, demands to be reread again and again. The back cover characterizes Autobiography of Red as "erudite yet accessible", and I cannot think of a more apt or laudatory description. Though I have to admit to not being entirely enraptured by the story, Carson's writing is full of moments of brilliance, and her reimagining of the Geryon myth is stunning without ever sliding into gimmickry. And though the book certainly had extra appeal for a classicist like me, I feel that it can most definitely be enjoyed by any reader whatsoever.

#004 The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin || January 18

This was my favourite book when I was 9, but it wasn't until this year that I decided to pick it up again. Not surprisingly, it was very easy for my adult self to get sucked into its light, entertaining murder mystery (I'm as into mystery now as I was as a child), and I really appreciated the mystery's high emphasis on wordplay (another lifelong love of mine). But what I was really struck by was the novel's seeming anti-capitalist subtext; just consider: "Uncle Sam" offers a socio-ethnic hodgepodge the promise of amazing wealth, if only they can win at his little game. Players are encouraged to work independently, even against each other, and to focus on "not what you have, but what you don't have". And as it turns out, the game is hardly fair, and not meant to be won by anyone in any straightforward fashion. Rather, only the shrewdest player, the one who's able to deconstruct the game's rules and keep all its secrets to herself, comes away with the windfall, while the others receive modest, arbitrarily acquired sums, from which they must squeeze out every penny. America the Beautiful, indeed.

#005 Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Roger Scruton || January 22

This is the first book I've read this year by a man, but Tristan und Isolde is coming to Toronto next week and I needed to prepare. Thankfully, this book was the perfect preparation. Death-Devoted Heart is an astounding study of Wagner's classic opera---part musical analysis, part literary criticism, and part philosophical tract. As such, it's also a very difficult book, requiring a fairly advanced knowledge of (or at least tolerance for) music theory, comparative literature, and the finer points of German philosophy. However, if you do feel comfortable with these various areas, Scruton is the perfect guide, and presents an all-encompassing interpretation of Tristan that is both eye-opening and level-headed. (It's all the more impressive that he accomplishes this in a book, without any accompanying audio.) Though I wasn't completely won over by the book's presentation or Scruton's style, I was very persuaded by his views, both musical and philosophical. In short, Death-Devoted Heart is a book I am sure I will be returning to again and again, both for its insight into Wagner and his music, and for its unparalleled discussion of erotic love.

#006 On Beauty, Zadie Smith || January 31

On Beauty is marvelous fiction. Though it may seem to be a novel about Big Ideas –– race, politics, love, &ct. –– its real appeal lies in Smith's consistent and extraordinary ability to perfectly yet novelly articulate life. More than anything else, it is this observational acuity that draws the reader in and propels the novel forward –– and compensates for its "flaws": its contrived plot, its neglect of certain characters, its lack of any strong message (not actually a bad thing). The book's major players are vile and/or pitiable, yet Smith's honest portrayals ensure that they are, first and foremost, human. And therein lies On Beauty's true strength: not as a scathing piece of social satire (it isn't), nor as a repository of contemporary commentary (which, if it is, it is only incidentally), but as a beautiful depiction of a small sliver of human life. Plus, it's damn entertaining.

Make no mistakes: On Beauty is far from all you could want out of a novel. Yet it has so much, and so much of the most important and rarest things, and that's what makes it such an exquisite work.

#007 On Beauty and Being Just, Elaine Scarry || February 2

While I enjoyed some of the specific points Scarry made over the course of this short essay---beauty's momentum toward replication, the aliveness beauty creates in the beholder and the beheld---I was disappointed by the work as a whole, and felt that she never really managed to establish her point that the relation between beauty and justice is more than a mere analogy. Not a bad book for what it is, but nothing I would recommend to others.

#008 The Lost Daughter, Elena Ferrante || February 5

The Lost Daughter is an intriguing, if not quite enthralling, read. Its prose is direct and its story simple, but beneath this placid surface is a dark psychological undercurrent that suffuses the story with a disorienting and disturbing uncanniness.

In simplest terms, The Lost Daughter is a meditation on womanhood and motherhood. The protagonist and narrator is a 48-year-old woman, physically separated and emotionally estranged from her two twentysomething daughters, though still deeply defined by the relationship she had and still has with them. As the story progresses, the reader is told more and more about the narrator's past, and made to feel the psychological torment that being a mother and being a woman has caused her. Simultaneously, the narrator is relating her interactions with a family she encounters while on vacation, all of whom she can't help but view through her own personally clouded lens.

This synopsis may make the book sound like a thriller, but there is nothing sensational to its story: no plot twists, no grand conflicts, no unsolved mysteries. But The Lost Daughter does have the same eerieness and captivation often found in thrillers, expressed in its intense psychological portrait of a woman.

Nonetheless, I was not entirely won over by this novel. Occasionally the narration was a little too explicit, spelling everything out for the reader. At other times the level of description just fell flat. But overall, I was left with the impression that though Ferrante is certainly a competent author, The Lost Daughter is perhaps not her best work. I look forward to reading something else of hers in the near future.

#009 Exit Wounds, Rutu Modan || February 6

Though I very much enjoyed the artistic style of Exit Wounds, I was less impressed by its story. Its characters were admirably believable and sympathetically portrayed, but something about its plot struck me as a little too far-fetched. Or perhaps I just wished the story could be longer.

Which is to say: Exit Wounds is not a bad graphic novel by any means; I guess I just feel that I've read better.

#010 The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy || February 24

It is never fair to begin a review of one book by comparing it to another---especially when the two books are not in intrinsically related, and even more especially when the two books were published in the same year, such that neither was written in light of the other---but there is simply no better to sum up Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado than by saying it is like Breakfast at Tiffany's if Breakfast at Tiffany's were told from Holly's perspective and set in Paris instead of New York.

This description will also probably give one a pretty good indication of how much they'll enjoy the book. If you've always been enamoured with Capote's Holly Golightly, you'll be equally enamoured with Dundy's Sally Jay Gorce; but if, on the other hand, you're irritated by such flightly, incorrigible types, well you're not going to be any less irritated by Sally Jay.

I, however, am firmly in the former camp, and relished The Dud Avocado for that reason. Sally Jay is a wonderful character to get to know, and the first-person narration offers an intimacy and closeness you never get with Holly Golightly. This has its pluses and its minuses, of course; part of what makes Holly so appealing throughout Capote's work is her distance and the feeling that she's always out of reach, and the third-person perspective of Breakfast at Tiffany's works to emphasize that. With The Dud Avocado, that sense of intrigue and mystery is lost, and regrettably so. Yet how tantalizing to have that veil be lifted!

Unfortunately, the plot of The Dud Avocado is wretchedly overwrought and contrived, and I ended up wishing the second two parts of the book never got written. (This is also a problem for Breakfast at Tiffany's, of course, but nowhere near as severe.) Indeed, most of the charm of the novel can be gotten from the first chapter alone. Nonetheless, that first chapter is so good, and the character of Sally Jay so unforgettable, that I can't dismiss the book outright. Though far from a perfect novel, there's something very special about The Dud Avocado, and something worth checking out.

#011 Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, Yoko Ogawa || March 1

I was very excited to pick up this latest Yoko Ogawa novel in translation, having been a big fan of Hotel Iris and The Diving Pool. Yet although Revenge offers more of Ogawa's signature sparse, haunting prose, it never quite reached the same heights as her other two books for me. The eleven loosely connected stories in this collection are all a bit too short to really stand on their own, but also do not really come together to form some bigger narrative, either. I still look forward to future Ogawa translations, but unless you're a serious devotee, Revenge is probably not a must-read.

Side note: Do not be misled by this book's packaging. Revenge is not some violent psychological thriller, or even particularly about revenge (its original title translates roughly to "Silent Corpse, Improper Burial"). It's dark and macabre, to be sure, but it's overall tone is one of understatement, not shock.

#012 The Rehearsal, Eleanor Catton || March 5

This is a really, really fantastic novel, beautifully written and keenly observed, and all the more astounding for being the author's debut.

In my opinion, what makes The Rehearsal so good is how it takes an all-too-familiar premise---a high school sex scandal between teacher and student---and presents it from an perspective that is entirely unorthodox. Absent are the explorations of the victim's psychological damage, or the revelations of the criminal's dark past. Rather, the sex scandal of The Rehearsal is presented as an object of envy among the other girls at the school, and as an occasion for their sexual awakening. Told through a series of short, temporally disjoint episodes, the novel unfolds in unexpected ways, avoiding the common high school stereotypes, while still presenting a narrative that feels real and true.

The Rehearsal is not the most ambitious novel, nor is it all that earth-shattering in its message. Yet it is meticulously crafted and refreshingly original---which, I guess, is enough for me.

#013 Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn || March 31

So the good news is that Gone Girl is a fantastic thriller, entirely as unputdownable as everybody says it is. Though by no means perfect (most of the side characters are cartoonish caricatures; 50 or 100 pages could probably have been trimmed off), the novel stands apart because the murder plot is really just a backdrop, an occasion for Flynn to delve into the psychology (and psychosis) of romantic relationships. Yes, you'll keep reading it because of the usual "whodunnit" reasons, but for me at least, the real enjoyment of the novel came from getting to know the protagonists and understand how they tick.

The bad news, however, is that, despite being a novel that so consciously flips the standard "wife killer" suspense thriller paradigm on its head, Gone Girl ultimately ends up falling into the same genre tropes it rails against, especially in its second act. What makes Amy such an attractive villain in the first half of the book is that she seems to have a legitimate complaint against Nick and the male oppression she's suffered, and she, unlike so many others, is actually doing something about it, and something entirely uncompromising. Yet when she starts to trip up in the second half of the book, she turns back into the demure, helpless "standard female character" that she so consciously refuses to be earlier on: she is easily overpowered by a couple strangers, she no longer even considers retaliating or taking revenge on them later, and instead she simply runs into the arms of the nearest man who can provide for her (and who, as it happens, turns out to be a psycho rapist). The really disturbing part, however, is that what the reader is supposed to feel through all this is, it seems, some sort of schadenfreude, some sort of sick pleasure is discovering that Amy is just as weak as the sexist female stereotype she initially opposed. We are supposed to delight in her assault, her downfall, her rape. And that is, simply put, not okay.

Gone Girl, for the most part, is a novel about playing with our expectations, about shaking us out of the standard voyeurism trafficked in by so much pulp fiction. So when it ends up glorifying that very same voyeurism and asking us to participate in it halfway through, this should give us pause. But maybe I'm overthinking things. Maybe Gone Girl should be treated as a beach read and nothing more -- and in that respect at least, it's really quite good.

#014 Red Doc>, Anne Carson || April 15

Earlier this year, I read Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red for the first time and loved it (see my review further up in this thread). So it was a great joy (and surprise) when I learned that this book's sequel (of sorts) was set to come just months later (though admittedly, it has been 15 years since the publication of Autobiography).

As others have noted, Red Doc> is strikingly different from Autobiography -- darker, less lyrical, somehow even more opaque. The ecstasy of love that permeated the pages of Autobiography has been replaced with the pain of existence. But the more sombre tone fits the more sombre subject matter: life (or lack thereof) after myth. If this doesn't sound like much fun, you'd be right, and you'd do well to avoid the book. But if you know what you're getting into and want to get into it, Carson is a more than capable guide.

The plot of Red Doc> is meandering and confusing at the best of times, and I'm not going to pretend that I actually understood this novel in verse. But there is something undeniably engrossing and bewitching about it. Carson's poetry has always been the main draw of her work, and though the language of Red Doc> doesn't sparkle or shine, it does exert an ineffable force on its reader -- a pull that will be drawing me back and back again in the future for sure.

#015 The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook, Eleanor Davis || April 16

Why am I reading a children's comic book about grade-school inventors going on wacky adventures and stopping a grumpy scientist-thief? Because Eleanor Davis's The Secret Science Alliance is, simply put, an outstanding graphic novel: charming, exciting, and perfectly told. The characters exude personality while still being relatable. The story is well paced and tightly structured. And most importantly, Davis uses the graphic novel medium to perfect effect, using a varied panelling style to mirror the varied action, and doing the whole thing in a wonderfully clear visual voice, filling each page an astounding amount of detail and humour, without ever cluttering and losing the reader. This is precisely the book I wished I had as a kid -- though I still more than appreciate it as an adult.

#016 White Teeth, Zadie Smith || April 25

White Teeth is a fantastic début -- expansive, addictive, rollicking, uncompromising, heartfelt. On the one hand, it is a novel about everything: ethnicity, identity, colonialism, history, religion, and a whole lot more. Yet Smith manages to keep all these Big Issues under control by artfully uniting them under the single dichotomy of randomness vs. regulation, or chance vs. choice, and it is this singularity of vision that holds the novel together across its numerous decades and many characters, and ultimately allows White Teeth to talk intelligently and movingly about some of the most difficult and ineffable things to talk about.

That is what made the novel fantastic in my opinion; yet as I said before, White Teeth is a fantastic début, and for me, it never quite escaped that label. Which is to say, for all its ambition, White Teeth still shows the signs of a first novel, and ended up seeming a little bit too ambitious. Smith's many strengths are certainly on display here, but so are some of her weaknesses. The pace is uneven at points, certain sections work better than others, and not all of the main characters are equally well portrayed.

Admittedly, these are extremely petty complaints. White Teeth is easily better than countless other novels, and I have no regrets for having read it. But it could be better, and what's more, Zadie Smith has actually gotten better. (On Beauty is, in my opinion, an astounding improvement; I haven't read NW yet, but I very much look forward to picking it up now.) So read White Teeth, enjoy White Teeth, but don't expect the world from it.

#017 Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, Lucy Knisley || May 8

This is a wonderful little graphic novel memoir on food and growing up. Knisley's drawing style is clean and enjoyable, and she does a really good job expressing her deep-seated love for food and the role that food's played in every aspect of her life. Like any memoir, Relish is limited in its scope, but this limitation is offset by the personal nature of its narrative.

And yes, reading this book will make you hungry. There's just so many drawings of food!

#018 Hotel World, Ali Smith || May 16

Hotel World is a fairly accessible non-traditional novel, deploying various techniques of modernist fiction without ever completely overwhelming the reader or collapsing into empty formalism. Its six distinct parts, with their six distinct literary voices, each offer a distinct take on the phenomenology of memory and experience. More than introducing us to their different protagonists, or to their different perspectives on the same situation, each part introduces us to a different way in which we engage with and make sense of the world around us.

However, I was never really gripped by the novel's actual story, and this lack of emotional connection ultimately kept the book from being something greater for me. I really like what Smith was up to in this novel -- I just wasn't ever all that swept away by how she did it.

#019 The Other Typist, Suzanne Rindell || May 27

I did not enjoy this book. Though its first chapter bursts with charm and intrigue (and immediately had me hooked), the rest of the book failed to deliver on this promise, and quickly devolved into tedious and unremarkable pulp. Riddell's writing is sloppy, repeatedly repeating the obvious to the reader. The narrative voice is irritating and without sufficient appeal. The setting of the 1920s indulges in the worst sort of false nostalgia (flappers! speakeasies! gangsters!). And the mystery that is meant to propel the plot forward is slight and just barely enough to keep you reading. But most importantly, the novel feels like a missed opportunity, as it fails to cash in on on its most promising elements -- namely, the rare occasions when it seems the story might have something interesting to say about the issues of gender and feminism. As it is, The Other Typist is not quite gripping enough to be a good thriller, and yet not quite insightful enough to be a good read.

#020 How To Host a Dinner Party, Corey Mintz || May 30

In a show of bad table manners, I devoured this book. Never have I found any other piece of writing that has so eloquently and straightforwardly expressed everything I think, believe, and feel about dinner parties: their joy, their purpose, their proper execution. To some, the dinner party may seem a frivolous and unnecessary occasion for a tract, but Mintz understands their true potential, and knows exactly what needs to be done to tap into it. Throughout the book, Mintz's advice is level-headed, down-to-earth, and unpretentious -- just like any good dinner should be.

The book is a very quick read (thus making it a bit overpriced at $20), but that's more a testament to Mintz's clear and pleasurable style, which deals with its subject matter with admirable precision and brevity. How To Host a Dinner Party teaches you exactly what its title announces, which turns out not to be a very complicated topic -- yet uncomplicated things can often be, by their very simplicity, complicated to write on and explain well. But that's precisely what Mintz has done with this book, and for that he deserves much praise.

#021 Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel || July 28

Wolf Hall is, in many ways, an outstanding accomplishment. It takes one of the most well-known and well-trodden narratives in English history – the reign of King Henry VIII – and makes it feel fresh, exciting, and real. Like any good author of historical fiction, Mantel is carefully (almost pedantically) faithful to the historical record and period setting, but her true talent lies in what she does within these limits: namely, her subtle and deeply believable portrayals of all the various players in her story. What we end up is a novel that reads more like a classic of realist fiction than a retelling of a historical event.

Wolf Hall is particularly notable for its characterization of Thomas Cromwell, the novel's protagonist and almost literal backbone (he appears in every single scene of the 650-page work). In Mantel's hands, Cromwell is portrayed as the demiurgic orchestrator of all of England's affairs, rising from the humblest of origins to become Henry's right-hand man. And yet, in Mantel's hands, Cromwell comes off neither as an egoist, nor as a pure schemer, nor even as a dutiful citizen and servant to his king. Rather – or so I felt, reading the book – Cromwell is driven by a sort of selfless individualism, an unflagging commitment not to let himself be held back by the accidents of his birth and upbringing. Without a doubt, he succeeds in his task through cunning and craft, but this is cunning and craft that he's earned and worked hard for, and that's what makes it, and Cromwell, so admirable. Indeed, this deep-seated devotion to the actualization of his full potential makes Cromwell appear as a sort of model for the modern man: someone freed from the ideological shackles of religion, monarchy, and decorum, and yet not so naïve as to plunge himself into the equally false idols of atheism, revolution, and anarchy, either.

Nonetheless, I must admit that Wolf Hall always felt like a bit of slog. Not only is the book long, but the writing is dense, and I never quite connected with Mantel's prose stylings. The narrative definitely picks up after the first half, and by the end of the book I was pretty well hooked, but that's still a lot of build-up to get through at first. However, I am very much looking forward to embarking on its sequel, Bring Up The Bodies, and its to-be-released threequel, The Mirror and The Light, after that.

#022 The (Uncensored) Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde || August 26

The Picture of Dorian Gray is an irresistible novel for someone like me. It just has so many of the things I most dearly adore: fin-de-siècle Decadence, eros, Dandyism, extended meditations on the nature of Beauty -- and all of these brimming with Wilde's signature wit. It's not a perfect novel by any means, and many parts of its story could be done better, but it is a singular and efficiently rendered tale, and one that every English reader should most certainly get to at some point.

Harvard University Press's publication of The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray not only restores the novel to its purest, most unadulterated form (working off of the original typescript that Wilde sent to his magazine publisher), it also supplies simply one of the best editions of the work currently available. Though lacking the marginal accoutrements of its original hardcover edition, this paperback printing includes the original's fantastic general and textual introductions, a selection of its notes, and is handsomely typeset besides. The text itself is identical to the hardcover's, and of course version provides the best insight into Wilde's original vision of the work and intended treatment of its themes (if you're into that sort of thing). And don't fear: it is not some mere scholarly trifle: The Uncensored Picture is a stunning novel even if you haven't read any of the other versions -- as, indeed, was the case with me.

#023 Night Film, Marisha Pessl || September 5

Night Film is a bloated, poorly written thriller with an intriguing premise but dreadful execution. The novel revolves around an enigmatic film director (part Lynch, part Kubrick, part Charles Manson) and his equally mysterious daughter, whose apparent suicide at the start of the book sets a ragtag gang of amateur detectives off on a sprawling wild goose chase for the truth. The director and his daughter are fascinating characters, and keep the mystery of the novel moving, but the rest of the story is weighed down by its actual protagonists, who are unsympathetic, unbelievable, and simply uninteresting. This is especially true of the novel's main character, a down-on-his-luck journalist who is smug to the point of irritation, cares about no one but himself, and has a seemingly bottomless wallet of bribe money ever at hand, despite being out of work for months. And insofar as the reader is unsympathetic to his character, the reader can never really become absorbed in the mystery, since his megalomaniacal pursuit of the truth is so purely self-interested – which is made all the worse by the fact that this pursuit is drawn out over 600 pages of largely unnecessary side plots, false leads, and red herrings.

These problems would be damning enough on their own, but on top of all this Pessl's writing is atrocious, inept, even laughable at points. She treats every new plot point as if it were some big dramatic reveal, casting every new observation in italics. Because italics make everything more suspenseful. If anyone ever references something from earlier in the novel, expect to be reminded immediately of exactly what that thing was, and to be reminded in italics. If the protagonist draws even the simplest of inferences, expect to be told immediately of this conclusion, and to be told like this.

So I can't really recommend Night Film at all. Despite the genuine intrigue of its premise, all that potential is squandered by poor plotting, characterization, and writing, and it's too long to treat as just some easy beach read. I really don't like not liking books, but for me Night Film read like nothing more than an exercise in how not to write a novel.

#024 Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, David Rakoff || September 5

Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die,
Cherish, Perish: A Novel by
David Rakoff is quite the treat:
Tender and moving, though bittersweet.
Penned on the eve of the author's passing,
It fastens on victims of harassing,
Hate, misfortune, spite, remorse,
AIDS, dementia, and divorce.
And yet, shining life through this vile prism,
Rakoff wallows not in nihilism,
Rendering all sorrow with compassion
(And in a most poetic fashion),
He makes mean existence seem a bit more nice.
So reader, please, take my advice:
Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die,
Cherish, Perish you should buy.

#025 Cartwheel, Jennifer duBois || September 11

I thoroughly enjoyed Cartwheel, from beginning to end. Though it may seem, on the surface, like a fairly standard police procedural, it slowly reveals itself to be something much greater, more a meditation on the inescapable subjectivity of perception and experience than a simple murder mystery whodunnit.

The story is told through four different perspectives – that of the suspect, her father, her prosecutor, and her lover – and jumps back and forth between them, and across different times, from chapter to chapter. This technique not only keeps the action moving forward, but also serves to highlight how deeply influenced each character's understanding of the crime is by their own past, even as new facts present themselves. By the end of the book, the question is less about who did it or what happened, but more about how we can ever be sure of who did it, or that someone whom we know and care about didn't (even ourselves).

The novel's prose is smart and efficient throughout, though not quite what I'd call superb. duBois' main gift is her deep understanding of the book's various characters, and of how these characters understand each other. Yet sometimes she tries to be a bit too reductively zeitgeist-y about everything, portraying her characters as all in their own way representatives of the present moment. Such thoughts were sure to cross her characters' minds from time to time, no doubt – but the frequency with which they come up struck me as a bit unbelievable, or at least grating. The prose also stutters a bit from duBois' GRE-prep vocabulary – which I say not as a philistine, but because it ends up making the narrative voice for all the characters too similar, and belies the very different people they actually are.

Jennifer duBois admits from the get-go that Cartwheel's plot is inspired by the real-life story of Amanda Knox, and other reviewers on this site have complained that it is a little too inspired, verging on duplication. Now, I had never heard of Amanda Knox before reading this book, so I am perhaps not one to judge, but this criticism seems to me misplaced. Yes, Cartwheel's plot and cast are very much ripped from the headlines, and yes, if you're familiar with its source material you will know how it's going to end, but as I said before, I do not believe duBois' aim was to tell a good ol' whodunnit. Rather, duBois exploits the genre and the facts she's working with to convey a deeper message – and for that, she should be applauded, and Cartwheel.should be read.

#026 The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism, Naoki Higashida || September 13

David Mitchell is one of my favourite contemporary authors, and it was his name that initially caught my attention and drew me to The Reason I Jump – which, of course, is not a new Mitchell novel, but a translation he did along with his wife of a Japanese book published in 2006 written by a thirteen-year-old Japanese boy with autism. The book is basically exactly what it advertises itself as being ("a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine"), and proceeds mostly by a series of questions and answers about how autistic people act and experience the world. As Mitchell notes in his introduction, the memoir's distinction and virtue lies in how it provides a present-tense first-person view of the autistic mind, which in turn provides some of the most enlightening information for those of us without autism trying to make sense of the autistic mind from the outside.

The book is a quick and light read, but it is touching and eye-opening throughout (and I say this even as someone who has not dealt closely with autistic people). If you are at all intrigued by the description, then I wholeheartedly recommend The Reason I Jump. It's everything it promises to be.

#027 NW, Zadie Smith || September 18

NW never really did it for me. This came as a major disappointment, given how thoroughly I enjoyed Smith's prior works, White Teeth and On Beauty. Granted, these prior experiences set my expectations for NW pretty high, but I had complete confidence that these were expectations Smith would meet... which made it all the more disappointing when she did not.

So what went wrong? Really, everything I have to say about the novel has already been said, and better expressed, by Michiko Kakutani in her New York Times review of the book, so you might as well go read that if you're looking for more specific details. But to summarize: In NW, Smith forgoes the grandiose saga-telling of her earlier novels and adopts a more intimate, up-close perspective and a more piecemeal, modernist style. This is nothing bad in itself; however, the style just doesn't seem to suit Smith. Her trademark humour, poetry, and keen observation are missing from NW, or at least much less present; the novel's characters are thinner, and their problems less relatable. Of course, it was not without reason that Smith chose to reel in her previous style (repetition gets stale quickly, after all). But in the case of NW, less did not turn out to be more, but was simply, and disappointingly, just less.

All the same, I still have confidence that Smith will bounce back with her next novel, or perhaps the novel after that, and produce something oncee again more to my liking. Or perhaps I will eventually come around to NW, with more time. I appreciate seeing Smith evolve and challenge herself as a writer, and I do not demand that she stick to her earlier ways; I just believe she can do better than NW. I look forward to reading that book when she does.

#028 The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton || October 8

The Luminaries is a marvelously told tale and d__n near perfectly written novel: terrifically imagined, meticulously plotted, and fastidiously described. Nary a sentence feels forced, and nary a page drags (and it's got 832 of them). It is, in a word, the single best piece of literary entertainment I have ever read, a rollicking mystery starring a cast of richly portrayed characters and set in the intriguing world of 19th-century gold-rush New Zealand.

And yet: For a book of all its heft, The Luminaries felt, in the end, strangely empty. It is deceptive how easily this novel strings you along, without you even noticing that you don't really care about any of its characters (as much as you take pleasure in all of them), or that there never really seems to be a central conflict (beyond the desire to discover the truth), or that there is no moral or philosophical lesson to any of this.

And yet: The novel seems almost to play into this conceit. As it presents itself, The Luminaries is a record of astrologically preordained events: characters' personalities mirror their star signs, and their interactions mirror the movement of the heavens. That is, this is a world of fate – and in such a world there can be no agency, no truly self-guided actions. So perhaps the novel's apparent vacuity is no accident. Perhaps, in its fictional world, that is the best it can do.

And yet: In actuality, of course, it is Catton's demiurgic hand that is truly at work here. After all, the novel is the product of her design, not the result of some celestial influence. And this is where the real brilliance of The Luminaries shines through. What Catton has given us is a novel so meticulously arranged that it nearly forces us to see it as all predetermined. However, if we give in and read the story as fated, the book seems to be missing something we want and would normally expect. And, on the other hand, if we resist and do not read it as such, we end up denying that it is what it is – a masterfully crafted work. In other words, The Luminaries is fiction that wears its fictionality on its sleeve, or rather, perhaps, fiction for fiction's sake. It reminds us that literature is always artificial, prearranged, and in that sense fatalistic – and reminds of everything fiction can still be in spite of this.

That being said, if I had to choose between The Luminaries and some more traditional "big novel", which (however falsely) purported to limn some aspect of the real world or of actual experience, I'd probably ultimately opt for the latter. Which is to say, though I'd recommend The Luminaries to just about anyone, it is not a novel that I'm going to rush to read again. Nonetheless, with this and and her first novel The Rehearsal, Catton has established herself beyond a doubt as one of today's most gifted and exciting novelists, and I look forward to reading everything she still has yet to write.

(And if you're interested to read more about The Luminaries, check out this fantastic review piece in The Guardian.)

#029 The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion || October 15

There is not much I can say about The Year of Magical Thinking that hasn't already been said. It is difficult. It is fantastic. It is deeply sad, in the way that any honest novel about death must be. It is uncompromisingly personal, also in the way that any honest novel about death must be. And it is a book I know I will be turning to again and again, in my own times of tragedy – not because it provides any real counsel or advice (it doesn't), but because of its rawness, candor, and veracity, and its vivid and unforgettable expression of just what grief in all its gruesome detail amounts to.

#030 Just Kids, Patti Smith || October 22

There is much about Just Kids to recommend it: its autobiography of Patti Smith's youth; its biography of the same period in Robert Mapplethorpe's life; its vivid account of the art scene in late-sixties/early-seventies New York; and its portrait of the artist as a young woman, the blossoming of her talent, and the birth of punk rock. But for me, the most remarkable aspect of this memoir was its beautiful and candid portrayal of Smith and Mapplethorpe's relationship, which embodied a kind of love that is rarely captured in literature (or art more generally), because it defies all our customary categories and descriptions. Experiencing such love is rare enough in itself; but rendering it in words as Smith does here is an astounding achievement, and one that everyone should have the pleasure to read for themselves.

#031 Who Do You Think You Are?, Alice Munro || November 17

This is a fantastic short story collection, and a striking exhibition of Munro's remarkable talent. The book's ten stories all revolve around a single main character, but should not be confused for ten chapters of a novel. Rather, the stories feel more like a selection of snapshots of a single life, with plenty of empty space left in between. That is, what we find in this book is not any grand story arc, but rather acute observations of a person at various moments in her life. It is a powerful fictional medium, and one in which Munro excels.

The stories I enjoyed most were "Mischief", "Providence", "Simon's Luck", and the titular "Who Do You Think You Are?"... but that probably says more about me and my penchant for Munro's portrayals of love than about the stories' own merits. Really, it feels like this collection, like life, has something in it for everyone. Every reader would do well to pick up this book and see what they find.

#032 Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose || November 27

Reading Like a Writer is a enjoyable read, chock full of good advice and even better examples. I appreciated Prose's distaste for universal rules and principles, and her "show don't tell" method of demonstrating what makes for good writing. All in all, this book just made me feel excited to read more, and better equipped to more deeply appreciate what I do. So, in this regard, I guess it achieved its aim fairly well.

I did wish, however, that Prose also included some examples of writing gone wrong, alongside her countless examples of writing done well. Admittedly, she is explicit about wanting to avoid this (saying that aspiring writers get enough negative criticism as it is in workshops), but it seemed to me that she could've made some of her points more effectively (or that I would've understood them better, at least) with the aid of some contrastive evidence.

Still, this book is a stirring testament to what good writing can be and accomplish. (Plus, it's a goldmine of recommended reading.) Though probably not a book that every passionate reader need own, it is at least a book that every passionate should borrow and eventually read.

#033 This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Díaz || December 1

This Is How You Lose Her was my first exposure to Díaz, and I came away from the book feeling very impressed. Díaz is a skilled short story writer, with a style that is at once jarringly poetic and resoundingly colloquial. Even as a reader with virtually no knowledge of Spanish, I was absorbed and enthralled by the book's language, and rarely if ever felt left in the dark.

The nine stories of this collection all deal, more or less, with the awful ways in which men treat women (romantically, domestically, and sexually) – but more importantly, they explore the background social forces which perpetuate this behavior, and the real difficulty of breaking free from them. On the one hand, this leads to a collection of stories in which people (most often, the book's quasi-protagonist, Yunior) generally act in horrible, unlikeable ways; but on the other, these are stories which shed light on and help us comprehend why this (very real) sort of behavior exists. So, it's not a particularly uplifting read, but it is insightful, and often moving. The strongest stories in my opinion were "The Pura Principle", "The Cheater's Guide to Love", and "The Sun, the Moon, the Stars", though many other of the stories were quite enjoyable as well. I look forward to reading Díaz's earlier work in the future, and to seeing what Díaz himself writes next.

#034 A Person of Interest, Susan Choi || December 31

From the very first page of A Person of Interest, it is obvious that Susan Choi is an author who loves writing sentences, and also one who is exceedingly good at it. Nearly every sentence of this midsize novel is a miniature work of art, a winding path of coordinate and subordinate clauses, so masterfully paced and punctuated that the reader rarely, if ever, gets lost. Choi's vocabulary is precise and erudite, and her observations entertaining and psychologically acute. The artistry simply spills over every paragraph of every page.

Now, I am a reader who loves reading good sentences, and this made the book a joy for me to read. Furthermore, I am a reader who likes stories about academics. (What can I say, it's a soft spot. As an academic myself, there's a certain thrill of escapism I get from such fictions; this, no doubt, was a big part of why I fell in love with White Noise, and On Beauty, and Stoner, for instance.) In addition, I have a soft spot for mysteries and crime fiction of whatever stripe. So, A Person of Interest, a beautifully written whodunnit starring an aging professor, should be shoo-in for me, right?

Somehow, no. Despite all its merits, the novel just didn't do it for me in the end. Though I was definitely hooked well through the first half of the book, I felt that Choi fumbled things in the second. The main problem was what I'd diagnose as a lack of vision: A Person of Interest just can't seem to decide what it wants itself to be, and thus ends up not having much of substance to say. Though it touches on themes of loss and memory and family and racism, none of these elements ever really come together in a meaningful way. The characters (and especially, the novel's protagonist) are well developed enough, but are not (ironically) particularly interesting, or sufficiently relatable. In other respects, the novel seems like it just wants to be a straightforward mystery; but as a mystery, it is generally limp: predictable, and when not predictable, outlandish.

So, in the end, I feel strangely split between deeply enjoying the book as a piece of writing on the one hand, and feeling deeply disappointed by the book as a piece of fiction on the other. I will definitely be seeking out Choi's other work in the future, but I do not think I will ever return to A Person of Interest, and I will be hoping that her other books not fall prey to the same problems.

SOME SILLY STATISTICS

Percentage of books read by women: 82% (28/34)
Total number of pages read: 10220
Average number of pages per book: 252
Average year of publication: 2001