(Some of) What I Read in 2023

Or at least, what I can remember. Must keep notes next year!

I'm more than aware that this is not an original idea, but, inspired and intrigued by the lists created by people whose writing I enjoy, I thought I would give it a go. However, when I tried to write my own list, it looked a ridiculous and over-seasoned mush. If I had tried to build one of those arty book towers, like sensible booklovers with Instagram accounts do, it would have fallen on my head and knocked me out. I have to admit that my reading has become obsessional, as if I have just realised that there is only so much time left and everything needs to be read…I read too fast, I don’t keep notes, and I forget more than half of it. But that in no way diminishes the pleasure I get from the occupation, even though I sometimes wonder why I am putting so much pressure on myself.

So this stack will do two things: hopefully it will allow me to get some order, some logic into my experience. Also, I am going to do my best to remember what I really enjoyed this year: I am completely fed up with the pretentious lists compiled in literary reviews, where famous people seem to compete to name the most obscure and unreadable tosh they presumably had the bad luck to be sent to review…with the very honourable exception of

Helen Lewis

in the New Statesman , who I'm delighted to say enjoyed best what I also enjoyed this year, and took delight in saying so.

Current literary fiction

I’m proud to say that I read Ian McEwan’s Lessons, which could probably have done with some judicious pruning ( editors’ ability to cut stuff declines in inverse proportion to the fame of the author) but said something interesting about the choices made by women artists, and about one-parent families.

I also read Demon Copperhead, a modern re-telling of David Copperfield, which I probably did not enjoy as much as I hoped I would: I liked being able to congratulate myself for all the literary references I could spot, but I much prefer Kingsolver’s earlier novels such as Flight Behaviour, or best of all, The Poisonwood Bible. I think I’m a bit squeamish about all the drugs. As my clever daughter pointed out to me: the law of unintended consequences means that American teenagers who are forbidden alcohol become far too comfortable with pill-popping and drug sniffing: give me British teenagers throwing up cheap cider behind the scout hut anyday.

Neither of these compare, in my opinion, to Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, which I absolutely adored and will re-read. I read and re-read Catton’s Booker prizewinner, The Luminaries, and it’s been a long wait for her newest offering. I guess you could call it an eco-thriller? an idealistic group of eco-warriors in New Zealand get suckered into a massive scam by an Elon Musk-alike, with murderous and thrilling consequences. This is my BIG RECOMMEND of 2023.

Bestsellers

If you’ve already clicked on the Helen Lewis link, you’ll know I loved all the latest Richard Osman, Mick Herron and Robert Galbraith novels. Three masters of their craft, I love them all, and am particularly invested in the romance of Strike and Robin, can’t wait for their next adventure. Osman raised the stakes with a shorter novel which dealt sensitively, as I think he always does, with the pains of old age and loss.

Guilty pleasures

When my brain is truly exhausted and can’t cram in another fact without displacing at least three, such as the names of my children or what we are having for dinner, then I turn to historical crime! and this was a great year as several of my favourite writers produced new volumes in series that I love: SG Maclean gave us a satisfying coda to her brilliant Damian Seeker series, The Winter List, and SJ Parris delivered Alchemy, another in the Giordano Bruno series set in the religious conspiracy years of the 1580s and based on a real life character. My googling tells me Bruno will come to a sticky end, but thankfully there can be many more books before we get there! And of course there was Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion, which I enjoyed, but felt slightly guilty: I’m such a Damian Seeker fan, and here I was meant to cheering for the other side! Still, if you want to immerse yourself in Commonwealth and Restoration Britain, these two authors can be your guide. 2024 will see me re-reading the entire Seeker series, I have enjoyed them so much. Good plots, good 17th Century history, but always a heart-wrenching twist at the end.

Classics I should have read before: or I did but had forgotten

Prompted by

Henry Oliver

I dusted down my very elderly copy of Madame Bovary and prepared to give it another go, having taken a viscious dislike to it in my twenties. I have to admit that I am an older, hopefully wiser, and more understanding woman than I was then, but I still found it a deeply uncomfortable read, and I wouldn’t like Emma if I met her in real life. Perhaps Henry will tell me I’m reading a poor translation…

I also felt that I should be tackling some of the more obscure works of writers I adore: Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. Ruth by Gaskell was an absolute revelation, and I thoroughly recommend it if you don’t mind being immersed in the extraordinary world of strict Victorian morality: it’s the story of how a woman is seduced, abandoned, and rescued by a brother and sister who are some of the sweetest characters you could meet. Of course, Gaskell had nothing but trouble from her critics for writing it, and Ruth cannot be allowed to live completely happily ever after, but I loved this book. Daniel Deronda, by Eliot, was slightly harder going. and very much a book of two halves for me: I loved the story of Gwendolen Harleth and her appalling husband: it has prompted me to put A Portrait of a Lady on my list for next year, as from memory there will be interesting comparisons to be made. Deronda, on the other hand, and his struggles with Judaic philosophy, I found a little tough-going - and my earlier comments about editors, sacrilegious though they are, apply equally here. There may have been some skipping…

Finally, I got round to reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and wondered why it had taken me so long. It’s the twist in the tale that made me shout with surprise, waking my sleeping husband, that will live with me, when hopefully yet more horror of drugtaking teenagers has faded.

Persephone Books

This wonderful publisher gets a section all to itself, as it has definitely given me some of my greatest reading pleasure this year. Here are some of the ones I particularly felt compelled to write about on Substack:

Out of the Window by Madeline Linford

The Village by Marganita Laski

Greengates by RC Sheriff

And I’ve just read my first ever Dorothy Whipple novel, They Were Sisters, and she is definitely a novelist who is going to be featuring heavily in my reading in 2024. Why have I never read her before?

I know that I’m going to spend the next week kicking myself for all the wonderful books I’ve forgotten this year, but hopefully there’s something here that you might be tempted to try for yourself. Meanwhile, next week I will see the first page proofs of Literature for the People, and I am probably a little over-excited. But I’m hoping it will feature in at least some of your 2024 reading lists!