My favourite books of the year

I'm not saying they're the most literary, or the brainiest - I don't care about that. These are the ones that left me begging for more

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It’s that time of year when the papers are full of books of the year lists that, much like their summer reading lists (Opens in a new window), are bursting with books that look like they’re zero fun to read.  (For more on this, catch up with Milly Johnson (Opens in a new window) on last week’s episode of the podcast.  She has PLENTY to say about the way commercial fiction is sidelined by the bookish establishment – particularly if it’s aimed at women, particularly if it's working class. Anyway...) 

I’m not saying there’s not a place for books about military history and macro economics. There is. It’s just not on my bookshelf.

So here are my favourite books of 2022. They’re not necessarily 'the best' (at the level of the sentence!). I can't guarantee they're all fun (in fact, I can guarantee some of them are very much not), but I loved each and every one of them, in their own ways. And there’s not a book here I wouldn’t buy again and pass on. 

FICTION

This was a bumper year for fiction (let's face it, most years are), so I need to write this quickly before I start changing my mind and trying to add things in. 

I tried (and failed) to choose a fiction book of the year, but a definite contender would be The Old Woman With The Knife by Gu Byeong-Mo (Opens in a new window). Hornclaw is one of those characters you’ll never forget: a 65 year old serial killer on the cusp of retirement (and pretty depressed about it), when she’s sabotaged by a young male upstart she decides she’s not about to allow herself to be erased quite so easily. A gripping thriller that's unlike anything else I've ever read, but also a laser-focussed analysis of society’s stinking attitude to ageing women. In the spirit of changing the narrative, Notes On An Execution by Danya Kukafka (Opens in a new window)makes us question the traditional serial-killer-worshipping narrative by looking at it from a different perspective. Ansel Packer is a serial killer on death row. He has 12 hours to go. So what? This is not his story. Instead it's told through the eyes of three women impacted by his crimes: the detective, the mother, the sister-in-law. In a world where an industry has grown up around the likes of Ted Bundy (to whom Packer bears more than a passing resemblance), this turns that on its head.

On a slightly lighter note, Monica Ali’s big-hearted Love Marriage (Opens in a new window) is the story of not one but two love marriages. (As opposed to arranged marriages.) The imminent nuptials of Yasmin Ghorami and Joe Sangster and that of Yasmin’s parents, whose love marriage is the stuff of family legend. But when Yasmin’s seemingly traditional parents and Joe’s outspoken feminist mother meet, the stories on which both families are built start to unravel. Ali credits Jane Austen as a massive influence, well here she gives her a run for her money. More family chaos comes in the shape of Fight Night by Miriam Toews (Opens in a new window). And when I say chaos, I mean CHAOS in the form of three generations of fighting women living under one small Canadian roof. Grandma's health is deteriorating, mom is heavily pregnant and running low on just about everything, while nine-year-old Swiv has been suspended from school (after taking Grandma Elvira's advice on fighting to heart). Now she's being homeschooled by Grandma and generally being her wing-kid, as Elvira tries to instil the fighting spirit for which the family is known. I can’t remember the last time I laughed this loud and long on public transport. All hail Swiv and Grandma Elvira!

I'm far from the first to sing the praises of Bonnie Garmus’ debut Lessons In Chemistry (Opens in a new window), so I’ll just say this: if you don’t love scientist-turned-reluctant-TV-chef Elizabeth Zott by the end of this book, you have no heart, no sense of humour, no anything! (And if you still need convincing, Garmus decided to write this after having her ideas nicked by some bloke at work one too many times. Sound familiar?!)

If you’ve been feeling unfulfilled ever since you turned the last page on Maggie O’Farrell’s scene stealing Hamnet last year, The Marriage Portrait (Opens in a new window)will put you out of your misery. Based on the short life of Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, the subject of Robert Browning’s poem, My Last Duchess, in which a duke pulls back a curtain to reveal his wife’s portrait while recounting how he murdered her, this is a gloriously compelling historical mystery (also, as it happens, told from the victim's point of view).

Starting to spot a theme? (That is entirely unintentional, but maybe this has been a year of women starting to rewrite some historical wrongs...) Jenni Fagan’s Hex (Opens in a new window) takes a look at the life of another wronged woman: Geillis Duncan, a young maidservant who was convicted of witchcraft in 16th century Scotland's North Berwick witch trials. There’s no shortage of witch books around this year but Fagan’s beautiful, rage-filled prose is intoxicating.

Equally magical, The Queens of Sarmiento park by Camila Sosa Villada (Opens in a new window)will take you on a trip to Auntie Encarna’s. The queerest boarding house in the world, it’s a refuge for the queens who gather in Sarmiento Park to earn money the only way that’s available to them. Then Auntie Encarna finds a baby in the bushes and decides it’s time to realise her dream of motherhood. A magic realist queer fairy tale and celebration of trans life.

A late addition to this round up (it was published at the start of the year, but I only got around to reading it the other day and it went straight into the top ten with a bullet...) Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield (Opens in a new window) is part-fairytale, part-horror, part-love story. When Leah returns after a deep sea mission that goes catastrophically wrong, Miri is relieved to have her wife back. But before long she’s starting to wonder who has returned in Leah's place… Shudder.

And last but definitely not never ever least, Marian Keyes’ Again, Rachel (Opens in a new window)(her follow up to her bestselling contemporary classic Rachel’s Holiday) was more than worth the 25 year wait. Rachel is back in rehab (this time as a counsellor), Luke Costello (remember him?!) is back in the country and everything Rachel thought she had sorted in her comfy middle-aged life is up for grabs. For full frontal honesty and all the feels Marian Keyes is the queen.

NON-FICTION

On the non-fiction front, my book of the year absolutely has to be screenwriter Abi Morgan’s heart-wrenching memoir. This Is Not A Pity Memoir (Opens in a new window) is an unputdownable story of tragedy, loss, love, grief, transformation and survival. When Abi’s husband Jake was taken ill and put into a coma for months, she thought that was the worst that could happen to their family… then he woke up and a whole new series of unimaginably painful challenges presented themselves. It will make you sob, it will make you laugh, it will break your heart and then it will put it back together again. I promise. I’ve already bought this book several times. I fully expect to buy it several times more.

Also brilliant but entirely different (let’s just say right now many of these books have virtually nothing in common except they’re not fiction), The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser (Opens in a new window) is a series of frank and funny essays about the often-futile pursuit of love. You will never look at The Philadelphia Story or Kermit the frog the same way again! The Familia Grande by Camille Kouchner (Opens in a new window)is a deceptively slight hand grenade that quite literally blew up the French establishment when it was published. Set in the privileged milieu of the intellectual elite, it’s the story of a family built on secrets and lies – and what happens when one sibling can no longer keep quiet. Very much not slim is Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux’s Getting Lost (Opens in a new window), the diary she kept during her eighteen month affair with a much younger married man in 1980s Paris. She is on the cusp of 50, divorced with two sons and this is a fascinating, raw look at love and desire from inside the perspective of a woman in middle age.

And now for something completely different: Dickens and Prince by Nick Hornby (Opens in a new window) is an ode to two very different kinds of geniuses – a man who couldn’t stop writing and a man who couldn’t stop recording. You might think their similarities stop there, but Hornby argues the two geniuses have more similarities than they have differences. This is wildly original, unputdownable and a brilliant stocking filler. You don't even have to like either of them.

Invisible child by Andrea Elliot (Opens in a new window)is the polar opposite of D&P in all the ways, except it's equally compulsive. Based on almost a decade of reporting in which Andrea Elliot followed Dasani Coates and her family as they moved from shelter to shelter and school to school under the constant monitoring of New York City’s child protection system. It’s a moving story about one child’s fight to prove herself and find her place in a world that has piled up as much as it can against her; a story about family, love and survival; and most of all a thought-provoking analysis of poverty, inequality and the double standards that lie at the heart of American (in fact make that western) societies.

Guardian columnist Marina Hyde has to be one of the few to have benefitted from the last six years of political and economic upheaval. So much material! What Just Happened? (Opens in a new window) is an uproariously funny collection of her most caustic columns since 2016. (Let's call it the year the world broke.) From David Cameron to Boris Johnson, Donald Trump to Gwyneth Paltrow, this is a romp, a roller coaster, a horror show - like Spitting Image on Fentanyl. Except we’ve all lived through it. (One to cause some “lively” conversation round the Christmas table, if you're feeling brave!)

Altogether more sedate, Miranda Seymour’s I Used To Live Here Once (Opens in a new window) is an intimate biography of novelist Jean Rhys, author of the wonderful Wide Sargasso Sea. From the Caribbean of the 1890s to 1920s Paris to post war England, via poverty, drug- and alcohol abuse and mental illness. Like its subject, it is dark, funny, fascinating, uncompromising and brilliant.

Lastly two very different memoirs I absolutely inhaled. Ready For Absolutely Nothing by Susannah Constantine (Opens in a new window) is unexpectedly hilarious. Stuffed with snort-inducing anecdotes you’ll want to read out loud to anyone who’ll listen, it’s also an unflinchingly honest look at her mother’s mental illness, her father’s belief that girls were not worth educating and her own descent in to alcoholism in midlife. But don’t despair! Because the Princess Margaret anecdote will have you howling. And finally, this year’s Matthew McConaughey GreenLights award for the 'celebrity memoir I really didn’t expect to give a toss about but really loved' goes to Matthew Perry for Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing (Opens in a new window). Immensely entertaining, painfully honest and exhaustingly funny (except for the bit where he disses Keanu Reeves. Twice. Heresy!) You might want to treat yourself to a listen on audible.

You'll find a list of all the books I've loved this year at The Shift's bookshop (Opens in a new window) on bookshop.org.

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