Best fiction I read in 2023
Women novelists steal the show
2023 was a year of getting back into a fiction groove, and the lady writers really took the cake. (Among these sixteen works of fiction that I’d rank as my favorites from the year, only two were written by men.)
Without further ado:
1. The Wall, Marlen Haushofer
Absolutely thrilling. Suffused with an even keel of dread throughout. Almost nothing happens, after the big life-altering event in the first handful of pages, and yet everything is happening, all the time. As many have remarked before me, it is a quiet feminist novel, a novel that investigates what might happen if a woman could consciously shape her own life and means of survival. Many thanks to Wei, who is one of the few people I will always take a book recommendation from, who is always right on the money. (Buy)
2. Foster, Claire Keegan
Gorgeous, spare, moving! I read it in a sitting and didn’t want it to end. (Buy)
3. The Outline Trilogy (Outline, Transit, Kudos), Rachel Cusk
This was a year of changing my mind about Rachel Cusk, whom I had previously written off for her extremely grim postpartum memoir. But in her novels, her style is so wild, so detached from everyday reality, that I couldn’t get enough. Faye, the narrator, is an empty vessel for the odd, profound reflections of her companions. We know very little about her. There is no plot. Nothing really “happens.” Instead, people come to her with Russian-nesting-dolls of stories, which she receives without much comment or even judgment. I’m not sure why I find these novels so addictive. Are they even novels? (Buy)
4. Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan
Fast, riveting, raw. You can read it in a sitting, more or less, but wow, it sticks in your gut. (Buy)
5. The Bridge of Beyond, Simone Schwarz-Bart
A magical, mystical novel about the women of Guadeloupe and their unbridled joy, even in the midst of lifetimes of suffering. Beautiful and just the right amount of perplexing. Huge fan! Many thanks to Irène for introducing me to Schwarz-Bart and to this novel. (Buy)
6. Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
A true accomplishment, worthy of all the hype. Demon Copperhead is a parade of tragedies, as Dickens would have wanted, and Barbara Kingsolver manages the long, complex story with incredible skill, setting the action amid the grim realities of southwest Virginia. It is a bit of an emotional slog—things are so bad, with no sign of relief, for hundreds of pages—but the conclusion is a real payoff.
I am particularly impressed by and grateful for Kingsolver’s boldness and willingness to tell this story, to speak on behalf of a region long neglected, abused, and used. (Buy)
7. The Quick and the Dead, Joy Williams
Incandescent and wild, as ever. An assortment of motherless girls range through the desert, dealing with grief and the afterlife, and saying completely mesmerizing, unbelievable things all the while. I continue to get the sense that Joy Williams is having more fun than almost anyone else. (Buy)
8. The English Understand Wool, Helen DeWitt
Such a wild, delightful little novella. You could read it again in an afternoon and it would be just as enchanting, funny, and strange. (Buy)
9. Flights, Olga Tokarczuk
Beautiful, wandering meditation on travel and the ways we change when we move in space and time. (Buy)
10. Burger’s Daughter, Nadine Gordimer
This heavy, complex novel is a paean to the hard-core leftist anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and as such, it was banned in that country when it was first published in 1979. A political activist herself, Nadine Gordimer was intimately connected to South Africa’s struggles, and she intended the book as a “coded tribute,” in her words, to the activist Bram Fischer, Nelson Mandela’s treason trial defense lawyer. (Meanwhile, a copy of this novel was smuggled to Mandela in prison. He reportedly liked it.)
The plot follows Rosa Burger, daughter of white Afrikaner parents who have been imprisoned for trying to overthrow the government. As a reading experience, I’ll confess that it’s not exactly enjoyable. Gordimer’s prose is wild and dense, and I found the jumping back and forth between first-person and omniscient narration jarring (instead of cool and innovative). I got lost a lot, in other words, but I liked it most when I let her insane prose roll over me like a tidal wave.
I agree with an early critic of the novel who said that it “gives scarcely any pleasure in the reading but which one is pleased to have read nonetheless.” (Buy)
Honorable Mentions
Our Strangers, Lydia Davis
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector
That Old Country Music: Stories, Kevin Barry
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
The Fraud, Zadie Smith
The Wolves of Eternity, Karl Ove Knausgaard
Poetry Postscript
Poetry is not exactly fiction or nonfiction. I don’t read a ton of it and never know how to review it. I read it too fast (according to poet husband). But I do find myself swept away by it, when I make time for it. Here’s the best poetry I read this year, all of which I highly recommend:
Best poetry I read in 2023
Collected Poems, Jack Gilbert
Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky
Radium Girl, Celeste Lipkes
Milk Tongue, Irène Mathieu
Selected Poems, Tomas Tranströmer