Best fiction I read in 2025
Women, war, and hard-earned wisdom
This year in fiction, I discovered new favorites and dove back into old ones. Here’s the best I read in 2025 and a list of honorable mentions.
1. The Sea, the Sea, Iris Murdoch
“When the poor ghosts have gone, what remains are ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. One can live quietly and try to do tiny good things and harm no one. I cannot think of any tiny good thing to do at the moment, but perhaps I shall think of one tomorrow.”
Far, far stranger than I was expecting, and for that, an absolute delight. A florid, self-absorbed, and entirely unreliable narrator, Charles Arrowby, falls apart in a house that is falling apart, surrounded by a whole cast of characters who are concerned about him, by varying degrees, and fail to bring about his salvation. Iris Murdoch is a sensible genius.
2. HHhH, Laurent Binet
I am not usually one for war novels, but this one is irresistible. Laurent Binet’s self-effacing style, which he laces with a novelist’s anxieties about telling a true story well, generates warmth, good humor, and drama. In fragmented chapters, Binet tells the story of SS official Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination by Czech and Slovak soldiers and captures a marvelous feeling of suspense. Death to all Nazis, forever and ever. Long live the memories of Gabčík, Kubiš, and the many other unnamed heroes celebrated here.
3. Still Life, AS Byatt
This long, dense novel about three British siblings, variously adrift and anchored, felt like it was for me, an aging former English major who loves words and is desperate to see the depth beneath the scores of human quiddities (one of Byatt’s favorite words). I want to read it all over again. I wanted it to have been entirely about Stephanie, and could have done without Marcus altogether, and I was chastened to recognize glimpses of myself in Frederica. (I want to be like Stephanie; I am more like Frederica.) I had to look up a word almost every other page. I was floored by Byatt’s incredible facility, her sensitivity, her depth of feeling and philosophical range. I found her description of childbirth to be the most accurate and intimate I’ve ever read. I was perplexed by the occasional burst of first person, could have done without the Van Gogh letter snippets, and there are some characters who don’t seem worth the stage time, but it was a joyful experience, this novel. I cried in the end! I won’t soon forget it!
4. Lion, Sonya Walger
This is billed as fiction, but it’s such a thinly veiled autobiography that it doesn’t feel right to call it that. The sentences are really striking and lovely. And if true, God bless Sonya Walger and her therapy bills.
5. The Other Name: Septology I-II, Jon Fosse
Reading on a Kindle is not my favorite, but encountering Jon Fosse on that little device feels appropriate. Stepping into his uninterrupted prose is like stepping into an ice-cold lake; you can’t think, you can only feel. I read it late at night, screen glowing in my eyes with his unbroken prose. This breathless novel reads like one uninterrupted sentence. The story inhabits the mind of a painter as he reckons with friendship, art, addiction, and God. It’s powerful. You fully get why Fosse was handed his Nobel. It’s challenging. I’m not sure I will read the rest of the books in this seven-part series, but I am thankful to have experienced this high, experimental form. I’ll think about it for a long time. The Norwegians, man. Someone get them some light therapy.
6. O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker
Perfect style on display in this exceedingly gloomy story about a fated Scottish teen named Janet. You know it’s not going to end well (from the very first page, quite obviously), but the beautiful sentences and sensitive portrayal, mixed with some of that classic dark British Isles humor, make it a tempting little novel.
7. Sister Europe, Nell Zink
Nell Zink feels like my delicious fictional secret, the novelist only I know about (even though I know it’s definitely not true). I want to tell you all about her and also not tell you all about her, in case she ceases to be mine. In this amusing novel, a long night of partying in Berlin goes sideways through the lenses of several different characters (plus a charming, imperious standard poodle named Mephistopheles). It’s funny and plotless and yet offers the kind of interiority and depth we expect from much more Serious Novelists. Everything I like right now.
8. Arlington Park, Rachel Cusk
Here we see the radiant, seething Cusk continuing to develop her pet themes: couples who do not understand each other, trapped housewives, slightly neglected children, men who have no idea what is really going on beneath the surface. And all with that bitter satiric edge that I cannot resist! Working my way through her whole bibliography and have yet to find one that doesn’t suit me.
9. Washington Black, Esi Edugyan
This is not my standard genre (historical fiction adventure novel), so I was skeptical at first, but the PROSE is SO GOOD. Truly beautifully done, and the characters are immensely deep, complex, and rewarding. Esi Edugyan writes from a deep well of grace and compassion toward human beings, in all of their paradoxes. Quite an achievement. (Thanks to Lulu for the recommendation!)
10. Pew, Catherine Lacey
A young person who cannot be identified by gender or ethnicity shows up in a town, sleeping at church, and is called Pew. Pew, who is a Cusk-like confessor to all of the characters, confounds the high-strung community. There’s a real turn halfway through, which I will not reveal, but the narrative becomes unexpectedly suspenseful. Lacey taps into her dark deep South roots and doesn’t take direction from anybody.
Honorable mentions
A Severed Head, Iris Murdoch
The Details, Ia Genberg
An Apprenticeship, or the Book of Pleasures, Clarice Lispector
I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman
The Virgin in the Garden, A.S. Byatt
Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann
James, Percival Everett
Bitter Water Opera, Nicolette Polek
Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang
Malina, Ingeborg Bachmann
The Topeka School, Ben Lerner
The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker
Glorious Exploits, Ferdia Lennon
The World According to Garp, John Irving
Cold Nights of Childhood, Tezer Özlü
Lost Illusions, Honoré de Balzac
The Answers, Catherine Lacey
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese
