One-line book reviews: my best reads in 2020

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Escapism, a conversation with someone other than those I live with, fantasy, humour, a dose of the old realism... there were many reasons to find solace in books this year. I was fortunate to be given wonderful books for my 40th birthday, and I've read a bit more slowly and indulgently than the voracious drinking reading of my 20s. 

I should point out to anyone who didn't read last year's blog that I don't keep a record of the books I read to show-off, or impress or prove how well read I am. I keep a record for two reasons: 

1) I've got a poor memory and find it really frustrating not to be able to remember the titles of books I've enjoyed, especially when discussing books with other people. 

2) In 2019, Dan challenged me (well, he challenged himself, and I took up the challenge) to read 30 books a year. Having an aim of reading 30 books each year is very good for keeping me off Twitter. 

In addition to the list below (and HP1-4, which are not included below), I've read a lot of short stories this year, and discovered what a pleasure many of them are. Good collections can be found in the Best British Short Stories annual publication from Salt Publishing. And there are many excellent magazines out there. I've enjoyed Open Pen, The London Magazine, Confingo, The Moth, and Lighthouse, plus (online) The Fiction Desk.

Like last year, I won't bother to link to books. JFGI. As ever, I would encourage you to use a local bookshop or Hive if any of them appeal to you, sanctimonious Leftie that I am.

1. The Truths and Triumphs of Grace Atherton by Anstey Harris: in a genre (higher-brow chick lit) that's pretty full, this is one of the better ones. A European adventure about a musician reeling from a deep betrayal, who finds solace in extraordinary friends.
   
2. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney: I'm sure I would have loved this if I'd read it 20 years ago. To be honest, I found it a bit too concerned with teenage angst. Been there, done that.
3. Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood: published in 1933, but feels a lot older. The main power of this book lies in how you're rooting for the protagonists, you're really rooting for them, but you just know that the weight of poverty will be too heavy for them to escape from. Being poor or not is far less to do with tenacity and hard work, and far more to do with how much money your parents have. That's still very true 90 years on. 
4. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende: when I was 18, I went on a family holiday to a cottage on Guernsey. One morning, I woke up before everyone else and saw the sun stream in through the lace curtains and an idyllic day dawned. But I was sobbing, great heaving guttural weeping that shook the bed and made my face as engorged as a frightened puffer fish. I had just finished Captain Corelli's Mandolin and was moved, completely. I expected to be almost as moved by Allende's novel, an episodic family saga emerging from the Spanish civil war, but it did not have such an impact on me. I'm older and more cynical perhaps. There's certainly bathos, a critical distance in A Long Petal of the Sea - it's not a sweeping Mediterranean epic. Allende often warns the reader about the bad stuff that's about to happen - so you can concentrate on the politics rather than the narrative? Perhaps; it's certainly a very political book. I enjoyed it a lot all the same. As an aside, ever since studying Brecht in the sixth form (yes I know, Brecht always gets a mention) I've been interested in how time is created in novels, and particularly when the sense of time is not interdependent with the novel's structure. How much do we lose in a novel if we know the ending before we start? It's easy to forget that the protagonists of Wuthering Heights are all dead or dying when the novel starts. Perhaps the tricks of time inspire me to choose more consciously historical novels, ones that are aware of the creation of history within their pages over novels that are simply set in the past. Anyway, enough musings.
   
5. England in Transition: Life and Work in the 18th Century by Dorothy George: one of those tempting little Pelican history books about less well known, or tidily divided up, eras. This is about the change from domestic work (not chores but work done in the home: weaving, sewing, washing, woodwork etc) to factory work, plus a little about changes in agriculture. A curious lull before the drama of the industrial revolution.
6. Sharpe's Eagle by Bernard Cornwell: I love a bit of Sharpe. Next!
7. The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch: a novelist couldn't get away with having the word 'nice' in a title these days, and this book is rather nasty in places. It's more fast-paced than many of her novels, with a detective thread waiting to be unravelled, but it's essentially, like all her fiction, about how we treat the people we love and hate. Murdoch is one of the most artistic novelists I've read, but all her artistry is deployed within the conventional structure of a novel. She's not a fantasist or a magic realist or a (proper) modernist. Rather, like Titian, she builds characters with layer upon layer of paint, some strokes a subtle hue, others thick splodges of oil to create a tangibly conscious and complete individual. I adore her novels; no other writer is so chocolatey.
8. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler: people are always recommending that I read Tyler, and I enjoyed this novel about the strains on a middle-aged couple's marriage. It's surprising that a story so domestic won the Pulitzer, but then, don't life's greatest dramas take place in the living room?
9. Snow by Orhan Pamuk: ostensibly this novel is about a journalist who returns to a remote part of Turkey to investigate a spate of suicides among women being forced to remove their veils. But it's not really about that at all. It's about poetry and porn, creativity and barrenness, the absence and presence of religion and, slightly less interesting for me, the lot of a single man in love.
10. The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark: a gem of a novella. Fun and sad.
11. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: I read this over two years - it's too rich, and there are too many complicated Russian names, to read it quickly. I felt more satisfied with the novel after I'd listened to the In our Time episode on it. Here's a spoiler: there's no crime and very little punishment. That is of course, Raskolnikov's initial assessment: some people are above the law and can commit crimes if it is necessary on their path to greatness. No crime. The victim was undeserving and pointless. Society is enhanced not damaged by the death of such a person. No crime. Raskolnikov's actions are no worse, morally, than the oppressions experienced by other characters, specifically poor women, attributable to 'society', and which go unpunished. No crime. As I read this grimy, unhappy, uncomfortable novel, I wondered what would happen if Raskolnikov walked into a Tolstoy novel. Tolstoy's novels have a moral balance; individual acts have value even if they are narcissistic; individual is not in conflict with societal morality, and even acts of war have a heroism and a grandeur. Perhaps, more than crime and punishment, Dostoyevsky's masterpiece is a novel about forgiveness, and the greater the sin, the greater the forgiveness on offer.
12. Fair Stood the Wind for France by HE Bates: a contemporaneous second world war novel about an injured pilot escaping through Vichy France. A novel to remind us that cooperation, conciliation and shared values enhance nations, rather than diminish them. 
13. The House by the Loch by Kirsty Wark: yes, that Kirsty Wark, her off the telly with the lovely lilt. A very readable family saga about how grief is a burden that can never be put down, but sometimes loved ones can help us carry it.  
14. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez: read it and be angry about how cars are crash-tested for men's bodies but not for women (well, they're tested for women in the passenger seat, not in the driver's seat); about how medicines are tested on men, not women, resulting in incorrect dosages and a lack of data about how medicines affect women at different points in their menstrual and life cycles; about how urban living spaces are designed for men travelling in and out of a centre not for women performing caring roles all around the area (and often also travelling to a workplace). Seriously, it made me so cross!
15. The Collector by John Fowles: I've been waiting to read this book since I studied the French Lieutenant's Woman in the sixth form. The Collector is a good book, but not quite worth the wait.
16. Napoleon's Wars by Charles Esdaile: I spent many happy hours choosing this book from all the books on Napoleon in a central London Waterstones. You know, back in the day when visiting the bookshop was a more pleasurable experience. This book really is about the wars, not the man. Well, a bit about the man because that influenced the wars. Really good. But only if you're into the Napoleonic era.
17. The Legend of the Holy Drinker by Joseph Roth: poignant that this was written in 1939 (well, I think it was written then; it was published posthumously that year) when you can imagine people might well have been wanting to drink away their troubles and find solace in the protection of a saint. Best read in one sitting, with a carafe of Riesling. 
18. Green and Pleasant Land by ??? I adore old-fashioned hardbacks from the first 60 years of the 20th century with their soft, green covers, torn dust jackets and powdery pages. I should have known not to judge a book by its cover; rather by its title, and beware the word pleasant. Anything with pleasant in the title will be concerned with contentment; placid, peaceful, 2.4 children, one up one down, Sunday roast, booze, football, religion: the manifold opiums of the people. Someone had kindly marked up all the typos in this one, and it was a quite interesting story about the conflict between nostalgic rural values and modernity. Yet it dealt too much in cliche. Onwards! (Btw, I failed to make a note of the author before I sent this on its voyage to the charity shop! It was published in the late 1950s I think.... If anyone can shed light, appreciated!)
19. Mrs Craddock by W Somerset Maugham: it's always a pleasure to find someone as witty as myself, and this fabulous little book has lines so cutting they should be written on shredded paper: "There is nothing so difficult as to persuade men that they are ignorant" ... "She was conscious of a successful frock; it was quite pretty, and would have looked charming on a woman half her age". An absolutely delicious novel with just enough poignancy to verge on brilliance.
20. The Purple Swamp Hen by Penelope Lively: a favourite author of my childhood with an intriguing collection of short stories. The story of the title is the best.
21. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: an unusual, and gentle, approach to a well-trod subject matter: the second world war. It follows the intertwined stories of a reluctant German soldier and a blind French girl. Long book but short chapters; good for busy people!
22. Sharpe's Rifles by Bernard Cornwell: it's that dishy fellow fighting Napoelon again.
23. The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier: Du Maurier is a far more inventive and unnerving author than she's given credit for. This isn't her best book (that's The House on the Strand) because I never quite believed in the central premise of mistaken identity. It's quite a thriller though.
24. The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith: I can't believe this was written in 1888! A funny series of diary entries from a clerk trying to get on in the world, and being thwarted by the wrong cutlery and familial discourtesy. Although the authors are obviously massively taking the piss out of the small-time ambitions of the central character, there's a recognition that the world is made up of much-loved nobodies. Plus Weedon Grossmith is the best name ever. 
25. Lionheart by Sharon Penman: the first instalment of a two-parter on the intriguing Plantagenet Richard I, who despite legend has only a bit-part in English history as he was absent from the country for almost all his reign fighting in the crusades, and an Aquitaine at heart.
26. A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell: although he wasn't poor himself Orwell conveys the shame and desperation of poverty better than any other writer I've read. Part polemic, part drama, part elegy to the happy poor, this book rattles around with some interesting ideas, but it's not a gripping story. But then Orwell's importance as a writer doesn't stem from hs greatness as a novelist. Orwell understood how, for the people living in it, poverty is like a chronic disease - it cannot be ignored or hoped away or overcome with the right spirit.  It's an ever present malady, with the bitterness of why me (or why not me) that comes from looking in every shop window filled with things you can't have, food you can't eat, holidays you won't go on, clothes you won't wear. "For Orwell social injustice was a physical pain," wrote Arthur Koestler. Significant that it's called A Clergyman's Daughter rather than The; as Orwell keeps reminding us, Dorothy's fate is shared by many other unmarried poor women. One of the most interesting aspects of this book for me, as a clergyman's daughter, is the sense of bereavement that accompanies a loss of faith.
27. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes: I knew the premise before I read it (which didn't spoil it for me although I won't share it here in case it would for you) - suffice to say it's about the capability (and to a lesser extent the desirability) of science to improve human intelligence. I didn't expect to believe in the story so wholeheartedly - I was utterly convinced by the narrator, which of course made it a very sad and humbling read. Don't be put off by the sci-fi label if you're not normally a big fan. It's just a wonderful novella.
    
28. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel: nothing I've read in the past 20 years has disabused me of the opinion that the greatest novels were all written before 1900. Nothing, that is, until the Wolf Hall trilogy. So much has been written about these books that I don't need to add much more. The Mirror and the Light has the breadth of Tolstoy and the depth of Dostoyevsky, and it contemplates the human condition - the effort of existence for those born into poverty and those born to wear a crown - with an incision that is almost painful to read. Best of all it's a great story and you can't help plugging for the big guy, even though you know it'll be a sorry end. Mantel is so wonderful at creating a sense of time and place that I would look up from reading and be surprised to be in my bedroom, not a Tudor court. This is a novel to swim along to. You won't always know where you're going, and the faces you're swimming alongside in this great ocean will seem sometimes familiar, sometimes strange, but it's a wonderful luxury to be in the water.
    
29. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris: brilliant opening chapter, crap final chapter, and pretty good in between.
    
30. A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne: I'm becoming quite a fan of Boyne's very readable literary fiction. The theme of this book is the art of creation (what's more important in a novel: the plot or how it's written?) and artistic integrity, which was dealt with so well in the film The Wife.
31. Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World by Alec Ryrie: ever since Trotsky v Lenin, many people on the Left have despaired of the divisions in the Left. If we all just agreed on everything we'd have conquered the world long ago! It's a similar story with Protestants, who have fought more vociferously among themselves over the visible manifestation of holiness, predestination, what churches and the people in them should look like, the Mass/Communion/Lord's Supper, vicars/priests/ministers/preachers and the relationship of church and state, than against unbelief (or people of other faiths). And there does seem to be something integral to Protestantism that you're convinced you're right. Doubt often isn't welcomed. This book deals with revival movements in South Africa, China and Korea, and puts the Church of England firmly in its place in the context of global Protestantism. As a Methodist brought up in the Church of England and married into a Catholic family, I really enjoyed it.
    
32. The King's Evil by Andrew Taylor: I love the playfulness of the title, but unfortunately I didn't realise this is the third book in a series set in 17th century London, and I should probably have read the others first. Good, but not a patch on Shardlake.
    
33. A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel: a family saga set in Norfolk and South Africa, dealing with faith, family lies, growing up and growing old. Mantel is such an observant writer, with a wonderful turn of phrase. A sad, satisfying novel.
    
34. So Much Life Left Over by Louis de Bernieres: I didn't realise this was a sequel to The Dust that Falls from Dreams, and I've read the Dust that Falls from Dreams! Readable, but Ken Follett does historical family sagas better. I do read a lot of historical family sagas don't I?  
    
35. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson: as swashbuckling as you'd expect. Camaraderie, cunning and crabs, and not a woman in sight.
    
36. Wilding: The Return to Nature of a British Farm by Isabella Tree: The story of how a farming couple stopped trying to make money from dairy farming and instead gave the land back to nature. The book discusses many ecological problems of today including reforestation, climate change, biodiversity, conflict between people and nature. It discovers the wonders of soil (soil is a very interesting topic and will be come increasingly important over the next 50 years), whether we should eat horse meat, the habitat of the purple emperor and why Scotland has too many deer. Its pages sing with the sound of species in desperate trouble getting a tiny glimmer of help from a small farm in Sussex that does largely nothing. I thought of the countryside as fields of barley or grazing sheep. Actually that's human agriculture. Nature is far more wild, more exciting, more diverse if we would only let it be.
    
37. The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter: only one person could have given me this book! A magical adventure story that explores identity and desire, and has more linguistic somersaults than a dictionary on a trampoline. Carter explores what it is to exist, and know you exist, and to not exist and know that you do not exist. It's the age-old philosophical questions dealt with in a lyrical and explosively fascinating way. Carter does more with the infinite possibilities of language than any other book I've read. It's crunchily awkward and exhilarating. I found I had to be in the right mood to read, and appreciate, this episodic rollercoaster.
    
38.  Hangman's Holiday by Dorothy L Sayers: eminently readable adventures of Lord Peter Wimsey and Montague Egg. Perfect bedtime reading for the very tired.
39. V2 by Robert Harris: a Christmas present. More understated than some of his novels. Really good read.  
    

So there you have it. A few more on the list than last year; let's just say I had a bit more time on my hands. If you only want one recommendation, read The House by the Loch if you want to weep, and Mrs Craddock if you want to smile.