This Florida reader had a fabulous year of reading in 2013. So good, in fact, that one list of favorites just wasn’t enough. I had to divide it into three separate lists: one for general literary fiction, one for historical fiction and one for nonfiction. Because sometimes you feel like you’re comparing apples and oranges and its just not fair to the books. Because books have feelings too.
Literary Fiction:
1. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
I tore through this puppy in less than a week. Combine some tragic Dickensian characters with an edge-of-your-seat plot and a meditation on the power and meaning of art, and you’ve got me. The story begins as a terrorist bomb goes off in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a 13 year-old boy staggers out of the rubble with The Goldfinch by the Dutch master Carel Fabritius (1622-1654) in his hands. Surely no trouble could come of that. . . .
I recommended this book to my book club and I don’t think I’ve ever heard such uniformly rave reviews. If you haven’t seen Donna Tartt’s interview with Charlie Rose, during which they visit The Goldfinch while it was at The Frick in New York City, take a minute to watch it now.
2. TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
I am in love with Colum McCann’s way with words. He’s like an artist who can squeeze paint out of a tube and with a few strokes of genius, turns out something that doesn’t just resemble life, but something that is truer than life itself.
Like Let the Great World Spin, which was all about the connections between us, TransAtlantic is about the space and the sea that separate us, and the ways in which we have crossed that space. It’s hard to describe what this book is about – it ranges all over the place, from Frederick Douglass’ trip to Ireland to Senator George Mitchell’s role in the Irish Peace Talks – you’ll just have to trust me that the different parts work together like a deck of cards in the hands of a magician.
3. The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
I first wrote about this book back in April after I’d just finished it and couldn’t stop recommending it to my friends.
I said it then and I’ll say it again, but reading this book feels like catching up with old friends. It dares to ask the uncomfortable questions about how long-term friendships are affected by success and talent, envy and regret, what-ifs and why-not-me’s. I mean, look back at your own friends from high school and college and tell me what differences you see. Kind of staggering, isn’t it?
Meg Wolitzer is coming to Artis-Naples for the Critics Choice Author Event on February 13 and 15, 2014. I can’t wait to hear what she has to say.
4. Someone by Alice McDermott
I have been a huge Alice McDermott fan ever since I read and fell in love with After This (2006), so I picked up a copy of Someone as soon as it came out. No one tells the simple domestic story better than Alice McDermott. She can turn her characters’ longings into what feels like a poem, a hymn, a prayer.
“Who is going to love me?” asks the main character, an Irish Catholic girl whose heart has just been broken by a cad. “Someone,” her brother says kindly. That just kills me. How simple, but what an enormous, universal truth.
Here is the story of just someone, no one special, just another someone in this big world of what now, 7 plus billion? And yet it is a universal story of grace and and family and the search for someone who loves you back. I loved it.
5. The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
The Woman Upstairs is brave and fierce and just plain balls-to-the-wall fabulous.
It’s the story of Nora, “the woman upstairs” — you know, the plain, unmarried elementary school teacher who lives in a semi-shabby apartment upstairs from you along with her cats and her regrets. She lives vicariously through the lives of other artists she envies and admires. Nora’s transformation will come, but how she gets there — through an absolutely stunning betrayal — is fueled by sheer fury.
Put on some music by Bonnie Raitt or Pink while you read The Woman Upstairs and let out a little of your own rage. Oh, come on, you know you have some in there somewhere. . . .
6. Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Tale for the Time Being is a sheer delight to read. It’s clever and witty and fun, plus there’s a spiritual Buddhist vibe that makes you feel like wow, maybe we are all connected here somehow, in ways we’ll never really understand.
Imagine the Elegance of the Hedgehog set in Japan, with a sad young protagonist, and combine it with the story of a woman across the Pacific Ocean who discovers her diary in a Hello Kitty lunchbox that washed up on shore after the 2011 tsunami.
You should read it.
FloridaReader 