Books of the Year 2021

Some old, some new, some rereads – my books of the year, roughly in order of reading:

Raven Leilani, Luster
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste
Natalie Goldberg, Let The Whole Thundering World Come Home
Nora Krug, Heimat
Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life
M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again
Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
Frances Wilson, Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence
Joy Harjo, Crazy Brave
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog

There were other good reads – Ash Before Oak, Three Simple Lines, Gathering Moss, EverybodyJust KidsMiss Iceland, Red Love, Dragman, Second Place, The Weekend, The PromiseOh William!, The Luminous SolutionMoonstone. Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up The Ghost was an excellent reread for book club. And this morning I finished The Fifth Season – what an introduction to the imagination of NK Jemisin, but maybe I need to let it linger a bit. If I’d finished listening to English Pastoral I suspect that might have made my selection too.

But the titles in the list above are the ones that really cast the greatest spell over me: drew my curiosity, got under my skin, fired me up, touched my heart, or equipped me with strength during what turned out to be a difficult year.

My standout read of 2021 is probably The Sentence. Before I read that, it would have been The Night Watchman. Clearly the year of Louise Erdrich. I love her. I just love her. Funny. I love that she is so funny. I love her characters: Tookie, Patrice. I love her political engagement. A couple of readers thought parts felt rushed, but to me that very rush of energy – the anticipation of what was coming – provided much of the pleasure of this book about books and book people set in a bookshop.

Enjoy this YouTube of Louise Erdrich’s launch interview held at Birchbark Books, which also provides the setting for The Sentence. ‘Sentences that bring people solace and comfort’ – just heard her utter those words again. And the thing about books is that you ‘can be alone but in the most splendid company’: another gem. UK readers: The Sentence comes in January.

If I had to ration myself, the other books I’d press on readers would be The Power of the Dog (clever western! fantastic prose! such pacing! such detours! see the movie too!), The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again (its mood! its mystery! its sense of place!) and Luster (the voice! the sheer bravura! the sheer lustrousness!). And Small Things Like These for an exquisite quickie, and Empire of Pain to fill you with fury and make you want to change the world.

There were a number of books I was looking forward to but their moment hasn’t come yet. The TBR piles teeter and totter.

And, as usual, hype (publisher/reviewer/social media) mars the experience of reading. Each to their own, etc., but! You *really* didn’t mind all those plot holes? You really fell for all that high-concept gush? I got the appeal of The Appeal – its format and its humorously observed characters were fun to start. But the closer you look, the less it makes sense. Surely those characters would be sending texts rather than emails, wouldn’t they? And don’t those insertions of additional evidence to the case seem a bit convenient? And those law students really hadn’t encountered this unusual legal case in the press: come on!? The foundation of the story’s drive starts to wobble, and isn’t this all getting a bit grating and silly now … But what do I know? It was book of the year here, a chain selection there, some notable blurbs. Are we really so easily pleased? Though I might not have cared so much if I’d not been led to expect something better. The hype: it was a problem.

And then Crawdads: insert horror emoji. It just didn’t add up for me – not least, one narrative prop is a poetry anthology that contains poems written maybe thirty years later than that book would have been published. A small detail – it’s not so much that it’s factually incorrect (I’m not that much of a purist), but it’s tonally off, and felt sloppy. At that point I started looking for flaws, and found many in the plot and the characterisation. I was no longer suspending disbelief that that child could have raised herself like that.

And then there was Kate Clanchy’s memoir, which in some ways is the book of the year in terms of how it generated, for me, so much thought about what constitutes good writing and good publishing. We can do better.

I sometimes feel bad about expressing criticisms of books. I mean, someone went to all that trouble, and authors can be sensitive souls (don’t tag them!). But I am a booklover, goddesssdammit, and making books better is part of my job. I task the writers I work with on ways to improve their manuscripts, but certain published books – and sometimes, it seems, whole genres – seem so mediocre that I wonder why I bother. Just rustle up a high concept that will satisfy the marketing department, then flesh out a synopsis (how I’ve come to dislike that word ‘twisty’), and hone a first page that will grab the attention of an agent or a judge. That sounds cynical, but so is publishing.

I really enjoyed Parul Seghal’s The Case Against The Trauma Plot in the New Yorker this week (27 December), not least as she seems to share my taste: Reservation Dogs was one of my favourite shows of the year. I like how this article identifies how trauma can provide too easy or tidy an explanation within stories:

The trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority. The solace of its simplicity comes at no little cost. It disregards what we know and asks that we forget it, too—forget about the pleasures of not knowing, about the unscripted dimensions of suffering, about the odd angularities of personality.

Hanging on ‘twisty’ reveals that milked shocked responses to characters’ suffering, the trauma plot was what spoiled It’s A Sin for me on tv too (I’m clearly going against some grains of popular taste this year). Ooo, and trauma porn reminds me that the follow-up to A Little Life is out soon. I promise to read with an open mind, honest! But I retain the right to judge harshly.

Many of my favourite books this year did in some way or other go to the heart of suffering and injustice, but they did so without implausible contrivances and mawkish stitching. They worked their magic with humour, with affection, with complexity, with an awareness of mystery, with a sense of negative capability. They usually had well-crafted sentences and paragraphs, and a voice. A personality.

Though I carefully observe professional boundaries, I am giving a special mention to Jo McMillan’s The Happiness Factory, coming in January 2022. I read earlier drafts, and perhaps am biased, but it gives me great joy to see this very funny and bittersweet novel make its way to publication, and from the esteemed indie Bluemoose too. The premise is fantastic: an estranged daughter uses an inheritance to buy a sex-aid factory in China just as the country is opening up to the global economy. And the concept is matched with a real voice and plenty of heart.

I vowed to blog every month this year – and I did that, and even managed the first of the month most of the time. This one: the end of the month, an hour to go. Because. Sometimes these things become chores, and sometimes we need to move along a bit. I am going to blog this coming year only if/when I have something that requires the longer form.

Blogging, is it over?! Should I be doing a Substack? Newsletters are an exciting format, though I find I don’t actually have the time to read various of the ones I’ve subscribed to, and some are quite mansplainy. Austin Kleon’s is one I always find time for.

But what do I have to add? And everyone’s a teacher now, everyone has an offering. Masterclass does it so well. I loved the David Sedaris one recently, and we’re working through Shonda Rhimes currently – both are funny, both are practical.

One thing I’ve noticed during the pandemic is that there are lots of people with lots of things to say, but sometimes there’s a value in quiet. I’ve muted and unfollowed a lot of people this year. Maybe I’m just a bit jaded at the end of 2021. ‘Just sitting: what a relief in this busy world’ – something Natalie Goldberg said as she led us in meditation during a virtual retreat earlier this month.

The solace of sitting and sentences. Maybe that’s something to aim for in 2022. And tulips! And crocuses, and daffodils. More to plant this weekend while I continue listening to English Pastoral. Priorities.

You can also find me at my new Andrew Wille Writing Studio account on Instagram, which seems an easier place for engaged interactions. More there, and Happy New Year! I’ll leave you with this beautiful poem from Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave: Eagle Poem.

2 thoughts on “Books of the Year 2021

  1. Loved the list, Andrew. Also like that you mention the books you didn’t like and why. Crawdads – couldn’t get on with it – ditched it. I can’t bear poor continuity or a lack of consistency. Your passion for good writing, humour and thoroughly thinking through everything are sadly, a rarity. Happy New Year.

    • Thanks, Terri! I am not always so picky, and it is well paced and has some lovely nature writing, but something about that book felt cartoony and ghoulish, and just off. False notes.

      And yes – I think the dislikes are important. I read (start) a lot of books I don’t mention on social media, but I hesitate to express opinions as I feel my job is to help writers rather than be critical. But maybe we need to call out tripe some more, and I figure the overhyped are ready for it (and the writers can weep into their royalties And seriously: I do feel much arises because of writing that fails to measure up to easily marketed high concepts – that’s lazy publishing.

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