Wrat-Up 2014 - Top Ten Historical / Literary / Other Books

I have included here any book that was either historical, literary or between genres. There were some great books in this category this year, ranging from love stories to mind-bending YA thrillers. 

Again, no particular order:

The Visitors by Rebecca Mascull

A hugely heartwarming novel about overcoming insurmountable difficulties, The Visitors follows the life of Adeliza, a young girl who loses her sight, her hearing and her speech. Adrift in a world of darkness, Adeliza is saved by Lottie, a young woman who teaches her to communicate using her fingers and her hand. As Adeliza blossoms, her connection to the ghosts who have always spoken to her in her mind leads her across the world. Full of hope, peopled by female characters with great strength, The Visitors is an adventure, a ghost story and a romance all wrapped into one. 

 

One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

Although I enjoyed the previous Jojo Moyes books I had read, I loved One Plus One. A funny, touching, heart-wrenching romance, about all kinds of love and the ways it can hurt, this was a fantastic story well told. All of the characters were real and rounded and it was one of those rare books to make me laugh out loud this year. I can't wait to see what Moyes writes next.

The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld

Reminiscent of Stephen King's The Green Mile, The Enchanted was a fresh take on the prison story, told through the eyes of three unforgettable characters. I very very rarely cry at books - though I'm a veritable crybaby when it comes to TV and film - but this one made me cry. Fantastic stuff.

 

The Storied Life of A.J Fiky by Gabrielle Zevin

Another one that brought a tear to my eyes, Zevin's novel about a bookstore owner is a book lover's dream, dealing with the very thing that makes most of us who write book blogs sit down behind a keyboard to write reviews. The love for books and reading soaks through every word in this book. Loved it!

 

Lovers at the Chameleon Club by Francine Prose

An epic historical novel set in Paris between the two wars, Lovers at the Chameleon Club is a lushly written, mind warping novel. It contained some of the most striking characters I had read about all year and played around with the idea of untrustworthy narrators in a clever way.

 

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air by Darragh McKeon

Combining a love story and a coming-of-age novel against the backdrop of the fall of the Soviet Union and the devastation of Chernobyl, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air drags the reader behind the Iron Curtain, delving unflinchingly into the communist world at its nadir. This book manages to evoke a different place and time not so distant from our own, through McKeon’s wonderful prose

 

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Mentioned on a lot of blogs (and in a lot of message boards posts on Goodreads) as the new Gone Girl, We Were Liars is the tale of a family and the way that events tear them apart. It is also a finely written and extremely tense thriller right through to the twist ending.

 

The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin

Promising a ghost story, The Ghost of the Mary Celeste proved to be a complex puzzle box of mystery, love, tragedy, spiritualism and inspiration. A great read, extremely well written.

 

The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier

A great combination of historical fiction and modern thriller, The Lost Sisterhood reinvents an age-old story (that of the Trojan War) for a new audience. Let down a little by some trite love stories, the female characters are nevertheless true Amazons, well worthy of the subject matter.

 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

A Goodreads Choice Awards winner, All The Light We Cannot See is set during the Second World War, following two characters through tragedy and triumph in turn, bringing them together at a key moment in the Allied victory. With great secondary characters, the novel manages to be both uplifting and heartbreaking at the same time.

Et soudain tout change by Gilles Legardinier

Camille et ses amis se connaissent depuis la maternelle. Leur dernière année de lycée les a enfin tous réunis dans la même classe. A quelques mois du bac, en compagnie de sa meilleure amie, Léa, d'Axel, Léo, et toute sa petite bande, la jeune fille découvre joyeusement la vie. Tous se demandent quel chemin ils vont prendre. Ils ignorent encore que d'ici l'été, le destin va leur en faire vivre plus que dans toute une vie.
 
Du meilleur au pire, avec l'énergie de leur âge et leurs espoirs, entre convictions et doutes, entre illusions et réalité, ils vont expérimenter, échanger et affronter. Leur histoire est la nôtre. Bienvenue dans ce que nous partageons de plus beau et qui ne meurt jamais...

In their last year of high school, with the baccalaureat waiting at the end, everything seems to be smiling for Camille, Lea, Axel and their friends. The future is unfolding before them, full of hope and promise. But when tragedy strikes one of them, the group of friends will discover all that life can throw at you and that in a single moment everything can change.

A French writer who started out writing thrillers, in recent years Gilles Legardinier has branched out into writing books about life, books that combine comedy with tragedy, exploring things that speak to all of us and make us what we are: human. In Et soudain tout change... Legardinier has outdone himself, writing a coming-of-age tale that will have you crying and laughing every time you turn the page. Legardinier is one of the best writers I have ever read – and if you know my dislike of reading in French (blame it on my schooling here in France!) you will realise what a compliment that is. His way of getting in to the heads of his characters (whether they be a thirty-something woman, a man in his sixties or a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood) is nothing short of amazing. I have loved all of his books, but I know that this one will stay with me. If you are lucky enough to be able to read in French, pick it up. Now! You won't regret it. 
 
I gave Et soudain tout change... 5 stars.

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

Following a scalding row with her mother, fifteen-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her old life. But Holly is no typical teenage runaway: a sensitive child once contacted by voices she knew only as “the radio people,” Holly is a lightning rod for psychic phenomena. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life.

For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.

Spanning six decades and the entire world, The Bone Clocks is a mind-bending, genre-twisting epic that traces the effects of a cabal of immortal mystics on a single woman and the people who cross her path. From her adolescence in England in the 1980s, Holly Sykes finds herself encountering strange events and unexplained paranormal activity throughout her life. It is only as she reaches the end of her life, though, that she begins to uncover the true depths of the war she has stumbled upon and the impact she herself will have on the world... 

My first David Mitchell book was actually not written by him – last year I read The Reason I Jump, a memoir of autism written by a young Japanese man that Mitchell and his wife translated. I loved the translation, but I also enjoyed the beginning section where Mitchell explained his own experiences with autism (his son is on the spectrum). So when I heard about The Bone Clocks I jumped at the chance, not having any idea what I was letting myself in for. The Bone Clocks is an amazing novel, a true mind-twister that sprawls across time and space, bringing in elements of literary fiction, pulp genre novels and historical works, pulling together a huge cast of characters in a race against time to stop a cabal of soul vampires while exploring metaphysics, psychology, philosophy and environmentalism. I have rarely read a book that touched on so many things and yet Mitchell does a fantastic job of tying the whole thing together. A coming-of-age tale, a sci-fi thriller, an exploration of what it means to be human... The Bone Clocks is all of these things and more. Highly recommended! 

I gave The Bone Clocks 5 stars.

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air by Darragh McKeon

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Goodreads

In a small village deep in the Soviet Union, the inhabitants wake one morning to find the sky has been changed to the deepest crimson. Animals are dripping blood. And ten miles away, the government races to cover up the extent of a disaster that will shake an empire and destroy lives... From Moscow to Pripyat, the events of that years of 1986 will shake up the existence of a handful of people: a nine-year old boy forced to play silent piano in a run-down apartment block, his aunt who must hide her dissident past in the monotonous work of a car factory, her ex-husband whose life as a surgeon will be transformed when he is sent to deal with the aftermath of an unimaginable accident, and a young teenage boy whose family will be torn apart by what has happened at the Chernobyl Power Plant...

Like anyone born in the 1980s, the Chernobyl disaster has been a constant in my life, something that is talked about, taught in school and whose effects are still not completely understood. Despite that presence, I have to admit to not knowing much about what happened in the aftermath and the role it played in the fall of the Soviet Union. So I was intrigued to read this novel set in just before, during and after the disaster, following the first rumbles in the fall of an empire through the eyes of a few characters. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a fantastic novel, heart wrenching and hopeful at the same time, whose characters lives shift and change over a short period, their entire existences overwhelmed by the tragedy. McKeon does a fantastic job of describing this post-Fall Soviet Union, from the constant fear and paranoia to the glimpses of hope amidst the darkness. A lot of this hope in the novel is provided through the character of Yevgeni. His story remains at the heart of the novel, though for a lot of it he is almost more of a secondary character, but it is his journey that starts the book and caps it off in an epilogue that takes us into the characters’ future (and our past) to show just what came from the events that took place in 1986. Always bittersweet, never going for the easy answer, this book manages to evoke a different place and time not so distant from our own, through McKeon’s wonderful prose. One of the best books I have read all year, without a doubt.

I gave All That Is Solid Melts Into Air 5 stars.

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

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Tooly Zylberberg, an American with one of the most unlikely names in fiction, owns a tiny bookshop in a tiny Welsh village, where she can avoid humans and hide among books. Still mystified by the events of her youth, which saw her spirited away from Asia to Europe to the US by a group of strange misfits, she tries to avoid thinking about her past. But when a former boyfriend from New York contacts her about Humphrey, the old Russian man who once took her under her wing, Tooly finds herself forced to return to a world she has left behind, a world still full of mysteries. For somewhere in the wild existence she once shared with Humphrey, the chaotic and temptuous Sarah and the charismatic, mysterious Venn, lies the truth about herself…
 
Held together by one of the most interesting narrative structures I have ever seen – the book cycles constantly through three separate time periods – The Rise and Fall of Great Powers is Tom Rachman’s sophmore effort, his first book since 2010’s The Imperfectionists. It is a great read, full of interesting, quirky characters, whom we follow through three different incarnations. Held together by the central figure of Tooly, we see each of these people in the 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s, with each time period clearly defined and described, without ever falling into period cliches. A clera love of books and reading is present throughout – most of the characters are readers, and Tooly especially carries her love of the written world throughout her adventures (she is described as someone who won’t finish a book because she doesn’t want the people she meets in books to end with “a blank space at the bottom of the final page”). A mind-twisting mystery is teased throughout the novel, bringing all of the storylines full circle by the end of it, and setting up some great revelations in the final pages. I loved The Rise and Fall of Great Powers almost as much as The Imperfectionists, and hope we get a new Tom Rachman novel before too long!
 
I gave The Rise and Fall of Great Powers 4 stars.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose

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Paris, the 1920s. A place of excitement, dissolution and liberty. A place of ambitions, passions, art in every form, where the discontented of the world over come to find freedom. In the centre of this world lies the Chameleon Club, where expats, artists and libertines rub shoulders with extraordinary athletes, journalists and cross dressers. Into this world come a group of people whose lives will come together for a time before breaking apart in the horror of the Second World War. Centered on Lou Villars, a former runner and racecar driver who becomes a Nazi interrogator, these sometimes lovers, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies see their fortunes rise and fall. From the Hungarian photographer Gabor Tsenyi, to the America writer Lionel Maine, these characters live and breathe through the heights of the 20s, the despairs of the 30s and the darkness of the Occupation.

Told through a kaleidoscope of voices – letters, diaries, memoirs and a non-fiction work – Lovers at the Chameleon Club is a truly epic work, providing a sweeping vision of a city and a world that came to an end in the fires of the Second World War. While the plot comes to revolve around the character of Lou Villars, who begins her life as an athlete before becoming a racecar driver, a mechanic, a spy and finally a torturer, all of the characters have their own stories and lives. Showing the effect that one person can have on so many lives, Lovers at the Chameleon Club also deals with the unreliability of narrators, as each and every one is shown at some point to have exaggerated, hidden or even outright lied about the truth. Where the book truly excels, though, is in the creation of the Paris of the 20s and 30s, and especially the portrayal of the Chameleon Club itself. Prose does a fantastic job of describing this world on the cusp of such brutal change. She also manages to give each narrator their own individual voice, passing the story from one to the other with aplomb. Though far from being an action-packed thriller, the pages turn by themselves, and I got to the end of it before I had realized it. With a surprise twist in the final chapter, which puts everything else into a new light, the novel is a triumphant depiction of an intriguing period of history, told through the eyes of some fantastically drawn characters. 

I gave Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 4,5 stars.  

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker

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Goodreads

 

When struggling writer Marcus Goldman goes to see his friend and mentor Harry Quebert to find inspiration and a cure for his writer's block, he stumbles upon a disturbing revelation - years before, Harry had been involved with a teenage girl who has since disappeared. When the girl, Nola, is discovered buried in Harry's back garden, Harry is the obvious suspect. In order to clear his friend's name, Marcus does the only thing he knows how - he writes a book. As his investigation into Harry's relationship with Nola and the events of 30th August 1975 leads him to darker and darker truths, Marcus begins to question everything he thinks he knows about his friend...

 

Every so often in any reader's life, a book comes along that reminds you why you love to read. I have had a handful of such books in the past, great novels (in my eyes anyway), like An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears or The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair is one of those books. Combining everything I love to find in a book, it is a fantastic, beautifully written mystery that is also so much more than that at the same time.

 

Told almost entirely by Marcus Goldman, a self-centered, shallow, unbelievably successful writer faced with every writer's dread - writer's block - The Truth About... details the chaos that unfolds once the body of a fifteen year old girl is found in the back garden of famous writer Harry Quebert. Harry is Marcus' friend and mentor, so Marcus decides to carry out his own investigation in order to clear Harry's name. Drafted into writing a book about the experience, Marcus soon realises that no one can be trusted and that every time he thinks he is getting a handle on what actually happened to Nola Kellergan, the truth is something completely different.

 

Although the centrepiece of The Truth About... is the gradual unveiling of what happened in 1975 and the truth behind the Harry Quebert affair, Joel Dicker's novel is just as much about writing, boxing and life. Each chapter (which are numbered backwards by the way for a reason that quickly becomes clear) begins with a piece of advice Harry has given Marcus over the years. While this advice is ostensibly about writing, they can be applied just as easily to life and it is thanks to this advice that Marcus gradually grows, changes and matures as the book progresses. Although he never really loses the slightly arrogant edge that any writer needs to be able to stand up and ask the world to read a bunch of words they have strung together, Marcus does grow into a more rounded human being and it is just as much this change as the truth about Nola that carries the novel forward.

 

The writing is great and it is difficult to remember that this is a translation out of French. Whoever the translator is, he did a phenomenal job, only once dropping the ball on the use of the French Untel (in English, So-and-so), but which I doubt anyone who is not bilingual would actually pick up on. Is the writing perfect? No. The dialogue can be a bit clunky at times and the shifts from present to past are sometimes a little confusing. But the book was such a joy for me that I passed over all those little imperfections, simply enjoying the ride.

 

A "coup-de-coeur" as we say in France, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair will be one of those books I will remember for a long time. A great mystery, an exploration of writing and life, the book touches all the buttons I need to make me fall head over heels in love with a novel. I cannot wait to see what Joel Dicker writes next and I doubt I will wait for a translation of whatever it is. This one will be in my top ten if not my number one at the end of the year, I am sure. I gave The Truth About... 5 seagull-full novels out of 5.

The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld

This is an enchanted place. Other's don't see it but I do.

From his cell, the narrator of The Enchanted tells us the story of the inmates, guards and other inhabitants of the ancient stone prison where he is being held on death row. Through his sometimes almost supernatural sight, he tells us of the Lady, an investigator hired by lawyers to try and get death row inmates out of their death sentences, the Fallen Priest, who struggles to make sense of the tragedy that caused his fall from grace, the warden whose wife is fighting a losing battle against cancer, and York, a brutal killer with a heartbreaking past of his own. As his own execution draws closer, the narrator draws all of these characters together in the enchanted place where wild horses run...

An Amazon pick of the month, The Enchanted has received quite a lot of attention in the past couple of months. After reading the blurb, and hearing the comparisons to such great books as The Green Mile, I added it to my To-Read list, unsure quite what to expect but looking forward to discovering what it was all about. What I found was a heart-wrenching literary fantasy, definitely worthy of the positive vibes that have been rippling through the blogosphere recently.
Told by a nameless narrator - whose identity is hinted at throughout but not fully revealed until the very end - The Enchanted brings together a number of disparate characters, all of them with dark secrets in their pasts, all of them struggling to make sense of the world around them and such concepts as justice, forgiveness and morality in a place where morals are a commodity and not a necessity. As our narrator skips between the characters, we get a fully rounded glimpse into the enchanted place that is this prison: a dark place where guards turn a blind eye to murder and rape in return for drug-money kickbacks, but also an enchanted place where the slightest act of goodwill can shine like a star gone suddenly nova.

Combining fantastical elements with a harrowing examination of the penal system and an investigative subplot surrounding the Lady and her attempts to see York escape the death penalty, the novel is able to constantly surprise and astonish, drawing out revelations about characters that turn monsters into victims without shying away from the dark truths. While examining something as sensitive as the death sentence and the way we treat men and women in prison, The Enchanted never goes for the easy answer or the simple emotion, forcing the reader to make their own minds up or at least go away from the book asking themselves questions.

Denfeld's writing combines short, sharp sentences with a poetic turn of phrase at times that culminates in a final scene that I defy anyone to read without at least a lump in their throat. Told mainly in the first person, the story moves skillfully between the characters, giving them all space to breath and develop despite the short length. While there are a few truly villainous characters (one each especially amongst the guards and the prisoners), most of them are far from simply cardboard cutouts - every single one of them has a story to tell.
The ending is bitter sweet, depending on the characters, but most of the story questions posed by the novel are answered while the more philosophical conundrums are left - as I said above - to the reader to make sense of. The fantastical elements, while present, are left in the background and again it is left up to the reader to decide how much of them are real and how much of them are wish fulfillment on the part of the narrator.

Harrowing and yet uplifting, dark and yet full of hope, The Enchanted is one of my books of the year so far and I imagine that it will be somewhere in my top ten by the end. Filled with real people and brimming over with beautiful, dark imagery, the book is a thought provoking novel that doesn't forget that the first job of any novel is to tell a story. I will most definitely be looking out for Rene Denfeld's next work. I gave The Enchanted 5 flibber-gibbets out of 5.

Goodreads
Buy It For Kindle
Author's Website

From the Blogosphere:
The Lost Entwife
My Shelf Confessions
Fantasy Book Critic

From the Author's Mouth:
Interview at Foyles.co.uk

Eden in Winter by Richard North Patterson

 

For three days, Adam Blaine and his family had entered the Dukes County Courthouse, a modest two-storey brick structure with white trim and doors, and passed through a double door to a spiral staircase that rose the courtroom itself.

In the aftermath of his father's apparent suicide, Adam Blaine has taken it upon himself to hide the truth - that the man who raised him was in fact his uncle and that his real father is the murderer who pushed his own brother off a cliff. As he struggles to protect those he cares about from the fallout, Adam also begins a relationship with his dead father's mistress. With the police and a journalist closing in on the truth, though, it seems that his dead father's reach may extend beyond the grave...

Ever since I read Balance of Power back in the early 2000s, Richard North Patterson has been a writer whose books I devour as quickly as I can. Though many of his earlier works were more straight-up legal and political thrillers, in the past few years he has been releasing a loose trilogy that depart from his status quo. Called the Martha's Vineyard Trilogy and starting with Fall from Grace back in 2012, these three books are more literary than what Patterson has written up until now. Following the fates of the Blaine family and those they have affected, Patterson has slowly developed a family saga with complex characters and a tangled web of lies and betrayals.

Eden in Winter is the final book in the trilogy and returns to "modern" day after the flashback to the 1960s presented in Loss of Innocence. We find the Blaines caught up in the immediate aftermath of the events of the first book as Adam's "uncle" - his real father - and brother are called to court in order to give their versions of what happened the night Benjamin Blaine ended up at the bottom of a cliff on Martha's Vineyard. As their testimony is given, we see how Adam has been manipulating events in the background, giving us a glimpse into just how good Adam is at what he does. As the story progresses, we follow Adam's struggles with his own life, and see as he tries to change it. A large part of that change involves Carla, his father's mistress, pregnant with his child. What begins as Adam wanting to make sure that his baby cousin has a better life than he does turns into much more as he and Carla draw closer.

Adam as a character develops in some interesting ways throughout the novel and we get a front seat to that as a large part of his storyline is taken up with his discussions with a psychiatrist friend. Forced to look into his relationships with his parents, his brother, his lovers and his job as a CIA contractor in Afghanistan, Adam comes to some major realisations about what he wants out of life and most of the impetus that keeps the pages turning revolves around seeing how and if he will be able to make different decisions than his father did.
Patterson's writing is crisp and at times lyrical. The skills gained writing more thrilling material in the past transfer well, making sure that what is at its heart a character piece delving in to the complex relationships of this - admittedly screwed-up - family is also a page-turner. Being so heavily invested in these characters from the previous novels also helps, obviously.

The one negative is that the final resolutions are a tad pat, especially when it comes to the relationship between Adam and Carla. Although the set-up is such that the ending seems in a way logical, it also demands a suspension of belief on the part of the reader that what should be such a totally dysfunctional and even slightly twisted relationship should work. Patterson lays the ground work, though, especially thanks to Adam's conversations with the psychiatrist throughout the early chapters.

A family saga full to the brim with deceit and lies, Eden in Winter delves deep into the characters of the Blaine family and manages to create a page-turning yarn that is hard to put down. With hints of the political and legal thrillers that Patterson is well known for dribbled throughout, the book is a nice resolution to a departure trilogy for the writer. As usual, a great read that cements Patterson for me as a must-buy whenever he brings out a new book. I gave Eden in Winter 4 bodies at the bottom of a cliff out of 5.

Goodreads
Buy It For Kindle
Author's Website

From the Blogosphere:
No reviews that I could find

From the Author's Mouth:
Interview and article for the Boston Globe