It’s New Year’s Eve, so
what better time to look back over a year of brilliant reads? I love reading
about other people’s favourite books of the year, so as 2012 draws to a wet and windy close, here is my list.
The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman
Australian
ML Stedman’s first book is the moving account of a young lighthouse keeper and
his wife in the 1920s. The couple live on a remote island off the coast of
Western Australia, barely seeing anyone from one month to the next. Then one
morning a boat washes up on the shore, with a dead man and a crying baby
inside. As I wrote in the Daily Express earlier this year: “Keep a box of
tissues at the ready – Stedman’s book is a real tearjerker.”
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – Rachel Joyce
I was
lucky enough to hear Rachel Joyce speak about her work and cherish her
description of writing as “like having
knitting in my head.”
Her debut novel is the touching, uplifting story of a man in his
sixties who leaves home one morning to post a letter to Queenie Hennessy, a
friend he hasn't seen for 20 years. She's dying, and on the spur of the moment
he resolves to walk from one end of the country to the other to see her. He has
no walking boots, no map, no compass and no mobile phone, but he’s adamant that
he’s going to keep on walking till he gets there.
Tuesday’s Gone by Nicci French
As the years go by, I like crime novels and thrillers more and more. I’m a big fan of Ian Rankin
but my favourite crime novel of the year was Tuesday’s Gone. The
second of the husband and wife writing duo’s series about psychotherapist
Frieda Klein was even better than the first. As I wrote on House With No Name:
“I’m very squeamish and the opening scene, where a social worker discovers a
rotting, naked corpse in a delapidated Deptford flat, stopped me in my tracks.
But I was so desperate to discover who he was and why on earth the confused
woman living there kept trying to serve him afternoon tea that even if I’d
wanted to, I simply couldn’t stop reading.”
Alys, Always by Harriet Lane
Harriet
Lane writes beautifully and her story of a lonely, 30-something newspaper sub who witnesses a woman’s death in a
car crash was one of my favourite reads. When I chose it for one
of my Friday book reviews I called it “a subtle, beautifully observed and exquisitely written
novel – the sort of book you read in one beguiling go.” And I can’t say better
than that.
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
It’s very special when you
love a book and then get the chance to interview its author. And thanks to
Headline’s Sam Eades, I interviewed Eowyn Ivey for House With
No Name this year. Her first novel, the tale of a middle-aged couple who move
to the wilds of Alaska to start a new life, is, as I said at the time, “a touching
and truly exceptional portrayal of heartbreak and hope.”
Pure by Andrew Miller
One of my most memorable
evenings of 2012 came way back in January when I was invited to the 2011 Costa Book Awards party.
I’d been lucky enough to be on the judging panel for the first novel of the
year category (a prize awarded to Christie Watson for the compelling Tiny Sunbirds Far Away) and as a result
got an invitation to the glittering awards ceremony at Quaglino’s. The overall
prize went to Andrew Miller for Pure, his novel set in a Paris cemetery four years before the start of the French Revolution. I later reviewed it for
the Daily Express and wrote: “You can almost smell the cemetery’s stifling odour, see the
noisy, turbulent streets and sense Baratte’s joy when he unexpectedly finds
love in the midst of all the horror.”
2013 promises a host of eagerly anticipated novels,
including Instructions for a Heatwave
(February) by Maggie O’Farrell, Life After
Life by Kate Atkinson (March), the latest in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones
saga and William Boyd’s new James Bond novel.
