After I typed this list up I looked back at them and thought: What a weird mix of titles this year. Dystopian dramas, mixed with espionage, and supernatural sci-fi, against World War Two. We all have types. I obviously chose a few similar ones in my books. I loved all of these for various reasons but the first two were truly special. Happy reading in 2015.
Brett
Brett
Beautiful seems to be the adjective most used when describing this book, and it truly is. The book alternates between two different lives, a young blind French girl living in Paris right before the German occupation, and a young German boy who has a gift for fixing radio receivers and is recruited into Hitlers youth academy. Heartbreaking and powerful, Doerr has created a story with unforgettable characters that should be required reading, and personally the best I've read this year.
http://www.amazon.com/All-Light-We-Cannot-See/dp/1476746583/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901211&sr=1-1&keywords=all+the+light+we+cannot+see+by+anthony+doerr
If you're looking for a post apocalyptic dystopian novel about a group of hard scrabble survivors savagely learning to live in a new cruel world a la, 'The Walking Dead', this is not the book for you. Instead, Mandel writes what I feel is a meditative and highly moving take on what it means to survive,and what it is to remember, and cherish, and regret, and love and lose. I'm certain the book added an additional resonance in this current day of ebola hysteria, building momentum with every passing hour, but I found myself constantly wondering what if something like this Georgia flu in the story really happened? How would the world and it's survivors fare in a before/after scenario. There's also such terrific writing in her juxtaposition between the purity of art as we follow this ragtag band of performers who move from each small survivor town bringing music and Shakespeare, and the flashbacks of a mega superstar actor and the trappings of fame before his heart attack on stage that opens the book. I loved this book. Loved its haunting sadness, and its ability for its characters to find the beauty in the everyday, in the simple.
http://www.amazon.com/Station-Eleven-Emily-John-Mandel/dp/0385353308/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901102&sr=1-1&keywords=station+eleven
Damn you Pierce Brown! Not only are you movie star handsome, but at only twenty six you've managed to write one of the most compelling, thrilling and heart pounding novels this year. Add to that it's already in development as a feature and that you're writing the screenplay, could make someone green with envy if you weren't so bloody talented. Oh you fans of 'The Hunger Games', forget your Katniss and come meet Darrow. He's lives on Mars, drilling into it's depths to find the resources to make the entire planet habitable for everyone. He's smart, young, happily married, and somewhat content despite a life a hardship under a rigid caste system. And then a cataclysmic event transpires that turns his life upside down, and propels him into a life beyond his imagining. A life that's fueled by rage, revenge, and a quest to topple the corrupt leaders of The Golds-(the highest level in the caste system) and to set an oppressed people free. War, politics, intrigue, it's all here, and told with a breathtaking pace that will spin your head. The second book come out this week, and I can't wait to snap it up.
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Rising-Book-Trilogy/dp/034553980X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901014&sr=1-1&keywords=red+rising
With David Mitchell you're guaranteed some spectacular writing, and this certainly lives up to that promise. Once again he deploys his device of linked stories, this time threaded by a woman named Holly Sykes, a young English girl who as well as pining for an older boy in town, also happens to be a psychic lightning rod for wandering, sparring spirits. Through six stories we move twenty years at a time, and Holly takes a supporting role through most of them, the novel bookending with her in her seventies. Mitchell creates gorgeous engaging narratives with each of his subjects, and his writing is so rich you want to savor every line. Like the following on love vs lust:
Lust wants, does the obvious, and pads back into the forest. Love is greedier. Love wants round-the-clock care; protection; rings, vows, joint accounts; scented candles on birthdays, life insurance. Babies. Love's a dictator.
Is this the David Mitchell I'd start with? Not really. The book for the most part is pretty linear, but does delve into the sci fi in each story with the aforementioned spirits, until the fifth and longest section of the book which is an all out Matrix like war of the worlds. This is where the momentum sputtered for me, and while it didn't detract from the overall enjoyment of the book it did take a push to finish. Mitchell's 'GhostWritten' carries some of these devices and ideas,like the linked stories and the spiritual element and for me is till my personal favorite and where I'd start as a new reader. But for his rabid fans of which I'd call myself one of, there's a lot here to love.
Lust wants, does the obvious, and pads back into the forest. Love is greedier. Love wants round-the-clock care; protection; rings, vows, joint accounts; scented candles on birthdays, life insurance. Babies. Love's a dictator.
Is this the David Mitchell I'd start with? Not really. The book for the most part is pretty linear, but does delve into the sci fi in each story with the aforementioned spirits, until the fifth and longest section of the book which is an all out Matrix like war of the worlds. This is where the momentum sputtered for me, and while it didn't detract from the overall enjoyment of the book it did take a push to finish. Mitchell's 'GhostWritten' carries some of these devices and ideas,like the linked stories and the spiritual element and for me is till my personal favorite and where I'd start as a new reader. But for his rabid fans of which I'd call myself one of, there's a lot here to love.
http://www.amazon.com/Bone-Clocks-Novel-David-Mitchell/dp/1400065674/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901080&sr=1-1&keywords=the+bone+clocks
Gosh, it's so hard to encapsulate the feeling of profound beauty and sadness upon finishing this book. Spanning nearly sixty years In the life of New Yorker Eileen Tumulty, first time author Thomas has written a stunning, raw and heartbreakingly honest account of a life lived, and in a larger sense, a representation of all our lives. The book feels like two very different stories beginning with her Queens upbringing of hard scrabble Irish immigrant parents, and then moving into the more richly plotted second half involving her career, marriage and child. The book is long. It didn't bother me, but some people might be put of by its slow unwinding, although again, the second half seemed to accelerate much faster as a family crisis begins to unfold like a mystery that most people will be able to figure out with dread. It's thoughtful, carefully crafted writing, from a writer to watch.
http://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Not-Ourselves-Novel/dp/147675666X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901125&sr=1-1&keywords=we+are+not+ourselves+matthew+thomas
All I can say is I can't wait to see who they get to play this woman! Jason Matthews has written a taut, tense thriller, that once the ground work is laid unspools at a breakneck pace. Written with insiders insight into the workings of the CIA, there were moments I'd find myself simeltaneously totally engaged, and yet struggling to keep the chess match straight. The Russian names can be a killer! Yet the book at it's heart is a simple construct of a beautiful Russian spy pitted against a male CIA operative, and letting the sparks fly. The utter enjoyment of the beginning of the novel is watching these two agents square off and wondering who will take who down before their sexual tension overturns everything. Yet the novel is so much more, and so much more complex. If you can be patient with the first seventy pages or so, you'll be rewarded with a terrific spy novel that hopefully will spawn many more installments.
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Sparrow-Novel-Jason-Matthews/dp/1476706131/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901176&sr=1-1&keywords=red+sparrow+jason+matthews
I'm going to wager a bet that this will certainly be the most original story you'll read this year. Francine Prose got the idea for writing this story when she saw a pic of two woman together at a club, one dressed as a man. The photo, called Lesbian Couple At Le Monocle, was taken by the Hungarian born Parisian photographer Brassai, who in the book is now named Gabor. In a Roshomonesque narrative, the story of the woman dressed as a man in the photo, Lou Villars, who becomes a spy for Hitler during the German occupation of France, is told by a collection of people. There's Gabor's best friend, an American novelist modeled on Henry James, who finds fame after writing a sexually explicit novel. There's Gabor's wealthy benefactor, his model girlfriend, and of course the biographer of Lou Villars, who charts her beginnings as an Olympic hopeful, to war sadist. This is a story dying to be made into a movie. A fascinating, and utterly absorbing fact meshed with fiction.
http://www.amazon.com/Lovers-Chameleon-Club-Paris-1932/dp/0061713783/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901231&sr=1-1&keywords=lovers+at+the+chameleon+club+paris+1932+by+francine+prose
After finishing Smith Henderson's electric, brutal ,and exhausting debut, it's no surprise the wave of high literary praise he's receiving. Set in Reagan's America during the eighties, Henderson peels back the curtain on an America many of us couldn't dream is a reality.These are the Americans who teeter on the edge. The underbelly with track marks, and shotguns, where hard liquor is the only thing that softens the insanity of life. Into this world, Pete Snow attempts to bring order to so much chaos as a social worker with his own set of demons that are about to not just overturn his applecart, but blow it to smithereens. When a feral boy shows up in the local school, Snow finds himself face to face with the boys father, Jeremiah Pearl; A survivalist who believes the end of the world is nigh, and Satan's minions are running the planet. What spirals sends Pete on one course with the Pearl family, while his own life careens off in a completely different and chaotic direction. This book is like driving by a car accident, that you have to slow down to witness, while at the same time scared of what you're going to see. It's a terrific debut from a writer that I'm certain we'll be hearing much more about.
http://www.amazon.com/Fourth-July-Creek-Smith-Henderson/dp/0062286447/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901254&sr=1-1&keywords=fourth+of+july+creek+by+smith+henderson
Many people are being ultra secretive about the supposed 'twist' in this book, but without giving it explicitly away, I do think it's only fair for the potentially interested reader to know what they're getting. Think E.M. Forster meets 'Penny Dreadful', the horror series on Showtime. Set in Victorian England, the first one hundred pages or so reads like a coming of age novel about a young man who leaves his sister, his only family, behind to find his way in the city as a writer. But then an event happens which steers the narrative into a classic horror story that veers off into a variety of characters while said writers sister comes looking for her brother who seems to have disappeared. If horror's not you're thing, you'll definitely be out.
I loved it. It's so hard to believe this is Lauren Owen's first book, and that she's not even thirty. Perhaps it was because I happened to be watching the Showtime series which takes place roughly the same time and location, but the story was so engrossing, so visual, and totally had me under its spell.
http://www.amazon.com/Quick-Novel-Lauren-Owen/dp/0812993276/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901277&sr=1-1&keywords=the+quick+lauren+owen
As a child of the seventies I remembered all the Fosse greats: 'Pippin', 'Cabaret',and 'Chicago'. But it was probably watching 'All That Jazz' that mesmerized me, and for one of the first times made me aware of the power of a director on film. How amazing it is to see, with Wasson's exhaustively researched bio how they all came together, while the man slowly fell apart. I found myself flipping faster through the pages as I entered the last third of his life, knowing what was coming, and yet unable to look away. Fosse is presented as a brilliant artist, a possessive womanizer, a drug addict and chain smoker, and a visionary ahead of his time. For those who are familiar and even those who are not, all those qualities make for a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read.
http://www.amazon.com/Fosse-Sam-Wasson/dp/0547553293/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419901299&sr=1-1&keywords=fosse
Also rounding up a pretty great group of honorable mention writers is Greg Iles, who has an amazing set of books I discovered revolving around a lawyer turned writer ala John Grisham, named Penn Cage. He moves back to his childhood home in Natchez Mississippi with his daughter after his wife passes away from cancer. Technically they're considered thrillers but Iles is much more than that. His latest in the series which was published this year is 'Natchez Burning', which got reviews to rival the finest "literature authors". It's a great, dark series dealing with the ugly underbelly of the deep south.
The first is:
