Last year I read about fifty books – and the vast majority of them were just fine. As my mother would say, they kept me quiet. I’m all for books that can pass the time on a dreary Sunday afternoon, but here is a short list of the books that did better than keep me quiet. These are the books that got me talking and recommending to anyone who would listen.
Money – Martin Amis
Embarrassingly, I avoided Martin Amis for a long time – mainly due to an assumption that he wrote ‘books for boys’ (by this I mean dull spy novels and dry political thrillers – you know, the stuff your dad buys at the airport). Oh, how wrong I was! This book is a delight. Grotty, funny, morally questionable – a fascinating journey through the excesses and addictions of the super rich in the 1980s. John Self might be an awful person but he certainly makes for a brilliant protagonist. The novel even has a neat little mystery built in – what more could you want? After finishing this, I went out to Oxfam and bought all the Amis novels I could find, and I would challenge anyone not to do the same.
I Who Have Never Known Men – Jacqueline Harpman
There are plenty of ways I could put someone off reading this book. It’s relentlessly bleak, for starters, and it provides no answers to the endless questions it raises in its dystopian setting. But if you can cope with 200 pages of unwavering hopelessness, then you’ll discover, as I have, one of the literary masterpieces of the 20th century. The book is so perfectly formed that I struggled to believe the author could be a human, and that the events could be imagined. Months after finishing the book, I still find myself thinking of those 39 women as though they were out there still, on some other planet or in some other time.
Hello Beautiful – Ann Napolitano
Ooh look at that – a recent bestseller that’s actually worth the hype! I don’t normally go for sister-focused books. As someone from a male-dominated household I tend to find them a little confusing, but when the Oxford SYP announced this as their book of the month I decided to give it a go. By the end of chapter one I already had full faith in the brilliance of Napolitano’s writing. She treats the Padavano family with such care and realism that I felt bereft to leave them at the novel’s end. Perfect!
Favourite Reads of 2024
Last year I read about fifty books – and the vast majority of them were just fine. As my mother would say, they kept me quiet. I’m all for books that can pass the time on a dreary Sunday afternoon, but here is a short list of the books that did better than keep me quiet. These are the books that got me talking and recommending to anyone who would listen.
Money – Martin Amis
Embarrassingly, I avoided Martin Amis for a long time – mainly due to an assumption that he wrote ‘books for boys’ (by this I mean dull spy novels and dry political thrillers – you know, the stuff your dad buys at the airport). Oh, how wrong I was! This book is a delight. Grotty, funny, morally questionable – a fascinating journey through the excesses and addictions of the super rich in the 1980s. John Self might be an awful person but he certainly makes for a brilliant protagonist. The novel even has a neat little mystery built in – what more could you want? After finishing this, I went out to Oxfam and bought all the Amis novels I could find, and I would challenge anyone not to do the same.
I Who Have Never Known Men – Jacqueline Harpman
There are plenty of ways I could put someone off reading this book. It’s relentlessly bleak, for starters, and it provides no answers to the endless questions it raises in its dystopian setting. But if you can cope with 200 pages of unwavering hopelessness, then you’ll discover, as I have, one of the literary masterpieces of the 20th century. The book is so perfectly formed that I struggled to believe the author could be a human, and that the events could be imagined. Months after finishing the book, I still find myself thinking of those 39 women as though they were out there still, on some other planet or in some other time.
Hello Beautiful – Ann Napolitano
Ooh look at that – a recent bestseller that’s actually worth the hype! I don’t normally go for sister-focused books. As someone from a male-dominated household I tend to find them a little confusing, but when the Oxford SYP announced this as their book of the month I decided to give it a go. By the end of chapter one I already had full faith in the brilliance of Napolitano’s writing. She treats the Padavano family with such care and realism that I felt bereft to leave them at the novel’s end. Perfect!
by Charlotte Harris