hogglestock

Wow, 2009 was a good year for reading. Not only did I read many more books than in previous years, but the quality of the reads was so much better. If you look back on my recap for 2008 you will see it was pretty slim pickins last year. This year I have almost 30 books that I really liked or loved. So was tough to narrow it down to my top 10 for the year.

Don’t be misled, these aren’t the finest, best-written books I read in 2009, they are just the ones that I enjoyed the most. And they are in no particular order.

The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher – My favorite Persephone so far. Review here.

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter – German ocean liner sailing from Mexico to Germany in the 1930s. A really interesting story about the disparate lives of the first class and mostly anti-Semitic passengers, the way they mix and the way they don’t mix.

Hotel de Dream by Edmund White – A wonderful bit of historical fiction about American author Stephen Crane and a manuscript about a male prostitute. Review here.

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins – My first Wilkie Collins but definitely not my last. Lots of plot, lots of twists and turns. I loved it. Review here.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Shaffer & Barrows – Life in the Channel Islands during WWII and plenty of book talk. Not perfect, but really, really enjoyable. Review here.

The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing – A different kind of thriller that definitely keeps you in suspense right up to the end. Review here.

Consequences by Penelope Lively – A really wonderful multigenerational story that I didn’t want to end.

A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood – A brother goes to India to see his brother who is about to become a brother. A Hindu monk that is. The story is told from both brothers’ perspective.

The House by the Sea by May Sarton – One of Sarton’s many journals. Books, garden, chores, neighbors, solitude. I read them whenever I need something quiet and evocative of simpler times.

On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin – An amazing novel of two farmer-brothers and their life in the Welsh borderlands. The writing and the story are quite beautiful.

The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman – Lipman is the queen of the intelligent, easy read. This was my first Lipman (I read two others this year and have another two lined up) and I loved it. This is the perfect introduction to what will become your love affair with Elinor Lipman.

As you can see, I couldn’t quite narrow it down to 10. The closest I could come was 11.

Honorable Mentions
My Latest Grievance – Elinor Lipman
The Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood
Pied Piper – Nevil Shute
The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
Plant Dreaming Deep – May Sarton
Some Tame Gazelle – Barbara Pym
Fly Away Home – Marge Piercy
Strangers – Anita Brookner
The Game of Opposites – Norman Lebrecht
Deluxe – Dana Thomas
Journal of Solitude – May Sarton
Anything for Jane – Cheryl Mendelson
A Jest of God – Margaret Laurence
Mr Phillips – John Lanchester
Love, Work, Children – Cheryl Mendelson
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Trick of It – Michael Frayn

City Boy
My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s
Edmund White

With one notable exception I have always felt like I should like Edmund White more than I do. He has written some good novels, lots of reviews and criticism, and a big ol’ doorstop of a biography of Genet. But overall I am somewhat ambivalent about his work. I thought this memoir of his would be kind of interesting. And it indeed has some interesting tales of life in New York before it was the safe, tourist-friendly city it is today. But it also has a streak of New York exceptionalism that drives me a bit crazy. The same kind of exceptionalism that make New Yorkers feel (and exclaim repeatedly) like they are the only ones in the USA capable of pulling together in a crisis (like during the 1970s blackouts). Like if an attack of 9/11 proportions would have happened in Chicago or Des Moines or Seattle, citizens of those backwater towns would have turned away and let the dead and dying fend for themselves. Underlying most of it, White also seems to be what I call a New York City bumpkin. New Yorkers so enamored of their island life and its insular, self-congratulatory social, political, and artistic milieu that they sometimes sound a lot narrower than their supposedly cosmopolitan existence would have you otherwise expect them to be.

So, I am not going to say much more about this memoir and instead focus on one of his novels that I truly like, and think more people should read.

Hotel de Dream
Edmund White

This is a wonderful bit of historical fictions that imagines the final days of American author Stephen Crane (1871-1900), famous for such works as Maggie, Girl of the Streets and The Red Badge of Courage. Apparently there is some (perhaps apocryphal) evidence that Crane was working on novel about a male prostitute whom he had met (in a platonic way) when the boy came to him begging for money.

In Hotel de Dream, Edmund White not only imagines “what if” Crane had written that novel, but he actually supplies the imagined Crane manuscript that forms a book within a book. And both White’s narrative of Crane’s final days, and the imagined manuscript fragments are interesting and beautiful. White provides what feels like an authentic look into the life of a turn of the century boy prostitute in a way that is engaging and sensitive. In the process White finds a way of filling a gap in a historical record where gay lives often go ignored.

I think this is a really fine book. I will let Ann Patchett have the final word:

The book is a marvel of the subtle layers of storytelling, and at every layer it is fascinating, tragic and utterly beautiful.