A Decade's Worth of Great Novels
I’m spending this Christmas by myself in France. It is quite strange, but mostly ok. There’s only so much Netflix and napping I can stomach so I’ve spent this afternoon compelling a list of what was meant to be the hundred best books i’ve read in the decade since I first started keeping a diary of everything I read. Before sharing my list, let me outline how I’ve managed to narrow it down.
I’ve read 2050 books since the beginning of 2012. I’d say around half of these are novels so 50% of the great books I’ve come across aren’t even getting a look in here.
Some of my all time favourite novels, such as Dracula and Wuthering Heights, aren’t making an appearance on this list because I don’t seem to have re-read them in the last decade. I will rectify this asap. I’d say around about two thirds of the books I read are semi-recent publications so this list is probably weighted towards the contemporary.
I’ve only picked one novel per author. This was a bit of a struggle. Ideally, I’d have listed multiple Shirley Jacksons, Barbara Comyns, Graham Greenes and Agatha Christies, but there’s only so much room on a list.
It is a list and therefore a very arbitrary thing, subject to my reading tastes and whims. I’m not saying these are the best books I’ve read in the last decade. They’re simply the ones which impacted me most. This afternoon, when I read through my reading diaries for each year, I was drawn to the books which came straight to mind because something in them resonated quite deeply at the time and is still speaking to me.
I’ve been quite honest with myself compelling this and gone for the novels I honestly loved, rather than the ones people expect you to bang on about.
I ended up with a longlist of around 200 books and it was impossible to shorten it down to 100 so what you’re getting is a list of 150 great novels in the order I read them.
All this to say, this is just an oddly drawn together list of novels I really enjoyed. Maybe there’s something in here you’ve not read before and it will prove useful to you. I really hope so. I think all these books are well worth a few hours of your time.
Emma Donoghue - Room
David Park - The Truth Commissioner
Patrick Dewitt - The Sisters Brothers
Paul Murray - Skippy Dies
Patrick Suskind - Perfume
Salman Rushdie - Midnight’s Children
Will Wiles - Care of Wooden Floors
John Irving - The World According to Garp
Andrew Miller - Pure
Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum (Translation by Breon Mitchell)
Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire
Brian Moore - The Great Victorian Collection
Angela Carter - Wise Children
Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle
Janet McNeill - The Maiden Dinosaur
Donald Antrim - The Hundred Brothers
Richard Brautigan - The Abortion
Kevin Barry - City of Bohane
Samantha Harvey - The Wilderness
Naomi Alderman - Disobedience
Eimear McBride - A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing
Haruki Murakami - 1Q84 (Translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel)
Jeanette Winterson - Oranges are not the Only Fruit
Patrick McCabe - The Butcher Boy
Hilary Mantel - Fludd
Leonora Carrington - The Hearing Trumpet
Jenny Offill - The Department of Speculation
Agota Kristof - The Notebook (Translated by Alan Sheridan)
Ali Smith - How to be Both
Donal Ryan - The Thing About December
Paul Ewen - Francis Plug: How to be a Public Author
Flannery O’Connor - Wise Blood
Tobias Wolff- Old SChool
William Trevor - Miss Gomez and the Brethren
Ben Lerner - 10:04
Muriel Sparks - The Driver’s Seat
Max Porter - Grief is the Thing With Feathers
Junot Diaz - The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Timor Vermes - Look Who’s Back (Translated by Jamie Bulloch)
Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life
Conor O’Callaghan - Nothing on Earth
Mike McCormack - Solar Bones
Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle
George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo
Sara Baume - A Line Made by Walking
Joan Aiken - The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Jeffrey Eugenides - The Virgin Suicides
Curtis Sittenfeld - Prep
Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Good Squad
Bonnie Nadzam - Lions
Bernard McLaverty - Cal
Joan Lindsay - Picnic at Hanging Rock
Jacob Polley - Talk of the Town
Edna O’Brien - The Little Red Chairs
Russell Hoban - Ridley Walker
Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road
Francis Spufford - Golden Hill
Carys Davies - West
Will Eaves - Murmur
Samanta Schweblin - Fever Dream (Translation by Megan McDowell)
Stephen King - Carrie
Anna Burns - Milkman
Michel Faber - Under the Skin
Fiona Mozley - Elmet
Miriam Toews - Women Talking
Sarah Moss - Ghost Wall
Sam Thompson - Jott
Michael Hughes - Country
Knut Hamsun - Hunger (Translated by Sverre Lyngstad)
Carol Shields - Unless
Richard Ford - Wildlife
Henry James - The Turn of the Screw
Elizabeth Strout - Olive Kitteridge
Julian Barnes - England, England
Tommy Orange - There, There
Cynan Jones - The Dig
Janice Galloway - The Trick is to Keep Breathing
Ocean Vuong - On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Sue Rainsford - Follow Me To Ground
Sophie Mackintosh - The Water Cure
Robbie Arnott - Flames
Fiona McFarlane - The Night Guest
Glenn Patterson - Burning Your Own
Jacqueline Harpman - I Who Have Never Known Men (Translation by Ros Schwartz)
Valeria Luiselli - The Lost Children Archives
Steven Sherill - The Minotaur takes a Cigarette Break
Andrew Michael Hurley - Starveacre
Caoilinn Hughes - The Wild Laughter
Otessa Moshfegh - Eileen
Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca
Adrian Duncan - Love Notes from a German Building Site
Garth Greenwell - Cleanness
Vigdis Hjorth - Will and Testament (Translation by Charlotte Barslund)
Alan Warner - Morven Callar
Sam Hanna Bell - December Bride
Marianne Lee - A Quiet Tide
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld - The Discomfort of Evening (Translation by Michele Hutchison)
Tove Jansson - The Summer Book (Translated by Thomas Teal)
Karl Geary - Montpellier Parade
Naomi Kruger - May
Magnus Mills - The Restraint of Beasts
Anakana Schofield - Bina
Peter Stamm - Seven Years (Translation by Michael Hofmann)
Olga Tokarczuk - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
David Garnett - Lady Into Fox
Catherine Lacey - Pew
Dexter Palmer - Mary Toff or The Rabbit Queen
Fernanda Melchor - Hurricane Season (Translation by Sophie Hughes)
Emma Glass - Rest and Be Thankful
Agatha Christie - And Then There Were None
Lisa Halliday - Asymmetry
Hanif Kureishi - The Buddha of Suburbia
Delphine de Vigan - Gratitude (Translation by George Miller)
Norah Hoult - There Were No Windows
Maurice Leitch - Gilchrist
Marie Darrieussecq - Pig Tales (Translation by Linda Coverdale)
Una Mannion - A Crooked Tree
Natasha Brown - Assembly
Percival Everett - Erasure
William Kennedy - Ironweed
Gwendoline Riley - My Phantoms
Virginia Feito - Mrs March
Kevin Brockmeier - The Brief History of the Dead
Victor Jestin - Heatwave (Translation by Sam Taylor)
Rachel Yoder - Nightbitch
Sarah Hall - Burntcoat
Sylvia Townsend Warner - Lolly Willowes
Nuala O’Connor - Nora
Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This
Benjamin Labatut - When We Cease to Understand the World (Translated by Adrian Nathan West)
Deirdre Madden - One by One in the Darkness
Graeme Macrae Burnet - Case Notes
Maggie O’Farrell - Hamnet
Claire Fuller - Bitter Orange
Sara Gran - Come Closer
Julia Armfield - Our Wives Under the Sea
Kay Dick - They
Graham Greene - The End of the Affair
Claire Kohida - Woman, Eating
Philippe Besson - Lie With Me (Translation by Molly Ringwald)
Graham Swift - Mothering Sunday
Selva Almada - The Wind That Lays Waste (Translation by Chris Andrews)
Barbara Comyns - Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
Roque Larraquy - Comemadre (Translated by Heather Cleary)
John McGahern - Amongst Women
Peter Cameron - What Happens at Night
Sigrid Nunez - The Friend
Barbara Pym - Excellent Women
Sophie White - Where I End
E Annie Proulx - The Shipping News