12 of the best books of the year so far

Victory City by Salman Rushdie

The 15th novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and Quichotte, Victory City,  described by The New Yorker as “immensely enjoyable”, is an era-spanning epic that begins in 14th-Century southern India. Its heroine is a grief-stricken nine-year-old girl, Pampa Kampana, who is instructed by a goddess to create equality for women in a patriarchal world. Kampana’s fortune, over centuries, becomes interwoven with that of the great empire of Bisnaga, the “victory city” of the title. In this novel, Rushdie has created “an alternative Mahabharata”, writes The Guardian, “an elaborate founding myth from the bare bones of history”. (RL)

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

Eleanor Catton won the Booker Prize in 2013 for her novel The Luminaries, and the New Zealand author’s latest offering, witty thriller Birnam Wood, has also been highly acclaimed. Eco-activism meets staggering affluence when the young members of an environmental rights group end up being entangled with a billionaire drone manufacturer. “Catton is not just a master at spinning a web of competing philosophies, ” says Vogue.com. “Her characters are deeply flawed but you can’t help but root for them.” The Guardian praises Catton as a “novelist of lavish technical gifts who addresses herself to the world, broadly and richly conceived.” Birnam Wood is, says the review, “another virtuoso performance: elaborately plotted, richly conceived, enormously readable”. (LB) 

Shy by Max Porter

From the author of Lanny (2019) and The Death of Francis Bacon (2021), Porter’s fourth book is another slight volume of experimental, poetic prose. Its hero is 15-year-old Shy, who we encounter as he walks away from Last Chance, a home for troubled youth, with his pockets full of rocks. Shy is Porter’s best, says The Telegraph, since his acclaimed 2015 debut, Grief is a Thing with Feathers, “an act of humanity and grace, heightened by its distinctive form and artistry.” According to the iNewspaper, it is “a dazzling bolt of prose in the long night of our times”. (RL)

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

“Marvellous – clever, funny and brilliantly well observed,” is how India Knight describes Pineapple Street in The Sunday Times. The debut novel by Jenny Jackson explores generational wealth and privilege in forensic detail, following three women who are part of the super-wealthy Stockton clan, in leafy Brooklyn Heights, New York. One was born into the wealth, one has married into it, and one wants to give it away. “What is impressive about the work is that it treats rich people as fallible human beings,” says Medium. “Although these characters are imperfect, you’ll fall in love with them anyway and you’ll want to know how they turn out once the end of the book is reached.” (LB)

Maame by Jessica George

Jessica George’s debut novel became an instant NYT bestseller when it was published earlier this year; favourable comparisons have been made with another publishing sensation, Candice Carty-Williams’s Queenie, from 2019. Maddie, nicknamed “Maame”, is a twenty-something Londoner with Ghanaian parents, who forgoes the regular trials of a 25-year-old existence as the primary caregiver to her father, who has Parkinson’s. A coming-of-age story about family, relationships and identity, Maame, writes The Washington Post, “isn’t always an easy story to read, but is always told with grace and compassion”. The New York Times says: “George shows the details and scope of life with such confidence and joie de vivre, it’s easy to forget she’s a first-time novelist.” (RL)

The Survivalists by Kashnana Cauley

In the Survivalists, Aretha, a lawyer, moves in with her coffee-entrepreneur boyfriend, Aaron, and his doomsday-prepping housemates. What follows is a half-joking exploration of capitalism, gun ownership, and what it takes to survive in the modern world as a black American. “Learn her name, because Cauley is one of the funniest writers at work today, period,” says the Los Angeles Times. Vulture agrees, describing Cauley as “one of the smartest and funniest writers working today, and this novel is a chance for fans to spend even more time with her cutting critiques of the flaws in American culture.” (LB)

Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin

Based on her own mother’s story, and interweaving real historical events with fiction, Cecile Pin’s debut novel begins in 1978, three years after the last US troops have left Vietnam. Young orphan siblings Anh, Thanh and Minh flee their village, first to Hong Kong, making their way as refugees towards the uninviting landscape of Thatcher’s Britain. Their journey is accompanied by the voice of their younger brother, Dao, a lost soul who speaks from the hinterland between the dead and the living. Wandering Souls is “subtle and gripping”, writes the LA Times, while the iNewspaper says: “this is a powerful and timely debut about seeking asylum; about what life is when it is ripped from its origins, and how happiness and identity can be found again on foreign shores.” (RL)

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

Set on the UK’s Isle of Wight in a beloved but crumbling family home, Sandcove, three very different sisters and their unconventional mother tackle life and long-held family secrets. The Sunday Times best-selling debut novel by Georgina Moore explores whether or not children can ever truly be free of the mistakes their parents make. “Each of the main characters is flawed yet relatable,” says The Independent, “and the family dynamics between the strong women are portrayed perfectly by Moore. An immersive novel which leaves the reader feeling they have become part of the family.” It’s a confident debut, according to The Observer. “With Moore’s evocative prose it’s easy to see why The Garnett Girls is being likened to works by Penny Vincenzi.” (LB)

Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood

This 15-strong short-story collection is Atwood’s first publication since The Testaments. Divided into three parts, it is dedicated in part to Atwood’s partner, Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019; scenes from the marriage of Tig and Nell sandwich a disparate bunch of tales that encompass everything from aliens to pandemics. Old Babes in the Wood is “a gripping read,” writes the FT, which highlights “themes that are always at the heart of Atwood’s work: the haunting presence of traumatic histories, profound imbalances of power and opportunity in the world today, and society’s darkest possible futures”. The Guardian says: “There are chips and fragments of lives, full of sass and sadness”. (RL)

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry

When he’s faced with the past he would prefer to forget, retired policeman Tom’s life is thrown into further confusion. In the Irish author’s ninth novel, Barry explores how the effects of violence and abuse reverberate across generations. Old God’s Time is a “reckoning with violated innocence,” says the Irish Independent. “The familiar story of the crimes of church and state is told in a fresh and spectacular way.” Meanwhile, iNews describes the book as a “profound state-of-Ireland novel”. Barry, it says, is “a master storyteller… exploring the fluid border between the real and the unreal, and its relation to trauma”. (LB)

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

This is New Englander Harding’s third novel: following Enon (2013) and his 2009 debut, Tinkers, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. It is in This Other Eden, though, “that Harding’s gifts have found their fullest expression”, writes The Observer, praising “the depth of Harding’s sentences, their breathless angelic light.” Inspired by historical events, the story is set on Apple Island in early-20th Century Maine, which the mixed-race Honey family have called home for generations, until they are abruptly cast off the island. This Other Eden, writes The New York Times, is “a novel that is both devastating and meditative.” (RL)

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

In this humorous take on Hollywood romcoms, Sally Milz is a comedy TV script writer who finds herself in an unlikely relationship that skewers all her assumptions about romance. Curtis Sittenfeld is the author of the hit novels American Wife and Rodham. The author, says The Guardian, “isn’t above giving readers what they want – and that’s exactly what she does in this affable, intelligently crafted tale of work and love… Throughout, the novel’s command of structure, pace and dialogue is faultless.” The Washington Post points to Sittenfeld’s “quick-paced prose”, and praises how vividly she depicts everyday life at the TV station where her protagonist works. “The work becomes terrifically exciting and reminds us how rarely we get to see what people actually do at the office.” (LB)

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