It has been a mixed year for literature. In the current climate, most of the big publishers have chosen to play it safe; releasing new titles from established authors which they know will sell. New novels by Grisham, King and Brown surfaced and they’re all fine if you like that sort of thing. As someone who spends most of his time in a bookshop, you would think fleshing out a top 5 for fiction, non-fiction etc would be easy. However, the oft scratched and edited shortlist I have next to me extends to just 14 titles across all genres. That said, while it wasn’t a desperately exciting year for new books, there were a handful that made me stand up and notice. The following are 5 titles, in somewhat of an ascending order, are the ones which grabbed me the most.
The Infinity of Lists by Umberto Eco
(MacLehose Press | 408 pages | £35 HB)
Acclaimed ponderer Umberto Eco has written a heavily researched and lavishly illustrated essay dissecting the West’s passion (or compulsion) for order. The list, whether used for enlightenment, bragging rights or year-end roundups, is a concept that Eco proves can be traced back as long as humanity can. Taking examples from great works of art, biblical passages and ancient engravings through to modern poetry and reference catalogues, Eco discusses the prevalence of the list in society. A book that sees Homer mingling with Joyce and Bosch with Warhol, it is fascinating insight into something so seemingly innocuous.
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
(Canongate | 128 pages | £9.99 PB)
As a self-confessed cynic, I wasn’t sure what to make of this at first. Judging the book by its cover might lead you to believe there’ll be angels and cosmic ordering inside. In fact, what you discover is a charming volume of short polemics on life after death and what you find there. In one you spend eternity in a grey waiting room until those who survive you forget you existed. Is it better to be comfortable but forgotten? In others God must decide if bad people are truly all bad. Should an adulterer who’s nice to his mother be saved? These forty two-page stories may not make you reconsider your death – and nor do they set out to – but they have a subtle and charming ability to make you reconsider your life.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
(Harvill Secker | 392 pages | £17.99 HB)
Despite my bemoaning of cookie cutter pool-side fiction, there were one or two truly revelatory novels in 2009. One is the debut of 28 year-old author, Reif Larsen. Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet is a 12 year-old Montanan. Son of a rancher father and scientist mother his is wise beyond their years combined. Everything he experiences he maps. Books of diagrams line his bedroom walls and it is one of these maps which gets him selected to give a speech to the Smithsonian museum in Washington, who assume he is rather more than 12. A cross country journey ensues. The novel is stunningly presented in an unusually sized hardback, giving sufficient space in the margins for T.S.’s numerous field notes, diagrams, equations and asides. It manages to be both light-hearted and poignant; a 3,000 mile trip documented through the wide, unbiased eyes of a child. Illustrations include a map of Montanan McDonald’s locations relative to population centres and the 5 varieties of boredom as exhibited by T.S.’s teenage sister. A real pleasure of a novel.
Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris; Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton
(Bloomsbury | 144 pages | £12.99 PB)
Perhaps the most ambitious novel of the year is the one which took traditional narrative and eschewed it completely. Important Artifacts is the story of a relationship. The relationship of Lenore and Harold from the party at which they met through their living together and on to their ultimately messy break-up. On the face of it it is a novel I would avoid like the plague, however the way in which Shapton chooses to tell it is so phenomenally engaging that it screams to be finished. The book is presented as an official auction catalogue. Black and white photographs of the lots and brief formal descriptions comprise the entirety of the novel. It is an auction of the shared moments; the final nail in the coffin of the relationship; that inevitable box of left-over trinkets returned in the bitterest of fashions. Every mundane item, beginning with the invitation to the Halloween party and ending with snide remarks scratched on napkins, torn pictures and once thoughtful gifts are presented for the public’s casual perusal. Snapped under harsh lighting and pinned with lot numbers and monotone descriptions. A picture tells a thousand words, and this story has depth far beyond its slight 144 pages.
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan
(Templar | 98 pages | £12.99 HB)
Shaun Tan is an award-winning Australian illustrator. While you are most likely to find his work in the children’s section, the sheer magnificence of his art is, to be honest, wasted on the young. His 2007 title, The Arrival, was an absolutely astounding tale told solely through his beautiful pencil sketches. A story of displacement and uncertainty which reflected the mass migration of countless peoples through the ages. I’d go so far as to call it essential. His most recent work, Tales from Outer Suburbia, a collection of short and surreal stories, is not as heavy but manages to be just as successful. An alien comes to visit and takes residence in a kitchen cabinet. A diver is found wandering the suburbs, far from sea. A new Cold War means everyone is required to have a missile in their back yard. The tales are brief, beautiful and say so much with so little. Tan’s illustrations are are the best you’ll find in fiction today, and despite its brevity and supposed 8+ age bracket I defy you to not be moved more by this than anything else you’ll read this year.
