Best 25 Novels Since 2000 ...
The following is a list of 25 novels published since 2000 that I consider good enough to be part of a LIST. Clearly this is my list and clearly there are some very evident biases; however, the following is a summary of the criteria I tried to follow.
Must be published AFTER 1999 …
Must qualify to be read twice if I live long enough. Some already have but most will be treats if I see the other side of 80.
Only one book per writer … this is meant to make the list more inclusive and is a tacit recognition that even the best writers have only a handful (if that) of great books within them. I apologize to the likes of Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth; however, their prolific output may, in fact, underscore my point.
This is not meant to win any diversity or inclusivity awards. It was book first and foremost. I wish Toni Morrison had written a great 21st century novel. I wish The Plot Against America was as good a book as it was prescient. I wish Annie Proulx had written Close Range in 2000. The list is long. I also am reluctant to put books recently published on the list. I wonder if Hamnet will survive through this decade.
Finally, with only a couple exceptions, each book on this list I would have been happy to teach. I did teach two (The Road & Old School) several times and if I had been able to continue with a popular senior literature elective, several of these might have found their way into the class.
btw: the order is the year published …
THE GLASS PALACE by Amitav Ghosh (2000)
This is a terrific introduction to one of the great writers of our time. Like most of his work, it borders on historical fiction and revolves around the European encroachment of the South Asian world. It is romantic, evocative and very instructive. There is so much more of Ghosh to read if this works for you.
ATONEMENT by Ian McEwan (2001)
I consider this to be McEwan’s triumph. Original, moving and brilliantly conceived, this book was inhaled when it came out. Even the most effete members of the English Department loved it. After this book’s wild success, envy and fame began to chip away at his writing and despite producing many more excellent novels; his critics seemed to have had enough. Too bad … a truly gifted and creative writer. Make a deal with yourself. Read one a year for the next ten years – it will be worth it. I suspect most of his canon will hold up.
OLD SCHOOL by Tobias Wolff (2003)
I taught literature for 20 years so I am biased when it comes to a book about a man in a private school who teaches American Literature and screws up his life. You will learn a lot about schools, boys and teaching but even more about Robert Frost, Ann Rand and Ernest Hemingway. It is short and sweet and packs a punch. Wolff writes like a dream. His other novels may be better than OLD SCHOOL (again … apologize for my teaching bias) while his short stories are as good as anybody writing today.
GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson (2004)
I just read it and wrote a lengthy apology that it took me so long (see the recent post). Widely placed at or near the top of any similar list, this novel is her masterpiece. It is a spiritual journey equally distributed through faith and language. Flying over the farming grid of Middle America will never be the same. Never … ever … read this book in a hurry. Read it aloud to your significant other or the family pet. It is worthy of a daily genuflect. Despite what critics and her rabid fans say, her other works (and she works slowly) are superb but suffer in comparison to this perfect book.
NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishigiro (2005)
I must admit that I am prone to raising a novel’s value if a terrific film adaptation is involved. I loved the 2010 British adaptation so much that I began to use it as I taught The Age of Innocence – a stretch for sure but a tantalizing one that produced some original essays. This does not mean I did not like the novel. It is a stunning piece of soft science fiction that uses dystopia to address the terrible shortcomings of our all too modern world. The inclusion of this book is also a way to insist that you read The Remains of the Day (and then see the movie). I am certain that this 1989 novel is what opened the door for Ishigiro’s Nobel Prize.
THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
I taught this novel for several years. I have read it six times. My children tracked me down in very different parts of the world to tell me how good it was. It has survived a near miss with the well-intentioned but misdirected movie. It has to now survive the canon’s white male culling phase and our general COVID triggered weariness with the “end of the world”. Climate change makes the apparent nuclear winter almost passé. I get this and kind of agree with all these hits; however, to read the last paragraph is to imagine John Donne awaking in our world for one poetic moment. The whole book is poetry ranging from the endless repetition of key words to literature’s most memorable Coke can. Finally, it remains one of the most hopeful books I have ever read.
THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery (2006)
This book really works. To pair it in the same year with The Road may feel a bit absurd. For some, I am sure, it will bring the whole list into question. Some consider this gentle, very original and ultimately traditional story to be a glorified piece of young adult fiction. Maybe … but so is To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies. The book captures youth and does so with a sense of place that resonates and that is the absolute requirement of any coming of age novel.
THE BRIEF & WONDEROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Diaz (2007)
This book requires an analogy to appreciate it. Reading it is like the first time you dance all night with someone you love. It is exhilarating, exhausting and you do not want it to end. The Dominican Republic gives it a terrifying macro context of violence and fear while the Dominicans who populate the story are simply unforgettable. Junot Diaz has written many great short stories but this certainly feels like his Catch-22. And like Heller, I suspect you can only catch lightning in a bottle once – which is exactly what he did here.
THE SECRET SCRIPTURE by Sebastian Barry (2008)
Barry succeeds where few do. He wrote a deeply romantic, lyrical novel filled with unraveling truths, canine heroics and political violence. If you figured out that this must be set in Ireland and the writer is Irish – ten points. It flirts with the “been there done that” narrative that haunts much of Irish literature no matter how well written the book. What the Irish may lack in narrative originality they more than make up for in expressive genius.
MY FATHER’S TEARS by John Updike (2009)
I cheat. The stories were written before my deadline; however, the compilation came out shortly before his death when his editor asked him to select his finest short stories for a brief anthology. Brief is the operative word since Updike wrote a zillion short stories and was as good at it as anybody in American letters (I do NOT like his novels). The fact that he curated this final, elegant list is truly a gift. Read the first story and weep … then read the rest. Written for older sensibilities, this is a collection from a man taking stock.
WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel (2009)
The Guardian recently called this the great novel of the first twenty years of the 21st century. It might very well be. One reason is that it inspired a trilogy that will stand the test of time. It is mighty hard to win TWO Booker Prizes. Her third Cromwell is too long. The second is doomed to fall short because Wolf Hall is a drop dead piece of imaginative writing that all by itself takes that troubled step-child of fiction, historical fiction, up a notch. The use of the “present tense’ and Cromwell’s place as “he” is jarring – through all three books. There are so many names and subplots and the narrative is prone to stalling like a Hybrid car at a red light. But like that car, once the light is green, it is speed and motion. Finally, I do not know if Cromwell deserves Mantel. Maybe that is what makes it work so well. Cromwell made it to the near top in a very dangerous world by keeping everybody off guard. That is exactly what Mantel does in this book (and to a lesser extent in the other two).
11/22/63 by Stephen King (2011)
This book should not be on this list. I do not like horror stories and do not read King. I read the first 100 pages of IT years ago and did not get a good night’s sleep for a week. Horror novels and horror movies scare me and I am very uncomfortable with that. I apologize. You can stop reading. The other reason this book should not be on this list is it is about JFK’s assassination and in my 17 years of teaching US history I must have read a dozen term papers on this moment in Dallas. Add to these two reasons that it is as thick as a brick, and you have a clear “pass” from me. A NYT book review cover review laid the seed for me buying it after a two-year delay. I read it in less than a week and think it not only showcases the absurd natural talent of King but, more importantly, serves as a powerful reminder to “be careful what you wish for”. Take a vacation for a week and be smarter for it – read it.
THE SENSE OF AN ENDING by Julian Barnes (2011)
Stephen King and Julian Barnes … Mutt and Jeff. Barnes’ book is as short and interior and King’s is long and external. But if you like that Abbot & Costello pairing concept, buy both of these books for that one-week vacation. Begin the vacation with King and end it with Barnes. Oddly, they are kind of getting at the same thing - peel that onion with care. When Barnes is not too much about Barnes. When Barnes is not showing off. When Barnes is not too much the privileged white male. When he avoids all of these increasingly fatal pitfalls in our emerging new world, he can write as good a sentence as anyone alive and you will thank him for it. It revolves around the sticky wicket of memory and that is always a rich place for a writer as subtle as Barnes.
HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA by Moshin Hamid (2013)
This novel by the immensely talented young Pakistani writer, Moshin Hamid, is The Great Gatsby reimagined in a fictional re-creation of his home country. Reading it is like sitting on the back of a moped as it whips through traffic in one of Pakistan’s densely crowded cities. It grabs you from the start and you are shocked to find that it never let you go despite many twists and turns. At times a page-turner, it ends as a deeply moving take on what propels us through this dizzy, dangerous world.
LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson (2013)
Chapter after chapter … you get used to it. The whole book is a trick and after a bit you are locked in. Atkinson expertly walks that elusive line between a thriller and a piece of serious literature. Her Jackson Brodie series are as good as any detective novels out there right now (btw: watch Case Histories mini series – may be better than the book). I like it, however, when she reaches for the brass ring as she does in this gripping, moving rumination on time, loss and circumstance. The sequel, God in Ruins (2015), may be even better. It is a Godfather 1 versus Godfather 2 comparison. You are just grateful to have both. Definitely read these two in order.
As an aside … it is noteworthy the number of film, books and TV series over the last 10 years that have the Blitz as a central part of the story. Not sure what this means but it is a “suggestive” trend.
IN THE LIGHT OF WHAT WE KNOW by Zia Harder Rahman (2014)
I wrote a separate post on this extraordinarily original novel that left the toughest critics flabbergasted. Talk about turning a remarkable life story into an equally remarkable piece of fiction. Tough, smart, incoherent and revelatory all at once … take a look at the post and decide if you want to take the deep dive.
STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)
It is a real oversight on my part to have not written a post on this “plague” novel. It is unfortunate that this book is so spot-on and terrifying to read at this very moment. It opens with 98% of the human race dying at the hands of a virus that does its dirty in weeks, not months or years. If that is not enough, there are planes filled with unattended corpses and bands of marauding and murderous survivors. Yet … the central character is a young woman you fall in love with. Music and art are the protagonist’s and her companions’ weapons. You finish the novel almost joyful. To pull this off required serious literary chops and a finely tuned vision. It is one of the “don’t miss” novels of this century so far – and not just because 2020 was only 6 years away when it was published.
A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA by Anthony Mara (2014)
What was in the water prior to 2014? A third truly great 2014 novel that deserves its own post. NOT for the faint of heart, the story takes place in a ravaged, brutal Chechnya. There are Russians from your worst dreams. There are internments and torture that even HBO might not film. Then there are people who make courageous, life affirming decisions and shine as luminously as few characters have in a contemporary novel. This is Mara’s first novel; it required several trips to a dangerous Chechnya. I am stunned by both facts. I was left in an even more profoundly stunned silence by an ending that ‘contains multitudes’.
MOTHERING SUNDAY by Graham Swift (2016)
I wrote a separate post on this short, poetic ode to loss. Please read the post. To write further is potentially get in the way of an utterly seductive and poignant two day read. If Swift seems to be your cup of tea, take a look at a more expansive and ambitious novel, Waterland, which he wrote in 1983. He has a real eye for the temporal nature of the worlds we create and inhabit. It is particularly moving in both these novels given the fact that the world he has been writing about for the last 50 years is fading away as surely as the late Edwardian era in Mothering Sunday.
NEWS OF THE WORLD by Paulette Jiles (2016)
Run, do not walk, and read this book. In fact, get a horse and buy this book. Get a horse, and ride through Texas reading newspapers to the locals while saving lives, including yours. It reads like a ballad. The picaresque novel has a long history in American literature and the West has always been a good place for it. Throw in a character right out of Lonesome Dove and a real economy of storytelling, and you get a book that I have handed out like Halloween candy. It is a true bipartisan novel, crafted for those looking for a great yarn and those wedded to serious literature. If the Senate had a book club, I might suggest they start with this one.
THE NINTH HOUR by Alice McDermott (2017)
You know something special has happened in a novel when you want to be in the basement of a convent doing the nun’s laundry. That is the “room where it happens” in this novel about truth, faith and redemption. Thematically, the novel is pure Hawthorne, in Catholic garb and ritual. Thankfully, that is all it shares with Hawthorne (though The Scarlet Letter is required in a lifetime of reading – even better the older you are). McDermott writes with the seamless beauty of the perfectly ironed habits that emerge each day from the basement laundry room. You do not want it to end. While it is not a “Catholic” novel, it illuminates very subtly where God’s grace may lie within that ancient religion.
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD by Colson Whitehead (2018)
I am more impressed with Whitehead’s imagination than with his emerging writing skills. The stories too often have a slight mechanical ring to them as if the nut does not quite fit the screw. Regardless, this book is a blowtorch. Slavery resists fiction both in print and on film. The subject truthfully told is so viscerally devastating that, like the Holocaust and war itself, it has to be seen either indirectly or as a fable of sorts. Get Out is more effective in many ways than the sincere but very awkward literalness of 12 Years a Slave. The “red coat” in Schindler’s List, Sophie’s “choice”, “saving” Private Ryan are all coated in a mythic structure to avoid trying to show or tell the indescribable. Whitehead’s book creates a crossword puzzle of the fantastic to capture the horrific – and it works.
THE OVERSTORY by Richard Powers (2018) & HAMNET by Maggie O’Farrell (2020)
Because these are so current, I feel you must read my posts on each to decide whether to read them. The former stares into our future while the latter imagines our past. Both do it in very different ways and in each case, I was left a bit breathless. It helps to like trees in Powers’ book and you do not have to be a Shakespeare scholar to love Farrell’s. That’s enough. Please read both.
NOTE: an audit of my 65-year-old biases reveals 15 men and 10 women on this list. I suspect that if I am lucky enough to write another such list in 15 years, those numbers will be reversed. The canon of my youth was so very male not because of bias as much as because of access. We can already see how radically all that is changing. The “white male writers” account for 10 or 40%. Certainly would have been considerably higher 15 years ago – thereby, making the same point. Having revisited many of the great novels of postwar America & Britain over the past ten years, I think the canonical “refresh” button is doing wonders for the health of our literature.
