Newsletter: A Good Book and a List

Maybe not your Christmas read but certainly a member of my Top Twelve books for 2024.

I read many “Best Books of the Year” lists. I read the Christmas suggestions lists. I am always surprised by the lack of uniformity and disappointed by the “pc” bias. I believe that my friends at our local Upper East Side bookstore are better critics than most anyone at the major US publications with the exception of The New Yorker. By the way, this applies to film critics but here I must call out The New Yorker’s Richard Brody as the most pretentious film critic I have ever encountered. He is where cinematic joy goes to die. So sad given the magazine’s astounding legacy of film criticism. Anyway … back to books

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In this letter I am going to list my Top Twelve but before I join the hubristic list crowd, I must comment on one book that made most of the lists, including, and most importantly, that of the critics at The Corner Bookstore … Garth Greenwell’s Small Rain. While 300 pages and fairly small in stature, this is a dense book where all the devils as well as the angels exist in its extraordinary detail and equally extraordinary digressions. The serious effort required to stick with it is utterly worth it; however, I must confess that I skimmed parts (maybe 10%). The overarching upfront subject does not lure you in … an undiagnosed, near fatal aortal collapse that leads to two months in ICU during the pandemic in Iowa City, each moment painfully and remarkable transcribed. The protagonist is a forty something gay poet and college lit professor and this book is the third in a Garthwell trilogy about this poet’s young life. It is autofiction since Garthwell went through a life-threatening experience not unlike that of his protagonist.

You might not run home to return to this book but if you make it through, it will stick. Much is relit and revealed in its blizzard of words. The pandemic’s initial shock and lethality lurks in the background throughout and serves as a vivid reminder that we are sadly and portentously rewriting and defanging what was, in fact, a terrifying moment. The health care system responded heroically despite the right-wing fantasies to the contrary and our heavily criticized lockdown response was as much an effort to save the system as well as to contain contagion. This seems to be entirely forgotten. The skills, mostly unrecognized, of health professionals shines through this book. At one point he compares the gifts of a good nurse to that of his own profession, teaching. Both the patient and student may experience a life-altering moment but the transiency of the heartfelt gratitude of that moment begins the day one checks out of the hospital or leaves school for a summer break. The digressions are filled with such poignancy. His ode to a potato chip as a wonderous but simultaneously barbarous product of a wonderous and barbarous humanity should be etched somewhere for all to read. The digressions take in much of our modern life ranging from trees to poems to love and to politics. Some go on too long, some can be a bit trite but the unevenness is a product of the novel’s ambition and scope. This is not a beach read. It is a winter’s tale … in every respect

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Now for the list … this is not in any order. Let history take care of that. They have all been published this year except one.

1. Orbital by Samantha Harvey … fiction

2. Small Rain by Garth Greenwall … fiction

3. The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life by Clare Carlisle … non-fiction

4. Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh … non-fiction

5. James by Percival Everett … fiction

6. Absolution by Alice McDermott … fiction

7. Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan … fiction

8. We Burn Daylight by Bret Anthony Johnston … fiction

9. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney … fiction

10. Martyr by Kaveh Akbar … fiction

11. Maniac by Benjamin Labatut … non-fiction

12. Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout … fiction

CODA: the list reflects a turbulent, “tend your garden” year as fiction was and remains more comforting and informative in a troubled world. The LIST is based on literary merit but does not reflect the joys I experienced reading lighter fare ranging from Precipice by Richard Harris to You Are Here by David Nichols. Finally, the non-fiction deficit was also a product of reading and completing Chernow’s 940-page 2017 biography, Grant. A read that continues to reap many rewards.

More later … thank you for reading.