We are made of stories. Our own, of course, but also the stories we’re told and give our attention to. In 2023, world-class novelists comforted, provoked and ultimately swathed me in their stories and I am, at an elemental level, different and thankful.
To wrap my year-end look at books (check out Part 1: nonfiction and Part 2: poetry), I turn to the novelists. Here, my favorite fiction titles of 2023, alphabetical by author:
Maylis de Kerangal, “Eastbound” / Somehow, the French novelist takes the perfect setup for a spellbinding thriller—a Russian conscript stows himself in a stranger’s train car, beyond sight of his new superiors—and turns the story inside-out. Tension abounds, but the majesty of de Kerangal’s work comes in gorgeous, sad-eyed descriptions of the world passing by train windows and the questions forming dissonant chords within characters’ thoughts.
David James Duncan, “Sun House” / Duncan’s long-awaited work promises that if we seek spiritual satisfaction, we shall find the same—in the seemingly impossible nourishment of nature, in unexpected communities, in connections that are material yet transcend what we know.
Dave Eggers, “The Eyes and the Impossible” / More relatable and inspired than most human characters, the free-roaming dog at the heart of Eggers’ latest plays sage and sentry for his animal neighbors in a vast park and plots to help them live in greater liberty.
Charles Frazier, “The Trackers” / Several of my favorite characters of the year live within Frazier’s tale of a young painter who follows a New Deal mural assignment into small-town Wyoming and discovers a quietly wild side to the American West.
Christian Kiefer, “The Heart of It All” / We need more books like this and more authors like Kiefer; that’s the highest compliment I can give. Scenes within this story of a Midwest community dealing with post-2016 realities explode small acts of kindness and notions of neighborliness, forming entire galaxies.
Catherine Lacey, “Biography of X” / Few books messed with my head—in the most wonderful way—like Lacey’s biography of a fictional artist. Written from the perspective of the late provocateur’s wife, “… X” asks if we ever really know anyone, and blurs the lines between art and artist beyond abstraction. A mind-bender with soulful implications.
Dennis Lehane, “Small Mercies” / When a world-weathered, blue-collar Boston mom searches for her missing daughter, she trips into unsettling truths about race, class and real power. Lehane’s multi-dimensional novel—a period piece, a thriller, a social study—sings its dirge and delivers one of the most compelling lead characters in recent memory.
Stephen Markley, “The Deluge” / Yes, Markley’s American tragedy forms a sprawling treatment of climate change in the recent past, searing present and all-too-near future. But it does something much more: examining the human spirit in complacency and crisis, creating a portrait of our communal sins and stabs at redemption.
Michael Farris Smith, “Salvage This World” / No one writes the modern South quiet like Smith and, in this account of real and existential storms beating down on an estranged family, he handles the exterior and interior world, our prospects of damnation and redemption, with a perfect touch.
Colson Whitehead, “Crook Manifesto” / At this point, especially in his accounts of family man/furniture store owner/not-so-small-time fence Ray Carney, Colson Whitehead is writing immersive jazz symphonies. What Carney gets himself into and out of matters, but more than this, readers really live next to Carney in 1970s Harlem and this sort of real-world building resounds.
And lest you think I lingered too long in this moment, here are a few favorite novels from this year, transmitted in from years past:
Jack Kerouac, “The Town and the City”
Jack Kerouac, “Desolation Angels”
Stephen Markley, “Ohio”
Cormac McCarthy, “Blood Meridian”
Haruki Murakami, “Kafka on the Shore”
Note: I’m currently in the middle of Gabriel Bump’s “The New Naturals” and Lydia Kiesling’s “Mobility,” each distinct and remarkable. Given more time, they might easily make this list but a person has to stop somewhere.
Thank you for paying even a moment’s attention to my writing this year on books and so much more. I look forward to coming alongside one another in art and beauty and life in 2024.