Best Books of 2009: Fiction

Originally I planned to write separate categories for general fiction, SF/Fantasy, and Horror. There's really not much straight-up SF/Fantasy or Horror on this list, but some titles contain elements of each of these genres, so let's just toss out all the genre classifications! Right out the window - There they go! After all, good writing is good writing, right? So: the best adult fiction of any kind that I read in 2009:


Mansfield Park (1814) - Jane Austen

Everyone should read something by Jane Austen at some point in their lives. Yes, everyone. No, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies doesn't count (although it is fun).


The Truth About Celia (2003) - Kevin Brockmeier

If you asked me to give you just one word on what I thought of this novel it might be "sad" or "beautiful" or maybe just "Wow." Or maybe I'd just point to the book, then point to you, then point to the book again. Sometimes word descriptions just don't work. Maybe I'd just hand you the book.

The Truth About Celia is a book of interconnected short stories told from various points of view. Celia is a seven-year-old girl playing in her backyard one early spring morning while her father Christopher shows their historic house to a couple of visitors. Janet, Celia's mother, has gone to rehearse with a community orchestra. And at some point during the day, Celia simply disappears without a trace.

Christopher, a writer, tries to deal with Celia's disappearance by creating stories that might explain what happened to his daughter. Sometimes they're stories of pure fantasy as in "The Green Children," a story of two children who are transported to a parallel world where their green color fades with time. Another, "Appearance, Disappearance, Levitation, Transformation, and the Divided Woman," is a tale from the point of view of Stephanie, a divorcee whose ten-year-old son Micah wants desperately to become a magician. Sometimes the connecting elements of these stories are clear, sometimes nebulous as Brockmeier bends the rules of narration to wonderful effect.

Other stories are told from Christopher's point of view, Janet's, and even Celia's. Maybe the most effective story, "The Telephone," is about Christopher receiving calls from Celia over the toy phone still in her room four years after her disappearance. Yet Christopher is torn between keeping the news of the calls to himself or sharing them with Janet while their marriage begins to slowly disintegrate.

Sad. Beautiful. Wow. Get your hands on it and read it.



Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964) - Philip K. Dick

A novel I'd like to read again soon. A wild ride with lots to think about. Read the Wikipedia description. It's far too much to go into here. And if you've never read PDK before, this is probably not the best place to start. My vote would be The Man in the High Castle.



Castle (2009) - J. Robert Lennon

The most powerful book I read in the first half of 2009. Since reading it, I've seen many negative reviews. Ignore them. Eric Loesch buys a large piece of land in his upper New York state hometown. He wonders if the locals remember him, as their welcomes seem not-so-welcome. Loesch discovers one small part of his land that is actually owned by someone else, yet the owner's name is blackened out on all the legal documents. An extremely potent look at power, memory, culture and the 21st century world we live in. Highly recommended.



Her Fearful Symmetry (2009) - Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry has taken a lot of knocks, many of them unfounded. I believe the culprit in this case is the old "I-loved-your-first-book-and-demand-that-each-subsequent-book-be-just-like-it" syndrome. I have not read her first novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, so I cannot make any comparisons, but even if I had, it shouldn't matter. Writers (and all artists) are free to pursue any paths they choose, even if they diverge from the expectations of their previous works. If it's good writing, it's good writing and it shouldn't matter if Niffenegger's next novel is about time travelers, ghosts or pig farming in Oslo.

The main story here (and there are several smaller ones) concerns 20-year-old American twins Julia and Valentina Poole, who have inherited a London apartment from their recently deceased aunt, whom they have never met. But there are two important conditions: the twins must live in the apartment for a full year before they can sell it and the girls' parents must never enter it. I guess if I had to pin this novel down, it's a ghost story, but it's so much more. The writing is wonderful, the atmosphere both humorous and creepy. Her Fearful Symmetry is one of those novels that comes dangerously close to coming off the rails at times (especially as the ending approaches), but I found myself drawn in, unwilling to leave until it was over (and maybe even not then).


As I Lay Dying (1930) - William Faulkner

(I choose this cover because I find the Oprah sticker so distasteful.)

“My mother is a fish.” Oh boy. Faulkner loves multiple points of view, stream of consciousness and dark, dark humor. He also loves strange and does it well. I haven’t read tons of Faulkner (at least not yet), but As I Lay Dying seems to me one of his more approachable novels. One by one, we meet the family of Addie Bundren as they seek to honor her wish to be buried in a nearby town. As with much of Faulkner’s work, the novel is set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.



Pobby and Dingan (2000) - Ben Rice

Delightful, funny, sad and celebratory short novel about Kellyanne, a young girl who loses her imaginary friends Pobby and Dingan. The story is narrated by Kellyanne’s brother Ashmol, who believes in none of the products of Kellyanne’s imagination. But he does care about her. Seek this short book (only 94 pages) out. You won’t be sorry.



Private Midnight (2009) - Kris Saknussemm

This is one seriously messed-up book. Many readers have said that Private Midnight is hands-down the weirdest book they've ever read. I'd have to say that Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves still holds that distinction for me, but Saknussemm's novel is definitely near the top.

Private Midnight is a mixture of detective noir, David Lynch, supernatural horror, psychological games, mythology, sexuality and way, way more. Disturbing? Yes. Also very hard to put down.



Illyria (2007) - Elizabeth Hand

(Please note that the picture on the left is the expanded novel-length edition of Illyria, due out in May, 2010. The novella that I read is pictured on the right.)

It pains me that Elizabeth Hand is not more widely read. Both her short and long fiction are stunning. She has a beautiful command of the language and a vision of the strange that together form work that is simply incredible. Illyria is a dark romance focused on the stage, particularly Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." Maddy and her cousin Rogan are teenagers born on the same day, yet in many ways opposites. Romantic and artistic longings are beautifully and painfully intertwined in this short, masterfully written tale.



Isis (2006/2009) - Douglas Clegg

First published as a limited edition by Cemetery Dance in 2006, Clegg's novella has thankfully gained a wider audience in this Vanguard Press edition. If you could bring a loved one back from the dead, would you do it? The concept has been around forever, but Clegg has managed to make the tale compelling and extremely difficult to put down. A creepy little Gothic tale with some wonderful illustrations.



Peace Like a River (2001) - Leif Enger

I have found that you either love Enger's Peace Like a River or you hate it. You either buy into it or you don't. The novel, set in rural Minnesota in the early 1960s, is narrated by Reuben "Rube" Land, an asthmatic 11-year-old boy. The plot itself is fairly simple: two boys break into the Land home, intending to threaten (or just scare?) Rube's 9-year-old sister Swede. Older brother Davy intervenes, killing the two boys before hiding out from the police. The bulk of the novel consists of the family trying to find Davy before the law does. The book contains a combination of earthiness, elements of the fantastic and faith. Perhaps each of these elements in isolation bother people. Perhaps it's the combination of them. Regardless, Peace Like a River is a unique experience that's worth your time.



Await Your Reply (2009) - Dan Chaon

Finally, my favorite read from 2009. No other novel I read this year was as compelling and as satisfying as this one. In the first chapter of Await Your Reply, we see Ryan Schuyler, a college dropout, racing down the highway with his severed hand in an ice chest. In the next, it's Lucy Lattimore, recent a high school graduate running away with her history teacher. Then we have Miles Chesire, searching for his twin brother who vanished 10 years ago. From there, it's a wild ride.

Wild, but not chaotic. I could tell you more about these characters, but I won't. (And I'd advise you not to read too many reviews that might reveal more than you want to know.) Dan Chaon masterfully unwinds these parallel stories that seem to have no connecting elements other than identity.

Await Your Reply is all about identity and the possibility of starting over, a concept attractive to many people in these unstable times. But the novel is also about family, relationships, trust and fear. Alternating chapters told across various timelines add an almost insurmountable tension, keeping the pages turning at a brisk pace. Yet read too quickly and you'll miss some wonderfully resonant writing that requires patience.

As soon as I finished the novel, I wanted to start it again just to see if I could find the clues that I'd missed the first time. You may have the same reaction. Don't be surprised. And don't plan to get much sleep once you've started this one.

That's it for fiction. Next time: a list of every blessed book I read in 2009: good, bad and everything in between.