good book reviews 2022

The 20 best books of 2022, according to our critics

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Ask four critics to name their favorite books of any year and you’ll get an array of singular narratives. But if any theme emerged among our top 20 books of 2022, it was the individual struggle to shape the future in a range of hostile words: the harsh dystopias crafted by Celeste Ng and Sequoia Nagamatsu; the vicious liars who questioned Sandy Hook; the British colonizers Samuel Adams outwitted and the American colonizers bested by the great Native athlete Jim Thorpe. These are stories told brilliantly — substance meeting its match in style — in which reality might be inescapable, but hope is unkillable.

The 5 best novels of 2022, according to Mark Athitakis

We asked four book critics to pick their favorites books published in 2022. Here are Mark Athitakis’ top 5 novels of the year.

Dec. 4, 2022

The 5 best fiction books of 2022, according to Bethanne Patrick

We asked our critics to pick their top books of 2022. Bethanne Patrick’s five favorites include Celeste Ng’s latest and newcomers that blew her away.

The 5 best nonfiction books of 2022, according to Mary Ann Gwinn

As 2022 nears an end, we ask four book critics to pick their favorites of the year. Here are Mary Ann Gwinn’s top nonfiction books.

The 5 best books of 2022, according to Jessica Ferri

We asked our critics to pick their top books of 2022. Jessica Ferri’s five favorites reframe mental illness, school shootings, aging and motherhood.

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The Best Books of 2022 So Far

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

I n a time that continues to be marked by uncertainty and devastation , books can provide solace and, perhaps, some answers to the biggest questions that arise when living through crises. The best books of the year so far pick apart what it means to grieve, how to love after loss, and what it takes to survive the unthinkable. In his celebrated new poetry collection, Ocean Vuong picks up the pieces of his life following the death of his mother. Jessamine Chan examines the lengths a parent will go for her child in her startling debut novel. And Margo Jefferson explores the relationship between art and humanity in her brilliant second memoir. Their stories, along with several others, offer a comforting reminder that we all grapple with hardship—and that there is light, even in the darkest of situations. Here, the best books of 2022 so far.

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water , Matthieu Aikins

In 2016, Canadian journalist Matthieu Aikins went undercover, forgoing his passport and identity, to join his Afghan friend Omar who was fleeing his war-torn country and leaving the woman he loved behind. Their harrowing experience is the basis for Aikins’ book The Naked Don’t Fear the Water , which chronicles the duo’s dangerous and emotional journey on the refugee trail from Afghanistan to Europe. As they are confronted with the many realities of war, Aikins spares no details in his urgent and empathetic narrative.

Buy Now : The Naked Don’t Fear the Water on Bookshop | Amazon

In Love , Amy Bloom

The first pages of Amy Bloom’s memoir set up the book’s devastating ending: It’s January 2020 and Bloom and her husband are traveling to Switzerland, but only Bloom will return home. Her husband plans to end his life through a program based in Zurich. He has Alzheimer’s and wants to die on his terms. Bloom introduces these facts swiftly and then packs an emotional punch: The next time she’s on an airplane, she’ll be flying alone. From there, Bloom details her husband’s wrenching decision and all that led up to their trip abroad. Though In Love is rooted in an impossibly sad situation, Bloom’s narrative is more than just an expertly crafted narrative on death and grief. It’s a beautiful love letter from a wife to her husband, rendered in the most delicate terms, about the life they shared together.

Buy Now : In Love on Bookshop | Amazon

The School for Good Mothers , Jessamine Chan

Frida Liu is a 30-something single mother struggling to keep up with the demands of her office job and raising her 18-month-old daughter after her husband left her for a younger woman. In Jessamine Chan’s unsettling debut novel, we begin on Frida’s worst day, when her lack of sleep has caused a lapse in judgment and she leaves her baby at home alone for two hours. Soon, Frida is sent to a government run facility with other mothers deemed “failures” by the state. Reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale , this eerie page-turner is a captivating depiction of a dystopian world that feels entirely possible. It’s not only the gripping story of Frida’s personal struggle, but also a thought-provoking work of commentary on American motherhood.

Buy Now : The School for Good Mothers on Bookshop | Amazon

The Candy House , Jennifer Egan

One of the most anticipated books of the year, The Candy House is Jennifer Egan’s follow up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad . That book was hailed for its innovative structure—one chapter was written as a Powerpoint presentation—and the new narrative follows suit in its impressive construction. This time, Egan spins fresh commentary on technology, memory, and privacy through 14 interlinked stories. In them, a machine called Own your Unconscious allows people to revisit any memories from their past whenever they want—if only they make those memories accessible to everyone else. It’s a thrilling concept brought together by Egan’s astute hand, offering a powerful look at how we live in an increasingly interconnected world.

Buy Now : The Candy House on Bookshop | Amazon

Olga Dies Dreaming , Xochitl Gonzalez

It’s the summer of 2017 and Olga Acevedo is seemingly thriving: She’s a wedding planner for the Manhattan elite and living in a posh (and rapidly gentrifying) Brooklyn neighborhood. The protagonist of Xochitl Gonzalez’s absorbing debut novel had humble origins as the daughter of Puerto Rican activists, raised by her grandmother in another part of the borough where she taught herself everything she needed to know to be where she is today. But in Olga Dies Dreaming , the reality of Olga’s self-made success is more complicated. She struggles with the loneliness that has accompanied meeting her lofty goals, and she’s haunted by the absence of the mother who abandoned her family when Olga was just 12 years old. As hurricane season in Puerto Rico amps up, Olga begins to grapple with family secrets just as she falls in love for the first time. What ensues is a thoughtfully depicted romantic comedy full of domestic strife, executed in Gonzalez’s vibrant prose.

Buy Now : Olga Dies Dreaming on Bookshop | Amazon

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Fiona and Jane, Jean Chen Ho

In her debut short story collection, Jean Chen Ho traces the evolution of a friendship between two Taiwanese American women for two decades. In interlinked narratives, told in alternating voices, Ho captures what makes female friendship so special by following these characters from their adolescence and beyond. Fiona and Jane’s bond is constantly tested, particularly as they navigate loss, breakups, and betrayal, but they always find their way back to each other. In intimate and layered terms, Ho describes the love that keeps their friendship together, even when life tries to pull them apart.

Buy Now : Fiona and Jane on Bookshop | Amazon

Constructing A Nervous System , Margo Jefferson

In 2015, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson released her debut memoir Negroland . In the award-winning book, Jefferson reflected on her life as she reckoned with what it meant to grow up as a privileged Black person in a wealthy area of Chicago, crafting a searing examination of race and class in America. The author now returns with a bruising second memoir that goes beyond her personal story, blending criticism and autobiography. Constructing A Nervous System is an exciting collection of Jefferson’s thoughts and musings on the world, from her love of Ella Fitzgerald and Bud Powell to her own writing process.

Buy Now : Constructing A Nervous System on Bookshop | Amazon

Vladimir , Julia May Jonas

Julia May Jonas’ outrageously fun and discomfiting debut Vladimir puts an unexpected twist on the traditional campus novel . Her narrator is a prickly English professor at a small liberal arts college who has developed a crush on her department’s latest recruit. Meanwhile, an investigation into her husband, the chair of the same department, looms large. He’s been accused of having inappropriate relationships with former students, but our protagonist could care less. As her feelings for the new hire enter increasingly dark territory, Jonas unravels a taut and bold narrative about power, ambition, and female desire.

Buy Now : Vladimir on Bookshop | Amazon

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Life Between the Tides , Adam Nicolson

Historian Adam Nicolson dissects all aspects of marine life to make stirring observations about crustaceans, humans, and the world in which we all live in this deftly reported book. In Life Between the Tides , Nicolson zeroes in on the tide pools he creates in a Scottish bay, which he describes in lyrical and engaging prose. Blending scientific research, philosophy, and moving commentary on what it means to live, Nicolson’s book defies genre categorization as the author, with the help of stunning illustrations, strives to tackle the biggest questions about humanity through investigating a sliver of the sea’s inhabitants.

Buy Now : Life Between the Tides on Bookshop | Amazon

Young Mungo , Douglas Stuart

The latest novel from Douglas Stuart shares a lot in common with his first, the Booker Prize-winning Shuggie Bain . In both, young men live in working-class Glasglow in the late 20th century with their alcoholic mothers. This time, the narrative focuses on the love story between two boys, Mungo and James, and the dangers that surround their romance. It’s a piercing examination of the violence inflicted upon queer people and a gripping portrayal of the lengths to which one will go to fight for love.

Buy Now : Young Mungo on Bookshop | Amazon

The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk

It’s been such a treat to read through Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk’s catalog as her books are being translated from Polish and released in English. The latest, translated by Jennifer Croft, is perhaps the author’s most ambitious. The Books of Jacob is a sprawling narrative set in the mid-18th century about a self-proclaimed Messiah who travels the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. At more than 900 pages, the novel is a gigantic undertaking, but Tokarczuk fills the chapters with delectable prose to paint a portrait of this complicated man—based on a real-life figure—through the perspectives of the people in his life. In doing so, Tokarczuk creates a compelling psychological profile of a mysterious leader that masterfully oscillates between humor and tragedy.

Buy Now : The Books of Jacob on Bookshop | Amazon

Time Is a Mother , Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong’s second poetry collection finds the acclaimed writer wrestling with grief after he lost his mother to breast cancer in 2019. Like his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous , this collection is a tender exploration of memory, loss, and love. Through 28 poems, Vuong showcases his original voice as he asks pressing questions about the limits of language and the power of poetry in times of crisis.

Buy Now : Time Is a Mother on Bookshop | Amazon

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Maureen Corrigan's favorite books of the year: 10 disparate reads for a hectic 2022

Maureen Corrigan

Some years, my best books list falls into a pattern: like a year that's dominated by dystopian fiction or stand-out memoirs. But, as perhaps befits this hectic year, the best books I read in 2022 sprawl all over the place in subject and form. Here are 10 superb titles from 2022:

Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun

Also a Poet is a moving account of Ada Calhoun's attempt to connect with her elusive father, art critic Peter Schjeldahl , by trying to complete his abandoned biography of the beloved New York poet, Frank O'Hara. Calhoun recalls how, one day, in the basement of the East Village apartment house where her parents lived for decades, she stumbled upon a treasure trove of cassette tapes from the 1970s; interviews that her father conducted with O'Hara's painter friends and fellow poets. Ultimately, the book Calhoun writes isn't an O'Hara biography either: It's a genre-defying memoir and work of criticism, as well as a love letter to O'Hara's poetry and to the city that inspired it.

Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

Renowned critic Margo Jefferson's book, Constructing a Nervous System, is also a virtuoso fusion of different forms: memoir, quick riffs and cultural criticism. As one of the few prominent African American female critics of her generation, Jefferson tells us she was "always calculating — not always well — how to achieve; succeed as a symbol, and a self." The pieces collected here range from a sharp consideration of the significance of Ella Fitzgerald's sweat during her television performances to the challenges Jefferson herself faced in teaching Willa Cather's work — along with its racist passages — to her majority white college students. Jefferson writes: "I wanted them to feel chagrined ... And I wanted them to be disappointed ... " That last response is one I'm certain Jefferson's own readers will not experience.

Interview: Margo Jefferson's new memoir is like a kaleidoscope into someone's life

The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris

The Facemaker, by medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris, tells the story of British surgeon Harold Gillies' pioneering work in reconstructing the faces of some of the estimated 280,000 men who suffered facial trauma during World War I. Those soldiers' faces were shattered and burned by the new technologies that that war ushered in: machine guns, chemical weapons, flamethrowers, shells and hot chunks of shrapnel from explosives. To cite the poetic words of one battlefield nurse, before Gillies came along, "the science of healing stood baffled before the science of destroying."

Interview: With no textbooks or antibiotics, this WWI surgeon pioneered facial reconstruction

Review: 'The Facemaker' profiles the British surgeon who treated WWI's disfigured soldiers

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacey Schiff

Stacy Schiff's biography of Samuel Adams is a thrilling, timely account of how the American Revolution happened: how the colonists were radicalized and came to think of themselves, not as Bostonians or Virginians, but as "Americans." It also tells the story of how Samuel Adams, the so-called "forgotten Founder," played an essential role in that transformation through countless conversations, clandestine meetings and newspaper essays written under 30-some pseudonyms.

Review: Author reminds Americans that Samuel Adams was a revolutionary before he was a beer

Signal Fires: A Novel by Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro's profound new novel jumps around in time to piece together the story of three teenagers, a car accident, two families and what persists even after neighborhoods change, people grow old, relationships fray and collective memories fade. The "signal fires" of Shapiro's title are the stars in the ancient night sky as seen through a lonely boy's computerized astronomy device. The boy shares his device with our protagonist, an elderly doctor, who's strangely comforted by the vastness: "The stars, rather than appearing distant and implacable, seemed to be signal fires in the dark, mysterious fellow travelers lighting a path ... "

Interview: Dani Shapiro on her new novel 'Signal Fires'

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

Jonathan Escoffery's debut collection of eight interconnected short stories overwhelmed me with its originality, heart, wit and sweeping social vision. Escoffery's aspiring, mostly Jamaican-born immigrant characters keep getting knocked down: by racism, the 2008 recession and, most literally, by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which reduces their house to its "skeletal frame." But, in its largest sense, the "You" his characters are trying to survive is America itself.

Review: 'If I Survive You' is a sweeping portrait of a family's fight to make it in America

Interview: Acclaimed short-story collection 'If I Survive You' explores Jamaican-American immigrant experience

Foster by Claire Keegan

Survival, of sorts, is also the subject of Claire Keegan's matchless novella, Foster , in which a young girl in the Ireland of the early 1980s is palmed off by her parents for a summer with relatives she doesn't know. None of the adults explains much: the girl's father takes his leave of her by curtly saying, "try not to fall into the fire, you." Keegan, who's a writer who revels in emotional tension, has a sharp ear for mundane meanness; but she has an even keener appreciation for the complications of kindness.

Review: With 'Foster,' Claire Keegan asks that readers look outward

Review: Small in scope, Claire Keegan's 'Foster' packs an emotional wallop

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Young Mungo is a disquieting work of fiction about the dangers of being different. In working class Glasgow, Scotland in the 1990s, a 15-year-old Protestant boy named Mungo falls in love with a Catholic boy. We readers know none of this will end well, but it's a testament to Stuart's unsparing powers as a storyteller that we can't possibly anticipate how very badly — and baroquely — things will turn out. Young Mungo is a suspense story wrapped around a novel of acute psychological observation.

Review: Brace yourself for 'Young Mungo,' a nuanced heartbreaker of a novel

Interview: 'Young Mungo' tells the love story of 2 boys — one Protestant, the other Catholic

Trust by Hernan Diaz

Trust is an ingeniously constructed historical novel with a postmodern point: namely, that readers can't wholly "trust" any of the slippery stories we read here, especially the opening one about the rise of a Wall Street tycoon much like Charles Schwab or J.P. Morgan. Throughout, Hernan Diaz makes dazzling connections between the realms of finance and fiction. As one character, an anarchist, says: "Money is a fantastic commodity. You can't eat or wear money, but it represents all the food and clothes in the world. This is why it's a fiction. ... Stocks, shares, bonds. ... That's what all these criminals trade in: fictions."

Review: You can't 'Trust' this novel. And that's a very good thing

Interview: Hernan Diaz's anticipated novel 'Trust' probes the illusion of money — and the truth

Lucy by the Sea: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout

I was reluctant to put Elizabeth Strout's latest novel Lucy by the Sea on this best of the year list. After all, her novel Oh William! was on last year's list . But it's no use to hold out against Strout, she's too good. Lucy by the Sea transports Strout's familiar heroine, Lucy Barton, out of New York City and into a ramshackle house in Maine with her ex-husband, William. The two shelter in place there during the worst months of pandemic, months Lucy recalls as having about them "a feeling of diffuse grief" and "mutedness." Strout's spare sentences and her simple pacing constitute her own idiosyncratic take on Hemingway's famous "iceberg theory," in which a depth of meaning and emotion lurks beneath the surface of the words on the page.

Review: 'Lucy By The Sea' succeeds at capturing disruptions, anxieties of pandemic

Check out Books We Love

NPR's Book We Love returns with 400+ new books handpicked by NPR staff and critics — including recommendations from Maureen Corrigan. Click to find your next great read. NPR hide caption

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The 10 Best Book Reviews of 2022

Merve emre on gerald murnane, casey cep on harry crews, maggie doherty on cormac mccarthy, and more.

Way back in the mid-aughts when I first started writing about books, pitching a print publication was the only reliable way for book critics to get paid, and third-person point of view was all the vogue. Much has changed in the years since: Newspaper and magazine book sections have shuttered, many digital outlets offer compensation when they can, and first-person criticism has become much more pervasive.

I don’t celebrate all these changes, but I’m certain of one thing in particular: I love book reviews and critical essays written in the first-person. Done well, they are generous invitations into the lives of critics—and into their memory palaces. With that in mind, most of my picks for the best book reviews of 2022 were written in the first person this year.

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

Adam Dalva on Stefan Zweig’s Chess Story , translated by Joel Rotenberg ( Los Angeles Review of Books )

Dalva’s review of Chess Story is a great example of the power of a first-person point of view—he doesn’t just examine the book, he narrates his own journey to understand it.

“In my own quest to understand Chess Story, I gradually realized that I would have to learn the game it centers on. And that has led me into a second obsession, much more problematic: I have fallen passionately in love with online bullet chess.”

Merve Emre on Gerald Murnane’s Last Letter to a Reader ( The New Yorker )

Merve Emre’s analysis of Gerald Murnane’s final book is a beautiful piece of writing. I love how she opens on a note of suspense, pulling you into a story you can’t stop reading.

“On most evenings this past spring, the man who lives across the street sat at his small desk, turned on the lamp, and began to write as the light faded. The white curtains in his room were seldom drawn. From where I sat, I had a clear view of him, and he, were he to look up from his writing, would have had a clear view of a house across the street, where a woman with dark hair and a faintly olive complexion was seated by a window, watching him write. At the moment he glanced up from his page, the woman supposed him to be contemplating the look, or perhaps the sound, of the sentence he had just written. The sentence was this: ‘Since then I have tried to avoid those rooms that grow steadily more crowded with works to explain away Time.’”

Minyoung Lee on Joseph Han’s Nuclear Family ( Chicago Review of Books )

Lee brings her own experience to bear in this insightful review of a novel about Korean Americans in the diaspora. (Disclosure: I founded the Chicago Review of Books in 2016, but stepped back from an editorial role in 2019.)

“In diaspora communities, it’s not uncommon to find cultural practices from the homeland, even after they’ve become unpopular or forgotten there. This is colloquially referred to as ‘the immigrant time capsule effect.’ It can be experienced in many of the ethnic enclaves in the U.S. My first impression of Los Angeles’ Koreatown when I visited in the 2010s, for example, was that it felt very much like Seoul in the 1980s. Grocery stores were even selling canned grape drinks that were popular when I was a child but that I haven’t seen since.”

Chelsea Leu on Thuận’s Chinatown , translated by Nguyen An Lý ( Astra )

Astra magazine’s “ bangers only ” editorial policy led to some spectacular reviews, like this Chelsea Leu number that opens with a fascinating linguistics lesson.

“It was in high school Latin that I learned that language could have moods, and that one of those moods was the subjunctive. We use the indicative mood for statements of fact, but the subjunctive (which barely exists in English anymore) expresses possibilities, wishes, hopes and fears: ‘I wouldn’t trust those Greeks bearing gifts if I were you.’ More recently, I’ve learned there exists a whole class of moods called irrealis moods, of which the subjunctive is merely one flavor. André Aciman’s recent essay collection, Homo Irrealis, is entirely dedicated to these moods, celebrating the fact that they express sentiments that fly in the face of settled reality.”

Casey Cep on Harry Crews’ A Childhood: The Biography of a Place ( The New Yorker )

Cep is a magician when it comes to capturing a sense of place, as evidenced by her book about Harper Lee, Furious Hours , and this review of a book about another Southern writer, Harry Crews.

“Dehairing a shoat is the sort of thing Crews knew all about, along with cooking possum, cleaning a rooster’s craw, making moonshine, trapping birds, tanning hides, and getting rid of screwworms. Although he lived until 2012, Crews and his books—sixteen novels, two essay collections, and a memoir—recall a bygone era. The best of what he wrote evokes W.P.A. guides or Foxfire books, full of gripping folklore and hardscrabble lives, stories from the back of beyond about a time when the world seemed black and white in all possible senses.”

Victoria Chang and Dean Rader on Roger Reeves’ Best Barbarian ( Los Angeles Review of Books )

Last year I professed my love for “reviews in dialogue” between two critics, and Chang and Rader continue to be masters of the form in this conversation about Roger Reeves’ second poetry collection.

“Victoria: Do you have thoughts on the flow of the poems or allusions? I have a feeling you will talk about the biblical references. But I’m most curious to hear what you have to say about the purpose of the allusions and references. Is the speaker agreeing with them, subverting them, both? Is the speaker using them as a way to press against or think against, or toward? I know you will say something smart and insightful.”

“Dean: That is a lot of pressure. I’ll try not to let you down.”

Maggie Doherty on Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris ( The New Republic )

I didn’t think anyone could persuade me to read another Cormac McCarthy novel after The Road, but Maggie Doherty makes every book sound fascinating by making it part of a bigger, true story.

“Such is the paradox of The Passenger , a novel at once highly attuned to the pleasures of collective life and resistant to the very idea of it. Unlike the violent, stylized books for which McCarthy is best known, this new novel is loose, warm, colloquial. It explores the sustaining, if impermanent, bonds formed among male friends. It’s full of theories and anecdotes, memories and stories, all voiced by some of the liveliest characters McCarthy has ever crafted. The Passenger is McCarthy’s first novel in over 15 years; its coda, S tella Maris , is published in December. Together, the books represent a new, perhaps final direction for McCarthy. The Passenger in particular is McCarthy’s most peopled novel, his most polyphonic—and it’s wonderfully entertaining, in a way that few of his previous books have been. It is also his loneliest novel yet.”

Allison Bulger on Vladimir Sorokin’s Telluria , translated by Max Lawton ( Words Without Borders )

I’m always interested in how critics find new ways to start a review, and Bulger’s opening lines here are a particularly sharp hook.

“Of all the jobs esteemed translator Larissa Volokhonsky has rejected, only one text was physically removed from her apartment on the Villa Poirier in Paris.

‘Take it back,’ she said. ‘Rid me of its presence.’

“The cursed title was Blue Lard (1999) by Vladimir Sorokin, known to some as Russia’s De Sade, and Volokhonsky’s revulsion was par for the course. It would be twenty years before another translator, Max Lawton, would provide eight Sorokin works unseen in the West, including Blue Lard , in which a clone of Khrushchev sodomizes a clone of Stalin.”

Summer Farah on Solmaz Sharif’s Customs ( Cleveland Review of Books )

Farah’s nuanced review of Solmaz Sharif’s new poetry collection further illustrates the potency of a first-person voice.

“Our poets write of our martyrs and resist alongside them; sometimes, I wonder, what life will be like after we are free, and what a truly free Palestine looks like. Last spring, the hashtag “#غرد_كأنها_حرة” circulated on Twitter, a collection of Palestinians imagining life as if our land was free; people imagined themselves moving from Akka to Ramallah with ease, returning to their homes their grandparents left in 1948, and traveling across the Levant without the obstacle of borders. This stanza acknowledges there is more work to be done than just ridding ourselves of the obvious systems that oppress us; decolonization and anti-imperial work are more holistic than we know. Sharif’s work is about attunement to the ways imperialism is ingrained into our lives, our speech, our poetry; this moment is direct in that acknowledgement.”

Nicole LeFebvre on Dorthe Nors’ A Line in the World ( On the Seawall )

LeFebvre opens this review like she’s writing a memoir or a personal essay—an unexpected joy that would be very hard to do in third-person.

“Each morning when I wake up, I hear the gentle crash and lull of waves on a beach. ‘Gather, scatter,’ as Dorthe Nors describes the sound. My eyes open and blink, adjusting to the dark. The sun’s not up yet. I scoot back into my partner’s body, kept asleep by the rhythmic thrum of the white noise machine, which covers the cars idling in the 7-Eleven parking lot, the motorcyclists showing off their scary-high speeds. For a few minutes, I accept the illusion of a calmer, quiet life. ‘Gather, scatter.’ A life by the sea.”

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The Best Books of 2022

If you want to read about spaceships, talking pigs, or supervillains, you’ve come to the right place.

Every product was carefully curated by an Esquire editor. We may earn a commission from these links.

Check back with us in the new year, when we'll start rounding up our favorite books of 2023. In the meantime, happy reading!

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, by James Hannaham

Hannaham’s buoyant sophomore novel introduces us to the unforgettable Carlotta Mercedes, an Afro-Latinx trans woman released from a men’s prison after serving two decades. Returning home to Brooklyn, she encounters a gentrified city she doesn’t recognize, as well as a host of new stressors; life on the outside soon involves an unforgiving parole process and a family that struggles to recognize her transition. Over the course of one zany Fourth of July weekend, Carlotta descends into Brooklyn’s roiling underbelly on a quest to stand in her truth. Angry, saucy, and joyful, Carlotta is a true survivor—one whose story shines a disinfecting light on the injustices of our world.

Harry Sylvester Bird, by Chinelo Okparanta

The title character of Okparanta’s gutsy new novel is a white teenager born to xenophobic parents, but everything changes for young Harry Sylvester Bird on a safari in Tanzania, when he develops an enduring fascination with Blackness. Harry soon escapes to college in Manhattan and begins to identify as Black, joining a “Transracial-Anon” support group and longing for “racial reassignment.” When he falls in love with Maryam, a student from Nigeria, a study-abroad trip to Ghana’s Gold Coast puts both their romance and his identity to the test. Outlandish and arresting, Harry’s miseducation is a deft satire of prejudice and allyship.

Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart

When his Shuggie Bain took home the Booker Prize in 2020, readers were desperate to see what this astounding debut novelist would do next. It will come as no surprise that Stuart’s second effort soars—and socks you right in the belly. Set in the tenements of Glasgow during the 1990s, Young Mungo is the wrenching story of the doomed and forbidden love between two teenage boys, one Catholic and the other Protestant. Insecure, self-loathing Mungo is forever changed by the calming influence of tender-hearted James, but in a stratified society such as this one, their bond can’t be allowed to stand. When the adults in their lives intervene, James and Mungo learn heartbreaking lessons about how boys become men. In a world where hope and despair coexist, Young Mungo is both brutal and breathtaking.

Time Is a Mother, by Ocean Vuong

Vuong’s second collection of poetry is a bruising journey through the devastating aftershocks of his mother’s death. Like Orpheus descending into the underworld, Vuong takes us to the white-hot limits of his grief, writing with visionary fervor about love, agony, and time. Without his mother, Vuong must remake his understanding of the world: what is identity when its source is gone? What is language without the cultural memory of our elders? Aesthetically ambitious and ferociously original, Time Is A Mother interrogates these impossibilities. “Nobody’s free without breaking open,” Vuong writes in one searing poem. Here, he breaks open and rebuilds.

Trust, by Hernan Diaz

In 2018, Diaz came close to the Pulitzer Prize with In the Distance , a probing western honored as a finalist; now, with Trust , he may finally take home the gold. Trust is the story of a Wall Street tycoon and his brilliant wife, who become outlandishly wealthy in Prohibition-era New York. In this puzzle box of stories-within-a-story, the mystery of their affluence becomes the subject of a novel, a memoir, an unfinished manuscript, and finally, a diary. Each layer builds and recontextualizes Diaz's riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed. The result is a mesmerizing metafictional alchemy of grand scope and even grander accomplishment.

Liarmouth, by John Waters

Waters takes his first bow as a novelist with this "perfectly perverted feel-bad romance” about Marsha “Liarmouth” Sprinkle, a con woman caught up in a bad romance with Darryl, the degenerate loser with whom she steals suitcases from airport luggage carousels. Marsha has promised Darryl sex for his services after one year of employment, but when she skips out without paying up, Darryl is out for revenge. In the acknowledgments, Waters aptly describes this novel as “fictitious anarchy.” That’s as good a description as any for this campy, raunchy, surreal story, rife with ribald pleasures. Read an interview with Waters here at Esquire.

Butts: A Backstory, by Heather Radke

This crackling cultural history melds scholarship and pop culture to arrive at a comprehensive taxonomy of the female bottom. From 19th-century burlesque to the eighties aerobics craze to Kim Kardashian’s internet-breaking backside, Radke leaves no stone unturned. Her sources range from anthropological scholarship to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” making for a vivacious blend, but Butts isn’t all fun and games. Radke explores how women’s butts have been used “as a means to create and reinforce racial hierarchies,” acting as locuses of racism, control, and desire. Lively and thorough, Butts is the best kind of nonfiction—the kind that forces you to see something ordinary through completely new eyes. Read an interview with the author here at Esquire.

Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, by Kim Kelly

With a galvanizing groundswell of unionization efforts rocking mega-corporations like Amazon and Starbucks, there’s never been a better time to learn about the history of the American labor movement. Fight Like Hell will be your indispensable guide to the past, present, and future of organized labor. Rather than structure this comprehensive history chronologically, Kelly organizes it into chapter-sized profiles of different labor sectors, from sex workers to incarcerated laborers to domestic workers. Each chapter contains capsule biographies of working-class heroes, along with a painstaking focus on those who were hidden or dismissed from the movement. So too do these chapters illuminate how many civil rights struggles, like women’s liberation and fair wages for disabled workers, are also, at their core, labor struggles. After reading Fight Like Hell , you’ll never look at American history the same way again—and you may just be inspired to organize your own workplace. Read an interview with Kelly here at Esquire.

Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library, by Amanda Oliver

Library-goers have long labored under a romanticized portrait of libraries as sacred spaces. In Overdue , a former librarian explores the importance of demanding better from what we love. Through the lens of her time as a librarian in one of Washington D.C.’s most impoverished neighborhoods, Oliver illuminates how libraries have long been vectors for some of our biggest social ills, from segregation to racism to inequality. Now, as unhoused patrons take refuge in libraries and librarians are trained to administer Narcan, our overlapping mental healthcare and opioid crises come to a head in these spaces. At once a love letter and a call to action, Overdue dispels mythology and demands a better future. You’ll never see libraries the same way again.

Woman, Eating, by Claire Kohda

My Year of Rest and Relaxation meets Milk Fed in this slacker comedy about Lydia, a multiracial Gen Z vampire suffering an identity crisis. Fresh out of art school and eager to make a new life for herself in London, Lydia soon gets a harsh reality check: her gallery internship is unfulfilling, her crush is dating someone else, and her supply of pig's blood is running dangerously low. Ravenous and lonesome, she becomes addicted to watching #WhatIEatInADay videos, desperate for the embodied connection to food and life that humans experience. But for this yearning young vampire, self-acceptance won’t come until she finds something (or someone) to eat. Thoughtful and thrilling, Woman, Eating makes a meal of themes like cultural alienation, disordered eating, and the growing pains of adulthood.

The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy

After sixteen years of characteristic seclusion, McCarthy returns with a one-two punch: The Passenger , out in October, and Stella Maris , a companion volume set to follow in November. In The Passenger , the stronger of the two works, we meet Bobby Western, a salvage diver and mathematical genius reckoning with his troubled personal history. Western is tormented by the legacy of his father, who worked on the atomic bomb, and the suicide of his sister, who suffered from schizophrenia. Told in meandering form, The Passenger is an elegiac meditation on guilt, grief, and spirituality. Packed with textbook McCarthy hallmarks, like transgressive behaviors and cascades of ecstatic language, it’s a welcome return from a legend who’s been gone too long.

Fen, Bog and Swamp, by Annie Proulx

The legendary author of “Brokeback Mountain” and The Shipping News delivers an enchanting history of our wetlands, a vitally important but criminally misunderstood landscape now imperiled by climate change. As Proulx explains, fens, bogs, swamps, and estuaries preserve our environment by storing carbon emissions. Roving through peatlands around the world, Proulx weaves a riveting history of their role in brewing diseases and fueling industrialization. Imbued with the same reverence for nature as Proulx’s fiction, Fen, Bog, and Swamp is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action. Read an exclusive interview with the author here at Esquire.

Because Our Fathers Lied, by Craig McNamara

How do we reckon with the sins of our parents? That’s the thorny question at the center of this moving and courageous memoir authored by the son of Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy’s architect of the Vietnam War. In this conflicted son’s telling, a complicated man comes into intimate view, as does the “mixture of love and rage” at the heart of their relationship. At once a loving and neglectful parent, the elder McNamara’s controversial lies about the war ultimately estranged him from his son, who hung Viet Cong flags in his childhood bedroom as a protest. The pursuit of a life unlike his father’s saw the younger McNamara drop out of Stanford and travel through South America on a motorcycle, leading him to ultimately become a sustainable walnut farmer. Through his own personal story of disappointment and disillusionment, McNamara captures an intergenerational conflict and a journey of moral identity.

A Ballet of Lepers, by Leonard Cohen

A Ballet of Lepers collects never-before-seen early works from beloved singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, including short stories, a novel, and a radio play. The titular novel, Cohen believed, was “probably a better novel” than his celebrated book The Favorite Game . These recovered gems traffic in the themes that would always obsess their author, like shame, desire, and longing. Cohen’s life and art have been dissected for years, but as this revealing volume proves, there are still new shades of him to discover.

Lost & Found, by Kathryn Schultz

Eighteen months before Schultz’s father died after a long battle with cancer, she met the love of her life. It’s this painful dichotomy that sets the foundation for Lost & Found , a poignant memoir about how love and loss often coexist. Braiding her personal experiences together with psychological, philosophical and scientific insight, Schultz weaves a taxonomy of our losses, which can “encompass both the trivial as well as the consequential, the abstract and the concrete, the merely misplaced and the permanently gone.” But so too does she celebrate the act of discovery, from finding what we’ve mislaid to lucking into lasting love. Penetrating and profound, Lost & Found captures the extraordinary joys and sorrows of ordinary life.

Less Is Lost, by Andrew Sean Greer

In 2018, Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for Less , an unforgettable comic novel about aging writer Arthur Less and his international misadventures. Less is back for more in this beguiling sequel, bursting with just as much absurdity, heartache, and laugh-out-loud joy as its predecessor. Dogged by financial crisis and the death of his former lover, Less sets out across the American landscape with nothing but a rusty camper van, a somber pug, and a zigzagging itinerary of literary gigs. Our reluctant hero blunders his way into a cascade of disasters, but the more lost Less gets, the closer he is to being found. Rambunctious and life-affirming, Less is Lost is a winsome reminder of all that fiction can do and be. As Greer writes of novelists, “Are we not that fraction of old magic that remains?” Read an exclusive interview with the author here at Esquire.

Fairy Tale, by Stephen King

The master of horror turns his talents to coming-of-age fantasy in this spellbinding tale about seventeen-year-old Charlie Reade, a resourceful teenager who inherits the keys to a parallel world. It all starts when Charlie meets Mr. Bowditch, a local recluse living in a spooky house with his lovable hound. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive stockpile of gold, and the keys to a locked shed containing a portal to another world. But as Charlie soon discovers, that parallel world is full of danger, dungeons, and time travel—and it has the power to imperil our own universe. Packed with glorious flights of imagination and characteristic tenderness about childhood, Fairy Tale is vintage King at his finest. Read an exclusive excerpt here at Esquire.

The Furrows, by Namwali Serpell

Fresh off the stratospheric achievement of The Old Drift , Serpell’s sophomore novel is a wrenching examination of grief, memory, and reality. When Cassandra Williams was twelve years old, her seven-year-old brother Wayne drowned off the Delaware coast. Or did he? While the first half of The Furrows examines the long half-life of Cassandra’s grief, the second half gets slippery, exploring the possibility that Wayne survived. As the blurry boundaries between what’s true and what’s possible collapse, Serpell resets her novel again and again, like a scratched record skipping back to the beginning. Old wounds never heal, and Cassandra can’t stop revisiting them. Let this breathtaking novel roll over you in waves.

The Book of Goose, by Yiyun Li

Time and time again, Li has proven herself a master storyteller obsessed with the nature of storytelling. In her latest novel, she takes that obsession to spectacular new heights. Set in the ruined countryside of post-WWII France, The Book of Goose centers on the friendship between shy Agnès and rebellious Fabienne. Fabienne devises a game: she will imagine a lurid story, and Agnès, with her perfect penmanship, will write it. When the book becomes a runaway bestseller credited to Agnès alone, it propels the girls on a trajectory of fame and fortune that threatens to sever their friendship. Fans of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels will love this gripping tale of art, power, and intimacy.

Liberation Day, by George Saunders

The godfather of the contemporary short story is back and better than ever in Liberation Day , his first collection of short fiction in nearly a decade. In one memorable story set in a near future police state, a grandfather explains how Americans lost their freedoms through small concessions to an authoritarian government. In another standout, vulnerable Americans are brainwashed and reprogrammed as political protestors, with their services available to the highest bidder. The rousing title novella sees the poor enslaved to entertain the rich, forced to recreate scenes from American history. In these powerful and perceptive stories, Saunders conjures a nation in moral and spiritual decline, where acts of kindness wink through like lights in the darkness.

@media(max-width: 73.75rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.4375rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.5625rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}} Best of 2022

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Book reviews: 47 of the best novels of 2022

New releases include The Singularities by John Banville and Saha by Cho Nam-Joo

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1. The Singularities by John Banville

2. saha by cho nam-joo (trans. jamie chang), 3. bournville by jonathan coe.

• 4. Molly & the Captain by Anthony Quinn

5. Darling by India Knight

6. the passenger by cormac mccarthy, 7. demon copperhead by barbara kingsolver, 8. liberation day by george saunders, 9. lucy by the sea by elizabeth strout, 10. the romantic by william boyd, 11. the marriage portrait by maggie o’farrell, 12. carrie soto is back by taylor jenkins reid, 13. lessons by ian mcewan, 14. the ink black heart by robert galbraith, 15. haven by emma donoghue, 16. trust by hernan diaz, 17. the last white man by mohsin hamid, 18. a hunger by ross raisin, 19. acts of service by lillian fishman, 20. the twilight world by werner herzog, 21. the exhibitionist by charlotte mendelson, 22. vladimir by julia may jonas, 23. to paradise by hanya yanagihara, 24. joan by katherine j. chen, 25. the house of fortune by jessie burton, 26. the seaplane on final approach by rebecca rukeyser, 27. the young accomplice by benjamin wood, 28. the sidekick by benjamin markovits, 29. nonfiction: a novel by julie myerson, 30. you have a friend in 10a by maggie shipstead, 31. very cold people by sarah manguso, 32. trespasses by louise kennedy, 33. elizabeth finch by julian barnes, 34. the candy house by jennifer egan, 35. companion piece by ali smith, 36. young mungo by douglas stuart, 37. sell us the rope by stephen may, 38. french braid by anne tyler, 39. good intentions by kasim ali, 40. the school for good mothers by jessamine chan, 41. pure colour by sheila heti, 42. a previous life by edmund white, 43. a class of their own by matt knott, 44. our country friends by gary shteyngart, 45. scary monsters by michelle de kretser, 46. free love by tessa hadley, 47. the fell by sarah moss.

As the author of three trilogies, John Banville is “no stranger to using recurring characters”, said Ian Critchley in Literary Review . But The Singularities takes this to extremes: so stuffed is it with “old Banville protagonists” that it is close to being a “literary greatest-hits collection”. The setting is Arden House – the crumbling Irish country house from Banville’s 2009 work The Infinities . Various characters from that work are joined by William Jaybey (from The Newton Letter ) and Freddie Montgomery (from The Book of Evidence ), among others. One doesn’t begrudge Banville his “game with his readers”: The Singularities is a “pleasure to read”.

With its “assembly of characters” and country house setting, this novel seems to have the “makings of a whodunnit”, said Tom Ball in The Times . But “no one dies”, or even falls out; and, in fact, little of consequence happens. Fortunately, “you don’t read Banville for his taut plots”. You read him because, every few pages, there’s a sentence “so perfectly contrived it stops you for a moment, achingly, like a beautiful stranger passing in the street”.

Knopf 320pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

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The South Korean writer Cho Nam-Joo is best known for her 2016 novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 , said Ellen Peirson-Hagger in The i Paper . A story of “everyday sexism”, it sold more than a million copies in South Korea and sparked a national conversation about the status of women. Cho’s latest novel, Saha , is “just as political” – though this time the focus is on class. Set in a dystopian future, the novel follows a disparate group of characters who live in some dilapidated buildings on the outskirts of “Town”, a fiercely hierarchical “privatised city-nation” where all aspects of life are tightly controlled. Offering a powerful critique of “plutocracy, systemic inequality” and “gendered violence”, the novel is “utterly captivating”.

Cho’s dystopia is “not particularly original”, and her plotting can be “surprisingly loose”, said Mia Levitin in The Daily Telegraph . But the novel’s characterisation is “touching” – and its themes are certainly powerful. At a time of rising global inequality – South Korea’s economy is dominated by “mega-corporations” – this is a book that “resonates widely”.

Scribner 240pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

“Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state-of-the-nation novel,” said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman . But one who can is Jonathan Coe. His latest charts 75 years of British history, following the lives of a single family, headed by matriarch Mary Lamb, who live on the outskirts of Birmingham, near the Bournville factory. Coe covers so much ground in just 350 pages by alighting only on key moments: VE Day in 1945; the Queen’s coronation; the 1966 World Cup; the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The result is a “piercing” satire on Englishness that is “designed to make you think by making you laugh”. This is a warm and comforting book, said Melissa Katsoulis in The Times – like a “mug of hot chocolate”.

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The final section, set during Covid-19, is very moving, said J.S. Barnes in Literary Review . But much of this novel is “flat and formulaic”. The use of hindsight is clunky: when Mary visits The Mousetrap in 1953, she thinks: “I imagine it will be closing before very long.” It feels like a “procession through well-worn territory”, rather than something designed to “excite or entertain”.

Viking 368pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

4. Molly & the Captain by Anthony Quinn

Anthony Quinn is a “fine prose stylist, able to evoke the past with vivid immediacy”, said Alex Preston in The Observer . His ninth novel is a sweeping epic that consists of three interlinked sections. In the 1780s, Laura Merrymount – daughter of the Gainsborough-esque portraitist William Merrymount – strives to escape from her father’s shadow and become a painter herself. In Chelsea a century later, we meet the young artist Paul Stransom and his sister Maggie – who abandoned her own dreams of becoming an artist to care for their dying mother. And finally, in 1980s Kentish Town another artist, Nell Cantrip, suddenly acquires late-career fame. Marked by its “intricate”, immaculate plotting, this novel is a “rollicking read”.

I found the plotting a bit predictable, and the characterisation heavy-handed, said Imogen Hermes Gowar in The Guardian . But the book has interesting things to say “about women’s work and talent, and the life cycle of art”; and it is deftly put together by a writer who delights in the “granular details of an era”, while also understanding its broad sweep.

Abacus 432pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

India Knight’s new book is a “contemporary reimagining” of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love , said Christina Patterson in The Sunday Times . Updating “such a beloved novel” certainly isn’t easy – but Knight has pulled off the task with aplomb. In her version, the four Radlett children – Linda, Louisa, Jassy and Robin – are not the progeny of an English lord, but of an ageing and reclusive rock star. Desperate to protect his children from “modern life”, he has purchased a “vast Norfolk estate” – and it’s there that we first encounter Linda and her siblings, through the eyes of their cousin Franny. The narrative tracks their passage to adulthood, and their romantic entanglements – centred on “Linda’s pursuit of love”.

Darling works because, as in Mitford’s original, the details are so “bang on”, said Emma Beddington in The Spectator . Sometimes, Knight artfully tweaks them: she replaces hunting with swimming, and gives her adult characters jobs (Linda runs a café in Dalston). Mitford “diehards can rest easy: your blood vessels are safe with this faithful, fiercely funny homage”.

Fig Tree 288pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Cormac McCarthy’s first novel in 16 years explores “the very boundaries of human understanding”, said Nicholas Mancusi in Time . Investigating a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico, diver Bobby Western discovers that one passenger is missing; soon he is being harassed by government agents. But the pretence that this is a thriller doesn’t last long: chapters in which Bobby discusses the meaning of life alternate with ones in which his maths genius sister Alice experiences schizophrenic hallucinations. It’s a deeply weird book, held together by “chuckle-out-loud” humour. A companion novel, Stella Maris , focusing on Alice, does little to explain it – but together they are “staggering”.

Sorry, said James Walton in The Times , but I can’t remember a recent novel so wildly indifferent to what its readers might enjoy, or even understand. The conversations that make up the bulk of it, ranging from nuclear physics to Kennedy’s assassination, are a complete ragbag. McCarthy’s gift for description and dialogue remains undiminished, but there’s no escaping the sense that The Passenger is “a big old mess”.

Picador 400pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel is a retelling of David Copperfield , transposed to the “valleys of southwest Virginia at the height of America’s opioid crisis”, said James Riding in The Times . Demon Copperhead, the “rambunctious hero”, is “born in a trailer to a teenage single mother”, and grows up in a world of neglectful child protection services and dubious guardians. The characters are all recognisable from the Dickens novel – but appear in new guises: “Steerforth becomes Fast Forward, a pill-popping quarterback; Uriah Heep is U-Haul, a football coach’s errand boy”. Daring and entertaining, Demon Copperhead is “shockingly successful” – “like Dickens directed by the Coen brothers”.

It’s a promising premise, not least because in its extreme inequality, post-industrial America resembles Victorian England, said Jessa Crispin in The Daily Telegraph . Yet while Kingsolver closely cleaves to the story of the original, she “breaks the most important rule of working in the Dickensian mode”: the need to “show the reader a good time”. Hers is a retelling “beset by earnestness” – and as a result it falls flat.

Faber 560pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Besides being a Booker Prize winner with his only novel, Lincoln in the Bardo , George Saunders is “routinely hailed as the world’s best short story writer”, said James Walton in The Daily Telegraph . The American’s dazzling new collection – his first since 2013’s Tenth of December – shows why he garners such acclaim. As is customary in a Saunders collection, quite a few of the tales are “deeply strange”: in the title story, three people are kept permanently “pinioned to a wall”, enacting scenes from American history; another story is set in a theme park that has never received any visitors. Around half the tales, however, explore “recognisable social and political dilemmas”: two employees clashing at work; a mother’s despair about the state of America after her son is pushed over by a tramp. And whether Saunders is engaging with contemporary reality, or “taking us somewhere else entirely”, he never forgets that the most important duty of a writer is to make his work “winningly readable”.

Tenth of December was a “marvellous” collection, but unfortunately Liberation Day doesn’t hit the same heights, said Charles Finch in the Los Angeles Times . Although “the standard of Saunders’ writing remains astronomically high”, there are times here when he seems almost on auto-pilot, reprising themes and situations he has previously explored. It’s true that if you’ve read Saunders before, then parts of Liberation Day will sound “like self-parody”, said John Self in The Times . But then again, “it’s churlish to knock a true original for repeating himself”. When he’s at his best, Saunders’ “oblique, farcical, tragic” view of the world still has the ability to “take the top of your head off”.

Bloomsbury 256pp £18.99; The Week bookshop £14.99

“Elizabeth Strout is writing masterpieces at a pace you might not suspect from their spaciousness and steady beauty,” said Alexandra Harris in The Guardian . Lucy by the Sea is the third sequel to her acclaimed bestseller My Name is Lucy Barton . It takes place early during the pandemic, when Lucy and her ex-husband, William, leave New York for a friend’s empty beach house in Maine – for “just a few weeks”, he says. It is “a study of a later-life reunion between a man and woman who married in their 20s”. It isn’t “a tender tale”, as William isn’t an easy man to like, but it is “as fine a pandemic novel as one could hope for”.

Over the course of three Lucy Barton books, Strout has “created one of the most quizzical characters in modern fiction”, said Claire Allfree in The Times . Still, even this “avid fan” found herself wondering whether this instalment is “surplus to requirements”. This, sadly, is a novel that “mistakes simplistic observation for subtle insight, bathos for pathos”, and Lucy herself is “downright annoying”. I disagree entirely, said Julie Myerson in The Observer . Lucy by the Sea is a wonderful evocation of lockdown life. It is “her most nuanced – and intensely moving – Lucy Barton novel yet”.

Viking 304pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

William Boyd’s 17th novel – his first set in the 19th century – is an “old-fashioned bildungsroman” that follows its “hero, Cashel Greville Ross, through a long and peripatetic life”, said Lucy Atkins in The Sunday Times .

After growing up in Ireland and Oxford, Cashel “impulsively joins the army” and finds himself “facing the French bayonets at the Battle of Waterloo”. He subsequently “hangs out” with Byron and Shelley in Italy, spends time in east India and New England, and becomes an opium addict, an author and a diplomat. Although the authorial winks can be groan-inducing – “Shelley can barely swim”, a friend of the poet declares – it is a “masterclass” in narrative construction and its ending is “genuinely poignant”.

Boyd is “as magically readable as ever”, said Jake Kerridge in The Daily Telegraph . But amid the non-stop action and “endless verbal anachronisms”, Cashel never quite emerges as a fully rounded character. Compared with Boyd’s previous “whole life novels”, such as Any Human Heart and Sweet Caress , The Romantic feels “glaringly synthetic”.

Viking 464pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

Maggie O’Farrell’s last novel, the brilliant Hamnet , “fleshed out” the lives of Shakespeare’s children, said Elizabeth Lowry in The Daily Telegraph . Her latest brings another neglected historical figure into the light – the noblewoman Lucrezia de’ Medici. In 1560, a 16-year-old Lucrezia left Florence to begin her married life with Alfonso d’Este, heir to the Duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio. “Within a year, she was dead”; it was rumoured Alfonso had killed her. Taking these “suggestive details” as inspiration (as Robert Browning did in his famous poem My Last Duchess ), O’Farrell “constructs a convincing human drama”.

O’Farrell is a master of visual description, said Claire Allfree in The Times . A tiger moves “like honey dripping from a spoon”; through a window, the sound of sobbing drifts upwards “like smoke”. Yet the “headily perfumed” prose proves oddly dulling: rather than “springing forth messily alive”, Lucrezia seems “trapped beneath the weight” of the “relentless” description. Although it sets out to bring Lucrezia back to life, it ends up being a “bloodless book”.

Tinder Press 438pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a TikTok phenomenon, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph . Thanks in part to BookTok – the social media app’s books community – her novels about glamorous women finding fame and fortune have sold in their millions. Continuing with that “winning strategy”, her latest centres on a “hotshot American tennis pro”.

Carrie Soto is a former world No. 1, who has won a record 20 grand slams. Now in her late 30s, she mounts an “unlikely comeback”, prompted by the emergence of a new star, Londoner Nicki Chan. This is a “compulsive, soapy page-turner” with “more substance than the average beach read”. In short, it’s an “ace” of an “escapist romp”.

Jenkins Reid has a “nose for a cultural moment”, said Susie Goldsbrough in The Times . And so this book’s appearance so soon after the retirement of Serena Williams – clearly an inspiration for Carrie – is “coincidental but not surprising”. Don’t expect “psychological depth”; “fundamentally, this is a sports story”, with whole chapters devoted to single matches. But it’s certainly very “fun to read”.

Hutchinson Heinemann 384pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Ian McEwan’s novels are often “lean, controlled enquiries” into specific historical moments, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The New Statesman : 1950s Germany in The Innocent ; the Thatcherite 1980s in A Child in Time . But his 18th is very different – “baggier and more protean” than any of its predecessors. It’s also, “to my mind, McEwan’s best novel in 20 years”. His protagonist, Roland Baines, is a baby boomer who bears a strong resemblance to his creator, were his creator “not a hugely successful novelist”. Roland spends his childhood in Libya, then “attends a state-run boarding school” in England. And like McEwan, he discovers as an adult that he has a long-lost brother. Yet his life is notable for its lack of direction: he “scratches out a living as a hotel lounge pianist, an occasional tennis coach and a hack”. Humble and wise, Lessons is “an intimate but sprawling story about an ordinary man’s reckoning with existence”.

As is often the case for McEwan’s protagonists, Roland’s life “hinges” on a single traumatic episode, said Edmund Gordon in the TLS . Aged 14, he begins an affair with his piano teacher, Miss Cornell – a relationship which, while he “isn’t exactly a reluctant participant”, nonetheless wounds him. A second trauma follows in his 30s, when Roland’s German-born wife, Alissa, abandons him and their baby son to pursue her ambition of becoming a novelist, said Peter Kemp in The Sunday Times . While Roland is left a single parent, Alissa – somewhat implausibly – becomes “Germany’s greatest writer”. As the decades pass, the “social and domestic cavalcade of Roland’s life” plays out against the backdrop of “momentous global happenings” – from 9/11 to the Covid lockdowns. A “vividly detailed lifetime chronicle”, Lessons is a “tour de force”.

Yet it has its problems, said Claire Lowdon in The Spectator . This is a novel full of dropped storylines and non sequiturs, and McEwan can’t resist those “overbearing news bulletins” that have peppered his recent work (“The Profumo affair was only a year away” etc.). Still, Lessons is consistently enjoyable, and there’s something to be said for the “novelty” of reading a McEwan novel that feels more like “a Jonathan Franzen”. At the age of 74, his desire to try new things is impressive. “Despite the rambling and the rushed patches, here is a whole, unruly life between the covers of a single book: a literary feat of undeniable majesty.”

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This new crime novel by J.K. Rowling, using her Robert Galbraith pseudonym, has Cormoran Strike, her Afghan-War-veteran-turned-private detective, getting to grips with the world of online trolls, said Joan Smith in The Sunday Times .

Strike and his partner Robin are called to investigate the stabbing to death of a woman named Edie. She was the co-creator of a YouTube cartoon featuring “ghoulish” characters cavorting in a cemetery, and the finger of suspicion falls on a gamer known as “Anomie”, who had subjected Edie to a “torrent of lurid accusation” after claiming that she’d ripped off his ideas.

While the novel works as a “superlative piece of crime fiction”, its subject matter also feels highly pointed: Rowling has herself faced accusations of plagiarism, and she has been subjected to savage online abuse for arguing that aspects of trans ideology lead to the “erasure of the word ‘woman’”.

Sphere 1,024pp £25; The Week Bookshop £19.99

Emma Donoghue’s latest novel is set in early 7th century Ireland, and centres on a trio of monks who build a monastic community on a tiny island, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post . The men set out in their “precarious boat” after their leader Artt – a “legendary holy man” – has a “vision of an island in the western sea”. When they reach a “large rock” covered in “birds, guano and little else”, Artt is convinced it’s the place from his dream – and resolves that he and his companions will never leave. Haven may sound like a work that “few readers have been praying for”, but it proves “transporting, sometimes unsettling and eventually shocking”.

There are some “striking formal similarities” between this novel and Donoghue’s 2010 bestseller Room , inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, said Paraic O’Donnell in The Guardian . Both are works of “radical minimalism”, about people who “struggle to preserve their humanity in utter isolation”. Although Haven is “created in a muted palette”, this is a work of impressive “narrative sustenance” – and is “crowded with quietly beautiful details”.

Picador 272pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated first novel, In the Distance, centred on a “penniless young Swedish immigrant” in California, said Jonathan Lee in The Guardian . His second concerns a “character at the other end of the economic scale” – a “Gatsby-like tycoon in 1920s New York” named Andrew Bevel. Rather than tell Bevel’s story straight, Diaz embeds it in four “interconnected narratives”: a fictionalised novel based on Bevel’s life; Bevel’s unfinished autobiography; a memoir by his ghostwriter; and fragments from his wife’s “long-withheld diary”. It sounds tricksy, but it’s surprisingly readable – like a “brilliantly twisted mix” of Borges and J.M. Coetzee, with “a dash” of Italo Calvino.

The “knotty ingenuity” of this novel makes it deserving of its place on this year’s Booker longlist, said Lucy Scholes in The Daily Telegraph . It is “destined to be known as one of the great puzzle-box novels”. I doubt that, said John Self in The Times . Parts are “original and surprising”, but overall it’s “well behaved and dull”, and consumed by its own cleverness. Like the tycoon at its centre, it’s “all smart, no heart”.

Picador 416pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Mohsin Hamid’s fifth novel begins with a transformation, said Alex Preston in The Observer : Anders wakes up one morning to find his skin has changed from white to black. This metamorphosis is not explained; instead, the focus is on its impact on the people around Anders. When he goes out, he feels “vaguely menaced”; his boss tells him he’d have killed himself had it happened to him. But then Anders finds that similar transfor­mations are taking place across the US, until eventually there is “just one white man left”. Written in “incantatory” sentences, The Last White Man is a “strange, beautiful allegorical tale”.

Mysterious transformations can be “fertile terrain” for fiction, said Houman Barekat in The Times : one thinks, most obviously, of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. But while that work resists easy interpretation, Hamid’s aims are all too obvious: this is “yet another liberal parable” about the “psychic underpinnings of racial prejudice”. Ultimately, it’s a book that says more about the “publishing industry’s anxious scrabble for topicality” than about “the human condition”.

Hamish Hamilton 192pp £12.99; The Week Bookshop £9.99

Most books billed as telling us “what it means to be human” really do no such thing, said John Self in The Observer . Ross Raisin’s A Hunger is an exception. The tale of a London “sous chef in her mid-50s”, this is the fourth novel by this talented writer – and it is his most “ambitious” yet, encompassing “work and family, desires and appetites, responsibility and identity”.

Raisin has always excelled at portraying working lives, said Alexandra Harris in The Guardian : Waterline , his second novel, centred on a Clyde shipbuilder; A Natural , his third, was about a lower league footballer. Here, he captures the rhythms of kitchen life so skilfully that it “makes one realise the degree to which work is still under-charted territory in literary fiction”. Yet the novel is about much more than cooking: Patrick, Anita’s husband of 30 years, has recently developed early-onset dementia, forcing her to combine the stresses of her job with a new role as a carer “changing incontinence pads”. The result is a “deeply thought out and beautifully unshowy” novel about the “conflicting demands of work and care”.

I wasn’t impressed, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times . Although Raisin’s gifts for “startling descriptive prose” are evident – notably in a bravura opening set in a walk-in fridge – the novel overall is let down by “wooden dialogue”, characters who don’t seem real, and a clumsy structure in which Anita’s present-day travails are juxtaposed with “rushed and skimpy” scenes from her early life. It may not be perfect, but this is a deft exploration of “the guilt that accompanies female ambition”, said Amber Medland in the FT . Daring in what it sets out to achieve, A Hunger is equally “impressive in its execution”.

Jonathan Cape 464pp £18.99; The Week bookshop £14.99

Lillian Fishman’s debut is one of the most “searching and enthralling” novels about sex I’ve read in years, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The New Statesman . “Eve is a 28-year-old barista from Brooklyn in a long-term relationship with Romi, a paediatrician.” Although Eve considers herself a lesbian, she has fantasies about sleeping with a “wild number of people”. When she posts nude pictures of herself online, they catch the attention of an artist called Olivia – who proves to be acting on behalf of a “tall, wealthy man in his 30s” named Nathan, who makes Eve his sexual “toy”. “Part erotic Bildungsroman, part melancholy comedy of manners”, Acts of Service is “startlingly accomplished”.

Well, I found it thoroughly tedious, said Jessa Crispin in The Times – less a novel than a crude allegory. Nathan is “basically Christian Grey from Fifty Shades rendered in marginally better prose”. Fishman’s reflections on the corrupting effects of “patriarchy” and “capitalism” have been far better expressed elsewhere. Overhyped and unoriginal, this is a disappointing addition to the “library of endless want”.

Europa Editions 224pp £12.99; The Week Bookshop £9.99

For 29 years after the end of the Second World War, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda held out on a small island in the Philippines, believing his comrades were still fighting, said Anthony Gardner in The Mail on Sunday . Now the great film director Werner Herzog, who befriended Onoda in 1997, has written an imaginative reconstruction of his experiences. Steeped in the atmosphere of the jungle, it’s an “enthralling” novel that explores the nature of time and warfare with great mastery.

Onoda’s single-minded intransigence makes him an archetypal Herzog hero, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph , and this “Hemingwayesque” novella is highly cinematic, with short chapters and vivid scene-setting. But its refined prose gives it a sculptural quality too: its descriptions of the natural world are radiant. Herzog manages to inhabit the soldier’s mind, and to create a “visionary” narrative, said Peter Carty in The i Paper. Moral issues – Onoda killed a number of islanders – are somewhat sidelined, but this beautifully crafted book is a “literary jewel” nevertheless.

Bodley Head 144pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Charlotte Mendelson’s “riotous, prize-winning novels” tend to be about messy, dysfunctional families, said Leyla Sanai in The Spectator . Her fifth centres on a “monstrous” artist named Ray Hanrahan and his downtrodden wife, Lucia. Narcissistic, abusive and controlling, Ray has “quashed” Lucia’s own artistic ambitions for decades, forcing her to minister to his needs and look after their (now grown-up) children.

With an “ostentatious private view” of his work about to open, he has summoned friends and family to their north London house. The result is a “glorious ride” of a novel – one in which “Mendelson observes the minutiae of human behaviour like a comic anthropologist”.

There is a lot going on in this novel – “at times, too much” – but the overall “effect is exhilarating”, said Susie Mesure in The Times . Moving between perspectives, Mendelson cranks the drama up to a “fiery climax”. There’s a “hint of HBO’s Succession ” in this tale of a “family in thrall to a despotic patriarch”, said Madeleine Feeny in The Daily Telegraph . Mingling “eroticism, absurdity and pathos”, it’s “electric”.

Mantle 336pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

At first glance, this debut novel seems to be yet another post-#MeToo book “dissecting sexual trauma and queasy power dynamics”, said Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times . At a US liberal arts college, John, a senior English professor, finds himself accused of sexual impropriety by “seven students with whom he has had affairs”. But rather than adopt their perspective, the novel is narrated by John’s wife – who is anything but sympathetic towards them. She laments the fact that young women today seem to have “lost all agency”, and admits to having “enjoyed the space” that her husband’s infidelities provided. With its bracing take on sexual politics, Vladimir is an “astonishing debut”.

In its second half, the novel becomes primarily about “female appetite”, as the narrator develops an obsessive crush on a “gorgeous new junior professor”, said Lucy Atkins in The Guardian . May Jones’s “quietly captivating” voice dazzles until the end, when the novel is let down by a “heavy-handed denouement”. Still, in its willingness to tackle “complex”, provocative themes, this is “an engrossing and clever debut”.

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Hanya Yanagihara’s latest novel is the “keenly awaited” follow up to A Little Life , her “devastating story of irreparable human damage”, said David Sexton in The Sunday Times . It consists of three sections all set in the same New York building and taking place, respectively, in 1893, 1993 and 2093.

Part one re-imagines 19th century New York as a “liberal breakaway nation in which gay marriage is normal”. Part two, set in the “time of Aids”, focuses on a wealthy white lawyer and his young Hawaiian lover. Part three envisages an America that has been ravaged by “successive waves of viruses, every few years from 2020”. While a “less bludgeoningly powerful” work than A Little Life , it’s still “highly affecting”.

This is in many ways a “wantonly strange” work, said Claire Allfree in The Times : the convoluted narrative can be “frustratingly opaque”, and there’s a complete absence of humour. Yet there’s no denying Yanagihara’s skill at immersing us in the “emotional world of her characters”. For all its flaws, To Paradise is “frequently magnificent”.

Picador 720pp £20; The Week Bookshop £15.99

The story of Joan of Arc – a 15th-century peasant girl from northeast France who became a national heroine – has been told many times before, said Marianka Swain in The Daily Telegraph . But in her second novel, the American writer Katherine J. Chen offers a “fresh and utterly enthralling take”. Her Joan is not a religious icon – “gone are the visions” – but primarily a “woman of action”: she’s a child of remarkable physical gifts who, through a series of “serendipitous events”, becomes a key ally of the dauphin (later King Charles VII), helping to lead his armies against the English. “Vivid, visceral and boldly immediate”, the novel has already earned comparisons with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy.

At once a “mystic, martyr and war hero”, Joan is a largely “incomprehensible” figure today, said Jess Walter in The New York Times . Chen, however, has a “lively stab” at making her seem relevant – in part by imagining her as an “abused child” who uses her anger to become an “avenging warrior”. “Rich” and “visceral” in its descriptions, Joan is “stirring stuff”.

Hodder & Stoughton 368pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

In 2014, Jessie Burton’s debut novel The Miniaturist – about 18-year-old Nella Oortman’s coming of age in 17th century Amsterdam – became a global bestseller, said Gwendolyn Smith in The i Paper . Now Burton is back, with a “beguiling, tender sequel”, set 18 years later. Nella, now 37, is a widow (The Miniaturist climaxed with her husband’s execution for sodomy), who still lives in the “same grand address on Amsterdam’s Herengracht canal”. A “cold, austere place” in the previous book, the house is now suffused with “warmth and familiarity” – though it still “thrums with secrets”. “Wise and fabulously immersive”, this book, if anything, surpasses its predecessor.

I disagree, said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph . Burton remains a “lovely writer”, who can craft “startlingly sculptural” sentences. But “where The Miniaturist was alive with spooky mystery”, this book lacks an “animating spirit”: characters, events and even the language seem contrived. “In seeking to bring more life to the characters in The Miniaturist, The House of Fortune somehow diminishes them instead.”

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Set in the Alaskan wilderness, Rebecca Rukeyser’s “wistful and sardonic” first novel is part adventure story, part coming-of-age tale, said The Irish Times . Seventeen-year-old Mira is working for the summer at a guest house run by a married couple, Stu and Maureen, alongside two other girls and a troubled chef. Much of her time is spent fantasising sexually about a boy she met the year before. Rukeyser’s descriptive prose is assured and elegant, and the story becomes increasingly tense, as Stu’s predatory behaviour towards the girls becomes apparent.

Mira’s adolescent yearning is well captured in this quirky, wry debut, said Siobhan Murphy in The Times . Rukeyser provides a “deftly juggled” mixture of merciless judgement and gentle compassion for her characters’ failings. There’s also plenty of comedy, said Cal Revely-Calder in The Sunday Telegraph, though the story becomes more “mature and melancholy” as it progresses. The Seaplane on Final Approach is about how “desire ruins everything”. And when the finale arrives, it is “catastrophic” – but it also provides “lengthy, gruesome fun”.

Granta 288pp £12.99; The Week Bookshop £9.99

“Few people outside the literary world” have heard of 41-year-old novelist Benjamin Wood, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . That’s a shame, because he’s “wonderful”. Already the author of “three richly layered novels”, he has now written a fourth, The Young Accomplice , which is “his most original yet”. Set in the 1950s, it centres on Arthur and Florence Mayhood, “childless architects in their 30s” who, inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, dream of creating a communal-living project on their Surrey farm. To help them realise this ambition, they invite a pair of borstal leavers – brother and sister Charlie and Joyce Savigear – to live with them; unsurprisingly, things go wrong.

Compared with Wood’s previous novels, which blended “storytelling punch with literary sensibility”, this book at times feels muted, said John Self in The Times . Wood spends a lot of time in his characters’ heads; you wish for a bit more action. Still, there are compensations: the characters feel like “real people”, who you miss when they’re gone. This is a book that “digs its claws into you and sticks there”.

Viking 368pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Benjamin Markovits’s latest novel is a “compelling account of relative failure”, said Joseph Owen in Literary Review . Brian, the narrator, is a “big fat slow” Jewish kid from Austin, Texas, who becomes childhood friends with Marcus Hayes, his high school’s basketball star. Marcus is black, and from a broken home – for a while he lives with Brian’s family – but in adulthood, when Marcus becomes an “NBA superstar”, Brian is merely a “semi-successful” sportswriter. The novel convincingly portrays Brian’s “inhibited world-view”, which is “tainted by jealousy” of his friend. The result is a “bleak, amusing, ultimately absorbing read”.

This is a novel with the “topography of a classic American story”, said Stuart Evers in The Spectator : “sport as a metaphor for the fracture of the US; friendship as a microcosm of race relations”. It feels a little dated – a bit “male and white” – and the “detailed descriptions of basketball” could put some people off. In the final act, though, when Markovits unveils “his A-game”, the novel “ignites into something compelling and emotionally resonant”.

Faber 361pp £18.99; The Week Bookshop £14.99

In 2009, the novelist Julie Myerson found herself at the centre of a media storm after publishing a non-fiction account of her eldest son’s addiction to marijuana, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer . The episode, she has said, drove her to a “kind of breakdown”, and she has never directly addressed it in her writing. Except that now, in a way, she has. This, her 11th novel – entitled Nonfiction – is all about “teenage drug addiction”. The narrator is a once “happily married” writer, who is looking back on her attempts to save her heroin-addicted daughter “from self-destruction”. Given her own backstory, Myerson is risking a lot with such a novel – but “the results are nothing less than incandescent”.

The title is confusing, and deliberately so, said Alex Peake-Tomkinson in The Spectator . This is Myerson’s “squarest attempt so far at autobiographical fiction”. Yet in other ways, it seems a typical work: she has always explored “her worst fears in her novels”. Although I hope she will “look beyond her own life” in future, I found this a “satisfyingly propulsive” read.

Corsair 288pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Maggie Shipstead’s “thrilling” historical epic, Great Circle , not only earned her a place on last year’s Booker shortlist, but also “proved a huge hit with readers”, said Lucy Scholes in the Financial Times . So it’s “savvy” of her publisher to bring out this collection of her short stories, written over the past 13 years. The tales vary widely in tone and setting – they transport us “from the catacombs of Paris, via an Olympic Village, to a guano island in the middle of the Pacific” – but taken together, they forcefully illustrate the “remarkable scope of Shipstead’s imagination and talent”.

While one or two of these stories seem a bit “too self-conscious”, most are superb, said Lizzy Harding in The New York Times . In the “sure standout”, “La Moretta”, a young couple’s honeymoon in Romania “transforms into folk horror à la The Wicker Man ”. Shipstead has an “unnerving ability to capture a character’s inner life in a few choice phrases”, said Stephanie Merritt in The Observer . “It’s a rare writer who can create a world as convincingly over a few pages as in a 600-page novel.”

Doubleday 288pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

This “creepy coming-of-age tale” unfolds like a “darker version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda ”, except with “no Miss Honey coming to the rescue”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Observer . Set in an “icy” Massachusetts town in the 1980s, it is narrated by Ruthie, an only child whose family is “on the edge of poverty”. Ruthie is an assiduous cataloguer of “everything she sees” – her mother’s lumpy body, her awkward dinners with richer school friends – but she doesn’t always understand the significance of what she sees. Marked by its “pitiless, minutely observed prose”, Very Cold People is a work that “will stay with me for a very long time”.

Manguso is especially good at evoking the “constraints and cruelties” of Ruthie’s home life, said Alexandra Jacobs in The New York Times . So successfully does she portray “boring old daily pain” that it almost seems redundant when “more dramatic plot-turns arrive” towards the end of the book. Very Cold People is at its best simply as a “compendium of the insults of a deprived childhood: a thousand cuts exquisitely observed and survived”.

Picador 208pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

The Irish writer Louise Kennedy only began writing aged 47, but her rise has been meteoric, said Madeleine Feeny in The Spectator . The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, her debut short story collection, was “fought over” by nine publishers. And now, with this first novel, she has written what promises to be another hit. Plot-wise, Trespasses doesn’t break new ground, said Kevin Power in The Guardian: set near Belfast in 1975, it’s about a young Catholic primary school teacher who falls in love with a posh Protestant barrister. What distinguishes it is its “sense of utter conviction”. This is a story “told with such compulsive attention to the textures of its world that every page feels like a moral and intellectual event”.

Kennedy is a superbly visual writer, and her “idiomatic dialogue gives her prose real verve”, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer : the protagonist’s mother, catching sight of Helen Mirren on a chat show, describes her as a “dirty article”. Combining “unflinching authenticity” with a “flair for detail”, this is a “deftly calibrated” and ultimately “devastating” novel.

Bloomsbury 320pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Julian Barnes’s latest is that “old-fashioned thing, a novel of ideas”, said John Self in The Times . It is narrated by Neil, a former actor, but is really all about Elizabeth Finch, the “lecturer on a course on culture and civilisation that Neil took decades earlier”. Finch, who is “probably inspired” by Barnes’s friend, the late novelist Anita Brookner, is remembered as an inspirational teacher, someone “who obliged us – simply by example – to seek and find within ourselves a centre of seriousness”. Neil recalls their sort-of friendship – they occasionally met for lunch – and describes his quest, in the present day, to find out more about Finch in the wake of her death. Very much a “thinky” novel, Elizabeth Finch may be “rather less fun” than most of Barnes’s books, but it “offers plenty to chew on”.

“Part of the challenge of rendering a brilliantly inspirational teacher is making them sufficiently brilliant and inspirational,” said Sameer Rahim in The Daily Telegraph . Despite Neil’s insistence on Finch’s originality, “what she actually says tends to fall flat”. “She told me that love is all there is. It’s the only thing that matters,” a classmate of Neil recalls. The novel is further let down by its baffling middle section, which consists of Neil’s “stolid student essay” on the fourth century Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, whom Finch regarded as a kindred spirit, said Sam Byers in The Guardian .

It all adds up to a “work stubbornly determined to deny us its pleasures”. I disagree, said Peter Kemp in The Sunday Times . As a teacher, Finch “blazes with vividness”, and Neil’s essay is a “bravura exercise in nimbly handled erudition”. Elizabeth Finch “celebrates the cast of mind” – subtle, sceptical and ironic – that “Barnes most prizes”.

Jonathan Cape 192pp £16.99; The Week bookshop £13.99

Jennifer Egan’s new novel is a “sibling novel” to A Visit From the Goon Squad, her bestselling 2010 novel about rock music, “Gen-X nostalgia” and the “digitalisation of everything”, said Dwight Garner in The New York Times . Consisting of interrelated short stories which zigzag about in time, it resembles its predecessor in structure – and features many of the same characters. But at its centre is a new figure: the “Mark Zuckerberg-like” Bix Bouton, whose company, Mandala, has created an “implausible” device known as Own Your Unconscious, which lets users upload their own and other people’s memories, and “watch them all like movies”.

The sci-fi aspects of the book are neither new nor “particularly fully realised”, said Andrew Billen in The Times : memory uploads have been tackled better elsewhere. But this is essentially a book of short stories, and most of them are excellent and “brain-stretching”. What “really astounds is the visual brilliance of Egan’s writing across these disparate tales”. She won a Pulitzer for A Visit From the Goon Squad; I hope this book “wins another”.

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Ali Smith’s first novel since her “extraordinary Seasonal Quartet ” has a fitting title, said Alex Preston in The Observer , as it “springs from the same source as its predecessors”. Like them, it was “written and published swiftly”, to cram in recent events. It’s 2021, and Sandy, an artist, is “struggling through lockdown”. Her father is in hospital following a heart attack – and she “only has his dog for company”. Smith skilfully evokes the grim monotony of pandemic life, said Catherine Taylor in the FT – from the “regularity of testing” to “the exhaustion of medical staff”.

Much of the plot concerns Sandy’s “renewed acquaintance” with an old university friend Martina, who gets in touch to tell her about her recent interrogation by UK border police, said Philip Hensher in The Daily Telegraph . This leads to Sandy meeting Martina’s twin daughters, Eden and Lea, who are full of “millennial” rage and entitlement. Covering a “lot of contemporary ground”, Companion Piece offers an entertaining portrait of the “world we live in, by the most beguiling and likeable of novelistic intelligences”.

Hamish Hamilton 400pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Douglas Stuart’s debut, Shuggie Bain – the winner of the 2020 Booker Prize – was a “bleak autobiographical novel about a young boy caring for his alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . His follow-up is “cut from the same cloth”.

Fifteen-year-old Mungo lives with his mother and two older siblings in Glasgow’s East End. “His brother, Hamish, is a Faginesque Protestant gang leader; his sister, Jodie, is a do-gooding fallen angel; and their mother, Mo-Maw, is a woman ruined by alcohol.” As the novel opens, Mungo is shooed off by his mother on a fishing trip with two menacing strangers from her Alcoholics Anonymous group, who promise to teach him “masculine pursuits”.

Interspersed with this “gruesome excursion” are chapters set a few months earlier, detailing Mungo’s first love affair, with a Catholic neighbour called James. Although this “alternating timeline” feels forced at times, this is still a “richly abundant” work packed with fine writing and “colourful characters”.

It may be felt – with some justification – that Stuart has written the same book twice, said Nikhil Krishnan in The Daily Telegraph . Yet he “makes small differences count”. Because Mungo is older than Shuggie, he is able to see in his sexuality “not just a source of difference and alienation, but a possible route to escape and emancipation”. And Stuart widens his focus beyond family life, taking in the “Jets and Sharks world” of Glasgow’s sectarian politics.

Like its predecessor, this “bear hug of a new novel” has a “yeasty whiff of the autobiographical” about it, said Hillary Kelly in the Los Angeles Times . If you adored Shuggie Bain , this book “will please you on every page”.

Picador 400pp £16.99; The Week bookshop £13.99

Joseph Stalin “never spoke or wrote” about the two months he spent in London in the spring of 1907, attending the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, said Alasdair Lees in The Daily Telegraph . Into this “psychological aperture” steps Stephan May, whose sixth novel is an “openly confected” retelling of those “few overlooked weeks”.

It begins with a 29-year-old Stalin – then known by his nickname, Koba – landing at Harwich, fresh from “a campaign of terror and banditry” in his native Georgia. In London, he stays in a dosshouse in Stepney, while better-off attendees – including Lenin – lodge in Bloomsbury. May’s Stalin is a “figure of fascinating contradictions” – an “idealist and a thug” – and the novel a “captivating thought experiment”.

Sadly, it often falls “disappointingly flat”, said Simon Baker in Literary Review . There are “samey descriptions” of London’s “awful” pubs, and May makes too much use of summary. Despite having the makings of an “exciting political thriller”, the novel isn’t convincing enough for May’s story to really grow.

Sandstone 288pp £8.99; The Week Bookshop £6.99

Anne Tyler virtually created the “family novel” genre, but has “strayed into more diverse territory recently”, said Melissa Katsoulis in The Times . Fans will be delighted by the 80-year-old’s 24th novel, which marks a return to type. Set, almost inevitably, in Baltimore, it’s a multi-generational saga spanning six decades, about a “comfortingly average” family. Mercy and Robin Garrett “enjoy a smoothly conventional life” running a hardware store and raising their three children. But theirs is a family in which “certain things must never be said”, and as the decades pass, this creates division. French Braid is “Tyler at her most Tyler-ish: pleasant and inoffensive, yet surprisingly deep and moving”.

Near its end, the novel does take an unexpected turn, said Anthony Cummins in The Observer . Its final chapters are set during Covid – a topic Tyler suggested she’d never write about. Typically, however, she emphasises not the pandemic’s harrowing side, but its “potential to occasion reunion and reconnection”. This book may fall short of her best work – but “at this point any Tyler book is a gift”.

Chatto & Windus 256pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

This “eagerly awaited” debut is being hailed as “part of a wave of novels by young men of colour exploring race, romance and mental health problems”, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times . Nur, a 25-year-old online journalist from Birmingham who regularly suffers panic attacks, has been with Yasmina for four years. But he has yet to tell his Pakistani parents about the relationship: Yasmina’s family is Sudanese, and Nur has never got over his “mother’s disgust when she saw him hanging out with a black girl at school”.

On the surface a “poignant romance” about the barriers standing in the way of two young lovers, Good Intentions gradually reveals itself to be a deeper novel – about how an obsession with vulnerability can “make you forget your responsibility to others”.

Ali’s characters are “well-drawn”, and “what a tonic” to have a book about race in Britain set outside the capital, said Siobhan Murphy in The Times . Unfortunately, though, the unnecessarily complex structure necessitates a lot of darting “between points on the timeline” – and this, alas makes the novel rather “confusing”.

4th Estate 352pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Jessamine Chan’s “crafty and spellbinding” debut is set in a terrifyingly plausible dystopian America, said Molly Young in The New York Times . Frida Liu is a 39-year-old single mother with an 18-month-old daughter and a stressful job. One day, in a “spell of insomnia-induced irrationality”, she leaves her daughter unattended at home while running a work errand.

Neighbours hear the toddler crying, and alert the police. Frida is sentenced to a year in an “experimental rehab facility”, where women are moulded into better mothers by practising their parenting skills on AI dolls. The school continually berates Frida for her actions: her kisses, instructors tell her, “lack a fiery core of maternal love”.

It’s no surprise that this book has been “making waves” in the US, said Madeleine Feeny in The Daily Telegraph : “questions of how we define and evaluate motherhood pervade contemporary culture”. Beautifully lucid and elegantly written, this is a “must-read” novel, said India Knight in The Sunday Times – “a Handmaid’s Tale for the 21st century”.

Hutchinson Heinemann 336pp £12.99; The Week Bookshop £9.99

The Canadian writer Sheila Heti’s latest is “an original”, said Anne Enright in The Guardian . It’s a short novel about grief in which plot often gives way to “mystical” digressions that are “earnest, funny and sweet” – “a bit mad”, but in a good way.

Mira, a solitary woman in midlife, falls in love with Annie, a fellow student at their school for art criticism. Then Mira’s father dies, and his spirit joins her own inside a leaf, where they converse about “art, God, love and the transmigration of souls”, before Mira returns to “the pursuit of love”, her faith in “family and tradition” strengthened.

Billed as “a philosopher of modern experience”, Heti is known for her auto-fictional novels such as How Should a Person Be? (2010). Pure Colour is more like a fable, said Mia Levitin in the FT , in which God is an artist, and this world is his “first draft”, now “heating up in advance of its destruction”. Sadly, the book’s “meditations on grief” left me cold, and I found the prose “clunky” and “perilously close to kitsch”, with a naive, fairy-tale quality ill-suited to a story about middle age.

Harvill Secker 224pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Edmund White’s novels “forever enlarged what gay writing might do”, said Neil Bartlett in The Guardian . His latest book – “his 30th, by my count” – is an “elegant, filthy” work that “crackles with a heartfelt insistence that the old and hungry” still have much to tell us about “the dynamics of sex”.

In the year 2050, a married couple in a remote Swiss chalet decide to entertain each other by recounting their “previous sexual careers”. Constance, in her early 30s, is an “African-American orphan”, while Ruggero, her husband, is an elderly bisexual Sicilian aristocrat who is “legendarily well-connected (not to mention well hung)”.

As you’d expect, this novel is “elegantly written”, and contains many “arresting images”, said Peter Parker in The Spectator – but it’s fairly “preposterous”. The leap forward in time is merely a device allowing Ruggero to reminisce about his affair 30 years earlier with the now-forgotten writer Edmund White, then old and infirm: a “fat, famous slug”, he calls him. It is, however, all very entertaining.

Bloomsbury 288pp £18.99; The Week Bookshop £14.99

Unsure what to do after graduating, Matt Knott alighted on tutoring as an “easy way to make money”, said Georgia Beaufort in The Daily Telegraph . He duly joined an agency that specialised in finding “study buddies” for the children of the super-rich. With his “Cambridge degree and his floppy hair”, Knott proved a big success – and in this “very funny memoir”, he recounts his three years in the job.

His first assignment was in a house in Mayfair, where each day he sat in a “holding pool” of tutors waiting to see if he’d be picked to help a five-year-old with his homework. Other families were considerably friendlier: half servant, half family member, Knott accompanied his charges on various exotic holidays.

This amusing book sheds light on a ridiculous world of “butlers in very tight trousers” and “helicopter trips from Tuscan villas to smart restaurants in Rome”, said Roland White in the Daily Mail . In this milieu, five-year-olds eat lobster tempura for supper, and “PJs” stands for private jets instead of pyjamas. With his pleasing turn of phrase (these days he works as a screenwriter), Knott is a witty, observant guide.

Trapeze 336pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Gary Shteyngart’s fifth novel is set during the far-off-seeming “early days” of the Covid pandemic, said Claire Lowdon in The Sunday Times . Sasha Senderovsky, a successful Russian-born US novelist (like his creator), has retreated to his large house in upstate New York, accompanied by a group of friends. Their plan is to ride out lockdown together but, predictably, things go wrong.

Various housemates fall out with one another; “plenty of partner-swapping” occurs. If the basic conceit owes a lot to Chekhov, the novel’s boisterous, madcap comedy owes at least as much to A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Shteyngart has brilliantly captured the “almost maniacal aliveness” of the early pandemic. If anyone writes a funnier lockdown novel, “I will eat my face mask”.

There’s so much going on in this somewhat “messy” novel that at times it’s exhausting to read, said John Self in The Times . A “little more stillness” would have been welcome. Still, it exhibits Shteyngart’s trademark “feverish energy” – and the result is “often funny” and “sometimes moving”.

Allen & Unwin 336pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

“Michelle de Kretser’s slyly intelligent sixth novel pairs two first-person narratives,” said Anthony Cummins in The Observer . One is set in “dystopian near-future Melbourne” and follows Lyle, an immigrant who works for a sinister government agency created to deport immigrants. The other is set in 1981, and follows Lili, a 22-year-old Australian, during a carefree sojourn in the south of France. The link between the two narratives is mysterious – and even the order you read them in is “up to you”, on account of the book’s “reversible, Kindle-defying two-way design”.

The publisher has been “fastidious” in cooperating with de Kretser’s conceit, said Sam Leith in The Daily Telegraph : there are two front covers, two copyright pages, two sets of acknowledgements, and so on. “It’s sort of magnificent, and it’s also sort of gimmicky” – and it left me unsure if I was actually reading a novel, or simply two novellas yoked together. Perhaps, though, it doesn’t really matter. Filled with “apt quick literary brushstrokes and the gleam of humour”, both halves are equally “terrific”.

Allen & Unwin 320pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

Tessa Hadley is justly lauded for “elevating the domestic novel to literary fiction” in her stories about the “shifting geometries” of middle-class families, said Mia Levitin in the FT . Free Love , her eighth novel, “adds a Sixties twist to Anna Karenina ”. Set in 1967, it centres on 40-year-old Phyllis Fischer, a well-off suburban housewife married to Roger, a senior civil servant. One summer night, twenty-something Nicky – the son of a family friend – comes to supper. He and Phyllis steal an “illicit kiss” – and embark on an affair. Leaving home without a forwarding address, Phyllis swaps her cosy life with Roger for “then-bohemian Ladbroke Grove” (where Nicky occupies a squalid bedsit). Hadley’s style is as “sumptuous” as ever, and her characterisations are superb. While this isn’t perhaps her best novel, its publication is a “cause for celebration”.

Hadley has been criticised for the “narrowness of her social concerns – her incorrigible preoccupation with Cecilias, Harriets and Rolands”, said James Marriott in The Times . So it’s gratifying that in this “beautiful and exciting” novel, she contrasts the bourgeois world with the “supremely undomesticated” 1960s counterculture.

Yet there’s a problem, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times : Hadley is far more at home among herbaceous borders than in the “pot-smoking” milieu of Nicky and his friends. Her depictions of the Swinging Sixties rarely rise above cliché – and “when she tries to capture the life of a black nurse whom Phyllis befriends, the writing becomes laboured”. You sense Hadley “itching to get back to the bourgeois suburbs” – and as this disappointing novel progressed, I wished I was back there with her.

Jonathan Cape 320pp £16.99; The Week Bookshop £13.99

Sarah Moss’s 2009 debut novel, Cold Earth , imagined an out-of-control virus, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer . She returns to similar terrain with her latest novel – only this time with less need for invention. Set in November 2020, The Fell centres on Kate, a forty-something single mum, who “finally snaps” during a two-week quarantine period, and goes for a solitary walk in the Peak District. It’s “destined to be an ill-fated expedition”: the night draws in, Kate doesn’t return – and her absence is noticed by her teenage son Matt. With its vivid sense of “accumulating dread”, this is an “intense time capsule of a tale”.

Moss moves “gracefully” between various perspectives, said Sarah Ditum in The Times : that of Alice, an elderly neighbour; and Rob, a member of the mountain rescue team. Elegantly written and concise, The Fell is a “close-to-perfect” novel. Even though Moss has said it was written fast, the prose here feels “precision-tooled”, said Roger Cox in The Scotsman . Remarkably, in only 180 pages, she has captured “all of lockdown life”.

Picador 180pp £14.99; The Week Bookshop £11.99

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40 Most Anticipated Books of 2022

JAN. 11, 2022

by Xochitl Gonzalez

Atmospheric, intelligent, and well informed: an impressive debut. Full review >

by Chantal James

A mesmerizing story told by an impressive and captivating voice. Full review >

by Hanya Yanagihara

Gigantic, strange, exquisite, terrifying, and replete with mystery. Full review >

JAN. 25, 2022

by John Darnielle

An impressively meta work that delivers the pleasures of true-crime while skewering it. Full review >

FEB. 1, 2022

A powerful collection that demonstrates Fu’s range and skill. Full review >

FEB. 15, 2022

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

by Marlon James

The second part of this trilogy is darker and, in many ways, more moving than its predecessor. Full review >

MARCH 8, 2022

by Karen Joy Fowler

The similarities to today are riveting and chilling. Full review >

APRIL 5, 2022

by Douglas Stuart

Romantic, terrifying, brutal, tender, and, in the end, sneakily hopeful. What a writer. Full review >

by Jennifer Egan

A thrilling, endlessly stimulating work that demands to be read and reread. Full review >

APRIL 26, 2022

by Michelle Huneven

Like the lamb shank at the cafeteria: tender, salty, and worthy of note. Full review >

by Mark Epstein

Empathetic and persuasive—one of the better books on psychotherapy and meditation in recent years. Full review >

JAN. 18, 2022

by Bernardine Evaristo

A beautiful ode to determination and daring and an intimate look at one of our finest writers. Full review >

by Kimberly Jones

Demanding better, Jones provides a wise, measured look at the economic and social landscape of America. Full review >

FEB. 8, 2022

by Chuck Klosterman

A fascinating examination of a period still remembered by most, refreshingly free of unnecessary mythmaking. Full review >

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

by Jessie Singer

An eye-opening, urgent book that demands an end to inequality as a matter of life and death. Full review >

by Garrett M. Graff

Now the best and fullest account of the Watergate crisis, one unlikely to be surpassed anytime soon. Full review >

FEB. 22, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

by Ian O'Connor

A sharpshooting account worthy of a champion. Full review >

MARCH 1, 2022

by Michael Kazin

This should be today’s go-to book on its subject. Full review >

by Meghan O'Rourke

Emotionally compelling and intellectually rich, particularly for those with a personal connection to the issue. Full review >

MARCH 22, 2022

by John Markoff

A sturdy, readable study of a fellow who’s had considerable press devoted to him—but who can still surprise. Full review >

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT

by Jason Reynolds ; illustrated by Jason Griffin

Artful, cathartic, and most needed. Full review >

by Leanne Hall

Hauntingly riveting. Full review >

by Akwaeke Emezi

A compact, urgent, and divine novel. Full review >

by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem ; translated by Kristen Gehrman

Vivid and brutal—but not without a sliver of hope. Full review >

by Neal Bascomb

An impressive addition to the sports history catalog. Full review >

GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS

by Laura Gao ; illustrated by Laura Gao with Weiwei Xu

A nuanced representation of being Asian and transnational in the contemporary U.S. Full review >

by Anna-Marie McLemore

A beauty both bright and deep. Full review >

by Adib Khorram

An absolute bop; Khorram’s best yet. Full review >

MARCH 29, 2022

by Candace Fleming

Erudite, readable, and appalling. Full review >

by Chesil ; translated by Takami Nieda

Enigmatic and powerful. Full review >

CHILDREN'S

JAN. 4, 2022

by Virginia Zimmerman ; illustrated by Mary Newell DePalma

A timely nod to female empowerment that knits together generations of girls and women and raises a hat to activists... Full review >

by Joanna Ho ; illustrated by Dung Ho

A beautifully validating book that builds on the necessary work of its predecessor. Full review >

by Ruth Behar ; illustrated by Devon Holzwarth

A nostalgic glimpse at a little-known but rich culture within the broader Jewish American community. Full review >

by Aisha Saeed

A powerful tale about a preteen pushing back against systemic injustice. Full review >

by Julie Dunlap ; illustrated by Megan Elizabeth Baratta

A marvelous life survey of a perennially relevant historical figure. Full review >

by Traci Sorell ; illustrated by Madelyn Goodnight

A heartwarming picture book about the roles of courage, culture, and community in the journey of personal healing. Full review >

by NoNieqa Ramos ; illustrated by Paola Escobar

This bold manifesto of cultural awareness reaches out to awaken the sleepwalkers among us. Full review >

by Julia Kuo ; illustrated by Julia Kuo

A quiet book with a loud message about the everyday things that create constancy in a world of ephemeral pleasures. Full review >

by Kelly Barnhill

Combines realistic empathy with fantastical elements; as exquisite as it is moving. Full review >

APRIL 19, 2022

by Dorien Brouwers ; illustrated by Dorien Brouwers

An invitation to cultivate our wild selves and our inextricable bond with the natural world. Full review >

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The Best Books of 2022—According to Real Simple Editors

Including some memoirs, some thrillers, some debuts, and the long-awaited return of some acclaimed authors.

Ted Cavanaugh

If you're looking for a good book to curl up with, to create a lively conversation for your book club, or just a relaxing beach read for your next getaway, these great new books for 2022 will keep you page-turning well past bedtime. Check back every month for a new set of recommendations from the Real Simple editors to add to your to-read list.

Anywhere You Run

COURTESY OF PUBLISHER

Anywhere You Run by Wanda M. Morris is the rare heart-pounding thriller that’s also deeply moving. In the summer of 1964, 20-something sisters Violet and Marigold leave their hometown in Jim Crow Mississippi to escape very different troubles: One is suspected of murder; the other is unmarried and pregnant. Neither realizes there’s a man who’s after them both, and their wrenching journey toward a new life will leave you breathless.

We All Want Impossible Things

Ashley and Edith, both in their 40s, have been inseparable best friends since childhood, and now Edith is dying of ovarian cancer. In author Catherine Newman’s expert hands, We All Want Impossible Things is an extraordinary ode to friendship—warm, sometimes outrageously funny, and as real as it gets. It celebrates the gift of long-term bonds without shying away from the pain of losing someone you can’t imagine life without.

Demon Copperhead

The title character in Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, Demon Copperhead, is a fire-cracker of a young man born to a single mother deep in the mountains of southern Appalachia. You’ll be enthralled by his voice, simultaneously hilarious and wise, as he illuminates life in rural America. Inspired by Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, this is the ideal late-fall read to sink your teeth into.

Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family

Rabia Chaudry, author of the bestselling Adnan’s Story and cohost of the podcast Undisclosed, explore show her Pakistani roots and American upbringing collided and contributed to her body image and sense of self in Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family. This triumphant tale celebrates loving yourself and eat-ing good food (it even includes recipes!).

Signal Fires

Dani Shapiro’s gorgeous new novel, Signal Fires, begins in 1985 in a quiet suburb, where three teenagers get into a drunk-driving accident. The two Wilf siblings survive, but the event forever haunts their family. Years later, the Shenkmans move in across the street and have a child, who forms a bond with the Wilf father. The families’ lives intertwine in poignant ways, showing how relationships—between siblings, parents and children, spouses, even neighbors—change over time. Have your tissues ready.

Best of Friends

The new novel by Home Fire author Kamila Shamsie opens at a school in Pakistan, where Zahra and Maryam are adolescent girls who have a warm and easy friendship despite the gap in their families’ means. The story gets unputdownable when they grow up to become successful women in London and are forced to reckon with an event from their past. With lots to say about loyalty and how relationships change over time, Best of Friends is great fodder for book club conversations.

When New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a child of Taiwanese immigrants, was going to college in the Bay Area in the ’90s, he viewed Ken, a Japanese American, as someone whose tastes (Dave Matthews Band, Abercrombie & Fitch) ran a bit too mainstream. But the two found comfort in each other, until Ken was killed in a carjacking. Gut-wrenching and beautifully written, Stay True is an unforgettable story about grief, identity, and the indelible mark a friendship can leave on our lives.

The Frederick Sisters Are Living the Dream

In The Frederick Sisters Are Living the Dream by Jeannie Zusy, a funny and insightful story about caregiving, Maggie is an illustrator who’s separated from her husband and raising two teenage sons. After Ginny, her older sister with intellectual disabilities, has an accident, Maggie must move Ginny from Maryland to her small town in New York and juggle her sister’s needs as well, which range from the serious (diabetes) to the less so (her love of online shopping).

Jacqueline in Paris

In Jacqueline in Paris, Ann Mah brilliantly imagines what life was like in 1949 for a college student named Jacqueline Bouvier as she embarked on her junior year abroad. The alluring descriptions of postwar Paris (the food, the scenery) will make you want to hop on a plane, and the compelling storyline, set amid the rise of the Communist movement in France, is made even more thrilling by the fact that we know where this particular woman is headed.

Less Is Lost

Andrew Sean Greer’s novel Less won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018. In this follow-up, Arthur Less is traveling across the U.S., pursuing writing work to recover from a financial crisis. The clever story that unfolds is a hilarious and touching take on modern life in America, making Less Is Lost a cathartic book for anyone who’s ever questioned their path—in other words, all of us.

If I Survive You

In these connected short stories, author Jonathan Escoffery follows a Jamaican family from the 1970s, when they settle in Miami after fleeing political upheaval in their home country, to the modern day. Both outrageously funny and a piercing look at life in America, If I Survive You is the kind of book you’ll think about long after you finish it.

The Family Remains

Even if you haven’t read Lisa Jewell’s mega hit The Family Upstairs, you’ll love her stand-alone sequel, The Family Remains. A thrilling cast of characters’ lives collide in ways you won’t see coming. Set in London, Chicago, and France, this intricate page-turner about secrets, family loyalty, and revenge is the perfect end-of-summer novel.

Other Birds

Zoey Hennessey arrives on Mallow Island, off the coast of South Carolina, to claim her deceased mom’s apartment. Her new home is in the Dellawisp, an old building named for magical birds, where the quirky tenants include estranged sisters, a girl on the run...and ghosts. Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen is whimsical, wise, and delightfully mysterious.

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz is about a woman who’s been tossed around by life but refuses to surrender. Cara Romero is in her mid-50s when she loses her job and has to find work for the first time in decades. Told through Cara’s sessions with a job counselor, this relatable story shows what true resilience looks like.

The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

In The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford, Dorothy Moy is a Seattle poet with depression.When her 5-year-old shows familiar symptoms, Dorothy tries an experimental therapy: connecting, via memory, with past generations of women in her family. Her experiences raise a fascinating question: Do we inherit trauma from our ancestors?

The Fortunes of Jaded Women

The Duong sisters have been cursed to live without love, happiness—or sons. The bad luck seems to extend to one sister’s adult daughters, so she consults her psychic for help. What happens next might finally bring this over-the-top family together. The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh is hilarious and heartwarming.

On the Rooftop

Sisters Ruth, Esther, and Chloe make up the Salvations, a 1950s girl group who are local stars in gentrifying San Francisco. When they get close to the big break their mother has pushed for, there’s a problem: Mom’s dream is no longer theirs. On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton is a powerful drama set during a pivotal moment in U.S. history.

People Person

In People Person, Candice Carty-Williams’s second adult novel after the best-selling Queenie, Dimple Pennington is a lonely, 30-year-old struggling influencer. A crisis forces her to reconnect with her four half-siblings and their absentee dad, leading to a witty and tender portrayal of how our childhoods affect how we relate to our family as adults.

The Marriage Portrait

Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait brings to life Lucrezia de’ Medici, a free-spirited young duchess in 1550s Florence. She’s thrust into a marriage when the groom’s intended bride, her older sister, dies suddenly. Her survival depends on whether she produces an heir. This is a riveting tale about one woman’s fight for autonomy.

Any Other Family

In Eleanor Brown's Any Other Family , four biological siblings are adopted by three sets of parents—two couples and one single mother—who are committed to keeping the kids in each other's lives. But this well-intentioned agreement proves difficult in practice, especially when the children's biological mother announces she's pregnant again. A tearjerker that nails the issues of fertility, adoption, and raising kids, this is a conversation starter about parenthood you don't want to miss.

Cult Classic

Imagine: You're at a reunion dinner with former coworkers when you excuse yourself to buy a pack of cigarettes. As you walk back to the restaurant, you run into a former boyfriend, and then another, and then another. That's what happens to Lola in Sloane Crosley's Cult Classic . Clearly something is up, and it's not mere coincidence. This wildly entertaining, hilarious, genre-defying, sci-fi-esque novel about dating and relationships is guaranteed to be unlike anything you've read before.

Nora Goes Off Script

Nora Hamilton writes movies for a romance channel, and her newest script—based on her own failed marriage—is picked up by Hollywood and being filmed in the farmhouse she shares with her two kids. When the movie's leading man offers her $1,000 a day to stay for a week after shooting wraps so he can decompress, the real drama starts. Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan is funny and smart, with a Nancy Meyers–movie quality you'll love and a main character you'll want to befriend. This is the perfect easy-breezy, feel-good read.

Fellowship Point

Set in idyllic coastal Maine, Alice Elliott Dark's Fellowship Point is the sweeping story of Agnes Lee and Polly Wister, longtime best friends who've made very different choices in life: One is a children's book author; the other is a wealthy wife and stay-at-home mom. When Agnes becomes deter-mined to have a piece of land in their community permanently protected, Polly could stand in her way. What follows is an engrossing, relatable tale about female friendship and the growing pains of long relationships.

More Than You'll Ever Know

In 1985, Lore Rivera is an international banker whose double life—split between Mexico City and Laredo, Texas— comes to a halt when one of her two husbands murders the other. In 2017, Cassie Bowman is a true-crime writer who becomes dangerously fixated on with Lore's story, and the questions multiply as she digs deeper. More Than You'll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez is a something-for-everyone read (mystery! family drama! romance!) with two incredible, secret-keeping protagonists.

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Feyi Adekola is trying to move on. After five years of mourning the love of her life, she embarks on a summer romance with a new friend, who whisks her away to the tropical island where he was raised. After they arrive, his father, a world- renowned chef, reignites a passion she thought was lost forever. You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi is a steamy and sexy read (as in, shut the book if your kids walk into the room) that also has tremendous heart.

As a child, actor Selma Blair was known as a troublemaker, a reputation she carried into adulthood. In Mean Baby , her raw, beautifully written autobiography, Blair recounts her difficult road—involving an addiction to alcohol and a complicated relationship with her mother—and shares how her multiple sclerosis diagnosis four years ago was, in many ways, what ultimately saved her.

Tracy Flick Can't Win

In Tracy Flick Can't Win , Tom Perrotta revisits the main character in Election, his bestseller about an overachieving high school student, played to perky, type A perfection by Reese Witherspoon in 1999. This sequel, set in 2017, takes a sympathetic view of now middle-aged Tracy, an assistant principal and single mom, as she reconciles her past ambitions with her current dissatisfaction in life. Perrotta brings his trademark dark humor and insights into suburbia to the story, along with some sweet observations about friendship.

The Foundling

The Foundling by Ann Leary takes place in 1927, as 18-year-old Mary starts work at the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. When she recognizes one of the patients, a childhood friend raised in the same orphanage she was, Mary begins to wonder what's actually going on at the facility, and whether women are being held against their will. This eye-opening novel, based in part on Leary's family history, looks at the outrageous ways our society has sought to control women.

The Mutual Friend

Written by How I Met Your Mother cocreator Carter Bays, The Mutual Friend hopscotches across various characters' points of view: adrift, 28-year-old Alice; her wild roommate; her brother, a former tech CEO who became a monk; the nurse who served jury duty with him; even a robot and a canary. But it all comes back to Alice, who seriously needs to study for the MCAT to fulfill a promise to her late mother. Funny, sad, and deeply wise, this one-of-a-kind book will renew your faith in humanity—and make you really want to put down your phone.

Two Nights in Lisbon

In Two Nights in Lisbon by bestselling author Chris Pavone, bookstore owner Ariel Price has accompanied her new, younger husband on a business trip to Portugal for a quick romantic getaway. But after she wakes up in their hotel room one morning and he's nowhere to be found, she realizes how little she knows about the man she married. This smart and suspenseful thriller is the perfect escape to kick off your summer reading.

Easy Beauty

Pulitzer Prize finalist Chloé Cooper Jones was born with a rare condition called sacral agenesis, leaving her in chronic pain. In Easy Beauty , her globetrotting memoir that takes readers from bars in Brooklyn, New York, to a Beyoncé concert in Italy, she candidly describes what it's like to inhabit a body that does not fit our culture's standards of beauty. Her story will make you think hard about how you regard the physical appearance of both yourself and others.

Hello, Molly!

Molly Shannon's book opens with the event that would shape the Saturday Night Live alum's life: a car accident—with her father driving and 4-year-old Molly in the back—that killed her mother, younger sister, and cousin. What follows in Hello, Molly! is an incredible story of resilience (along with, of course, some laughs) showing how her upbringing influenced her remarkable career. Warm and openhearted, this one feels like a conversation. Consider getting the audiobook, read by the author herself.

The Evening Hero

The Evening Hero , the new novel by Marie Myung-Ok Lee, is about a Korean-born obstetrician facing his final years in the rural Minnesota town where he settled 50 years before. He's achieved the so-called American dream, but when his hospital is forced to close and he receives a letter that endangers all he's built, he has to reexamine his choices. This is a tender and shrewdly comic look at immigrant life, family, and how our past informs the future.

Take My Hand

It's 1973, and Civil Townsend has landed a nursing job at a family-planning clinic in Alabama. She travels to a rural cabin to meet her first patients, 11- and 13-year-old sisters she's supposed to inject with birth control, and learns that something sinister is afoot when it comes to how the local healthcare system treats poor, Black girls. Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is a riveting, based-on-true-events story about a heartbreaking chapter in our country's history.

The Candy House

The Candy House , what author Jennifer Egan calls a "sibling" to her Pulitzer Prize–winning A Visit from the Goon Squad , is unlike anything you've read. A rumination on our tech-dependent culture, it centers on a fictional new technology that allows users to access their every memory and share them in exchange for the memories of others. With multiple perspectives and styles (there's a chapter composed solely of tweets), this mind-bending novel is a wild ride.

Sea of Tranquility

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel is a deeply imaginative novel spanning 500 years. It begins in 1912 with a British teenager's exile to Canada, hop- scotches through the 2020 pandemic, and moves on to the future, where a famous author, who lives on a moon colony, is visiting Earth for a book tour. A mashup of sci-fi and historical fiction, this thought-provoking story powerfully examines where we've been and where we're going.

Lessons in Chemistry

Elizabeth Zott is a devoted chemist who wants to be taken seriously. But in 1960s California, her ambitions are routinely roadblocked by the men around her. Through a series of surprising (and entertaining) events, she becomes the star of America's most popular cooking show, where she sparks a revolution among her housewife viewers, motivating them to reassess their lives. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is a bold, smart, and often hilarious look at the value of so-called women's work.

In Finding Me , Viola Davis writes with raw honesty about her Rhode Island childhood, which was marked by poverty and a difficult family situation, and her journey to become one of the most acclaimed actors in Hollywood today. This book is a testament to resilience, hard work, and the pow- er of owning your truth.

French Braid

Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler's new novel, French Braid , proves once again that nobody can write about small family moments quite like she can. Her 24th novel focuses on the Garrett family from the 1950s to today, showing how each character's actions—the mother's pursuit of a painting career, a daughter's surprise pregnancy, a son's long absences—leave lasting marks on the others' lives.

The Cartographers

Nell Young's father, an acclaimed cartographer, sidelined her promising career in the field when they had a falling out over a worthless old highway map. When he turns up dead in his office and Nell discovers the very same map hidden among his things, she discovers that it may actually be quite coveted and valuable—dangerously so. The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd is a wildly entertaining, imaginative ride, with a cinematic plot that keeps the pages turning.

Karen Joy Fowler's Booth is about the family of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin. This family drama (emphasis on the drama) is set in the Maryland wilderness, where Booth's parents and many siblings lived. An epic novel, it's both the story of an eccentric household and a historical saga, zooming in on the tumultuous life of each family member as the country catapults into civil war.

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss

Bestselling author Amy Bloom's In Love is the heartbreaking, intimate story of how she and her late husband, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, made the wrenching decision to end his life with the help of Dignitas, an assisted- dying nonprofit in Switzerland. From her point of view as caregiver and partner, Bloom writes candidly about the husband she adored, their transformative marriage, and the choices they made during an impossible time.

Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation

Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation is an engrossing memoir about how author Erika Krouse broke open the case of a college student who was attacked and raped by football players at a party. Reluctant to investigate the incident because of her own history of abuse, Krouse soon became deeply involved in the case, which eventually made national headlines. Her personal account reads like fascinating true crime, and the emotional ending makes this an unforgettable read.

When We Were Birds

The poetic prose in Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's debut novel captivates from the start, when Yejide is grappling with her dying mother's difficult legacy. In the cemetery, she meets Darwin, a gravedigger who's abandoned his Rastafarian upbringing for the sake of earning a living, and the two find hope and comfort in the least expected of places. When We Were Birds is a unique love story whose magical setting in Trinidad takes center stage.

Mercy Street

A Boston women's clinic is at the center of Mercy Street , the perceptive new novel by Jennifer Haigh. The story zooms in on the lives of every- day people in today's America—a counselor at the clinic, the pot dealer who helps remedy her anxiety, a loner whose only true community is online, an anti- abortion activist—and, in Haigh's expert hands, explores how we arrive at the beliefs we hold.

Notes on an Execution

Danya Kukafka's Notes on an Execution is an intense thriller that reads like a mash-up of Law & Order and a college psych class. The fictional story of Ansel Packer, a serial killer on death row, is given a brilliant twist—it focuses on the women he affected, ultimately asking why we're drawn to crime stories about violent men. Cleverly constructed and smart, this is the kind of book you finish with a big exhale.

Violeta , the latest novel by Isabel Allende, is the sweeping tale of Violeta Del Valle, a 100-year-old woman whose life is bookended by two pandemics: the Spanish flu and Covid-19. Her saga, written so vividly that it feels like an autobiography, is a testament to resilience and courage.

Don't Cry for Me

Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black is a novel- in-letters told from the point of view of a Black father at the end of his life, writing to his gay son about how his own upbringing shaped his actions, for better or worse. This moving read, guaranteed to make you think about the older adults in your life, is an insightful peek into how the elderly might regard their place in a changing world.

Ursula Byrne is a successful, sharp New Yorker who learns about an exclusive matchmaking service that promises to find clients their perfect partner. Intrigued by the guarantee, she succumbs to the company's intricate "assessments." Funny and modern, The Arc by Tory Henwood Hoen is like a rom-com's cooler big sister. It's as much a satire as it is a romance, roasting our (perhaps misguided) reliance on high-tech solutions for matters of the heart.

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The Best Reviewed Books of 2022: Fiction

Featuring jennifer egan, emily st. john mandel, ian mcewan, celeste ng, olga tokarczuk, and more.

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We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2022, in the categories of (deep breath): Fiction; Nonfiction; Memoir and Biography; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror; Short Story Collections; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; and Literature in Translation.

Today’s installment: Fiction .

1. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf) 28 Rave • 9 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan Read an interview with Emily St. John Mandel here

“In  Sea of Tranquility,  Mandel offers one of her finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet, but it is her ability to convincingly inhabit the ordinary, and her ability to project a sustaining acknowledgment of beauty, that sets the novel apart. As in Ishiguro, this is not born of some cheap, made-for-television, faux-emotional gimmick or mechanism, but of empathy and hard-won understanding, beautifully built into language … It is that aspect of  Sea of Tranquility, Mandel’s finely rendered, characteristically understated descriptions of the old-growth forests her characters walk through, the domed moon colonies some of them call home, the robot-tended fields they gaze over or the whooshing airship liftoff sound they hear even in their dreams, that will, for this reader at least, linger longest.”

–Laird Hunt ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (Scribner)

27 Rave • 13 Positive • 11 Mixed • 4 Pan Read an interview with Jennifer Egan here

“… a dizzying and dazzling work that should end up on many Best of the Year lists … The Candy House requires exquisite attentiveness and extensive effort from its readers. But the work and the investment pay off richly, as each strain and thread and character reverberates in a kind of amplifying echo-wave with all the others, and the overarching tapestry emerges as ever more intricate and brilliantly conceived. Enacting the book’s dominant metaphor, Egan is presenting a version of Collective Consciousness: the blending and extension of selfhood across shared experience and identity. One of the book’s most fascinating implications, less patent but pervasive, is how this alternative model of perception does and doesn’t undermine traditional notions of literary consciousness … As we follow the pebbles and crumbs Egan so cannily lays out, readers may feel at times as disoriented or wonderstruck as children making their way through a dark forest, at others electrifyingly clear-sighted, ecstatically certain of the novel’s wisdom, capacious philosophical range, truth and beauty. Charged with ‘a potency of ideas simmering,’ The Candy House is a marvel of a novel that testifies to the surpassing power of fiction to ‘roam with absolute freedom through the human collective.'”

–Pricilla Gilman ( The Boston Globe )

3. Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (Riverhead)

26 Rave • 10 Positive • 1 Mixed

“ Pond is so unusual, and so unsettlingly pleasurable, that I thought it would be greedy to hope Bennett’s new novel, Checkout 19 , would be better. Lucky me: it is … Bennett is too committed to the oddity and specificity of her again-nameless narrator’s ideas to ever fall into the worn grooves of other people’s. Indeed, the novel is explicitly committed to the privacy of thought … Not many people are able to live this way; not many women or working-class characters get written this way. For the rooted among us, reading Checkout 19 can be utterly jarring. It is a portrait, like Pond; it’s also a call to come at least a little undone. Yes, really. It really is.”

–Lily Meyer ( NPR )

4. The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. by Jennifer Croft (Riverhead)

26 Rave • 9 Positive • 4 Mixed • 1 Pan

“ The Books of Jacob is finally available here in a wondrous English translation by Jennifer Croft, and it’s just as awe-inspiring as the Nobel judges claimed when they praised Tokarczuk for showing ‘the supreme capacity of the novel to represent a case almost beyond human understanding.’ In terms of its scope and ambition, The Books of Jacob is beyond anything else I’ve ever read. Even its voluminous subtitle is a witty expression of Tokarczuk’s irrepressible, omnivorous reach … The challenges here—for author and reader—are considerable. After all, Tokarczuk isn’t revising our understanding of Mozart or presenting a fresh take on Catherine the Great. She’s excavating a shadowy figure who’s almost entirely unknown today … As daunting as it sounds, The Books of Jacob is miraculously entertaining and consistently fascinating. Despite his best efforts, Frank never mastered alchemy, but Tokarczuk certainly has. Her light irony, delightfully conveyed by Croft’s translation, infuses many of the sections … The quality that makes The Books of Jacob so striking is its remarkable form. Tokarczuk has constructed her narrative as a collage of legends, letters, diary entries, rumors, hagiographies, political attacks and historical records … This is a story that grows simultaneously more detailed and more mysterious … Haunting and irresistible.”

–Ron Charles ( The Washington Post )

5. Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart (Grove)

27 Rave • 5 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan

“… moving … Stuart writes like an angel … masterful … if Stuart has not departed much from the scaffolding of his debut novel, he has managed to produce a story with a very different shape and pace … The raw poetry of Stuart’s prose is perfect to catch the open spirit of this handsome boy, with his strange facial tics … The way Stuart carves out this oasis amid a rising tide of homophobia infuses these scenes with almost unbearable poignancy … Stuart quickly proves himself an extraordinarily effective thriller writer. He’s capable of pulling the strings of suspense excruciatingly tight while still sensitively exploring the confused mind of this gentle adolescent trying to make sense of his sexuality … The result is a novel that moves toward two crises simultaneously: whatever happened with James in Glasgow and whatever might happen to Mungo in the Scottish wilds. The one is a foregone calamity we can only intuit; the other an approaching horror we can only dread. But even as Stuart draws these timelines together like a pair of scissors, he creates a little space for Mungo’s future, a little mercy for this buoyant young man.”

6. Lessons by Ian McEwan (Knopf)

23 Rave • 10 Positive • 4 Mixed • 3 Pan

“Nobody is better at writing about entropy, indignity and ejaculation—among other topics—than Ian McEwan … One of McEwan’s talents is to mingle the lovely with the nasty … McEwan can make a reader feel as though she has bent forward to sniff a rose and received instead the odor of old sewage … McEwan’s use of global events in his fiction tends to be judicious and revealing … These all serve as reminders that history is occurring. And maybe some readers do, in fact, require that reminder. But Roland is so passive that one gets the sense he’d be exactly the same guy in any other century, only with a different haircut … One way to read Lessons is as a self-repudiation of the maneuver at which McEwan has become virtuosic. More authors should repudiate their virtuosity. The results are exciting.”

–Molly Young ( The New York Times )

7. Either/Or by Elif Batuman (Penguin Press)

18 Rave • 12 Positive • 3 Mixed Read an interview with Elif Batuman here

“The book gallops along at a brisk pace, rich with cultural touchstones of the time, and one finishes hungry for more. I reread The Idiot before reading Either/Or and after almost 800 cumulative pages, I still wasn’t sated. Batuman possesses a rare ability to successfully flood the reader with granular facts, emotional vulnerability, dry humor, and a philosophical undercurrent without losing the reader in a sea of noise … What makes a life or story exceptional enough to create art? What art is exceptional, entertaining, and engaging enough to sustain nearly a thousand pages? Selin’s existential crisis within the collegiate crucible haunts every thoughtful reader … The novel stands on its own as a rich exploration of life’s aesthetic and moral crossroads as a space to linger—not race through. Spare me sanctimonious fictional characters locked in the anguish of their regretful late twenties and early thirties: May our bold heroine Selin return to campus and stir up more drama before departing abroad again.”

–Lauren LeBlanc ( The Boston Globe )

8. Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (Penguin)

21 Rave • 5 Positive • 4 Mixed

“Stunning … One of Ng’s most poignant tricks in this novel is to bury its central tragedy…in the middle of the action. This raises the narrative from the specific story of a confused boy and his defeated father to a reflection on the universal bond between parents and children … Our Missing Hearts will land differently for individual readers. One element we shouldn’t miss is Ng’s bold reversal of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It is the drive for conformity, the suppression of our glorious cacophony, that will doom us. And it is the expression of individual souls that will save us.”

–Bethanne Patrick ( The Lost Angeles Times )

9. Trust by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead)

22 Rave • 3 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan Read an interview with Hernan Diaz here

“[An] enthralling tour de force … Each story talks to the others, and the conversation is both combative and revelatory … As an American epic, Trust gives The Great Gatsby a run for its money … Diaz’s debut, In the Distance , was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Trust fulfills that book’s promise, and then some … Wordplay is Trust ’s currency … In Diaz’s accomplished hands we circle ever closer to the black hole at the core of Trust … Trust is a glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery … He spins a larger parable, then, plumbing sex and power, causation and complicity. Mostly, though, Trust is a literary page-turner, with a wealth of puns and elegant prose, fun as hell to read.”

–Hamilton Cain ( Oprah Daily )

10. Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

20 Rave • 5 Positive • 2 Mixed Read an interview with Ling Ma here

“The strangeness of living in a body is exposed, the absurdity of carrying race and gender on one’s face, all against the backdrop of an America in ruin … Ma’s meticulously-crafted mood and characterization … Ma’s gift for endings is evident … Ma masterfully captures her characters’ double consciousness, always seeing themselves through the white gaze, in stunning and bold new ways … Even the weaker stories in the book…are redeemed by Ma’s restrained prose style, dry humor, and clever gut-punch endings. But all this technical prowess doesn’t mean the collection lacks a heart. First- and second-generation Americans who might have been invisible for most of their lives are seen and held lovingly in Ma’s fiction.”

–Bruna Dantas Lobato ( Astra )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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No Mercy: A review of Scott Morrison’s memoir

'Repetition, cliché, malapropism, daft diction, plodding syntax, more cliché, and bucketloads of sentimentality? This book has got it all.'

Catriona Menzies-Pike

May 14, 2024

Scott Morrison, Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness

“Most politicians write books about what they’ve done.” Scott Morrison is absolutely correct on this point.

Most prime ministers write books about what they’ve done. The prime ministerial memoir is an established genre in Australian letters, a response to the not-unreasonable expectation that the leader of the country has a contribution to make to the national record.

That these books tend to be monuments to their authors’ self-regard is beside the point. Prime ministerial memoirs are, effectively, closing statements. They represent a final chance for the departing politician to correct misapprehensions, settle scores and pre-empt criticism before the rest of us — journalists, colleagues, citizens and historians — pass judgment. Writing a memoir is a form of democratic accountability. That was never one of Scott Morrison’s strengths.

In this meagre book, Plans For Your Good , Morrison dispenses with the conventions of the prime ministerial memoir and unburdens himself of any obligations to future historians. This book, he explains, “is my story of what I believe God has done for me through His faithfulness in all my life’s circumstances and how I truly came to understand God’s promise in Jeremiah 29:11. It is also a book about what God can do in your life.”

Morrison may well yearn for his book, subtitled, “A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness”, to serve evangelical ends. Whether he likes it or not, though, Plans For Your Good will become a crucial text for anyone trying to understand the governing of Australia between 2018 and 2022. I suspect that Plans For Your Good will deliver unto posterity the portrait of a leader driven by profound faith, yes, but a leader who allowed that faith to licence a political career characterised by evasions, refusals and shockingly little care for the lives of the poor, the suffering and the vulnerable. 

The text that Morrison has bequeathed the nation is neither a coherent narrative of his time in office, nor does it offer any useful insight into the relationship between his faith and the policies implemented by his government. Instead, we have a book about what God has done for Morrison (a lot), with some digressions on what Morrison has done for God (never enough, but that’s okay).

It’s been widely noted that Plans For Your Good was written to introduce Morrison to a North American evangelical audience and as such, the interests of Australian readers are irrelevant, and so too any high-minded notions of prime ministerial duty. Morrison is addressing a reader who needs a baseball analogy in order to make sense of a witless aside about cricket. 

Usually, when Australian authors take a book to the US market, they’re asked to make changes so that local usages can be grasped by American readers. The edition of Plans For Your Good that I read retained Australian spellings, but otherwise no deference is paid to Australian readers. A sheep station is a bit like a ranch, you see, and we say, “how good is such and such” when we want to say how good it is. It’s a sign of Morrison’s indifference to his Australian readers, and to the expectations of the office he once held, that he didn’t insist on removing this stuff for the local edition. Presumably Harper Collins Christian Publishing anticipated selling sufficient copies of the book in Australia to make it worth releasing but the numbers weren’t there to mandate small editorial changes for the local market. 

To say that Plans For Your Good is a patchy account of Morrison’s political career is an understatement. There’s naught here about Morrison the minister for Immigration and border protection, the architect of the punitive Operation Sovereign Borders regime, not even a smug little joke about the disgraceful “ I Stopped These ” trophy he reportedly kept in his office.

The one-time minister for Social Services has nothing to say about welfare, is silent on poverty, and when he uses the term “social justice advocates”, it is to deride his critics. He does not mention robodebt. We hear nothing about either climate change or Morrison’s loyal support for the resources sector. Nothing about the 2019 bushfires. Morrison showers himself with praise for leading the nation through the difficult years of the COVID-19 pandemic — and yet there is not one word in this book about the secret ministries palaver. Morrison is a marketing executive at heart and he’s trying to reach a new audience with Plans For Your Good — why would he bother surfacing these old accusations?

There are two episodes in the book that do prompt Morrison to defend himself at some length. The first is AUKUS, viewed by some, and certainly by Morrison, as his capstone foreign policy achievement. He is at pains to depict himself as both essentially truthful in his dealings with Emmanuel Macron and as unwavering in his commitment to Australia’s national interest. The French, he writes, “failed to appreciate just how seriously we were taking the threat to our security in the Indo-Pacific”.

The AUKUS saga becomes an occasion for Morrison, ever the strategist, to reflect on the shared values of the United States, the UK and Australia, and to establish kinship with his conservative American readers. He invokes Pearl Harbour, has a go at Barack Obama, and elaborates on the threat posed to global order by Chinese militarism. “I decided it was not in Australia’s long-term interests to duck and cover. We had to stand up for ourselves, face our fears, and not capitulate to China’s bullying.”

This section of Plans For Your Good is the one that most resembles a conventional political memoir — until Morrison uses it to present a moral lesson about facing your fears: “God’s assurance enabled me to step out of a mindset of fear and do what I believed was in the best interest of my country.” Morrison’s language as he delivers these lessons — and there are many such hokey, blokey adages in this book — is a reminder of the mutually sustaining relationship between secular self-optimisation literature and evangelical tracts.

Morrison pays little attention to First Nations peoples for most of Plans For Your Good . When he narrates the experiences of his convict forebear William Roberts, he does make reference to the violent settlement of the colony: “Awful cruelty, terrible suffering, and dispossession were also inflicted on our [sic] indigenous [sic] peoples who had been living on our [sic] continent for more than 60,000 years, comprising more than 500 separate nations and 250 languages.” Wait for the coda: “This was not unique to Australia.” How good is Australia?

This formula is repeated in a later chapter when he talks about travelling to Brewarrina to see the fish traps with the Aboriginal singer Col Hardy. “People are complex, and so are nations. Stories of dispossession and violence against indigenous peoples are not unique to Australia, but this makes them no less excusable. You will find similar terrible stories in every country that emerged from colonisation.” It’s a breathtakingly lazy rationalisation, one that reveals Morrison’s shrugging relationship with history.

And so to the second point on which Morrison deigns to answer his critics, his 2022 speech on the anniversary of Kevin Rudd’s 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations, the one in which Morrison called for First Nations peoples to show forgiveness to settler Australia. He was criticised for this, especially by Indigenous leaders. By way of response, Morrison delivers a homily on forgiveness, taking a detour to clarify a distinction between earthly justice and forgiveness.

Whether you read this section as politics, philosophy or theology, it is a hodgepodge, and he finishes where he began, arguing that “forgiveness is the only real power victims truly have that is entirely within their control.” This may provide insight into how Morrison understands the Christian principle of forgiveness, but it also exposes his reluctance to adopt a position of humility and to listen to his critics.

The only critic Morrison cares about is God — that much is made clear in this full-throated assertion of faith. The former PM shares his frequent conversations with the Lord — “things got pretty heated between me and God as I poured my heart out” — and occasionally ventriloquises Christ. Curiously, the Christ of Plans For Your Good sounds quite a lot like Scott Morrison: “Scott, I get it, I’ve been there and worse, and you know what? I did it all for you.” I am not particularly troubled either by Morrison’s religious convictions or by their intensity, although I do not share them. What distressed me as I read Plans For Your Good was Morrison’s incessant use of his faith to deflect political accountability. 

We are told a great deal about God’s mercy and Christ’s love, and Morrison likens himself explicitly to numerous Biblical figures. However, there’s precious little love or mercy expressed for any folks beyond the former PM’s circle of family and friends. He does let his guard down when he talks about his great love for his daughters and his wife. It’s moving to read of the solace Morrison’s family provided to him as he navigated the tremendous pressures of leadership. It’s just that we never here see him take a compassionate approach to strangers.

Morrison writes, “If you see the dignity and worth of another person, the beating heart in front of you, in all of its complexity, you’re less likely to disrespect them.” How do statements like this square with his cruelty to refugees, his punitive approach to welfare recipients, and his selective largesse during the pandemic? Ideology comes knocking every few chapters in the form of brief tirades against secularism, identity politics and cancel culture — and that’s about it. You would expect a man of such deep commitment to Christianity also to share some of the convictions of that faith concerning the poor and the dispossessed. And yet Morrison failed to see millions of beating hearts in front of him.

Other accounts of Morrison’s time in office bear witness to his mastery of the darker arts of politics — his ruthlessness, his deviousness and his opportunism. Faith might not be politics, but politics was a game that Morrison knew how to play very well. Morrison notes that not all Christians share the same political views, which is certainly true, and yet he will not elaborate on how his faith shaped his neoliberal, pro-business, socially conservative politics. We are left to take it on faith that it did. 

That Morrison is not a gifted prose stylist will come as no surprise. Repetition, cliché, malapropism, daft diction, plodding syntax, more cliché, and bucketloads of sentimentality? This book has got it all. As James Ley wrote of the former PM’s rhetorical abilities in 2022, “He has never shown any interest in what words actually mean, or even the conventional ordering of their syllables.” If you prod Morrison’s aphorisms hoping for a sign of life, they fall apart.

Have a go with this one: “God is not a vending machine where we insert our faith and expect to receive the comforts of life in return. We don’t always get what we want, but we do always get God.” A careful reader might baulk at the transformation of faith into a coin here. I don’t think Morrison did. The Scottification of Biblical stories is one of the expected discomforts of Plans For Your Good : 

“In the last chapter we talked about Daniel and his experiences in Babylon. He wasn’t the only one to face trials and persecution there. He had three really good friends who came with him from Judah. In Australia, we would call them Daniel’s mates.”

I suspect this book was not written at all, but rather recorded and transcribed. Read a few sentences aloud and you can hear the cadences of sermons and the influence of Morrison’s pastors. You can also hear, well, Scott Morrison — without all the bothersome interruptions and interjections from an audience who wishes to hold him to account. 

Patrick Mullins’ superb biography of William McMahon, Tiberius with a Telephone (2018), is haunted by the ghost of an unwritten book, the memoir that McMahon found himself unable to write. Mullins finds a captivating pathos in McMahon’s efforts to write about his maligned tenure, a pathos that is a counterbalance to the scathing assessments of McMahon’s peers. Until not so long ago McMahon was widely supposed to have been the worst leader endured by Australians since Federation. That is no longer the case.

Scott Morrison, like McMahon, couldn’t manage to write a book about his political record. Instead of staying silent, though, he has written a book designed to catapult him into a lucrative consulting career in the United States. I find something revealing in the contrast between McMahon; vain, diligent and ambitious to the end, trying and failing to account for his time in office, and Scott Morrison’s brazen indifference to the office he once held and the country he purported to serve.

Will you be rushing to your nearest bookstore to grab your own copy of Morrison’s memoir? Let us know your thoughts by writing to [email protected] . Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

About the Author

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Catriona Menzies-Pike is a writer and editor living in Vancouver BC. Between 2015 and 2023 she was the editor of the Sydney Review of Books . She was awarded the Walkley-Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism in 2023 and publishes a newsletter on literature and the internet called Infra Dig .

• christianity
• political memoir
• Scott Morrison

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Personally, I think Morrison is almost entirely image obsessed and my hunch is, that Christianity for him is largely just an integral part of his image creation. That is, for someone whose political career demonstrates a constant lack of empathy and trustworthiness, proclaiming to be deeply religious, has been a convenient method of fooling those uninclined too look too deeply, that he possesses compassion for the less fortunate and that he can be trusted to carry out good deeds. Or if you like, the morally bankrupt claiming a deep morality. Or the equivalent of loudly and publicly announcing, “This is my leader!”, while already stabbing that leader in the back.

And I suspect that his book being tailored to the American market fits in perfectly with that, as America is probably the most lucrative nation on Earth, for those who want to earn wealth and status, by relentlessly trumpeting that they’re doing God’s work.

It is well said. A lot of it applies to Abbott, too.

Plus Howard who also has much more rat cunning.

Abbott doesn’t get a mention in article, who I reckon will probably out-rank ScoMo on ‘Worst Ever PMofAT’ list. I’m hoping we don’t ever have to rate Dutton, but if Trump can get a second run, the age of alternative reality is here, and anything is plausible. Abbott Mk2?

Arrrrgggghh!

Abbott was an amateur in comparison…

But one doesn’t need to be accountable, empathetic or trustworthy if one’s actions are all part of God’s plan

I think you have an important insight here. Though not just image obsessed but also impression obsessed. How Scotty is perceived is his preoccupation above all else, and perception is more important than facts, they are just what you assemble perceptions on, or push to one side when they conflict with the image being pursued. Thus, necessarily, lying to others and himself is a constant, it’s integral to the man.

Another paradox appears to be, the PM constantly asserts his faith yet this is Scotty from marketing, writing a book for an American evangelical audience he clearly intends to profit from. So is the writing about faith really just bad faith, a hucksters spiel to get the rubes into the tent? Being Scotty, it is probably impossible to disentangle any sort of truth about it. He is so buried in this behaviour of preening and excusing himself that I expect it is hardly even conscious for him, just integral, part of his (shallow) being. For the rest of us, it’s not even worth trying to know where it begins and ends, it is simpler and truer to just dismiss what he says as all self-serving nonsense.

Yes, to me it appears to be a lifetime of him claiming to be the man for the job, without any real intention of doing the job. That is, he’s interested in money and status, but no so much in the hard work required to do a job properly or acquire a deep understanding of any subject. He’ll always be the one taking credit for the efforts of others, but the first to blame others, when his mismanagement causes things to go wrong.

Spot On: you’ve hit the nail on the head! The miscreant was all about stealing credit and deflecting responsibility. Such are the techniques of Prosperity Theology.

I think you have nailed Schmorrison’s comcept of being ‘deeply religious’. Schmorrison is not religious, he is Christian, in the exclusive, prosperity-driven, Americanised version of that identity. Nor is he in any sense, a spiritual person. His relationship to Christianity is all about what it can do for him personally, in terms of his career, his ambition and his success. No-one is more important than himself, not his family, his political colleagues, or his country. He is Trump with perhaps a few more brain cells and not much else. He’ll do well in America, a country that is in the process of destroying itself by espousing the same non-values and disregard for humanity as Schmorrison. I hope they enjoy him. We didn’t.

I read a George Monbiot article a while back, talking about the concept of a pathocracy. That is, government by people with pathological personality disorders. Chiefly the dark personality triad of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. With Trump and Morrison, I think two of the three are well represented.

Both are certainly sociopaths with zero empathy.

We should also judge him by his choice of friends which include the disgraced Brian Houston. I expected he would go into business with him and set up a new church (Houston has plenty of practice).

A cultivated image as a barely functional moron?

Yes, a pathological liar cannot be “a leader driven by profound faith”. His best moment was as a child actor in the Vicks VapoRub ad. Should never have been given a speaking role.

Didn’t Julia Banks say in Parliament that even his faith is just another marketing strategy?

Morrison can be summed up in one word. Vacuous.

Surface, all the way down.

“Tailored for an American market”. Sounds likely. They really go for that stuff.

Full of shit,overweening self regard,and wouldn’t recognise the truth if it backed over him.Fuck off and stay fucked off.

Now we’re getting to the response he deserves.

Apparently the F-bomb is more acceptable to the modbot than ‘genitalia’. Go figure….

i gave up trying to figure,I write in these columns( not using bad language) and it gets moderated out .

Me too. A perfectly innocuous comment of mine yesterday took 24 hours to be accepted. So now nobody has read it.

I wanted to say that too ‘Michale B’ but couldn’t quite find the right word!

He can never be full of it because so much runs out his mouth.

He couldn’t write about what he’d done, as it was mostly announcements with little actually achieved. Most that was achieved was harmful to Australia and Australians as a whole. Even the good work he did during the pandemic was soon undone by more failures.

“God’s assurance enabled me to step out of a mindset of fear and do what I believed was in the best interest of my country.” His recent revelations that he relied on anxiety medication, makes it clear that he required pharmaceuticals to cope so clearly his faith was not sufficient to get him through, despite his obvious narcissism demonstrated in his belief that only he could manage all those ministries.

This guy is either a complete BS artist as suggested by his many lies and deceptions, or he is delusional. Perhaps both.

Clearly Both.

Definitely both. And more. He is a transparent fraud, but not even very good at that. And with so little self-awareness that he doesn’t even know he is! Which makes him even more pathetic. (By contrast, Donald Trump KNOWS he is a con artist, and revels in it. He knows it’s all a game, and delights in his “success” in conning his way to the top. Until just recently, anyway.)

‘Even the good work he did during the pandemic’ was largely riding on top of the States. He is probably more proud of the ‘good work’ he did in transferring $Billions of Job Keeper to those owners of businesses which did not qualify under his own government’s rules. It is difficult to find enough words to describe this reprehensible person. Even with his stated belief, I doubt that he actually believes.  His selective use of one quote from the bible, Jeremiah 29:11to give credence to his ‘being’ let alone his ‘life’. One translation I saw says ‘ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ’ = which is the one he probably uses as it is about prosperity. Another says, ‘ For I know the plans that I have for you’, declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord .’ – which his actions spoke louder that his words. The Lord’s plans for ‘welfare and not for calamity’ were clearly not his thoughts or ways.

“ Repetition, cliché, malapropism, daft diction, plodding syntax, more cliché, and bucketloads of sentimentality? This book has got it all.” Superb!

Anyone who does a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree and as the subject of their (Science! )thesis is the Christian Brethren must have a problem! How in 1989 a University such as Sydney University of New South Wales (UNSW) allowed a then 21-year-old Scott Morrison to take such a subject is somewhat unbelievable!

Agree. Utterly absurd. This for an honours degree in SCIENCE!!! Wonder if anyone knows the name of his academic supervisor. That said, the other point is that the voters of Cook continued to vote for this fraud. Still, it is “ the shire”. Giving hobbits a bad name.

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Books | former denver post reporter writes book about slain colleague’s murder, “the last story,” by arthur kane tells the story of jeff german’s killing in las vegas.

German is much more than a statistic, though.

In “The Last Story: The Murder of an Investigative Journalist In Las Vegas (WildBlue Press), German’s colleague Arthur Kane delves into the reporter’s professional life, the police investigation into his death, and the evolution of Las Vegas and news media over recent decades.

“It was important to me to get the story out there,” said Kane, an award-winning investigative journalist who worked at The Denver Post for seven years. “As far as we can tell, the last time a public government official was accused or convicted of killing a journalist was in the ’40s in Texas when a [deputy] sheriff killed a radio reporter who was digging into some of his properties he was running brothels out of.”

“We talk about threats all over the world to journalists, but a lot of times people don’t realize it happens here.”

German was 69 when he was fatally stabbed outside his Las Vegas home. He spent four decades working as a reporter there, covering everything from the mob to corrupt politicians. Police allege former Clark County public administrator Robert Telles killed German as retribution for an article he wrote, based on staff interviews, about the “hostile work environment” Telles’ created and an inappropriate relationship he had with a coworker.

A month after the story published, Telles lost a primary for re-election.

His arrest soon after the murder shocked many of German’s colleagues since the articles weren’t among the journalist’s most forceful or impactful. They didn’t expect any serious fallout from what he wrote about Telles, a low-level government official. (After all, German had once been sucker-punched by a mobster.)

“We didn’t think anything of it,” said Kane, who joined the Review-Journal in 2016 and is currently the investigations editor. “There was nothing to indicate that this would be anything different than a politician trying to cover up for things he did wrong in office and blaming the messenger for it.”

“The Last Story” is not just about German’s tragic death, though. It covers much of the newspaperman’s life, homing in on his career, from covering organized crime in Sin City at the Las Vegas Sun — which led him to host the second season of the “Mobbed Up” podcast — to major court trials to questionable actions by government personnel.

Kane doesn’t gloss over the negative moments of German’s career, either; he describes some questionable ethical decisions and calls out some of his colleague’s more arrogant moments. “I [set out to] try and paint the most accurate picture of his life, what happened and what kind of city Las Vegas is away from the Strip, this level of conflict that [German] lived through for 40 years of his life here,” said Kane. “Jeff’s life mirrored a lot of really interesting times in Vegas.”

Kane sometimes gets a little lost in the details of those times, inundating the reader with names and meticulous narrations. But “The Last Story” also paints a larger picture through its exploration of Las Vegas’ underbelly, its exploration of the state of contemporary journalism and the struggle to continue doing the kind of hard-hitting investigating work to which German and Kane devoted their careers.

German’s killing has also raised intriguing questions about a free press — chiefly, whether a journalist’s sources remain protected after death. Information gleaned from German’s personal devices (the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department seized his cellphone, four personal computers and a hard drive after the murder) are an ongoing question despite the Nevada Supreme Court ruling in October that the state’s shield law that protects journalists from being forced to disclose sources remains intact in death. More than 40 news organizations filed a brief asking the judge not to allow police to access German’s electronic devices.

Review-Journal employees recently finished reviewing those gadgets and logging what they consider to be privileged information not relevant to the case; they’re expected to turn over more than 1,000 items to prosecutors.

Telles’ murder trial has been postponed until early August. He has pleaded not guilty and remains in jail without bail. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Kane said he and German used to joke to one another about watching their backs after sensitive stories were published. They’d ask the other journalist to investigate and write about it if a source did come after them. It was, Kane said, “gallows humor.” But it took on a more serious bent after German’s death: Kane had last seen him in person a week earlier, after Telles had lost his re-election and the two journalists recited the same old shtick.

“In a way, I’m keeping a promise to Jeff,” Kane said of the book. “I feel obligated to do what we talked about even if it was joking.”

“The Last Story”

Author: Arthur Kane

Publisher: WildBlue Press

Daliah Singer is a freelance writer.

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3D Printing Failures: 2022 Edition: How to Diagnose and Repair ALL Desktop 3D Printing Issues Paperback – December 13, 2021

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The brand highlights its T&N Adaptive Foam technology that's resilient and contouring, yet still supportive. It also uses graphite and gel in its foams to pull body heat, which can help prevent the overheating that typically comes from memory foam. And while this model is the most popular, Tuft & Needle also has an even more affordable 8-inch option as an Amazon exclusive, along with two more expensive options that have added features.

WHO IT'S BEST FOR: People who need their mattress right away; you can get it in as little as two days. Its construction is good for side and back sleepers or anyone who likes the feel of memory foam. It's also ideal for people looking to spend under $1,000.

TESTER NOTES: This mattress received a lot of praise in areas like comfort and support, and it stood out among our panel for its motion isolation: Users told us they couldn't feel their sleeping partners move around throughout the night. They also raved that it feels supportive and firm. One survey respondent highlighted, "My Tuft & Needle mattress is so much more comfortable than any mattress I've ever had in the past." The main complaint here is that the edges lack support, so if you're sitting on the side it may sag.

This brand stands out for its grid-shaped elastic material in the top layer of the mattress. Its unique feel is squishy yet firm, and it's designed to provide both support and pressure relief . Below the grid are two layers of memory foam in this original model.

Purple also offers hybrid models with foam and coils for added support and airflow, but they're pricier and heavier. It's worth noting that the original model is still particularly heavy (a Queen weighs 110 pounds) because of the gel layer.

WHO IT'S BEST FOR: Hot sleepers, since its grid layer offers superior breathability. It's also ideal for couples because it offers motion isolation. And because it has a weight capacity of 600 pounds (or 300 pounds per side), it's a great option for heavier body weights.

TESTER NOTES: Our panel describes it as the perfect combination of soft and firm, and users say they can't feel their sleeping partners move during the night. Reviewers also praised its comfort by telling us it feels like "sleeping on air" and "like floating in every sleeping position." They also say its cooling capabilities were obvious throughout the night. Just note: Unlike other models that can arrive within days, some told us their Purple mattress delivery took longer than expected.

A happy "medium" for sleeping partners with different preferences, Helix's mattress isn't too firm or too soft. It also stands out for being a tall hybrid that combines several layers OF foam and coils, using a moisture-wicking cover for hot sleepers and having zoned sections for more support and pressure relief to HELP keep you aligned.

Helix offers a wide range of mattresses, and you can take the brand's sleep quiz if you need help picking out the best one for your needs. Its most popular model is the Midnight Mattress , but the Dusk Luxe earned better scores from our reviewers. Just note that because it's taller with more layers, it's also one of the heaviest boxed mattress picks and it doesn't come with side handles for easy maneuvering.

WHO IT'S BEST FOR : Couples with different sleep positions, back sleepers and combination sleepers who need a true medium firmness level. It's also great for people who prefer a taller bed.

TESTER NOTES: Our reviewers liked that this model had good edge support and a contouring feel without sinking in. Testers gave it high scores for comfort, support and sleep quality. They especially liked that it felt supportive in multiple sleep positions. One tester pointed out, "It's a good mix for me (a side sleeper) and my partner (a back sleeper)."

READ OUR FULL REVIEW: Helix Mattresses a Tester Favorite Among Couples and Combination Sleepers

Nolah Original 10"

The best mattresses for people with back pain typically have a medium firmness level and are made of memory foam, which offers pressure relief and helps promote alignment for side sleeping. Nolah's boxed hybrid not only meets this criteria, but it also earns praise from users who swear it helped alleviate their back pain.

The mattress is made up of three foam layers and is only 10 inches tall, but if you prefer a hybrid or a taller mattress then we recommend the Nolah Evolution 15 . It's heavier and more expensive, but it was loved by our reviewers and offers an ergonomic layout to help keep you aligned. With either model, you can opt for in-home delivery and setup for an added $125.

WHO IT'S BEST FOR: Anyone suffering from back pain, hip pain, pregnancy-related pain, sciatica and other discomforts that disturb sleep. It's especially good for side sleepers, which is the sleep position recommended for people with back pain.

TESTER NOTES: We've had several reviewers tell us that they were shocked by how well it improved their discomfort. One user of the hybrid version told us, "On the first day of testing, I went to bed with a strained back from hours of sitting at my desk. When I woke up the next day, the pain was completely gone." Another said that it "offers back support while still cradling pressure points. It has been significantly helpful in relieving back pain for my husband, who has scoliosis." Plus, our reviewers said it holds up well over time and sleeps cool, despite being made of foam.

READ OUR FULL REVIEW: Users Say Nolah's Mattress Relieves Back Discomfort

Most affordable and lightweight boxed mattresses have minimal layers and are primarily foam, but for an upgraded feel you can opt for a hybrid model with several layers of foam on top of coils. Bear's model has consistently impressed our sleep testers with its indulgent comfort. It has an ergonomic layout with five zones to promote spine alignment, and each zone varies in pressure relief and support. It's heavier than other boxed models, but that can be expected for a taller mattress.

One thing to note: The website claims it uses natural minerals that convert your body heat into energy to enhance recovery. We couldn't verify these claims in our review process, but we still recommend this model for its incredible comfort.

WHO IT'S BEST FOR: Anyone who's struggled to find a comfortable mattress, or anyone who isn't sure whether they prefer a foam or spring model since it combines both. It's also a great option for people with back pain.

TESTER NOTES: Users gave it high scores across the board, with some saying it's the most comfortable bed they've ever slept on. In fact, our reviewers find that it has led to better sleep, with one telling us, "This is undoubtedly the best mattress we have ever owned. We have traveled all over and have never had the sleep experience we now have every night."

A good soft mattress should feel plush without sinking in or sagging, and Puffy's model delivers with its luxurious feel that's not too soft. It's a hybrid model that combines the support of coils with the conforming feel of foam for pressure points. In fact, there are several layers of foam inside to ensure it feels extra comfy.

This mattress has gone through updates in recent years and we've had testers share their thoughts on the changes. With each upgrade, users tell us they notice improved support.

WHO IT'S BEST FOR: Anyone who prefers a plush mattress instead of one that's too firm. It's also great for side sleepers and back pain sufferers because of its pressure relief.

TESTER NOTES: Testers describe lying on this mattress as feeling like they're sleeping on a cloud, but they still give it high marks for support. One even told us, "I am able to sleep more deeply on it," while others note that it has gotten rid of aches and pains they had from firmer innerspring beds. Users also like that it's not too soft, saying it keeps its shape without sagging under their weight. Just note that although the brand claims it has cooling properties, testers didn't observe this during their reviews.

READ OUR FULL REVIEW: Users Compare Puffy's Mattress to Sleeping on a Cloud

Avocado Green Mattress

Most boxed mattresses are made with memory foam, but this organic mattress uses latex, which creates a firmer feel. In fact, Avocado says it's a 7 on a firmness scale of 1 to 10, which is among the firmest you can find in a bed in a box. The mattress is also certified organic by the Global Organic Textile Standard ( GOTS ) and the Global Organic Latex Standard (GOLS).

It's a hybrid latex model, meaning it combines latex with coils (unlike most hybrids that combine memory foam with coils). It also uses an organic cotton outer cover that's button-tufted (so there are no synthetic adhesives) and a layer of organic wool (instead of synthetic flame retardants). Its coil layer is ergonomically laid out for proper alignment, with added edge support to prevent it from sinking in at the sides.

WHO IT'S BEST FOR: Its firmness makes it most suitable for back and stomach sleepers, or for heavier bodies that need a firmer surface to prevent sinking. This is because you don't get the sinking sensation from latex that's common among foam mattresses. If you're a side sleeper or prefer a softer feel, you can add a plush latex pillowtop for an added cost. Avocado also offers a lower-priced organic mattress that's 10 inches and has a 5/10 firmness rating.

TESTER NOTES: Our panelists rave about the Avocado brand in general, especially for its customer service and for being sustainable without sacrificing comfort or quality. Users of this particular model say they love sleeping on it and note that it keeps their body weight evenly distributed. "I like that it's made of organic and natural materials, that it's extremely comfortable and that it's held up even after years," said one of our reviewers.

READ OUR FULL REVIEW: Avocado's Geren Mattress is The Best Organic Bed You Can Buy

How we test boxed mattresses

The bedding experts in the Good Housekeeping Institute Textiles Lab evaluate mattresses on an ongoing basis to ensure the ones we recommend will be convenient to set up and comfortable to sleep on. Besides reviewing the materials, specifications, noteworthy features and any relevant performance claims from the brand, we also research the brands to see if there are consumer complaints. Sometimes brands that put a lot of emphasis on marketing end up having red flags for quality or customer service, so those get eliminated from our review.

Next, we review the mattresses in person. Our product analysts and consumer testers share in-depth feedback to provide comprehensive data on each model. We survey testers after several weeks, then again after longer periods (including a year and beyond) to see how well the mattresses hold up over time. On top of that, we survey our tester panel to get insight into the mattresses they already own. In recent years, we've surveyed more than 10,000 mattress owners and reviewed responses to more than 170,000 questions .

Each mattress is rated on aspects such as the following:

• Ease of ordering and delivery: Our reviewers rate the shopping experience and speed of delivery. They also share whether they experienced any issues and how potential problems were resolved.
• Ease of setup: This one is especially important for boxed mattresses since users typically set up the mattress themselves. Testers describe their setup process and whether the mattress took proper shape quickly.
• Firmness rating: Our reviewers specify the firmness of the mattress, which is an important step because the listed rating from the brand doesn't always match what users feel in real life. This is especially true for boxed mattresses, where foam and hybrid models may feel softer than expected.

Lexie Sachs (she/her) is the executive director of strategy and operations at the Good Housekeeping Institute and a lead reviewer of products in the bedding, travel, lifestyle, home furnishings and apparel spaces. She has over 15 years of experience in the consumer products industry and a degree in fiber science from Cornell University. Lexie serves as an expert source both within Good Housekeeping and other media outlets, regularly appearing on national broadcast TV segments. Prior to joining GH in 2013, Lexie worked in merchandising and product development in the fashion and home industries.

Grace Wu (she/her) is a product reviews analyst at the Good Housekeeping Institute 's Textiles, Paper and Apparel Lab, where she evaluates fabric-based products using specialized equipment and consumer tester data. Prior to starting at Good Housekeeping in 2022, she earned a master of engineering in materials science and engineering and a bachelor of science in fiber science from Cornell University. While earning her degrees, Grace worked in research laboratories for smart textiles and nanotechnology and held internships at Open Style Lab and Rent the Runway.

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The Best Mattresses

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The Best Mattresses You Can Buy Online

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The Best Soft Mattresses

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Read This Before You Buy a Helix Mattress

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• Air Purifier
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Best Air Purifier

• DIY Alternative
• Best Mid Range
• Best Budget

Notable Mentions

All reviews, the 4 best air purifiers - spring 2024 reviews.

Whether you worry about everyday dust and pollen or more serious pollutants like smog, mold, wildfire smoke, viruses, or bacteria, an air purifier makes a worthwhile investment. Air purifiers operate based on a common principle: they draw air through one or more filters using a fan. However, manufacturers have found interesting ways to iterate the concept, resulting in a fairly dense market catering to various budgets and needs.

We've tested over 20 air purifiers, and below are our recommendations for the best you can buy.

If you're looking for something that strikes a great balance between performance and features, the best air purifier we've tested is the NuWave OxyPure. This premium air purifier has a novel selling point: its multi-stage filtration system uses washable and reusable filters instead of traditional replaceable ones. This system comprises a stainless steel mesh pre-filter for larger debris, two 'Bio-Guard' filters for mold, viruses, and bacteria, an ozone filter, and a HEPA/pellet-type activated carbon filter. Except for the HEPA/activated carbon filter, which needs replacing every year, the manufacturer advertises these parts to have a 20-year lifespan, only requiring a wash every couple of months. In terms of actual air purification performance, the NuWave is also very good overall, with good particle filtration performance across the board and an impressively high clean air delivery rate. Its built-in particle sensors allow it to monitor and change fan speed according to ambient air quality.

This air purifier is also Wi-Fi enabled, and you can operate it remotely using the NuWave Connect companion app, letting you check the quality of your home's air while you're away, set cleaning schedules, or change the device's settings. It also operates pretty quietly at lower fan speeds, which is good if you leave it running overnight, but it can get pretty loud at higher fan speeds; check out the Dyson Purifier Big+Quiet Formaldehyde BP04/BP03 if that's a major concern, but be aware that it falls short of the NuWave in both small particle filtration performance and clean air delivery rate.

See our review

A DIY Alternative

On the other hand, if you don't mind sacrificing convenience features, style, and low operating noise on the altar of particle filtration performance, consider building your own Corsi-Rosenthal Box. We used this  guide  to make our own and used a 3M Filtrete air filter set with a Lasko 20-inch box fan. Now, let's get this out of the way. This homemade machine isn't nearly as practical or intelligent as the NuWave OxyPure , the best air purifier for homes we've tested, or even cheaper options like the Levoit Vital 200S . It's loud, ugly, and very noisy. It also lacks niceties like particle sensors, Wi-Fi, or an odor-absorbing carbon filter (though it's worth noting that most air purifiers we've tested lack a sufficient amount of carbon to effectively deal with even moderate levels of volatile organic compounds, so this isn't too big a deal in the grand scheme of things).

That said, the Corsi-Rosenthal Box handily outperforms every conventional air purifier we've tested in terms of actual performance, with a very high clean air delivery rate and exceptional particle filtration performance. If you plan on setting it up in an area where noise, size, and aesthetics aren't a concern, like a workshop or garage, it's hard to do any better.

Best Mid-Range Air Purifier

The Levoit Vital 200S is the best air purifier for homes at a mid-range price point that we've tested. Its filtration system is simpler than the NuWave OxyPure 's, with no extra 'BioGuard' or ozone filters. Still, it certainly has the goods where it counts, with a HEPA filtration system that's effective in locking in small particles. Its clean air delivery rate is also very good, making it suitable for small to medium-sized rooms. Like the NuWave, you can connect this device to a home Wi-Fi network, allowing for remote operation and live monitoring of your home's ambient air quality.

However, this air purifier is far from your only good option at this price point. The Winix 5500-2 is an excellent, similarly-sized alternative with excellent particle filtration performance. The main differences between the two lie under the skin, with the Winix having a particle ionizer that you can turn on and off; these devices are intended to cause smaller airborne particles to clump together and fall to the ground, where you can clean them up later, but they also produce ozone as a byproduct, which can irritate your lungs through prolonged exposure.

Best Budget Air Purifier

If you want to spend as little as possible and only need an air purifier for a smaller room, the Levoit Core 200S is the best air purifier at a budget price point we've tested. This device is small enough to fit on a dresser or shelf yet delivers relatively impressive overall filtration performance. It lags behind larger machines like the Levoit Vital 200S , with a considerably lower air cleaning rate and worse overall performance when sealing in the smallest airborne particles. However, it's still far from terrible in the latter regard. You'll have to replace its main filter more often than the Vital 200S, with a replacement interval of six to eight months instead of a year.

While the 200S lacks an automatic fan speed adjustment setting, it's Wi-Fi enabled, so you can pair it with your smartphone via the VeSync companion app to remotely operate the device, set operating schedules, or send you filter replacement notifications.

• Levoit Core 400S: The Levoit Core 400S is a very good alternative to the Levoit Vital 200S that delivers near-identical performance. That said, it's fractionally louder in its lowest fan speed setting, and unlike the other Levoit model, its pre-filter isn't washable under water. See our review
• Levoit Core 600S: The Levoit Core 600S is a fantastic alternative to the Levoit Vital 200S if you have larger rooms and require a higher clean-air delivery rate. That said, the difference in performance isn't all that large, and it's also pricier and noisier. See our review
• Coway Airmega 200M: The Coway Airmega 200M is a mid-range air purifier with a built-in ionizer that can be turned on and off and an automatic fan speed adjustment function. However, its particle filtration performance lags slightly behind the Levoit Vital 200S, and it's noisier. See our review
• Coway Airmega AP-1512HH Mighty: The Coway Airmega AP-1512HH Mighty shares quite a bit with the Coway Airmega 200M, with the same filter system, motor, and user interface but a slightly different exterior shell. It shares most of the same strengths and weaknesses as its newer sibling, meaning it falls somewhat short of the Levoit Vital 200S regarding raw performance. See our review
• Honeywell HPA300: The Honeywell HPA300 is fairly unsophisticated as air purifiers go. It has a power-hungry, loud fan motor and no Wi-Fi connectivity or particle sensors, leaving it behind the NuWave OxyPure for convenience features. It has a very high clean air delivery rate and does a fantastic job of sealing in most airborne particles. See our review

Our recommendations above are some of the most well-rounded air purifiers for most people. We factor in the price, feedback from our visitors, and availability.

That said, there is no single best air purifier for homes that will suit everybody; your needs will depend on your budget, the size of your living space, your personal tolerance for operating noise, and whether you like having a device with convenience features like Wi-Fi connectivity. If you'd like to choose for yourself, here's the list of all our air purifier reviews.

What Book Should You Read Next?

Finding a book you’ll love can be daunting. Let us help.

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By The New York Times Books Staff

• Published April 16, 2023 Updated May 17, 2024, 3:51 p.m. ET

Fiction | Nonfiction

For more recommendations, subscribe to our Read Like the Wind newsletter, check out our romance columnist’s favorite books of the year so far or visit our What to Read page.

At The New York Times Book Review, we write about thousands of books every year. Many of them are good. Some are even great. But we get that sometimes you just want to know, “What should I read that is good or great for me ? Well, here you go — a running list of some of the year’s best, most interesting, most talked-about books. Check back next month to see what we’ve added.

We chose the 10 best books of 2023. See the full list .

Give me a thrilling interpretation of an American masterpiece

James , by Percival Everett

In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own and with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.

Local bookstores | Barnes and Noble | Amazon

I want a great American book full of humanity

The heaven & earth grocery store , by james mcbride.

McBride’s latest opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the remains’ connection to one town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history. But rather than a straightforward whodunit, McBride weaves an intimate tale of community.

I’d like an intricate, immersive fantasy

The book of love , by kelly link.

Link, a Pulitzer finalist and master of short stories, pushes our understanding of what a fantasy novel can be. Here, she follows three teenagers who return from the dead and compete for the chance to remain alive in a series of magical challenges, spinning a rich tale full of secrets and the supernatural.

Local booksellers | Barnes and Noble | Amazon

I want to read a book everyone is (still) talking about

Demon copperhead , by barbara kingsolver.

Kingsolver’s powerful novel, published in 2022, is a close retelling of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield” set in contemporary Appalachia. The story gallops through issues including childhood poverty, opioid addiction and rural dispossession even as its larger focus remains squarely on the question of how an artist’s consciousness is formed. Like Dickens, Kingsolver is unblushingly political and works on a sprawling scale, animating her pages with an abundance of charm and the presence of seemingly every creeping thing that has ever crept upon the earth.

Introduce me to a family I’ll love (even if they break my heart)

The bee sting , by paul murray.

This tragicomic novel follows a once wealthy, now ailing Irish family, the Barneses, as they struggle with both the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and their own inner demons.

How about a thrilling, wrenching story that puts heroic women at the center?

The women , by kristin hannah.

The best-selling author of “The Nightingale” follows a San Diego debutante who works as an Army nurse during the Vietnam War. “Hannah’s real superpower is her ability to hook you along from catastrophe to catastrophe, sometimes peering between your fingers, because you simply cannot give up on her characters,” our reviewer wrote.

I’d like a cozy story that appreciates the little things

Tom lake , by ann patchett.

Set on a cherry orchard during the recent pandemic, this novel has echoes of both Anton Chekhov and Thornton Wilder. It follows three sisters in their 20s quarantining with their mother and drawing out stories from her past as an actress.

I’d like to be wowed by a historical masterpiece

The fraud , by zadie smith.

Based on a celebrated 19th-century criminal trial in which the defendant was accused of impersonating a nobleman, Smith’s novel offers a vast, acute panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters.

I’d like a smart romantic comedy that avoids cliché

Good material , by dolly alderton.

Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old man struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.

How about a heartwarming novel to suit any mood?

Remarkably bright creatures , by shelby van pelt.

This debut novel, a runaway best seller, follows a widow named Tova who starts working overnight shifts at a nearby aquarium, where she forms a bond with an octopus named Marcellus. As they grow closer, it turns out that Marcellus holds the key to one of her most painful episodes: the disappearance, decades ago, of her son.

I’d like a nuanced look at the border crisis

Everyone who is gone is here , by jonathan blitzer.

This timely and instructive history, from a New Yorker staff writer, situates the immigration crisis as the outcome of a long and vexed entanglement between the United States and its southern neighbors.

Teach me about a forgotten chapter of American history

Madness , by antonia hylton.

Hylton investigates the hidden history of Crownsville Hospital, a segregated asylum on 1,500 acres in Anne Arundel County, Md., that operated for over 90 years. The story has resonance today — particularly regarding America’s continuing failure to care for Black minds.

I can’t learn enough about WWII

Judgment at tokyo , by gary j. bass.

Written by a veteran journalist and Princeton professor, this immersive look at the prosecution of Japanese war crimes offers an elegant account of a moment that shaped the politics of the region and of the Cold War to come.

I want a revelatory biography of someone I thought I knew everything about

King: a life , by jonathan eig.

The first comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades, Eig’s book draws on a landslide of recently released government documents as well as letters and interviews. This is a book worthy of its subject: both an intimate study of a complex and flawed human being and a journalistic account of a civil rights titan.

I want a dramatic history that reads like a novel

Master slave husband wife: an epic journey from slavery to freedom , by ilyon woo.

Woo’s book recounts a daring feat: the successful flight north from Georgia in 1848 by an enslaved couple disguised as a sickly young white planter and his male slave. But her meticulous retelling is equally a feat — of research, storytelling, sympathy and insight.

I want to hear Britney’s side of the story

The woman in me , by britney spears.

Spears is stronger than ever in her long-awaited memoir. She reveals plenty about her life in the spotlight, but tempers well-earned bitterness with an enduring, insistent optimism.

I’d like a moving memoir about friendship and mental illness

The best minds: a story of friendship, madness, and the tragedy of good intentions , by jonathan rosen.

In his engrossing new memoir, Rosen pieces together how he and his brilliant childhood friend, Michael Laudor, ended up taking sharply divergent paths. (Laudor came to prominence as a Yale Law School graduate working to destigmatize schizophrenia, but later killed his pregnant girlfriend.) Rosen brings plenty of compassion to this gripping reconstruction of Laudor’s life and their friendship.

Honestly, I really like reading about animals

What an owl knows: the new science of the world’s most enigmatic birds , by jennifer ackerman.

There are some 260 species of owls spread across every continent except Antarctica, and in this fascinating book, Ackerman explains why the birds are both naturally wondrous and culturally significant.

Take down a dazzling, erudite rabbit hole

Doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world , by naomi klein.

After she was repeatedly confused online with the feminist scholar turned anti-vaxxer Naomi Wolf, Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine” and other progressive books, turned the experience into this sober, stylish account of the lure of disdain and paranoia.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

As book bans have surged in Florida, the novelist Lauren Groff has opened a bookstore called The Lynx, a hub for author readings, book club gatherings and workshops , where banned titles are prominently displayed.

Eighteen books were recognized as winners or finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, in the categories of history, memoir, poetry, general nonfiction, fiction and biography, which had two winners. Here’s a full list of the winners .

Montreal is a city as appealing for its beauty as for its shadows. Here, t he novelist Mona Awad recommends books  that are “both dreamy and uncompromising.”

The complicated, generous life  of Paul Auster, who died on April 30 , yielded a body of work of staggering scope and variety .

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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