by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
‘Tis the season for lists of the best books of the year. There are more lists to come, but enough of
them have been published to give me some idea of what the consensus is. Honestly, there’s never consensus, because
what makes a book the best? It’s
different for different people. All the
same, if what you’re looking for is a really well-written book, here are some
ideas about where to start looking.
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders won this year’s
Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in literature. It is also on many best-of-2017 lists: Time
Magazine, Library Journal, Kirkus, the Washington Post, Amazon, and BookPage so
far. This is Saunders’ first novel; he
is well-known as a short-story and essay writer. Be warned that it’s written in a very unusual
style, but reviewers say if you can get past that, this imagining of Lincoln
and his son Willie after Willie’s death is moving, heartbreaking, and surprisingly
funny.
BookPage is the book review magazine we have at the front
desk, by the way. It’s paid for by the
Friends of the Litchfield Library, and it’s very popular among people looking
for something new to read.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward is on best-of lists in
Time, Publishers’ Weekly, Washington Post, and BookPage. It won the 2017 National Book Award for
Fiction, Ward’s second novel to win that honor.
This road novel tells the story of Jojo, a mixed race thirteen-year-old
boy, who travels through Mississippi with his mother when his father is
released from prison. With themes of
family, fatherhood, and ghosts, this is both a timeless and timely novel about
the South.
White Tears by Hari Kunzru is on 2017’s best book lists
published by Time, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus. Two recent college graduates become obsessed
with sound recordings and music, and they fake a vintage blues recording,
making up a musician they pretend to have discovered. The story takes a left turn when one of the
young men is beaten into a coma and the other sets out with his sister to find
out if the imaginary musician is a real person.
Not a typical mystery or time-travel story, this is a complicated
reflection on race and cultural appropriation, described by some as a ghost
story.
The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott is on Time Magazine’s,
Library Journal’s, and Kirkus’ best of the year lists. McDermott won the National Book Award in 1998
for Charming Billy. The Ninth Hour is a portrait of an Irish Catholic family in early twentieth-century
Brooklyn. A young Irish immigrant has
been fired from his job at the subway, and he commits suicide by starting a
fire in his tenement. An aging nun helps
his pregnant widow, and the child and the neighborhood nuns become the center
of the story. A story about kindness, faith, and the lasting
effects of suicide on a family, reviewers say the book makes the reader feel
like they’re in the room with the characters.
Other books that have been showing up on multiple best-book
lists include Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie, and Priestdaddy by Patricia
Lockwood. Most of these are in the
Litchfield Library collection, and all of them are available to order in
Pioneerland Library System.
