My favourite blog post of the year is my yearly wrap-up, and I traditionally write and upload it during December of the year in which those books were read. In 2020, I didn’t do this. No one had a good 2020, but I had a particularly hard and miserable one, and I had little interest in reading, let alone writing a lengthy blog post. Now that we’re three quarters of the way through 2021, and I’m finally recovering from the nightmare that was 2020, it’s time for my 2020 favourites; after all, if anything good happened last year, it’s that I read several phenomenal novels. This list is in no particular order.
In The Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman’s metaphor is imagined as a literal network of train tracks and tunnels concealed beneath the Southern soil. The protagonist, Cora, is enticed by a fellow slave named Caesar into fleeing their plantation, but things go awry when Cora kills a white boy who tries to capture her, making them targets of a merciless manhunt. Cora and Caesar travel on the Railroad from state to state, searching for somewhere they can be truly free, but there is no rest for the wicked as the pair struggle to outrun the notorious slave catcher Ridgeway, who is hot on their heels and out for blood.
One of the many excellent qualities of this novel was its unflinching portrayal of the barbaric conditions to which slaves were subjected. I appreciated that Whitehead didn’t cringe away from depicting the full scale of violence that slave owners inflicted against their slaves; the brutality was gruesome, horrific, and regularly deadly, and Whitehead offered no reprieve from this reality, forcing the reader to acknowledge the inhumane events on which the novel is based. I liked being held accountable, forced to look history in the eye. I also liked that the novel considered multiple perspectives — it was interesting to learn how people in different circumstances interpreted the customs and habits of the time period. Similarly, I liked that the story took place across multiple locations; I found it supremely educational to see how different states and communities treated slaves. The Underground Railroad is the rare, invaluable combination of entertaining and educational that I always value in a story, and I’m excited to read more of Colson Whitehead’s backlist in the future; his literary award catalogue features the MacArthur Genius Grant and two Pulitzer Prizes, so I’m confident his other novels will enthrall me as much as this one did.
This novel is not for the faint of heart. Set in the wake of the #MeToo movement with a backdrop of such scandals as the 2017 Harvey Weinstein bombshell, this scorching debut follows Vanessa who, at age 15, entered a sexual relationship with Jacob Strane, an English teacher at her high school who is 36 years her senior. Seventeen years later, another former student has made allegations of sexual abuse against the same teacher, and Vanessa is forced to reckon with the possibility that what she thought was a dark, romantic love affair may actually have been sexual abuse.
This book is frustrating and uncomfortable and so, so necessary. I particularly liked the way it portrayed victimhood, and the blistering analysis it provided of the responsibility that women often take on for their own assault. Vanessa’s stubborn conviction that she what had with Strane was love is aggravating, but regrettably realistic: like so many other women who have been assaulted by men in power, Vanessa held herself responsible, convinced herself that she wielded power over Strane, that she initiated their affair, that she was in control. Although it is certainly a distressing and difficult story to pick through, I really do believe that My Dark Vanessa is essential reading from which one will emerge with much greater empathy for survivors of sexual abuse. Vanessa is an infuriating, but ultimately empathetic woman whose story has never been more critical, and as we travel deeper into the systematic unravelling of the patriarchal power that enables men to manipulate young girls in the way Strane manipulated Vanessa, I hope that Vanessa’s struggle to own her victimhood will make women in similar situations feel less isolated and alone.
The Good Daughter is a crime thriller about two sisters, Sam and Charlie, whose childhood is blown apart by a violent attack on their family home. Their father is a defense attorney, whose notoriety makes him the subject of many targeted attacks, the worst of which leaves his wife murdered, one daughter crippled, and the other emotionally scarred. Twenty-eight years later, Charlie has become a lawyer herself. When she becomes the prime witness in a court case that reminds her painfully of her past, old leads come unburied as she investigates what would motivate a naive teenage girl to commit cold-blooded murder in a middle school hallway.
I fucking loved The Good Daughter. Despite its brutality, nothing is sensationalised; yet despite the professional detachment with which the violence is viewed, it still has so much heart, and makes you feel intensely for each character. It asks us to consider scenarios from multiple points of view, and empathise with people whom we would normally regard with contempt. An impressionable girl who brings a gun to school, a defense attorney who has helped many disreputable men go free because he believes everyone deserves a fair trial, a man who committed murder against his better judgment; perhaps these crimes cannot be forgiven, but it is important to set our emotions aside and fight to find the truth. Additionally, Sam and Charlie are fascinating women, and their troubled dynamic felt truly authentic considering their nightmarish adolescence. Both women regularly screw up and make questionable decisions that they later regret, but ultimately, they’re fighting for what they think is right, just like their father, and it’s this humanity that made them so compelling to read. If you enjoy legal thrillers, I cannot stress enough how fantastic The Good Daughter is, and highly recommend that you read it.
Jules Larsen has just broken up with her boyfriend, can’t get a job, and is feeling generally sorry for herself when an opportunity too good to pass up falls into her lap: an ad promising $12,000 in return for three months apartment-sitting a luxurious studio in the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most enigmatic apartment buildings. The rules of the job seem harmless: no visitors, no nights spent away from the apartment, and no disturbing the Bartholomew’s rich, elusive residents. Jules eagerly accepts the offer, and when her downstairs neighbour, Ingrid, expresses concerns about the dark history surrounding the building, Jules brushes her off as just another eccentric resident. The next day, however, Ingrid has disappeared without a trace, and Jules begins to suspect that everything at the Bartholomew is not as it seems.
Lock Every Door was a rollercoaster ride from start to finish. The details of the mystery were dished out at a tantalising pace that kept you both well-fed but still needing more, and they were clever enough that I was able to pick up on them without knowing how or why they fit into the story. The main criticism of this book is that the ending is simply too ludicrous, but I didn’t find this to be the case at all. It was a little unhinged, absolutely, and certainly out of left field, but I felt it took the perfect tone considering the preceding suspense. Overall, Lock Every Door was an immensely satisfying read: I was spooked but not too scared to sleep, intrigued but not completely lost, and the ending wraps everything up nicely instead of leaving loose ends for me to tie up myself, which I much prefer to open endings. It has a fantastic mystery, a compelling Gothic atmosphere, and an incredibly imaginative ending. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a thriller with a strong mystery element, as well as everyone who loves haunted house stories: the Bartholomew may not be literally haunted, but its dark history is haunting as hell.
Ask Again, Yes is a slow-burning drama about two families, the Gleesons and the Stanhopes, whose breadwinners, Francis and Brian respectively, are partners in the NYPD and who live next door to each other in upstate New York in the early 1980s. We follow three generations of the two families, starting with the two rookie cops and ending with their grandchildren, but the story ultimately circles around Kate, Francis’s daughter, and Peter, Brian’s son, whose childhood friendship grows into a star-crossed romance after a violent tragedy sends the families spinning in opposite directions.
The premise of Ask Again, Yes instantly brought Celeste Ng to mind, which is high praise: I will read anything that Celeste Ng writes. I loved that this book didn’t rely heavily on plot — although the plot that is present is breath-taking in its suspense and devastation — but instead focused on developing the characters and creating rich, complex personalities for each of them. Despite the ensemble cast of multiple extended families, by the end of the novel, you feel as if you know everyone intimately, and you care about them more than you reasonably should. Kate and Peter are the centrepiece of the novel, and the A-plot concentrates on the development of their relationship throughout the years and the ripple effect that the novel’s defining tragedy has on the rest of their lives; however, I felt a particular kinship with Peter’s mother, Anne, an Irish immigrant whose unstable emotional state is generally misunderstood throughout the majority of the book. She remains undiagnosed throughout the novel (although I suspect bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder), but her wild mood swings and erratic behaviour force an irreparable wedge between the two families that she struggles, in later years, to dig out. To me, Anne represents the novel’s major themes of forgiveness and acceptance. The inciting incident and ensuing tragedy are undeniably Anne’s fault, but as the years pass and time dulls the razor-edged memory, it becomes possible to forgive her crime and acknowledge that she isn’t the black-and-white villain she is perceived to be; she’s a troubled woman who wasn’t getting the help she needed. She cannot be completely exonerated of her transgression, but she can, eventually, be forgiven, and I loved that this novel gave us enough time to watch as time filed down the edges of traumatic childhood memories, allowing compassion to slowly seep in. If you’re interested in family dramas, or you’re hunting for novels that are along the lines of the inimitable Celeste Ng, Ask Again, Yes is not one to miss.
This one really surprised me. Catch and Kill follows journalist Ronan Farrow’s quest to expose the allegations of sexual abuse against Harvey Weinstein, and the challenges he faced as he chased those stories, from internal company politics to covert black-ops intelligence operations. Part spy-thriller, part investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks ground on the abuse of power in Hollywood high society and uncovers the lengths to which men like Weinstein will go in order to camouflage and perpetuate their corruption.
I picked this up because I wanted to educate myself about the allegations against Harvey Weinstein (and because I didn’t realise that She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey was about the same thing). I was hoping to learn more about what led to and inspired the #MeToo movement, but I wasn’t expecting to be so thoroughly enraptured with Farrow’s journalism and storytelling as he detailed the mountains he had to move in order to get this story published. I knew that Weinstein was an enormous piece of shit who abused an astronomical number of women, including an astonishingly long list of well-known actresses, and that he used his insurmountable wealth and influence to manipulate these women into silence and threaten their hard-won careers. What I didn’t know was that he also employed multiple intelligence agencies to spy on the journalists who were investigating him and prevent his sexual misconduct from becoming public. I really liked Ronan Farrow as a reporter; I thought he gave an excellent, unbiased account of what took place, and I admired that he made his fight to avenge Weinstein’s victims the focus of the book, while also giving us ample glimpses into his life in order for us to connect with him and invest in his determination to publish this story. He seems like a great guy with a strong moral compass, and I liked seeing a man dedicate himself to a story in order to vindicate women’s justice and liberty. I think that more people should read this book because it was great, informative investigative journalism that helped to expose the seedy underbelly of Hollywood.
Girl, Woman, Other is a triumph of modern fiction, a prime example of exceptional literary talent that is not only meticulously crafted, but also performs a “sweeping history of the black British experience” (Gay, 2019). A polyphonic collection of character studies, the novel examines the lives of twelve black, British women throughout the last century, and was published in 2019 to a torrent of accolades: joint-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, shortlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, a Sunday Times bestseller, one of Barack Obama’s 19 Favourite Books of 2019, and identified as Book of the Year in 25 different publications, including Oprah Magazine and TIME. It’s a high-profile piece of fiction, and for very good reason.
As a white woman, I couldn’t relate to a scrap of Girl, Woman, Other, but I loved it nonetheless. Informational and entertaining, the novel gave me incredible insight into a wide variety of black, female experiences, and the diversity of challenges that black women have encountered during the last century. My absolute favourite thing about this book is how many different intersections of womanhood it examined. Race, class, sexuality, gender identity, historical context; Evaristo considered it all, and I learned so much about so many different black/female experiences, and how the intersections of these different facets of personhood affect the way that women interact with the world, and how the world interacts with them. One of my favourite character studies in this book was that of Dominique, and her abusive relationship with Nzinga. It’s rare to see stories of domestic abuse in same sex couples; they’re often portrayed as more harmonious and idyllic than heterosexual relationships, but this isn’t universal, and it’s important to share stories about same sex domestic abuse and to acknowledge that abusive behaviour isn’t unique to men; women can be abusers, too. I also enjoyed Yazz’s perspective. Her youthful, righteous indignation was reminiscent of the fiery feminism that I paraded in my teens, and as the teens say, we do love to see it. Girl, Woman, Other is an impeccably unique work of feminist, female literature, and I believe it is essential reading for its invaluable perspectives and strong focus on the uniqueness of individual womanhood in all its variations and forms.
Ngā mihi & kia kaha x
WORKS CITED
- Gay, R. (2019, December 28). Roxane's review of Girl, Woman, Other. Retrieved October 4, 2020, from https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3105399075?book_show_action=true.
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