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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Best books, 2005: Fiction
"Veronica" By Mary Gaitskill Pantheon Order from Powells.com
Gaitskill's fans have waited for eight years for "Veronica," and this novel is her best book yet. It comes as a marked departure for the author, in terms of both content and form. Until now, Gaitskill has chronicled the darker side of desire: the lure of S/M, the allure of same-sex sex, the scary -- and often all-consuming -- need for physical connection inside all of us, and her best work was found in her short story collections. Alison, the narrator of "Veronica," has a fluorescent, dirty past as a model in Paris and in New York; now she's a decrepit nobody with hepatitis who cleans offices for cash and rides the bus. But the novel is less about Alison's gray present than her memories of her unlikely relationship with Veronica, an older, coarse, loud and unfashionable woman who died of AIDS. "Veronica" isn't a happy story; there's nothing feel-good about it. But it is a novel so streaked with colors and spiked with sharp edges that reading it is almost a tactile experience. Gaitskill's perfect, slicing descriptions of the people who drift in and out of Alison's life, and her unsparing portrait of a sad, once-beautiful woman who doesn't want -- or deserve -- our pity, makes "Veronica" one of the most original and moving books of this year.
"Never Let Me Go" By Kazuo Ishiguro Knopf Order from Powells.com
By some uncanny sorcery, Ishiguro has written a novel redolent with all the aching mysteries of existence and yet told in the voice of an average, unimaginative English schoolgirl. Well, not quite average. Kath, along with her friends Tom and Ruth, has a peculiar destiny, one that an astute reader will figure out in the first chapter or so (still, you'll find no spoilers here). They go to a special boarding school where they are groomed for their special fate, and despite it all they still manage to enjoy and suffer the ordinary loves and betrayals that come to young people everywhere. Almost. This odd, heartbreaking novel isn't (as some have claimed) a cautionary tale about science and ethics, and it's not really an experiment in genre-bending. Instead, modestly but inexorably, in commonplace prose, it unfurls age-old conundrums about what it means to be human; about the grievous sin of treating any person, however unexceptional, as the means to an end, and about the unfathomable future that awaits each and every one of us.
"Kafka on the Shore" By Haruki Murakami Knopf Order from Powells.com
The latest dispatch from the epic, entrancing dream world of Japan's best-known contemporary novelist explores new territory. This time out, Murakami veers away from the Raymond-Chandler-inspired intrigues and hard-boiled ruminations of his earlier books. Instead, he invokes another literary touchstone -- J.D. Salinger -- in telling a bruised, if also tender, coming-of-age story. Fifteen-year-old Kafka (not his real name) flees his brutal, secretive father and holes up in a private library tucked away in a sleepy seaside town. Meanwhile, back in Tokyo, a simple-minded old man with the power to talk to cats has a disturbing encounter with the living, speaking, cat-killing embodiment of a popular whiskey's brand mascot. Gradually, their paths converge in wooded village without a past or a future. Does all of this make sense? Not strictly, but that's hardly the point. Like all of Murakami's best fiction (especially his own favorite, "Hard-Boiled Wonderland," to which this novel is a companion), "Kafka on the Shore" has a hypnotic power that's positively addictive and the ability to satisfy even when it doesn't explain. Murakami is one of the world's most adventurous and innovative novelists. He may play by his own rules, but his readers are the ones who win.
"On Beauty" By Zadie Smith Penguin Press Order from Powells.com
Like Smith's reputation-making debut novel, "White Teeth," this tale of two families explodes with vitality, curiosity, sympathy and enthusiasm for human beings and the perplexing situations they get into. The Belseys are a leftish mixed-race family living in an East Coast college town. The Kipps are conservative black Brits of Caribbean descent who move in down the street. The patriarchs of both clans are academics and professional rivals. Loosely based on E.M. Forster's "Howards End," "On Beauty" is a less disciplined but more exuberant comedy of manners, an exploration of the often hilarious collisions of values and desires that result when the Belseys meet the Kipps. Pretentious undergraduates, wannabe gangstas, hypocritical moralists, burnt-out radicals -- none of these are new fodder for the campus novel, but in Smith's hands the stuff of routine satire becomes miraculously endearing and sympathetic. She is that very rare breed of author who can make us laugh at her characters even as she envelops them (and by extension, us) in her fierce, radiant and irresistible love.
"Magic for Beginners" By Kelly Link Small Beer Press Order from Powells.com
"Times Like These" By Rachel Ingalls Graywolf Order from Powells.com
Two masters of the short story, one young, the other seasoned, both with a mordant view of human nature, a dark sense of humor and a commitment to telling tales in which something actually happens. Link dabbles in the supernatural, writing about lonely zombies, villagers who live inside a purse, and even a haunting (not of a house, but of the objects inside it). Ingalls dwells on thwarted love, poisonous secrets and people who meddle in each other's lives with a calculated cold-bloodness that's at once thrilling and horrific. Link's writing shimmers with imagination without ever turning flowery or fussy; Ingalls' has the matter-of-fact cadences of a timeless storyteller. These two collections bristle with delights and surprises; in fact, the one thing they both do consistently is catch you off-guard. At a time when most short stories are little more than exquisite little mood or chamber pieces, Link and Ingalls remind us of just how dangerous and exciting the form can be.
