Best Reads of 2020

2020 was a dark, confusing year, and the books I read seemed to reflect that. I make no excuse and offer no apology for being drawn to dark material. But 2020 seemed to encourage that tendency in my reading choices.

Death in many guises, disease, murder, despair, vengeance, obsession, depravity, misogyny, sundry disturbing manifestations of destructive behaviour and poor decision-making, pessimistic dystopian visions, madness … the books I read in 2020 featured all of these and more. Yes, there are a few glimmers of hope peeking through here and there. But if you blink you miss them.

Still, the skill and artistry required to write from a dark place and engage the reader, sometimes against his will or better judgment, is an accomplishment in itself. You can’t help but admire the writer who populates his or her stories with disturbed or grotesque characters—people who would make you to turn and run should you be unfortunate enough to encounter them anywhere but on the printed page—and still draw the reader into that imagined world and keep him coming back for more. It requires an audacious talent to pull that off.

The books on this year’s list do not take the reader to any magic kingdoms and the damsel in distress is not likely to be rescued anytime soon. But all of them are exquisitely crafted, intelligent, provocative and enthusiastically recommended.

The American edition of Asylum Piece, published in 1946 by Doubleday, combines two volumes of Anna Kavan’s remarkable stories first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape: Asylum Piece (1940), and I am Lazarus (1945). From 1929 to 1937, Kavan (1901-1968) had published six novels under the name Helen Ferguson (she was born Helen Emily Woods, married Donald Ferguson in 1920, and later took the name Anna Kavan from a character who appeared in her own fiction). The stories in Asylum Piece represent a radical and stunning departure from her earlier work and came in the wake of several traumatic life events: the death of an infant daughter, the dissolution of her second marriage and a suicide attempt. In 1938, suffering from severe depression, she was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Switzerland. Many of the stories collected in this volume are set in just such an institution and depict fragile, brittle states of mind. Others, such as those collected in Part One of the American edition, titled “The Summons,” present characters being persecuted, mistreated or imprisoned for no clear reason by a monolithic, impenetrable bureaucracy. The focal point in Part One is often “the advisor,” an official to whom the narrator reports for advice and guidance, but who proves to be either untrustworthy or uncooperative. In the enigmatic, Kafkaesque title piece, “The Summons,” the unnamed narrator is facing charges of some sort, but can’t find out what the charges are, who has made the accusation, or even what the punishment might be. Part Two, “Asylum Piece,” comprises eight stories, by turns moving and unsettling, written from a variety of perspectives, dramatizing interactions between inmates of a psychiatric clinic and those who treat and care for them. Particularly memorable is the fifth of these, which begins on a radiant summer morning with a young man and woman arriving at the clinic by car. The woman is nervous, exhausted from traveling and somewhat oblivious, and must be helped inside. The man is impatient and openly annoyed with her. At the interview with the head doctor, in response to questioning, she declares that she is there against her will and that she never wanted to come to the clinic, but even as she speaks she realizes that her hysterical tone is working against her and that her fate has already been decided. Once in her assigned room, she descends into a state of despair. The stories in Part Three, “I am Lazarus,” describe a variety of scenarios and often depict the horrific effects of war on mental states. One exception is “Benjo,” in which the narrator recalls encountering a local character named Benjo when she was living in “the other country.” She had bought an old farmstead house and workers had only just completed extensive renovations when Benjo shows up at her door. He is friendly and the two build a rapport, but she is later disturbed by the degree of familiarity he assumes and begins to suspect him of harbouring some veiled motive. Many of Kavan’s stories are written from bitter experience and the level of detail throughout the volume is often astounding. The reader will also notice the prose, which is crystal-clear and tightly controlled, a trait that carried over into her later works. In Asylum Piece Anna Kavan unflinchingly probes the murkiest recesses of the human psyche. This is a dark, disturbing, brilliant masterpiece and a landmark volume of short fiction.

Frances Boyle’s stories chronicle the many ways things can go stale or turn sour in people’s lives, particularly where male-female relationships are concerned. Many of the characters in Boyle’s stories are nursing secrets. They’ve misbehaved, they’ve betrayed their partners. Or, in some cases, they have simply changed: they have formed new passions; they’ve been pushed beyond endurance and need to take drastic action; they’ve grown in surprising ways and are no longer the person they once were. In “Dance Me,” Estie’s craving for fun and a carefree existence causes her to resist pressure to settle down with childhood sweetheart Paul, whose medical career makes him, in the eyes of her family, a perfect match but who to her seems far too serious about life. “Cold Air Return” tells of the aftermath of Jacqui and Matt’s breakup. Sick of Matt’s dishonesty and smarting from a string of broken promises, she walked out expecting him to try to win her back. Instead, Matt moved to a different city, taking much of her stuff with him, including her car. Now she finds herself in the uncomfortable position of selling off the things in his apartment—helped by Carol, Matt’s pragmatic ex-wife—trying to raise money to bail him out of jail. “A Beach on Corfu” chronicles teenage Elizabeth’s summer of 1969 and her infatuation with Mark, the leader of the youth drama program that she attends. In her immature and impressionable mind, she builds Mark up into a kind of romantic icon and is later crushed when he reveals to her a cold and callous heart. And the stunning title story follows Judith’s ill-conceived attempt to leave her demanding, unaffectionate husband Tom. On a hot day while Tom is heading out of town on a business trip, she takes the children with her but runs into more obstacles than she anticipated and is finally overwhelmed, done in by an inability to improvise when the situation turns against her. Frances Boyle is an adventurous writer, a risk taker who stretches her art by exploring a variety of forms and settings. A few of the stories take place in the middle decades of the previous century. “Running Through Green,” about a college student, Jim, who becomes distracted by a girl and fails his year, is composed in the seldom-used second-person voice. Boyle’s prose is richly detailed, disciplined and visually precise. Her stories tackle complex and difficult relationships with great compassion but without resorting to sentiment or becoming maudlin. These are smart, provocative stories: dramatically absorbing, humane and psychologically rich. Seeking Shade is a significant accomplishment, and Frances Boyle, whose previous publications include a novella (Tower) and two volumes of poetry, is a writer worth following.

Emma Donoghue’s startlingly prescient novel, The Pull of the Stars, is set in a Dublin maternity ward during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Specifically, the action takes place over three days beginning on October 31, the day before the novel’s main character, Nurse Julia Power, will turn thirty. Julia’s hospital—ravaged by the effects of the war as well as the worsening pandemic—is impoverished, understaffed and in a perpetual state of crisis (her “ward” is actually a converted supply room with space for three beds reserved for women sick with the flu who are about to give birth). As the novel begins, Julia arrives for her shift to discover that one of her patients has died in the night, and, as the day progresses, Donoghue chillingly evokes the myriad and horrific challenges facing health professionals at a time when a deadly illness of mysterious origin is spreading unchecked through the population via mechanisms that defy understanding. The novel’s dramatic urgency derives from the fact that the virulent respiratory illness makes pregnancy and childbirth even more dangerous than it normally is. Julia’s responsibilities to her patients—to ease their distress and see them safely through a period of physical dependency where any number of things can go wrong—often prove impossible to uphold. Over the course of the three days we see her grapple with as many deaths as births—only rarely do the fortunes of her patients match her hopes for them. As we’ve seen previously in Emma Donoghue’s historical fictions, she does not shy away from depicting the squalid and gory details of her characters’ daily lives. In The Pull of the Stars, childbirth is rendered as a torturous rite of passage, fraught with risk for both mother and child. For Ireland’s typical young mother or working-poor female in 1918, there is little beauty or magic in being pregnant, and none of the romance and glowing promise we find in popular representations. It is, in fact, a dread condition for women who are frequently malnourished and physically depleted from caring for already large families and labouring like slaves from dawn to dusk. More often than anyone would like to admit, it is a death sentence. Julia’s concerns and activities are not limited to the hospital, and her emotional life deepens as the action moves forward. She lives in a flat with her brother Tom, who returned from the war shell-shocked and unable to speak. For Julia, Tom is a source of comfort, but also a source of worry and heartache. In the makeshift Maternity/Fever ward, Julia develops a close and surprising bond with a young volunteer worker, Bridie Sweeney. Nurse Julia does not regard herself as naïve—she is acutely aware that unwholesome living conditions are a prime contributor to the misery her patients endure. Experience has taught her that women’s subservience to men and their forced adherence to rigid religious doctrine exact a huge physical toll. But Bridie’s situation as a boarder at a nearby convent opens Julia's eyes to a whole new world of suffering of which she is ignorant. Julia Power understands that there are limits to her influence. She will never fix the rampant inequities to which she is witness. She knows that she is but a miniscule cog in a massive wheel. But she emerges from her experiences over these three days profoundly altered, newly energized to make a difference, to alleviate suffering, to defy the forces of oppression. Emma Donoghue’s novel is written on an intimate, human scale, but its message is large: that if we can find a way to set aside our differences and accept our shared humanity, it will see us through any crisis.

Following her mother’s death, 40-something Karen returns to Nova Scotia to care for her developmentally disabled sister Kelli and take charge of the family home. In Toronto, where she’s lived and worked for years, Karen has recently gone through a painful and messy divorce: these wounds are still fresh. Karen is a lone soul: her father is long dead and there are no other siblings. She seems to have few friends and no other relatives. About twenty years earlier, when she asserted her independence and left home determined to build a life that did not revolve around serving the round-the-clock needs of her mentally challenged sister, her mother accused her of selfishness. They argued, and the relationship since has been strained, to the point that, though they communicated, Karen did not even know that her mother’s cancer had advanced to the life-threatening stage. This is the setup for Watching You Without Me, Lynn Coady’s suspenseful tale of a grieving young woman’s efforts to break free of a past that has left her guilt-ridden and emotionally fragile. Enter Trevor, a support-worker employed by a care firm called Bestlife and assigned to Kelli’s case. Karen, in a highly vulnerable state and overwhelmed by the myriad chores and life-altering decisions that follow the death of a parent—concerning the house, its contents, Kelli’s future, and, as it turns out, her own future—is grateful for Trevor’s seemingly kindly insistence on helping out in any way he can. She realizes that he’s pushy and manipulative, controlling and temperamental, but is confident she can handle him, and since she has no one else to rely on she seeks his advice and accepts his recommendations on care facilities where Kelli could take up residence once the house is sold. Trevor becomes a fixture, assuming household chores and insinuating himself into her life in other less obvious ways. The story develops as a gradual dawning, with Karen resisting the evidence before her eyes until so much disturbing truth has been revealed that she’s forced to take drastic action. Coady’s masterstroke in this novel is Karen’s first-person voice: a breezy, uninhibited, occasionally expletive-laced, sometimes very funny vernacular that carries the reader along through the numerous twists and turns of an intricately plotted story. Watching You Without Me, a smart and enormously entertaining page-turner, is also a triumph of storytelling, filled with complex characters whose fates come to matter greatly.

In The Likeness, the second of Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad novels, Detective Cassie Maddox has transferred out of Murder to Domestic Violence. Still recovering from the trauma of a previous undercover assignment, she is abruptly called to the scene of a new murder by her colleague (and lover) Detective Sam O’Neill. The body of a young woman has been discovered in an abandoned cottage in Glenskehy, a village some miles outside of Dublin. It’s all very mysterious and hush-hush, and Cassie can only wonder why Sam needs her to visit this crime scene and view this body. The answer is shocking and eerily disturbing: the young victim is Cassie’s physical double and has been identified as “Alexandra (Lexie) Madison,” which was Cassie’s undercover name. Also present at the scene is Frank Mackay, Cassie’s boss in Undercover when she was on the case as Lexie Madison. A bit of investigating reveals that “Lexie” was a student at Trinity University and lived in Glenskehy with four other students in Whitethorn House, the old manor house owned by the wealthy landowning March family, passed down through the centuries and recently inherited by Daniel March, one of the four students. Frank is keen to withhold news of the death from the four and, under the ruse that Lexie has recovered from her wounds, recruit Cassie to pose as the dead girl and insert her into Whitethorn House to run an investigation from the inside. Sam is reluctant to place Cassie in a potentially lethal situation, arguing that there are too many unknowns. Eventually though, yielding to Frank’s charms and some dubious reasoning, Cassie agrees to once again assume the identity of Lexie Madison and soon thereafter moves into Whitethorn House with Daniel, Abby, Rafe and Justin. What ensues is a uniquely fascinating domestic whodunit as Cassie probes the strangely intimate relationship that exists among the students. As Cassie works the inside angle, Sam investigates the dead girl, digging into her origins and background, trying to determine her identity in the hope that this might cast light on the motivation for the murder. Cassie’s undercover skills remain sharp. She is able to carry off the subterfuge with only a few minor glitches and quickly gains the trust of her four housemates, while at the same time noting their habits and observing their behaviours. What she doesn’t anticipate, however, is becoming so attached to life at Whitethorn House that her sympathies and loyalties begin to grow murky and divided. In this novel, Tana French confirms that her hugely successful, prize-winning first novel, In the Woods, was no fluke. This complex, layered story dwells for much of its considerable length on the hermetic bond that exists among five people, including their emotional interdependence, and the breakdown of that bond when outside pressures are brought to bear. The prose is lush, and French uses the rural setting to great effect. In The Likeness, Tana French has written an absorbing novel that doubles as an intricate study of human psychology and a moving and gripping entertainment.

The struggles of unexceptional people living in 1980’s Nigeria are the focus of Sefi Atta’s moving and gripping second novel, Swallow. The story is narrated by Tolani Ajao, a young Yoruba woman living in Lagos who has moved there from her home in Makoku village seeking a brighter future and a better, more modern way of life. Tolani shares a simple apartment with another young woman, Rose Adamson, a city girl with an impetuous manner who is not shy about voicing her dissatisfaction with the state of the country and her marginal existence. For Tolani, life in the big city is nothing like what she had hoped it would be. The infrastructure is dilapidated. Power outages are frequent. Tolani and Rose both work at the Federal Community Bank and find the daily commute back and forth to their office long and tedious. Financial pressures are relentless. One day Rose is fired from her job for refusing to submit to the sexual advances of her boss, the odious Mr. Salako, and Tolani is shocked when Salako approaches her to fill the position. But Tolani is accustomed to doing what she is told. Unwillingly, she becomes Salako’s administrative assistant, and is not surprised when he makes similar advances toward her and then becomes belligerent when she rebuffs him. Meanwhile, Tolani is growing impatient with her unambitious boyfriend Sanwo, who is content to drift through life eking out a modest living making “deals” while giving little thought to their future together. At Rose’s urging, Tolani presents him with an ultimatum regarding their marriage plans, but immediately regrets her actions when he grows sullen and annoyed. Trying to appease, she allows Sanwo to talk her into investing in his next deal, a sure thing that will produce a large return in a short time. When the deal turns out to be a scam and Sanwo confesses that her money is gone, she breaks up with him. Rose, who has not found another job, has been spending her time with a shadowy character named OC, and one day she approaches Tolani with a drastic and dangerous scheme that will solve their money problems once and for all. Tolani, knowing that losing her job at the bank is a distinct possibility after she files a complaint against Mr. Salako, considers the ramifications of Rose’s offer, which requires that she become party to a criminal enterprise. In the end, Tolani, facing a decision about the kind of future she wants for herself, flees the city and ends up back in Makoku living with her mother and considering her options. Atta’s disturbing and deeply affecting novel tells a story of ordinary people facing heartbreaking choices. Tolani is smart and enterprising but lives in a world where prosperity is a dream for all but an elite minority of the most fortunate and the most corrupt. Can she learn to accept the hand that life has dealt her? And if she cannot, what can she do about it? When all is said and done, it is her past that seems to hold the answer.