For the first time in three years, I met my Goodreads Reading Challenge, clocking in a bit before midnight on New Year's Eve with the 45th book I'd read. I pushed myself to read more poetry and more non-fiction books over the course of the year, so am dividing this list into three sections: Best Fiction, Best Poetry Collections, and Best Non-Fiction that I read. Here goes--
Best Fiction Read in 2019:
#4 The Story of Arthur Trulov, by Elizabeth Berg (2017)
I loved this book—so full of heart, empathy, humor, and pain, but pain that can be helped through with genuine kindness. Its take on living life, dying, and keeping the dead close--in a healthy way--is hopeful. I realize this can make the book sound saccharine, but it’s not. Arthur and Maddy are such quirky, well-drawn characters, such very real people, I would enjoy being with them. The book reminds me of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, another wonderful story about an elderly man and his relationship with a younger character.
#3 Us Against You, by Fredrik Backman (2018)
This is another wonderful book from Swedish novelist, Fredrick Backman, who—with great sensitivity—takes us back to Beartown in the aftermath of the painful, violent events of the last book (Beartown) about this small Swedish hockey town. Once again, he shows us the worst and the best in people, as the town continues to wrestle with the aftermath of its star teenaged hockey player being accused of sexual assault. The novel recognizes that “there are both good and bad people living here, and that makes us complicated, because it isn’t always so damn easy to see the difference” (364). Both Maya—working to heal from and grow after she was assaulted--and Benji—the former best friend and team mate of Maya’s attacker, who wrestles with his sexuality in a place where men are to be macho--are portrayed with such depth and understanding. They are two people I would like to know and felt I would miss once I was done reading.
#2 Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly (2016)
I found this to be an emotionally devastating, but highly engaging and important historical novel. I learned much, having never before heard of the young Polish women imprisoned at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp after their arrests in 1941 for participation in the Polish Resistance. “The Ravensbruck Rabbits” were operated on in horrific “medical experiments” by Nazi doctors, including the real-life Herta Oberheuser, one of the three narrators of the novel, whose cavalier, matter-of-fact expressions of anti-Semitism and complete disregard of the women she tortured and mutilated was too much at times, and I had to step away from the book. The voice of Kasia, a fictionalized camp survivor was my favorite of the three leads, and I was always glad to get back to her after the evils of Herta’s perspective. Kasia’s story was so terribly sad, while also admirable for her strength and honesty. The third narrator was Caroline Ferriday, an actual American philanthropist, who did much work with and for French war orphans and the Ravensbruck women. I’m glad to have learned about her, too. The novel is a well-researched and -written journey into hard history that’s crucial to keep alive.
#1 Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens (2018)
Feeling like a tapestry that weaves elements of To Kill a Mockingbird, Mary Oliver’s poetry, and Bastard Out of Carolina in with Owens’ own rich imaginings and naturalist’s knowledge, this survival tale/love story/mystery/ode to the wilds of coastal North Carolina is at the top of my list of books read this year. This is such a beautifully written and soulful book. Kya will stay with me for a long time. Can’t recommend it highly enough.
Best Poetry Collections Read in 2019:
#4 The Tradition, by Jericho Brown (2019)
I fortunately happened upon this when wandering through CLC’s library because I needed a break from grading. Brown’s language is harsh and beautiful, and he is unsparing and compassionate and justly angry in his reflections on the violence to which too many marginalized people in our society are subjected, too often by those in official power: “I will not shoot myself/In the head, and I will not shoot myself/In the back, and I will not hang myself/ With a trashbag, and if I do,/I promise you, I will not do it/In a police car while handcuffed/Or in the jail cell of a town/I only know the name of/Because I have to drive through it/To get home…” (“Bullet Points” 16).
#3 1919, by Eve Ewing (2019)
Chicago-based poet and sociologist Eve Ewing crafts wonderful, informative, and deeply thoughtful poems to pass on the history of the 1919 riots in Chicago that were sparked by white rage at an African-American boy drifting across the invisible line in Lake Michigan that divided a black from a white beach. Lasting more than a week, leaving 38 dead and hundreds injured, the racial violence in Chicago was joined by that in other cities across the U.S. in what got dubbed “Red Summer.” Ewing draws connections backward to the Great Migration from the South to Chicago and forward to the police killing of Laquan MacDonald and its aftermath through the trial, and eventual conviction, of the police officer who murdered the African-American teen. Powerful history and poetry.
#2 If They Come for Us, by Fatimah Asghar (2018)
Like Ewing’s book, Pakistani-American Asghar’s collection reflects back on history (in this case her grandparents’ experience in Partition in 1947) and connects it to her experience as a child and adolescent immigrant in New York, with some particularly powerful expressions of her bad treatment at the hands of classmates after 9/11. I used some of her poems with my Women in Literature class this fall; the students really liked them.
#1 On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong (2019)
I’m cheating here as this is actually Vietnamese-American poet Vuong’s first novel. It’s an affecting, largely biographic, story, written as a letter to his immigrant mother who suffers from war-induced and domestic violence trauma that she re-inflicts onto her son, a young man exploring his sexuality in the midst of a challenging, yet also loving, context. As much as I liked the story, I more loved getting lost in his absolutely gorgeous and poetic use of language. So, I put this in my poetry list because it is poetry, and it balances out my lists to four books each.
Best Non-Fiction Read in 2019:
#4 Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, by Nick Reding (2009)
While I disagreed with some of Reding’s underlying assumptions and some solutions his reporting leads him to, I learned a lot from this book about the history and effects of meth and about the messed-up ways the US government has, and has not, worked to deal with it. He draws connections that make a lot of sense: between the rise of big agriculture companies and the concomitant exploitation of workers, the rise of big Pharma, and the growing influence of lobbyists and de-regulatory zeal on Congress. His detailed portraits of people he interviewed extensively and came to know were compelling.
#3 Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe (2019)
A deeply reported book about the tragedy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, specifically centered around the disappearance and presumed murder in 1972 of Jean McConville. Keene introduces us to a wide-ranging cast of folks from the IRA, the British Army, and others. He writes with empathy, and I came to feel that I knew these people well. I learned a lot.
#2 Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, edited by Roxanne Gay (2018)
Much truth and a lot of pain are spilled in these pages by the group of honest and brave writers Gay brought together. I could relate to what too many of them wrote, which is partly why it took me so long to get through the book. But, it’s thought-provoking and well worth a slow read.
#1 Educated, by Tara Westover (2018)
I hadn't been particularly compelled by all the hype over this memoir of a woman raised in a survivalist Mormon family in Idaho, a young girl when the federal government stand-off with Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge occurred. But, my book club voted to read and discuss it, and so I took it out of the library. I was not prepared to be so drawn in to Westover’s story of familial abuse and self-education when kept from school, of serious injuries that could not be treated by doctors in a medical establishment her parents would not trust, of gaslighting, yet also of her deep love and beautiful descriptions of the mountains and countryside in which she lived. Even though my background as an urban, mainline Protestant, public school-educated child and teen is so very different than hers, I found myself being able to relate to a number of her struggles and experienced a range of powerful emotions while reading. In this way, my #1 non-fiction book and #1 novel (Where the Crawdads Sing) are similar, and I am back full circle…
