Category: Best of 2022

Still Life – Sarah Winman

Ms. Winman writes inspired novels (When God Was a Rabbit, A Year of Marvellous Ways, Tin Man). Her new book is a love letter to Florence and to Italian life in general. There is love of art, great food and wine, and love between humans with all its complications. The lives of diverse English people are detailed beautifully over 35 years, from 1944-2009. There are some remarkably eccentric characters that constitute an extended family. This is a “must read” book.

Amy adds: one of my favourites of the year so far – she’s a favourite author.

A Marvellous Light – Freya Marske

Imagine you ae a civil servant in Edwardian London (1908) and are suddenly and unexpectedly assigned to a new position in the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints, where your role is to be a liaison to magicians. What a wonderful premise for a first novel about a muggle learning that magic exists. And there is a cracking good mystery about a lost document, curses and spells, and even an enchanted malevolent maze! Overall, very entertaining.

Run Towards the Danger – Sarah Polley

Ms. Polley is a wonderful actor, screenwriter, and director, so it is not surprising that she has written this impressive collection of essays. Her stories are intensely personal and achingly candid, describing some terrifying situations. She also addresses the fallibility of memory, and the mutability of memory/reality because the person you are now is not who you were then. This is a powerful and moving book, invoking both laughter and tears: a must read.

The Book of Form and Emptiness – Ruth Ozeki

This brilliant new book by the author of A Tale For The Time Being is wildly imaginative, and thus hard to describe. Benny is a teenager who hears voices; his mother Annabelle is a hoarder. Both are grieving the death of their father/husband. Most key events take place in a public library, and books have a consciousness that allow them to narrate the story. Events are chaotic and often perplexing. What is reality, especially with grief and PTSD? What is the price of imagination? Highly recommended.

When We Lost Our Heads – Heather O’Neill

Simply put, this is a wonderful book about compelling and complex women in Montreal at the end of the 19th century. Men in the story are mostly inconsequential, despite some appallingly boorish behaviour. Marie and Sadie are best friends as children, but theirs is a classic love-hate relationship (“Every decent friendship comes with a drop of hatred. But that hatred is like honey in the tea. It makes it addictive”). Marie is spoiled and entitled; Sadie is subversive and dangerous. Ms. O’Neill‘s writing is enchanting with exquisite similes describing disparate worlds: life in a brothel, exploitive factory work (the Squalid Mile). Female relationships are infinitely complex with righteous anger, pettiness and jealousy, and a self-absorbed woman who has no empathy toward other women. Powerful feminist themes abound: the invisibility of marriage, sexual awareness leading to female empowerment. And finally, anticipate a late plot twist and an extraordinary ending. This is O’Neill at her best, a Montreal noir story.

These Precious Days – Ann Patchett

Ms. Patchett is one of my favourite novelists (The Patron Saint of Liars, Bel Canto) but she also writes essays that previously were collected into the wonderful book This is a Story of a Happy Marriage. This is her second book of essays, some published previously in Harpers and the Atlantic. All are insightful glimpses into her life, from childhood to the current time. A favourite for me is the first essay about her three fathers, all different experiences, all with positive and negatives. Her writing is clear, focused, and honest – highly recommended.

(Amy seconds all of this!)