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Best books of 2023

The best books I read in 2023

Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson (Tor Nightfire, 2023)

Imagine Tana French writing a folklore-infused horror novel, and you have Knock Knock, Open Wide. The always-thrilling plot takes in a life-changing accident, a love affair, and a sinister TV series; the storylines overlap and entwine perfectly, and there’s a lot of beautifully crafted character work. It’s a dark and eerie book, but full of life and love, too.

Black Mountain by Simon Bestwick (Independent Legions, 2021)

A mixed-media horror novel disguised as non-fiction about the many strange incidents surrounding a cursed/haunted mountain. Unputdownable and genuinely unnerving at points – I had the time of my life reading this. I’m amazed it isn’t better-known among horror fans!

The Last Language by Jennifer duBois (Milkweed Editions, 2023)

A riveting, disturbing book about a language therapist’s relationship with the autistic man she’s helping to ‘speak’ using the controversial method of facilitated communication. I read it in one fevered session, completely in the grip of the dizzying, queasy moral maze duBois creates.

Hydra by Adriane Howell (Transit Lounge, 2022)

Just when you think the ‘unhinged woman’ trend has had its day, this excellent Australian debut offers a fresh spin on the whole idea. Anja’s dry, idiosyncratic voice rings out from the page, and the plot is never far away from intimations of something dark and weird. Read if you love Ottessa Moshfegh and Tár.

My Death by Lisa Tuttle (2004, reissued by NYRB Classics 2023)

A perfect novella about a widowed writer who becomes obsessed with her latest project, a biography of a little-known artist’s muse. Astonishingly clever, convincing and absorbing, it’s a revelation and turned me into an instant fan of Tuttle’s writing.

Grasshopper by Barbara Vine (Penguin, 2000)

A beautiful and eloquent coming-of-age tale dressed up as a crime novel. The plot has so many different strands that it’s difficult to describe concisely, but this is essentially a character-focused story about identity, aspiration and love. The rare book that actually made me cry.

How Can I Help You by Laura Sims (Putnam, 2023; UK ebook out in January 2024)

Explores the tense relationship between two women with secrets (some more dangerous than others) who both work at a public library. A sharp, nuanced character study that is also utterly propulsive. If you loved Death of a Bookseller, this should be next on your wishlist.

Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev, translated by Michael Henry Heim (Picador, 1985)

1930s cult classic about a dissolute Russian teenager, his friendships, affairs and drug addiction. Think No Longer Human, but (in my opinion) way better. It’s philosophical, funny and stuffed with remarkable descriptive writing.

Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes (Titan, January 2024)

Years after an infamous failed expedition, a captain with a sullied reputation must return to the Arctic in search of his former lieutenant. Immersive and enthralling at every level, this is a blood-soaked, frostbitten treat – I’ve been describing it as The Terror meets Heart of Darkness.

The Devil’s Playground by Craig Russell (Doubleday, 2023)

An elaborately plotted historical mystery about a legendary silent horror movie. Come for the lost film and its ghosts; stay for the well-researched portrait of old Hollywood, the world-weary heroine, and the fascinating detective story.

We Were Never Friends by Margaret Bearman (Brio Books, 2020)

A woman looks back at a strange period of her youth when her family became entangled with Kyla, a hated classmate of hers. Dazzling at the sentence level – Bearman illuminates Lotti and Kyla’s world with startling colour, vividly portraying the emotional landscape of adolescence.

Honour Thy Father by Lesley Glaister (Bloomsbury, 1991)

Four elderly – yet naive – siblings live in self-imposed imprisonment amid the squalid remains of their family home. How did they end up like this? We Have Always Lived in the Castle meets Come Join Our Disease in a dark tale that perfectly balances tender nostalgia, black humour and sinister threat.

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (Virago, 1957)

We meet Angel as an impetuous 15-year-old convinced she will become a great novelist, and follow throughout her life as she first fails upwards, then eventually loses everything. It’s a tragic story that centres on a pathetic character, yet Taylor writes with a compassion that makes it almost romantic.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge (Penguin, 2017)

A labyrinthine series of stories within stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft – but you definitely don’t need to like (or have read) Lovecraft to enjoy it. Deceptively complex, it excavates the lives of its characters while maintaining a subtle sense that the whole narrative is haunted.

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward (Viper, 2023)

My favourite of Ward’s books since her debut Rawblood, this is a story about murder that deals with the long shadow it casts. It’s also about writing and witchcraft, unrequited love, and the death of the author, and is unexpectedly heartbreaking.

Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt (Cipher Press, 2023)

This book takes the ‘trauma as horror’ trope and eats it from the inside out. It’s full of fearless writing about fetishes, transness, transphobia, dysphoria, and what – if anything – it means to be virtuous. While often disgusting (be warned), I wanted to reread it straight away.

Where Furnaces Burn by Joel Lane (2012, reissued by Influx Press 2023)

A sprawling map of linked stories; layered, moody and strange. Not the easiest book to recommend – Lane, one of my favourite writers, invariably creates very bleak worlds – but an incredibly rewarding reading experience.

Notable reread: Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach (Picador, 2013)

A grieving, lonely young woman finds solace on an online debate forum and ends up immersed in someone else’s life. Just as fast-paced, gripping and brilliantly voice-driven as it was when I first read it a decade ago.

Honourable mentions

So many good books came out in 2023 that I have to mention a few more. The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman was the funniest, sharpest, most quotable novel I read this year. I loved the intriguing layers of Ben Tufnell’s The North Shore and Viola Di Grado’s poignant Blue Hunger, translated by Jamie Richards. Verity M. Holloway’s romantic, atmospheric The Others of Edenwell deserved way more attention. And this may be an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill more than The Haunting of Hill House.

For thought-provoking plots: Service by Sarah Gilmartin and Kids Run the Show by Delphine de Vigan, translated by Alison Anderson. For pure thrills: Nicholas Binge’s mind-bending Ascension and Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling Flux. For both, and great suspense: A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates.

And not forgetting the brilliant 2023 books I read as review copies last year: Nina Allan’s masterpiece Conquest, Alice Slater’s ultra-compelling Death of a Bookseller, and Maria Dong’s loveable Liar, Dreamer, Thief.

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Best books of 2022

The 12 best books I read this year

The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton (Simon & Schuster, 2022)

Shortly after starting at St. Dunstan’s, a private school on the windswept Maine coast, 16-year-old Laura joins the school choir and develops an infatuation with its pious, exacting president, Virginia. Soon Virginia’s passions (God, running) become Laura’s, and the choir becomes her family. The narrative focuses relentlessly on this small group and the school campus, which both creates the impression of a faintly otherworldly setting, and reproduces within itself the hyper-focused, enveloping smallness of Laura’s obsessions.

Through Laura we see how easy it is to locate the numinous in someone or something you love – and how dangerous that can be. This is a story about how obsession is an endless vista unfolding and then, eventually, a prison; a story to make you feel fury and sympathy and pity for your younger self. In deceptively controlled prose, Burton creates a world that feels like an enchantment, filled with aching nostalgia, terror and sadness. I felt hugely invigorated by it, and left it behind reluctantly.

A History of Fear by Luke Dumas (Atria Books, 2022)

Presented as a manuscript written by convicted murderer Grayson Hale, an American student in Edinburgh who killed a classmate and claimed the Devil made him do it, A History of Fear is immediately gripping. This is a novel about repression, religion, the dangers of denying oneself and generational trauma – but it’s also just a really fucking good ghost story: brimming with atmosphere, full of the kind of creeping, swirling uncertainty that makes great horror. It walks a tricky path – balancing real emotional damage/confusion and a supernatural threat – with grace and, it seems, ease, while the pure intrigue and tension generated by the central question (is Hale really communing with the Devil?) never let up. I raced through it so quickly I barely paused for breath.

Conquest by Nina Allan (riverrun, 2023)

Nina Allan is my favourite writer and this is an extraordinary novel: a deeply complex and layered work of speculative fiction that rewards close reading yet is also incredibly enjoyable. The plot revolves around a missing man, his girlfriend’s search for him, and whether his belief in an incipient alien war has any basis in reality. Touching on themes that include conspiracy theories, mental illness, music and code, ambition and apathy, faith and doubt, it’s a story about what happens to someone who falls into the cracks between scepticism and delusion. Yet the truth is it’s impossible to capture what’s great about Conquest in a paragraph, because it’s about everything – the stuff of life, the search for meaning. As soon as I finished it, I wanted to start all over again; when I do, I know I will find new meanings and mysteries in the text.

Lote by Shola von Reinhold (Jacaranda Books, 2020)

Lote is an academic mystery about a secret society. It’s about the exclusion of Black people from (what is recorded of) history; a woman who repeatedly seeks to escape her own life and reinvent herself; an odd artists’ residency where people speak in pure cant and revere an obscure architect... All these things are in there, but there’s also a load of other stuff – about aesthetics, beauty, decadence, ways of seeing – Lote is a book of fantasies and ideas, fizzing with intelligence, infused with baroque spirit, written with immense charm and openness. It’s unique in the true sense of the word; I can think of nothing to compare it to. I read it in a delirious trance and it left me dizzy with pleasure.

Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater (Hodder & Stoughton, 2023)

Cynical, normie-hating Roach has worked at a beleaguered branch of bookshop chain Spines since she was a teenager. When a new team are brought in to reverse the shop’s fortunes, she meets a very different type of bookseller: the stylish, friendly, popular Laura. The two women soon clash over their opinions on true crime, and Roach’s initial desire for a friendship curdles into hate. What unfolds after that is a thrilling, fast-paced story of obsession with a dark, sticky soul. It combines a razor-sharp character study with bags of atmosphere and a deliciously nasty underbelly – think Looker meets The Poison Tree meets Boy Parts. So, which bookseller meets an untimely end? That’d be telling... but you won’t be able to put it down until you find out.

Liar, Dreamer, Thief by Maria Dong (Grand Central Publishing, 2023)

While I was reading Liar, Dreamer, Thief, I felt like I was living inside the world of its heroine Katrina Kim – who I found infinitely loveable even though she’s a self-confessed disaster and one of her main interests is stalking a colleague, Kurt. When he suddenly vanishes, leaving a cryptic note that seems meant for Katrina, her already-messy world spirals even further out of control. The writing is sometimes awkward, sometimes brilliant, and it suits the character perfectly – it really feels like this is Katrina’s voice rather than a novel. The story, too, is always shifting and transforming. Is it a conspiracy thriller, an ‘unhinged woman’ narrative, a story about a fractured family coming back together? It’s all three and more: a glorious Technicolor starburst of a novel. It’s funny and poignant, colourful, totally immersive, and – somehow – oddly cosy and comforting.

A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better by Benjamin Wood (Scribner, 2018)

12-year-old Daniel and his father, Francis, are going on a road trip: Francis, who creates props for TV programmes, has promised to take Daniel to visit the set of his favourite show. If that sounds wholesome, think again – Francis is a volatile, unstable man and when the visit doesn’t go to plan, devastating chaos ensues. This harrowing sequence of events unfolds with all the gravity of a factual story, imbued with a terrible urgency that sweeps the reader along. A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better is one of the most finely crafted, powerful novels I have read all year. While the details may be disturbing, the writing is simply so flawless that reading it felt, against the odds, like breathing a huge sigh of relief.

The Appeal by Janice Hallett (Viper, 2021) and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett (Viper, 2023)

Though I feel like the last person on Earth to hear about Janice Hallett’s bestselling mystery The Appeal, I am going to shout about it anyway – I can’t remember the last time I read something that so thoroughly lived up to the label ‘unputdownable’. And her forthcoming novel, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, is very much in the same vein. Both feature inventive narrative approaches: The Appeal is told primarily through emails; Alperton Angels is a patchwork of text messages, transcriptions, extracts from books and scripts, etc. I can’t get enough of this format, which allows plenty of space for the story to be funny and irreverent as well as exciting. It’s also completely addictive.

The Teardrop Method by Simon Avery (TTA Press, 2017) and A Box Full of Darkness by Simon Avery (Black Shuck Books, 2021)

One thing I love about reading is finding new(-to-me) authors whose writing excites me – that feeling where you immediately want to read everything of theirs you can get your hands on. This happened to me with Simon Avery’s quietly haunting speculative novella, The Teardrop Method. Soon afterwards I picked up his excellent collection A Box Full of Darkness, which I also loved (especially ‘Perfidious Albion’, which is about a mythic TV play, a cult-like organisation, grief and magic and is just so good). Avery’s fiction is compelling as hell, and he’s got a great knack for writing about the vaguely uncanny, the weird-in-the-ordinary, but more than that his work contains a deep understanding of loneliness and the different types of human connection that offer a route out of it. He writes like a natural heir to Joel Lane, with the same (rare) ability to pin down an ethereal, unsettling mood. I cannot wait to read more from him.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles (1959)

I am really bad at writing about classics, but I couldn’t not include this. (Not least because it is the novel The World Cannot Give was inspired by and partly based on, which makes it a perfect way to end my list of the year’s favourites.) A Separate Peace is told almost entirely from the perspective of a teenage boy at a New England boarding school during the Second World War. It’s the story of how these children of privilege navigate the paradox that constrains them: they will imminently join the fight, so they’re expected to grow up fast, but adults also treat them as paragons of precious innocence, to be indulged and coddled. The writing is so clean and smooth and lucid. It rolls along wonderfully; it’s emotionally resonant. I found it beautiful, and well deserving of its status.

Honourable mentions

Stargazer by Laurie Petrou (VERVE Books, 2022): A zingy headrush of a campus novel following the friendship (and rivalry) between two girls, Stargazer is absorbing and deftly structured, with possibly my favourite literary character of the year in Diana Martin. The sort of book I will never get bored of reading.

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith (Oneworld, 2021): A wide-ranging epic of love, hate, family legacy and folklore that’s SO much better and more interesting (and with a much stronger supernatural element!) than I initially expected, especially given the twee title. Recommended to fans of Ghostwritten and The Kingdoms.

Out of a Clear Sky by Sally Hinchcliffe (Pan, 2007): I missed this debut from Hinchcliffe (author of my beloved Hare House) when it was first published; I’m so glad I sought it out. A literary suspense novel about a woman trying to deal with both a breakup and a stalker, it features masterful storytelling reminiscent of Barbara Vine, with excellent writing about landscape and nature.

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis (Picador, 2005): BEE writes himself into a horror story as a suburban dad, and there’s also a murderous Furby. It’s pretty difficult to describe this book beyond that, but it was orders of magnitude better than I’d hoped, entertaining and comic and eerie and brilliant, with an ending that has no right being so moving.

Found Audio by N.J. Campbell (Two Dollar Radio, 2017): If you love meta novels about lost media – and I do, though I acknowledge it’s a bit of a niche – this is a must-read. Revolving around a mysterious set of tapes and a search for something called ‘the City of Dreams’, it’s a sweeping, extremely propulsive adventure enlivened by a delicious element of uncertainty.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (Corsair, 2022): The scope of the storytelling in this incredibly intelligent, unpredictable book took my breath away. Wide-ranging, densely interconnected, character-centric and very empathetic – and you don’t need to remember A Visit from the Goon Squad to enjoy it.

Lambda by David Musgrave (Europa Editions, 2022): One of the most interesting sci-fi stories I’ve read in a while, absolutely bursting with ideas (too many to summarise here!) and cleverly developed perspectives. A funny, chilling and true portrait of a future world.

Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova (Atlantic Books, 2022): An offbeat coming-of-age story about a young woman working in a singularly peculiar cinema. Camilla Grudova’s writing pulls the reader down into the enveloping ambience of the bizarre, wildly intriguing Paradise.

Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Saraband, 2021): In his faux-biography of a ‘forgotten 1960s psychotherapist’, Graeme Macrae Burnet pulls off the rare feat of writing two parallel narratives that are equally compelling. A riveting meta-novel in which the ‘truth’ is revealed at exactly the right pace.

The Witch in the Well by Camilla Bruce (Transworld, 2022): This tale of two ex-friends writing competing books about the same historical figure, a reputed witch, sees Camilla Bruce making a welcome return to the winning formula that made her debut (You Let Me In) so dazzling. Unreliable narrator + hints of horror/fantasy/fable = an irresistible combination.

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James (Berkley, 2020): A virtual masterclass in how to write a spooky, atmospheric mystery; I had a great time reading this. The forlorn – and definitely haunted – motel of the title jumps off the page.

Short stories

Unexpected Places to Fall From, Unexpected Places to Land by Malcolm Devlin (Unsung Stories, 2021)

Isn’t it amazing when you buy a book on a whim and it turns out to be exactly the sort of thing you’re always longing to read? I already knew of – and liked – Malcolm Devlin’s writing, but even so, Unexpected Places took me by surprise. This is a collection of linked stories (good) and encompasses a dazzling range of genres that might best be collectively summed up as speculative litfic (even better). It centres on a man called Prentis O’Rourke and the ways in which his death affects a number of different versions of reality. I adored ‘Walking to Doggerland’ (told in three parts scattered throughout the book), ‘Five Conversations With My Daughter (Who Travels in Time)’, and ‘My Uncle Eff’. The best stories in this book are subtly strange and totally unpredictable, but very human, even when they have pure SF concepts at their heart.

Whirlwind Romance by Sam Thompson (Unsung Stories, 2022)

Don’t be fooled by the title – Sam Thompson’s short stories sit at the intersection of realism, horror/fantasy and the vaguely disturbing, non-specific Weird. They’re uniquely imaginative, evocative and charged with uncanny energy. There are many descriptions of fictional art (a thing I just absolutely love), and there is always, always an incredible sense of place. Among the best are ‘The Heights of Sleep’, about a man’s obsession with an enigmatic writer; ‘The Red Song’, in which an academic explores the traditions of a strange and sinister city; and ‘One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide Queen’, a thoughtfully written yet gripping fantasy adventure. And ‘Seafront Gothic’ might be the best ever example of a story suiting its title perfectly.

Other collections I enjoyed: Nana Nkweti’s irresistibly vibrant, spirited Walking on Cowrie Shells. The Ghost Sequences by A.C. Wise, a fabulously varied set of ghost stories (it’s a bit too long overall but some, like ‘The Nag Bride’ and ‘The Stories We Tell About Ghosts’, are indelible). Gareth E. Rees’ portraits of a Britain in meltdown in Terminal Zones. Paul Dalla Rosa’s An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life exploits affectless narrative voices brilliantly – ideal for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh’s short fiction. Ice Age by Iain Rowan, a short but powerful collection of weird tales.

A few final honourable mentions

When We Were Young by Dawn Goodwin: a captivating, entertaining mystery with unexpected heart, humour and a great portrayal of lifelong friendship. The Marsh House by Zoë Somerville: a rich historical novel of suspense and tragedy laced with elements of folklore. The Cloisters by Katy Hays: a ‘dark academia’ book that elevates itself above all the clichés with an indulgent, intoxicating atmosphere. A Child’s Book of True Crime by Chloe Hooper: a beautifully written portrait of paranoia, incredible at the sentence level.

Hawk Mountain by Conner Habib starts with a skin-crawling premise (the protagonist’s childhood nemesis finagles his way into his home & refuses to leave) and then turns it completely upside down, revealing a devilishly smart core. Skin Deep by Liz Nugent – a superb character study, something like Tana French meets (early) William Boyd – got me out of a horrible reading slump. Run Time by Catherine Ryan Howard is a thriller about the making of a horror film; a dream concept for me, so fun and surprising.

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Best books of 2021

10 12 favourites*

*This was supposed to be a top 10, but I couldn’t quite narrow it down and also had a last-minute entry to my favourites list. Here we go!

Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman (4th Estate, 2021)

What it’s about: A dissatisfied writer and a former child star investigate a conspiracy involving artificial water in LA. Simultaneously a satire of the film industry, near-future SF, a thriller and a cautionary tale about climate change/consumerism – and also nothing like any of that.

Why I loved it: Kleeman is a genius, and Something New Under the Sun exists on its own plane: a bizarre, wild, colourful odyssey through a version of California that seems to be melting. As in her debut, Kleeman is breathtakingly adept at taking symbols of capitalism, celebrity and consumer culture and warping them beyond all recognition in order to reveal the horror within. Yet no matter how bizarre the plot gets, an ever-present undercurrent of humanity means that, against all odds, it doesn’t feel detached from reality at all. The narrative style – which mixes dreamy, weird writing, deliberately (and hilariously) absurd dialogue, and really effective perspective switches – is brilliantly unique. The result is the best, most ingenious book I have read this year, with a title that is wholly apt. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: The isolated writer-protagonist and suggestions of conspiracy in Red Pill; the hallucinatory LA setting of We Play Ourselves. But really, Kleeman’s vision stands alone, and only she could have written this book.

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt (Cipher Press, 2021)

What it’s about: Three years ago, three girls – Alice, Ila and Hannah – entered the House, a corrupted, haunted place. In the aftermath, Hannah is gone and Alice and Ila’s relationship is radically transformed. Ultimately, the two survivors must go back.

Why I loved it: This book left me haunted. Rumfitt turns the haunted house trope inside out (and then some) with a story about fascism and trauma and guilt and gender and what it’s like to try and perform an acceptable impression of a functioning human being after bad shit has happened to you. It’s electrifying. It’s disgusting. It’s hot. It actually made me THINK. It’s the best book about what it is to be a woman (specifically in modern Britain) that I’ve read in years, possibly ever. It’s the most radical horror novel of the year and probably the decade. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: The punk spirit of Gary Budden’s London Incognita. Again, though, this book is a true original.

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki, translated by various (Verso Books, 2021)

What it’s about: Short sci-fi stories from a little-known Japanese author, written in the 1970s and 80s but only now translated into English. Unusually for a collection, each story has a different translator.

Why I loved it: This is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. Terminal Boredom isn’t just prescient, it’s prophetic – over and over again I was thrilled by the fact that these stories featuring video calls, reality TV, robot vacuum cleaners, live streams, celebrity politicians, screen-addicted people, and very 21st-century perceptions of gender, date from 40 years ago. Suzuki has a startling ability to pin down a character’s worldview in just a few lines: the book is packed with observations so acute they sting; so modern they’re unnerving. ‘You May Dream’ – a story about grappling with loneliness and detachment in a society that prizes technology above community – is an instant classic, ‘Terminal Boredom’ and ‘Women and Women’ are also outstanding, and the entire collection represents a stunning body of work. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: Anna Kavan’s short stories, Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury, 2021)

What it’s about: London, 1898: a man named Joe steps off a train and realises he has lost all his memories. Then he receives a postcard written to him before he was born... This all takes place in an alternate version of 19th-century Britain in which France won the Napoleonic Wars.

Why I loved it: On paper, The Kingdoms shouldn’t have been my thing – I don’t usually enjoy fantasy, I’m ambivalent about alternate histories, and I actively avoid romantic fiction. Yet I fell head over heels in love with it. The world of the book is fantastically complex and vivid, the character development builds slowly until you’re properly obsessed with these people, and I found myself unexpectedly invested in the central romance – to an embarrassing extent (tears were shed). Missouri Kite has to be my favourite character of the year hands down. Pulley’s writing epitomises emotional excellence, and this is a sweeping, enthralling story with tons of heart. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: Cloud Atlas, Crossings, The River of No Return or The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters.

Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe (Mantle, 2022)

What it’s about: An unnamed woman leaves London to ‘start a new life’ in rural Scotland. She settles in the tiny community surrounding a country estate, where it soon becomes clear the locals not only believe in witches, but also regard them as an active threat.

Why I loved it: I underestimated this book at first, fearing it might be derivative. I couldn’t have been more wrong: Hare House, in its essence, is a true original. Any cliches in the plot are made entirely new by masterful plotting, a uniformly fascinating cast of characters, sparing deployment of tension and eeriness, and, most of all, VOICE. This is Hinchcliffe’s second novel (and you’d better believe I’ll be reading her first soon), but she writes like an author at the absolute top of their game – sharp as a knife, not a sentence wasted. Employing landscape beautifully, making the story just uncanny enough, it’s note-perfect all the way to the bravura ending, which made me almost squeal with glee. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: Devil’s Day, The Little Stranger, voice-driven dark character studies like Notes on a Scandal and The Woman Upstairs.

The Brimstone Wedding by Barbara Vine (Penguin, 1995)

What it’s about: 70-year-old Stella, who has terminal lung cancer, confides in her care assistant, Jenny: the tale that emerges involves a secret house and a forgotten film star called Gilda Brent. The story is narrated by Jenny, who’s dealing with some secrets of her own.

Why I loved it: While it starts quietly and requires some patience (Vine’s writing is nothing if not replete with description and detail), The Brimstone Wedding transforms into an enthralling tale whose brilliance made me increasingly dizzy with joy. Everything I have loved about Vine’s other novels is realised to its full potential here: the rich, almost fussy language; the slow-burn intrigue; the multidimensional characters. Throw in a perfect narrative voice (we learn so much about Jenny from the way she tells the story) and you have a truly spellbinding book that is literary triumph, gripping mystery and tragedy all in one. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: Strangely, this is the hardest book on the list to find comparison points for; I’d really only liken it to Vine’s others. But if you like getting stuck into a long, detailed, involving mystery, chances are you’ll enjoy this.

The Coming Bad Days by Sarah Bernstein (Daunt Books, 2021)

What it’s about: A woman leaves her partner, moves to another town and lives in solitude – until she forms an odd, intimate friendship with a woman called Clara. Around the same time, she starts to receive strange anonymous notes.

Why I loved it: Bernstein’s debut is very much driven by style and language rather than plot and character; I read the book marvelling at its style first, and taking in its events second. The writing is remarkable: reminiscent of Fleur Jaeggy’s style, but imbued with its own cool economy and wry humour, full of ambiguity and the cold thrill of pessimism. I couldn’t stop noting down lines I loved. It can, however, be abstract and difficult, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to everyone (if you want everything in a story to be resolved and made clear, avoid). The cover suits it perfectly: icy and ambiguous. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: Anything by Fleur Jaeggy; the mood of Signs of Life; the setting of Communion Town.

Among Others by Jo Walton (Corsair, 2011)

What it’s about: Morwenna, a 15-year-old girl from a magical family (she’s the daughter of a powerful witch), goes away to boarding school. Told in diary entries, the story charts her coming-of-age journey.

Why I loved it: This is a unique sort of fantasy novel: one in which the fantasy is largely incidental. It’s really the story of an inquisitive, precocious, naive girl discovering her identity, largely through reading science fiction and meeting others who share that passion. It’s lovely to read – the literary equivalent of a big warm blanket – yet it’s also unusually compelling. I was hooked on Morwenna’s voice, finding her excitement infectious, and loved the way magic was woven into the story. I came away from it feeling delighted to have discovered Walton’s work. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: Nina Allan’s novels and stories; the narrative form and style of The Moth Diaries.

Professor Everywhere by Nicholas Binge (Proverse Hong Kong, 2020)

What it’s about: Newly arrived in the UK from Hong Kong, Chloe Chan finds life at a British university dissatisfying until she starts working with the reclusive Professor Roland Crannus. It quickly becomes clear that Crannus’s research is more unorthodox than anyone imagined, and Chloe’s dragged along for the ride.

Why I loved it: Speculative fiction about multiple worlds that also has a captivating academic setting and a narrator I felt attached to almost instantly… This was a book I’d always wanted to read without even knowing it existed. What worked best for me about it is something that perhaps should have worked against it: its world feels so small, so cosy (even as we’re presented with the possibility of countless realities). I just felt so at home in it. Written as Chloe’s memoir, Professor Everywhere is such a likeable and absorbing story that even its flaws only made it more charming to me. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: The combination of collegiate setting and speculative elements in Catherine House.

The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allan (Titan Books, 2021) / The Good Neighbours by Nina Allan (riverrun, 2021)

Disclaimer: as some of you will know, I am a huge fan of Nina Allan. At this point, I’m so deeply entrenched in my love of her work that it’s arguably impossible for me to be objective. We were blessed with both a novel and a collection this year, and I couldn’t not mention them! But I’ll try to keep this brief...

The Art of Space Travel is an outstanding collection of short stories. Some are sci-fi, fantasy or horror; some are literary fiction; many blur the lines between these genres. All are written in a rich and engaging style that makes every character feel like a fully-formed human being. The stories chosen for this book are, for the most part, quiet and thoughtful, rarely dealing in extremes, though incredibly powerful when they do. They include the stunning ‘Four Abstracts’, the story that made me fall in love with Allan’s writing: a perfect horror story that is also a beautifully nuanced exploration of friendship, art, grief and guilt. (Full review)

The Good Neighbours is a novel about a photographer who revisits the island she grew up on and becomes obsessed with an old murder case. She uncovers the incongruous fact that the killer – her childhood best friend’s father – believed in fairies. This is a story about the fragile and capricious nature of the human mind, and the dangers of making assumptions; it’s sensitively crafted and compassionately written. And as it’s the least genre-inflected of Allan’s major works to date, I also think it would make a great introduction to her writing for those who don’t usually enjoy SF or horror. (Full review)

They by Kay Dick (1977, reissued by Faber 2022)

What it’s about: In a series of interconnected stories, we follow an anonymous narrator trying to survive in a society besieged by the ‘they’ of the title – a group who seek to destroy art, independent thought and even love.

Why I loved it: They is resolutely cryptic, with so many things remaining unknown throughout: the background of the world it depicts; the identity of the narrator; whether the narrator is even the same person from one story to the next. Dick’s prose moves swiftly and covers much ground in a few sentences, shifting between matter-of-fact description and startling emotional depth. The style made me sure I would love it; the story ‘The Fairing’, an extraordinarily tense and ambiguous sequence, confirmed that. I enjoyed They most for its mysteries – it’s most powerful when little is explained – and love the fact that I can now see echoes of it in the work of so many of my favourite writers of speculative fiction. (Full review)

Read if you enjoyed: Anna Kavan’s Ice, basically anything by M. John Harrison, Piranesi, Christopher Priest’s Dream Archipelago books/stories.

Honourable mentions

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor (Daunt Books, 2021): I truly believe that Taylor’s books are classics in the making, and this collection of short stories is further proof of that. The subject matter (young people navigating intimacy, desire and loneliness) is not new, but Taylor’s prose hums with a power beyond what fiction typically possesses.

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura (Vintage, 2021): Kitamura’s writing epitomises the phrase ‘deceptively simple’. This, a short novel about an interpreter trying to build a life in an unfamiliar city, does exactly what I want literary fiction to do: capture reality in a way that makes it new.

Laura Blundy by Julie Myerson (Harper, 2000): This Victorian murder story is propelled by the blunt, sly voice of its antiheroine. Both a brilliantly effective piece of historical fiction and an uncanny triumph of ventriloquism – read if you enjoy transgressive fiction and unreliable narrators.

Come Join Our Disease by Sam Byers (Faber, 2021): If I had to pick one book from this year that should’ve been massive, this would be it. A story of ennui in the underbelly of London that transforms into a transcendentally disgusting ecstasy of filth; a fearless excoriation of capitalism and wellness culture. Lurid, sickening, fun, impassioned, provocative and brilliant.

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021): I never feel properly equipped to talk about Cohen’s writing; his intelligence and wit are so powerful they kind of terrify me, and while not easy to sum up, this novel of campus politics and Jewish identity is masterfully written, involving, surprising and very funny.

Spider by Patrick McGrath (Penguin, 1991): In this gothic novel of 1950s London, a young man’s identity and sense of self slowly unravel as he writes the story of his life. A masterpiece of psychological horror, full of ratcheting tension and powerfully disturbing imagery.

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021): One of the most readable and compelling memoirs I’ve ever encountered, cataloguing the author’s lifelong obsession with Japan and what it’s like to live in another language.

Whiteout Conditions by Tariq Shah (Dead Ink, 2021): The lean prose of Shah’s novel – about a man returning to his hometown for the funeral of his friend’s younger cousin – is as bare and and unforgiving as the bleak urban sprawl its characters traverse. To be read in a single sitting.

Also...

Even more honourable mentions

Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe: four tales of notorious crimes and the women obsessed with them, made unputdownable by wonderful writing. Daniel Kehlmann’s Fame (trans. Carol Brown Janeway), a surprising, exciting collection of interlinked stories – a bit Ned Beauman, a bit David Mitchell. Damon Galgut’s ostensibly simple, ultimately gripping The Impostor. A Lonely Man by Chris Power, an effortless story about stories that’s also a wildly tense cat-and-mouse thriller. The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas by Daniel James: I have repeatedly described it as ‘Daisy Jones & The Six written by Borges’ and I stand by that.

Dennis Cooper’s transfixing, terrifying, indelible The Sluts. Patrick Redmond’s The Wishing Game and its bone-chilling ending. Virginia Feito’s clever Mrs March, for which the publisher’s attention-grabbing tagline (‘Shirley Jackson meets Ottessa Moshfegh meets My Sister the Serial Killer’ ) was, for once, accurate. The audiobook of Joseph Knox’s True Crime Story, which – thanks to its excellent voice cast – was the only audiobook I managed to truly enjoy in a year of trying to make myself like them. Matt Wesolowski’s Demon, the sixth (and final?) entry in the Six Stories series of horror(ish) novels about a true crime podcast – books I will be rereading forever.

Short stories

Richard V. Hirst’s beautifully crafted, sinister, complex ‘Oblio’ and Gareth E. Rees’ funny, poignant ‘Meet on the Edge’ (both from the anthology Out of the Darkness). Andrew Michael Hurley’s powerful ‘The Hanging of the Greens’ (from the otherwise mediocre The Haunting Season). The title story from Lucie McKnight Hardy’s Dead Relatives, a triumph of voice, full of the narrator’s slyness and angst. Jia Tolentino’s snappy, acerbic I Would Be Doing This Anyway. Online, everything by Brandon Taylor – especially ‘Prophets’ and ‘Otto’ – and ‘Cancel Me’ by Honor Levy.

Notable rereads

I revisited The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse for the first time in 12 years, with some trepidation; I discovered that not only is it just as good as I remembered, but my relationship with it now feels deeper. I read Dark Echo by F.G. Cottam for something like the sixth or seventh time; it’s still my favourite ghost story. Tasha Kavanagh’s twisted, vividly rendered coming-of-age tale Things We Have in Common was even better second time around. Ditto Andrew Michael Hurley’s Devil’s Day, an enigmatic pastoral laced with horror (Hardy meets Aickman) which remains my personal favourite of the author’s novels.

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Best books of 2020

Real Life (2020) by Brandon Taylor Part of me wishes I could choose something less obvious for my favourite of the year – like, say, something that wasn’t shortlisted for the Booker Prize. But there’s just no getting around it: Real Life is the only book I have read in 2020 that I can legitimately call a masterpiece.

It’s set over a single weekend as biochemistry student Wallace grapples with the question of what to do with his life amid several significant events: the death of his father, the apparent sabotage of his final-year experiment, and the unexpected beginning of a sexual relationship with a friend who considers himself to be straight. Throughout, Taylor writes with fluidity and grace, managing an incredible balance between Wallace’s surface detachment and the true depths of his emotion. It strikes me as the perfect, ideal novel for now: Wallace’s dilemmas are personal (inextricably tied to his experience as a gay Black man), but the questions the novel asks are universal, and the greatness of it lies in the space between the specific and the general. Anyone can read this and feel deeply connected to it.

Gripping from the start (the opening line already sounds iconic), coolly and elegantly expressed, meticulously descriptive without a scrap of superfluous detail, Real Life is an immediate classic. I’m in awe of everything about it.

The Killjoy (1986) by Anne Fine The Killjoy is my favourite discovery of the year because it’s a book I could so easily have gone my whole life without even knowing about. Before I found a copy in a secondhand bookshop at the end of last year, I had no idea Anne Fine had even written adult novels, let alone one so closely aligned with my own reading interests.

It’s narrated by priggish university professor Ian Laidlaw, whose account concerns his sadomasochistic relationship with a young student, Alicia. Ian’s confessional monologue is an intense elucidation of character: a masterclass in unreliability, it slowly shows us how he fails to understand himself and others; how his obsession with Alicia goes hand-in-hand with shame and loathing; and, ultimately, the monstrous culmination of this strange entanglement. Make no mistake, The Killjoy is horrible, but also exhilarating and utterly riveting. Ian’s voice is so memorable that I know this is not just a five-star, this-was-brilliant book; it’s a book I will remember forever (they are not always the same thing).

Ironopolis (2018) by Glen James Brown Ironopolis had been on my to-read list since it came out in 2018. Having read it, I am a) absolutely kicking myself for not doing so earlier and b) urging you to read it, right now, especially if you are from a northern working-class background. It’s a set of six interwoven stories, all of which play out on a Teesside council estate. The estate is so vividly recounted that my mind was BOGGLED when I looked it up and discovered it’s actually the author’s own creation?!?! With that said, as striking as the sense of place is, the characters are even better; their stories are packed with joy and tragedy and heartbreak, and written with palpable compassion. This is a triumphantly polyphonic portrait of working-class life, spinning a fantastic story (complete with thrilling traces of folklore and magical realism) while feeling totally authentic. The rare book I would genuinely recommend to everyone.

You Let Me In (2020) by Camilla Bruce Recipe for You Let Me In: take the dark, folkloric themes of Pine or Lanny; mix with the lyrical, romantic style of The Summer That Melted Everything; add a relationship with the same disturbing overtones as those of My Dark Vanessa; combine with the weird atmosphere of short stories by Kelly Link and Elizabeth Hand. It centres on Cassandra Tipp, a reclusive romance novelist who claims to have had a lifelong faerie companion called ‘Pepper-Man’ – but is this creature real, or did Cassie construct a fantasy to make sense of unbearable trauma? If this doesn’t sound like your thing, it wouldn’t usually be mine either, but Cassie’s account of Pepper-Man – horrible and gorgeous, sickening and seductive – had me bewitched. This is a powerful modern fairytale that keeps you wondering, hoping and guessing about the reliability of the narrator’s claims.

London Incognita (2020) by Gary Budden London Incognita is a book, a place, and a mythology. It’s the weird little interstitial spaces you only know about if you’ve lived in a city for years and exhausted all its lesser-explored corners. It’s the shabby shopping centres, council blocks and alleyways you’ll only encounter if you’re poor or down on your luck. It’s a shifting shadow that makes you jump, or a familiar face glimpsed in a crowd for a split second. It’s a marvellous interconnected web of individual histories. You might get lost in its streets: wreathed in smog by a leering spectre, lured beneath an underpass alongside a cabal of ghosts, or beckoned into the sky by a goddess with a flickering face... Gary Budden’s second collection is a thrilling fusion of horror fiction and psychogeography with zine culture, punk music and pulp fiction – a style that really is all Budden’s own, and realised to its full extent here. (Bonus: includes the outstanding novella Judderman, one of my faves of 2018.)

The Earth Wire (1994, this edition 2020) by Joel Lane When I read Joel Lane’s brilliant (albeit rare) The Witnesses Are Gone a couple of years ago, I instantly knew his work was so perfect for me that I’d want to read all of it. However, Lane’s books are mostly out of print and have largely been difficult to get hold of... until this year, when the reliably excellent Influx Press reissued two of his short story collections, including The Earth Wire. That it was a debut is hard to believe: the cool, measured tone is unwavering, and the stories – scenes of urban alienation woven lightly with the weird and supernatural – feel like the work of a much more experienced writer. Every sentence is a potent distillation of his stylistic approach, and in some ways the book reads like a single dreamlike narrative. Mesmerising.

Boy Parts (2020) by Eliza Clark Have you heard about Boy Parts? I feel like, since you’re reading this newsletter, you’ve probably heard about Boy Parts. And it’s a buzzy book for good reason. The unforgettable narrator, Irina – an acerbic, misanthropic fetish photographer – is the perfect blend of antiheroine and villain, and Eliza Clark’s observation is pin-sharp. I seriously couldn’t tear myself away, especially during the horribly compelling second half and the sublime hallucination of an ending. My main points of comparison for this book are Tampa by Alissa Nutting and Sweetpea by CJ Skuse, but really it’s entirely its own thing, and that thing is as dark as spilled blood, as intoxicating as a triple vodka and as memorable as a well-aimed punch.

Sleep Has His House (1948) by Anna Kavan If you want to be reminded of the pure power of language, read this. Sleep Has His House is a fusion of novel, memoir and literary experiment, perhaps best described as a surrealist painting in book form. It rather defies description and is certainly not something I can easily nutshell; told primarily through fantastical dream-scenes, it’s a feast for the mind, extraordinarily vivid, with at least one breathtaking sentence on every page. Kavan’s novel Ice is one of my all-time favourites and this was a stunning reminder of everything I love about her writing – and, indeed, about writing in general.

Scabby Queen (2020) by Kirstin Innes Telling the life story of its protagonist – one-time pop star and political campaigner Clio Campbell – through the eyes of those who knew her, Scabby Queen is an exuberant celebration of the impact an individual can have on the world, and simultaneously a feminist narrative about activism, community and society. It says so much about such big themes, and makes Clio magnificently complicated (sometimes hard to like) without taking away from her power as a character and/or symbol. I could’ve read an entire book about each of the narrators, all of whom feel fully alive. Very readable, equally meaningful.

The Apparition Phase (2020) by Will Maclean I’m sure you know by now that I love ghost stories. So obviously I expected to enjoy this debut, which opens with twins Tim and Abi’s attempts to fake a spirit photograph – but even so, it exceeded my expectations by miles. Set in the ‘haunted 1970s’, The Apparition Phase is highly detailed, absorbing and emotive, with some chilling scenes and an indelible climactic sequence. A great ghost story can’t always also be a satisfying novel; this is definitely both. Read if you liked The Little Stranger or Rawblood.

Blue in Green (2020) by Ram V and Anand RK I turned to this graphic novel at a bad time, when I was unable to read anything else, and it heroically pulled me out of a reading slump. I will say upfront that the plot – a once-promising musician losing himself in a dark obsession – is not terribly original. However, the art is something really special: every page a gorgeous riot of colour filled with glowing lights, hyperreal raindrops, blurring neon and ghostly figures. Images come to life as though they are not so much art as a live feed of the protagonist’s mind’s eye. It’s endlessly beautiful.

A Phantom Lover and Other Dark Tales (1881–1905, this edition 2020) by Vernon Lee There’s this short story I recommend a lot: ‘A Phantom Lover’ by Vernon Lee, an astonishing, weird, disconcertingly modern ghost story from 1886. With the publication of this new collection, I had the pleasure of a) revisiting it (it’s just as good as I remember) and b) discovering more of Lee’s tales. They’re filled with dense, heady descriptions of art, music and places, reflecting the author’s preoccupation with aesthetics and the perception of beauty. I often find Victorian fiction more interesting than enjoyable, but Vernon Lee’s writing is different: still so fresh and unusual.

Deity (2020) by Matt Wesolowski I’ve been a fan of Wesolowski’s Six Stories – a series of horror/thriller novels revolving around a true crime podcast – for several years. I didn’t think anything could top 2018’s ingenious Changeling, but Deity comes close. It focuses on the life and death of Zach Crystal, an enigmatic singer accused of inappropriate relationships with young fans. As ever, Wesolowski crafts an engrossing mystery laced with elements of horror (here the ‘Frithghast’, a creature said to roam the woods where Crystal built his mansion), but it’s typically thought-provoking too – excellent on questions around power, idolatry and celebrity, the role of abuse in shaping an abuser, and ‘separating the art from the artist’.

Greensmith (2020) by Aliya Whiteley This was my most unexpected favourite of the year. I don’t read lots of sci-fi, and when I do, it’s usually the gently speculative type, whereas Greensmith has actual intergalactic adventures and flamingo-shaped aliens and everything. I won’t describe the plot, not because it isn’t great, but because what really matters is how much heart this book has; how tender and empathetic it is. Penelope and Hort are characters I’ll be thinking about for quite some time. Also, this line: ‘If she never learned to see the reality of the universe, would it matter as long as the illusion was her friend?’ GOD.

Honourable mentions

Piranesi (2020) by Susanna Clarke: Inventive, fittingly labyrinthine, and strangely loveable. Clarke’s surprise second novel is best approached with minimal knowledge, and becomes increasingly compelling as it goes along.

Nothing Holds Back the Night (2011) by Delphine de Vigan, trans. George Miller: A family memoir that’s as fast-paced, gripping and tense as a thriller, and also interrogates the very idea of writing a memoir. The master key to de Vigan’s oeuvre.

Plunge Hill: A Case Study (2020) by J.M. McVulpin: There’s an Eden Book Society novella on this list pretty much every year, and 2020 is no exception: Plunge Hill is a perfect 70s horror pastiche – wickedly entertaining from start to finish.

Adrianne Geffel: A Fiction (2020) by David Hajdu: A smarter, wittier, more knowing Daisy Jones & The Six – an oral history of a fictional musician, addictively readable, with an antagonist so loathsome I wanted to crawl into the book just so I could punch him.

Catherine House (2020) by Elisabeth Thomas: A much-needed slice of escapism that takes the campus novel and turns it on its head. It’s Bunny with less gore, plus the sumptuous food of Supper Club and the sci-fi elements of The Possessions.

Nightshade (2020) by Annalena McAfee: As an artist looks back over her life and career, she is revealed as someone quite different than she initially appears. Subversive, satisfying, a real slow burn.

A Fatal Inversion (1987) by Barbara Vine: A classic example of the always-fun ‘hedonistic young people inhabit country house, bad thing happens’ plot. Clearly very influential; pleasingly slow-moving and textured.

Smart Ovens for Lonely People (2020) by Elizabeth Tan: 20 stories showcasing the author’s wit, empathy and imagination. Surreal, hilarious and sometimes totally off the wall; poignant and incisive in equal amounts.

There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job (2020) by Kikuko Tsumura, trans. Polly Barton: Deadpan yet joyful with undercurrents of magical realism, this drily funny character-driven novel felt like it could’ve been written for me. Try it if you liked The New Me, Temporary or Convenience Store Woman.

I Am Dust (2020) by Louise Beech: A theatrical ghost story with unexpected soul. Come for the cursed musical, stay for the lovely characters, magical atmosphere and heart-wrenching ending.

The Rules of Attraction (1987) by Bret Easton Ellis: I wanted to clear this off my to-read list and strongly suspected I would abandon it. Turns out I loved it – fast, funny, brilliantly awful, and somewhat more human than I was expecting.

Coming up in 2021

We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman Fleeing a scandal in New York, a formerly celebrated playwright hides out at her friend’s house in LA, but it’s not long before she gets entangled with the flighty filmmaker next door, whose latest project is ‘Fight Club, but girls’. As with several of my other favourites, though, a mere description of the plot doesn’t really capture what’s so good about it: this novel is a fizzing ball of ideas, a delightfully messy multilayered exploration of queerness, art, ambition and what it means to fail. Silverman’s depiction of unrequited love is something I just can’t stop thinking about. And the penultimate chapter is a tour de force that has to be read to be believed. Due out: 9 February from Random House

Before the Ruins by Victoria Gosling This atmospheric debut is more than the sum of its parts. I was drawn in by the blurb, which mentions a group of friends congregating at a ruined manor house and getting caught up in a game... until it all ends in a terrible betrayal™. JUICY. But what I ended up loving most was the depth of the characterisation (especially of protagonist Andy), masterful depiction of relationships (both platonic and romantic), and the level of context we’re given, something that makes the book much more rich and rewarding than it could’ve been. One for fans of The Poison Tree, The Truants and Bitter Orange. Due out: 6 May from Serpent’s Tail

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez, trans. Megan McDowell I have talked about this already, just as I have talked about Things We Lost in the Fire endlessly, but I will never stop, because you simply must read Mariana Enríquez. This newly translated collection has a potent, oppressive mood; it’s a book queasily obsessed with sex and ghosts, full of sadistic pleasure and the restless dead. Enríquez’s fiction is morbid, lustful and startlingly effective. Due out: January from Granta (UK) and Penguin Random House (USA)

Also...

Clare Chambers’ Small Pleasures, a plaintive tale of quiet heartbreak in the tradition of Anita Brookner et al; Alex Landragin’s Crossings, a better David Mitchell novel than the actual David Mitchell novel that came out this year; Gary Gibson’s very fun ghost story/sci-fi/mystery novella Ghost Frequencies; Irenosen Okojie’s kaleidoscopic, wildly inventive story collection Nudibranch; Jade Sharma’s raw, funny, poignant Problems; Jonathan Sims’ Thirteen Storeys , which contained perhaps the most memorably creepy moments of any horror fiction I have read this year.

Short stories: ‘The Red Suitcase’ by Hilaire (humorous, tense, ambiguous): ‘Loam’ by Scott Heim (well-paced, atmospheric, sensitive); ‘White Nights’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, trans. Ronald Meyer (engaging, intense, urgent); ‘Muster’s Puppets Presents...’ by Frances Leviston (both amusing and terrifying). Best anthology: Outsiders, ed. Alice Slater, with standout stories by Emma Hutton and Anna Wood.

Over the summer, I reread some of my all-time favourite books, which is a thing I definitely recommend doing. And also another excuse for me to remind you that Communion Town by Sam Thompson and The Legacy by Kirsten Tranter are superb and very underrated and you should read them.

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Best books of 2019

The Dollmaker (2019) by Nina Allan A couple of weeks ago, I picked up my copy of The Dollmaker, flipped through the pages, and felt my heart lift. I decided then and there to reread it over Christmas, and I was delighted to find that not only was it just as wonderful second time around, but that I discovered new details, made new connections, noticed things I didn’t notice at first.

As is typical of Allan’s work, this is a kaleidoscopic narrative composed of uncanny reflections, worlds within worlds. The framing narrative is about Andrew Garvie, one of several dollmakers in the book, and his relationship with a mysterious penpal named Bramber Winters. As Andrew sets out to meet Bramber for the first time, his tale is interrupted by macabre short stories ostensibly written by Ewa Chaplin, another dollmaker. These create eerie parallels with Andrew’s experience, betraying the plot’s underlying darkness. They’re also a huge pleasure in themselves.

The tagline sums up The Dollmaker as ‘a love story about becoming real’, and it’s remarkable how accurate that is. It feels as though Andrew and Bramber are being written into existence – and, as the reader turns the pages, read into existence. This is the sort of novel that speaks to the power of fiction and the possibilities it contains: I couldn’t shake the thought that my imagination was playing an active role in shaping the narrative. That the story was subtly reassembling itself while the cover lay closed.

I can’t improve on what I said about The Dollmaker in my original review, so I’ll repeat it here: this novel is an enchanted castle of stories upon stories, a dizzying labyrinth. I wanted to go on reading it, and living in its world, forever.

Water Shall Refuse Them (2019) by Lucie McKnight Hardy A slow-burn summer horror story, set during the heatwave of 1976. Teenage Nif and her family are spending a month in a cottage on the Welsh borders. Obsessed with an invented belief system she calls ‘the Creed’, Nif takes up with a strange boy called Mally. I was so engrossed by this incredible debut that it’s altered my memories – I could believe I read it while lying on scorched, dry grass, on baked earth, but no, that’s in the book, isn’t it? The characters seem vividly real, the setting crackles across the page, and the uneasy, ambiguous mood is all-consuming.

From Blue to Black (2000) by Joel Lane Joel Lane’s writing leaves me speechless. From Blue to Black is partly a book about music – focusing on two men in an indie band who become lovers – and the style entirely captures the ambience of the hazy, doomy, slow, sad rock music its characters make. Lane’s paragraphs are often miniature lessons in perfect structure and tempo. There is a persistent underlying strangeness, like a barely perceptible backing track. I could say so much more, I could copy out so many quotes (see my original review, where I did just that) because I don’t feel I have enough language available to me to actually capture how exquisite it is. A masterpiece.

The Gilda Stories (1991) by Jewelle Gomez Imagine that the protagonist of Interview with the Vampire was a black lesbian, and you might start to get an idea of the stunning, cinematic scope of The Gilda Stories. From 1850 to 2050, we walk with Gilda, observing scenes from her long and fascinating life. These stories transported me; they made me believe – I really bought Gilda as someone who had lived for hundreds of years, accruing wisdom and deepening relationships with others of her kind. This is a more coherent work than any novel-in-stories I have ever read. It is a thoughtful, cerebral type of fantasy novel, rich with visual possibilities, spellbinding.

Starve Acre (2019) by Jonathan Buckley / Starve Acre (2019) by Andrew Michael Hurley On the list twice because it was published twice this year: firstly under a pseudonym as part of the Eden Book Society series, and secondly by John Murray under Hurley’s own name. The Eden version is my favourite of the two by a (hare’s) whisker, but there’s not much between them: it’s just that a first reading of Starve Acre is so rewarding. The story – about a grieving couple marooned in a bleak, unwelcoming village – sank its claws into me slowly, building a sense of creeping dread, dialling up the tension and terror to an unbearable pitch. Like Hurley’s other novels, it is the best kind of horror story and it feels like a future cult classic.

Ghosts of My Life (2004) by Mark Fisher I’m not the sort of person who goes around saying books have ‘changed my life’. But Ghosts of My Life might truly deserve that epithet. It is essentially a collection of essays about music, TV, film and novels, but it feels like something much bigger and more significant is shifting beneath its skin. (Parts of it are so powerful as narrative that I was briefly convinced it was actually a novel.) This book introduced me to entirely new ways of looking at and thinking about pop culture; it made me feel like neglected synapses were suddenly ablaze.

The Collector (1963) by John Fowles I dithered over whether to include this: it’s a classic, so well-known and influential that it needs no recommendation from me. But it was undoubtedly one of the best books I read all year, so here it is (also, it proves I do sometimes read stuff that was published before I was born). It’d been on my to-read list for years, and I knew the basics of the plot: a lonely young man kidnaps a girl and keeps her prisoner. I wasn’t expecting it to be so emphatically about social class – something that makes it feel incredibly fresh and relevant. It got under my skin.

Underrated

Plume (2019) by Will Wiles: It’s difficult to account for just how riveting this novel is, as its premise – an alcoholic journalist trying to hold his life together over the course of a few days in London – doesn’t break new ground for literary fiction. The magic is in the writing; Jack’s narrative is urgent, funny and plaintive, a candid internal monologue studded with neologisms. Wiles also adds just the right amount of weirdness: a possibly-imaginary column of smoke towering over the city; cameo appearances from cockatoos; intriguing minor characters. (Also my favourite cover of the year.)

Insurrecto (2018) by Gina Apostol: Apostol has her characters produce competing scripts for films based on the Philippine-American War; in doing so, she recreates the disorientating effect of a factual story filtered and warped by several layers of invention, mythology and bias. This is a 340-page novel so dense with detail that it feels like 1,000 pages, and I could probably spend years trying to pick apart its astonishing maze of interlocking narratives. A tremendous achievement, one of the most impressive modern novels I’ve read.

Pharricide (1998) by Vincent de Swarte, translated 2019 by Nicholas Royle: In the year of The Lighthouse, this really should’ve gained more traction. Bleak, disturbing and supremely fucked up, it introduces us to Geoffroy Lefayen, who becomes lighthouse keeper at the notoriously isolated Cordouan. His diary entries chart a terrifying odyssey of violence and psychological terror, featuring possibly the most deranged marriage scene in literature – but it’s also funny, and Geoffroy oddly sympathetic.

Kristen Roupenian’s You Know You Want This (2019) might seem like an odd inclusion here – thanks to the notoriety of the story ‘Cat Person’, it was discussed ad nauseum. Yet the endless hot takes obscured the fact that it’s actually a really good collection, and much more eclectic than the box people wanted to put it in. Sharp, weird, excruciatingly real, psychologically astute.

Honourable mentions, part 1

A group of books by and (mainly) about young women, all published in 2019, read throughout the year.

In January, The New Me by Halle Butler, one of the quintessential novels of the millennial experience. Its precise, darkly funny portrait of a sympathetic/infuriating antiheroine makes it a must-read for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh. In April, pure entertainment in the form of Katie Lowe’s The Furies, a witchy coming-of-age novel soaked in the repulsive glamour of adolescence. Lurid and overblown, and I mean that as a compliment. Later that month, Necessary People by Anna Pitoniak, a smooth-as-silk tale of suspense packed with fabulous, campy drama (tons of rivalry, a great villain) and surprisingly thought-provoking themes (particularly around the interactions between ambition and privilege).

In May, on holiday, an embarrassment of riches. The best of them was Fake Like Me by Barbara Bourland, a brilliantly realised hybrid of the literary art novel (think What I Loved) and the psychological thriller. The unnamed narrator is on the verge of a career breakthrough when her studio burns down, taking an almost-complete series of paintings with it. She decamps to an exclusive residency to recreate her work and, in doing so, unwittingly begins to follow in the footsteps of her idol, a sculptor who took her own life. Smart, taut and compulsive; the narrator and her art are utterly believable creations.

Not forgetting Bunny by Mona Awad, a campus slasher satire on acid – bizarre, gory, razor-sharp; a joy. Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma – a novel with a perfect elevator pitch (a reality TV show set on a newly discovered planet) which ends up being most successful in depicting the everyday struggles of life with depression. The Paper Wasp by Lauren Acampora – surreal, complicated, an obsession narrative infused with philosophy and dream-logic.

Back at home, in June, Supper Club by Lara Williams, an understated novel about decadence. The backstory of Williams’ protagonist Roberta was so uncannily true to aspects of my own experience that it felt a bit like discovering myself as a character in a book. In July, The Truants by Kate Weinberg: I experienced this Secret History pastiche as a guilty pleasure, yet now I find it’s stuck with me more vividly than expected.

Ones to watch in 2020

Pine by Francine Toon: ATMOSPHERE – bags and bags of the stuff. That’s the greatest strength of Francine Toon’s gorgeous debut, set in a small Scottish town where a 10-year-old girl finds she is the only person who can remember the repeated appearances of a ghostly figure. When I think about Pine, I can see it and feel it; the richness of its world is unforgettable. (Out 23 January.)

Universal Love by Alexander Weinstein: 11 new stories from the author of Children of the New World, my favourite short story collection of the decade. Universal Love has a lot to live up to, but it meets the challenge. Just like Weinstein’s debut, this is a remarkably consistent and addictively readable book, filled with tales of the coming world – plausible sci-fi imbued with empathy. (Out 4 February.)

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell: The hype is huge, but I was wary. A novel about a 15-year-old girl having a sexual relationship with her fortysomething teacher... Did I really want to read this? I thought I might scan a couple of chapters and dismiss it. Instead, I was instantly sucked in, and barely looked up until I’d finished. It’s almost unbelievable how well Russell handles the subject matter. You feel everything the protagonist does, and the story treads a complicated, thorny, but ultimately hopeful path. (Out 10 March.)

Top 5 short stories

‘A Change of Scene’ by Nina Allan (in Aickman’s Heirs): A sequel to Robert Aickman’s ‘Ringing the Changes’ that actually surpasses its source material. Yes, I said what I said. It sees Aickman’s character Phrynne returning to the eerie town of Holyhaven with her best friend Iris. Allan recreates the original’s pervading strangeness immaculately, but builds her plot around an uneven, guilt-laced friendship which is given strong psychological foundations. It all culminates in a terrifically ambiguous ending. The whole thing is so fucking good, I’d think she was just showing off if I didn’t love it so much.

‘The Heights of Sleep’ by Sam Thompson (in Best British Short Stories 2019): Immediately riveting, masterfully constructed, quietly and inexplicably terrifying: this is pretty much a perfect short story. It made me ache to read the works of J.S. Gaunt, the imagined novelist with whom the story’s narrator is so obsessed.

‘Hardrada’ by Ashley Stokes (in Tales from the Shadow Booth, Vol. 4): In a year when folk horror was noticeably resurgent, Stokes’ story stood out as one of the finest, most original new takes. I was in awe of everything about it: the intensely evocative names, the first-person-plural narration, the sly dialogue, and (especially) the excellent closing lines.

‘Songs Like They Used to Play’ by Malcolm Devlin (in You Will Grow Into Them): What initially appears to be a time-travel story proves to be something much richer. Devlin weaves layers of complicated backstory as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, and the story is packed with so many original ideas it seems like a small miracle. Dislocation, regret, dread; a simmering, disquieting concoction.

‘Echo of the Moment’ by Xuan Juliana Wang (in Home Remedies): When an acquaintance offers Echo a cache of free designer clothes, there’s a macabre caveat: the original owner killed herself a few days earlier. But Echo can’t resist the lure of the luxurious outfits, which begin to exert a powerful effect on her life. One of the best ghost stories of the year.

With honourable mentions to: ‘Le détective’ by HP Tinker (published as a Nightjar Press chapbook). ‘Ten Days’ and ‘Astray’ by Nina Allan (in Now We Are Ten and Dead Letters, respectively). ‘Nightmare’ by Shirley Jackson (in The Missing Girl). ‘Bulb’ by Gemma Files (in New Fears 2). ‘Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom’ by Ted Chiang (in Exhalation).

Honourable mentions, part 2

To go right back to the beginning, my first book of 2019 was a great one: the characters of Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers (2018) are still running around my head 12 months later. It’s a novel to really sink your teeth into: an epic saga of friendship, split between Chicago in the 1980s and Paris in 2015, with some of the most moving scenes I read all year. It also has a subplot about someone leaving their art collection to a museum which is more gripping than I thought possible.

Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror was as good as everyone kept saying. I often think about two of the essays: ‘Ecstasy’, a hypnotic meditation on faith, drugs and music, and ‘Reality TV Me’, which has such an irresistible narrative drive that it works equally well when read as a short story. On the subject of essays: Mark Fisher’s writing led me to Ian Penman’s, and It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track (2019), a collection of biographical pieces about musicians, taught me so much about its subjects.

Like The Collector, Ben Lerner’s 10:04 (2014) almost seems like a pointless inclusion – it’s not new, and everyone knows it’s great – but I loved it. I’d been getting sick of autofiction, but 10:04 made me freshly aware of how effective it can be. I also got round to Melissa Broder’s The Pisces (2018) and, without particularly high expectations, found it revelatory – who else is writing so openly and accessibly about the mechanics of female desire?

Early in the year, I read Nina Allan’s second novel The Rift (2017), a spectacular, genre-defying deconstruction of the ‘lost girl’ trope. In September, I read the revised 2019 edition of her interlinked story collection The Silver Wind – already wonderful, now made more expansive and powerful by the addition of new stories.

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Best books of 2018

2017 was such a great reading year, I suppose it was inevitable that 2018 would pale a little in comparison. I feel like I generally read a lot of good stuff, without having a set-in-stone ‘best of’. 2018 was a better year for discovering new-to-me writers I have fallen in love with, and learning more about what I enjoy and appreciate as a reader; not so good for putting together a structured list of favourite novels.

So this will be a bit different from the best-of lists I’ve done in the past. No top 10s – just a collection of books, stories and writers I’ve loved this year.

Then again, I could just write Nina Allan’s name and leave it at that.

The first thing of Allan’s I read was a short, subtle, virtually perfect horror story, ‘Four Abstracts’, in the anthology New Fears. I was so absolutely blown away by its brilliance that I immediately started gathering more of the author’s work. So far, I’ve read four collections of short stories, A Thread of Truth (2007), The Silver Wind (2011), Microcosmos (2013) and Stardust (2013); the novellas Spin (2013) and The Harlequin (2015); and her incredible debut novel The Race (2014); as well as 17 separately published short stories.

Allan writes the kind of fiction I like best: speculative but grounded in reality. She often writes about possible worlds, about overlapping and intersecting versions of the same life. Her books are populated by characters who immediately seem real and whose fates you care fiercely about. She has the ability to deliver a sucker-punch of a narrative surprise very calmly – so when there’s a killer twist (and sometimes there is), you’ll never see it coming. Full of literary and pop-culture references, her stories are shot through with a deep knowledge and understanding of what makes genre work; always multilayered and effortlessly imaginative.

If you want to start reading Allan, I would recommend beginning – as I did – with some of her short stories, ideally ‘Four Abstracts’ or ‘Maggots’. If you love those, you’ll almost certainly love The Silver Wind and The Race, the best of her books (in my view). Her third novel The Dollmaker – her first to be published by a mainstream imprint – comes out in April 2019, and I hope it’s going to be huge, but at the same time I want to guard her writing jealously and keep it to myself. (I’m getting ready to ‘well, actually...’ anyone who dares criticise it without having first read her entire back catalogue.)

I’m not going to write at length about everything of Allan’s I’ve read this year – you’ll probably know from the above summary whether her writing is likely to interest you or not. All I’ll say is that discovering her work made me feel like something had finally clicked into place. As though I’d always been missing these stories without ever knowing it. Less than a year after discovering her, I can confidently name Nina Allan as my favourite author and the most inspiring writer I have ever read.

I know I basically said ‘no numbered lists’ in the introduction but... I Still Dream (2018) by James Smythe is my undisputed #1 novel of 2018, the one I immediately think of when anyone asks what my favourite book of the year was, the one I’ve most often recommended. It’s the life story of Laura Bow, inventor of an AI, Organon, that will change the world. It moves through time, from recent past to distant future, imagining how developments in technology might change our relationships with one another. But Smythe never loses sight of the individual at his story’s core: Laura is one of the most believable, well-rounded protagonists of any book I’ve read in recent memory. I Still Dream is electric with all the messy joy and awfulness of human life, while also full of very smart and incisive writing about tech, data and privacy. Visionary and compelling, as intelligent as it is compassionate – I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying this.

Joel Lane was another of my favourite discoveries of the year. I found The Witnesses Are Gone (2009) perfect not just because of the fascinating plot and excellent prose, but because it might have been written to order especially for me: the atmosphere, the unspecific weirdness of the horror element, even the micro-stories of faulty relationships, self-doubt and political activism that creep into the background. Lane’s writing finds the eerie/ambiguous in everything, and this book – about a man who becomes obsessed with a mysterious film director – makes effective use of its dilapidated urban setting in the author’s native Birmingham. I savoured every word.

In the Miso Soup (2005) by Ryū Murakami, trans. Ralph McCarthy, depicts a tense and nightmarish descent into the seedy underworld of Tokyo as Kenji, a young tour guide, finds himself in thrall to an American tourist named Frank. The setting is intensely visual in its neon-soaked lucidity; Murakami perfectly evokes the experience of navigating a familiar place alongside a stranger; Frank is one of the most horrifying literary villains I’ve come across. Addictive, riveting, deliciously strange, it truly had me hooked from start to finish.

Social Creature (2018) by Tara Isabella Burton charts the toxic friendship between two women, broke writer Louise and wealthy socialite Lavinia. Once the two become entangled, it’s not hard to see where the story is going: the joy for me was in the luminous writing, clever nuances and dry, knowing narrative. Social Creature is often described and reviewed as though it’s just a frivolous, throwaway thriller,and it can be read like that: it is readable, fast-paced, and a lot of fun. But if you care to look, it’s far deeper and smarter than it seems at first glance. Discovering Burton’s short fantasy fiction, informed by ancient history and myth, made me understand the foundations her novel is built on, and why it works so wonderfully.

Trick (2018) by Domenico Starnone, trans. Jhumpa Lahiri, is another masterclass from one of my favourite writers of fiction working today. An ageing illustrator, struggling with his latest work, visits Naples, where he is to spend a few days looking after his grandson. I’m not quite sure how Starnone manages to turn such an ordinary domestic scenario into an exhilarating, multilayered drama, but here we are. There’s rain lashing the windows, a city seething with ghosts of the narrator’s past selves, and a psychological duel between a man in his seventies and a wily, precocious four-year-old. Trick is about youth, old age, family, social mobility and impostor syndrome. It’s a story for everyone, and a delight to read.

Every year there’s at least one book I read and love and just cannot understand why it hasn’t become a bestseller. This year’s is Rubik (2017) by Elizabeth Tan. Rubik is a novel-in-stories, a web of interconnected narratives that loosely circle the title character, Elena Rubik, and others. Their lives overlap and intersect in unexpected ways. The stories range from everyday scenes to the more exotic: impossible adventures, possible futures, fanfic, daydreams. The resulting work is a virtuosic kaleidoscope of reality and fantasy in which the world we know seems to end up being reconfigured. A Visit from the Goon Squad meets Inception, with wit and heart and boundless imagination.

My favourite new writer in translation was Niviaq Korneliussen, whose debut Crimson, trans. Anna Halager, is set in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. It’s narrated by a group of friends who are in the process of exploring their sexualities and gender identities. Their voices are all wonderfully and furiously alive. There’s something uniquely magical about the texture of Crimson, the way it evokes its setting so effortlessly and without cliche, the way it achieves depth of characterisation in short chapters, trimmed of all superfluous detail. It plumbs the darkest depths of its characters’ despair in order to show us how there must be rebirth before change and acceptance is possible. An electrifying, invigorating and intensely moving debut.

I loved everything I read by Gary Budden this year, but most of all Judderman (2018), published as part of the Eden Book Society series of novellas under the pseudonym D.A. Northwood. In the powder-keg atmosphere of 1970s London, two brothers are trying to catalogue the city’s forgotten stories. When one goes missing, the other is compelled to follow in his brother’s footsteps, venturing into the ‘thin places’ of London. Lurking in the background is the judderman, a bogeyman-like figure composed of everything bad and sick and rotten in the city’s neglected corners. This is a story rooted in the grubby reality of everyday life, yet one that feels truly magical in the manner of a fairytale. It also fits neatly into Budden’s canon of the strange landscape.

Perfidious Albion (2018) by Sam Byers is a novel that tackles the current political climate, and unlike some other attempts (ahem), it does so brilliantly. It follows a large cast of characters through a saga of online/offline and personal/corporate politics, and as in his underrated debut Idiopathy, Byers is fantastic at depicting relationships. Perfidious Albion is about a small town as a microcosm of British society, and whether ‘small town’ even means anything in an uber-connected age. It’s a timely satire that is genuinely smart and genuinely funny. Also has the best ending I’ve read this year – entirely unexpected, and fabulously done.

Reading I Am the Brother of XX (2017) by Fleur Jaeggy, trans. Gini Alhadeff, I was instantly transfixed. Jaeggy has a voice like no other – strange, sharp, staccato, never a word wasted. You will encounter disturbing scenes in her short stories, but it would be wrong to categorise them as horror. Rather, they’re about the indistinctly strange and disquieting, with much of the detail implied rather than made explicit. I found the arrangement of words endlessly fascinating, and couldn’t stop highlighting sentences and passages. So odd yet such a thrilling discovery.

At the beginning of the year, I found out a sequel to Matt Wesolowski’s Six Stories – titled Hydra – had been published in late 2017. I devoured that, and then came Changeling (2018). While every book in this horror-thriller series has been supremely enjoyable, Changeling was a step up: creepy, yes, but also an important, well-researched, sensitively told story about people and relationships. The plot sees podcaster Scott King investigating a 30-year-old disappearance that took place close to a supposedly haunted forest. If this was ‘just’ a horror novel, it would be a very effective one. But there’s an extra layer of character development – delving into themes of manipulation and coercive control – that really elevates it.

I don’t know whether to categorise Hell (1998) by Kathryn Davis as literary, experimental or horror fiction, and therein lies its genius. In a sentence, it’s a unique haunted-house story about a 1950s family, a 19th-century writer, and the inhabitants of a doll’s house. In a phrase, it’s... mind-bending. Histories overlap and memoir meets fiction as the narrative shifts between timelines that keep leaving bits of themselves behind. This book is a hallucinatory journey, an elaborate feat of layering, and the language is stunning.

So far I’ve either read or sampled 12 books due to be published in 2019, and Looker by Laura Sims is my top pick. The plot is simple: a recently divorced woman develops a fascination with her neighbour, a famous actress, and the obsession quickly consumes her. Pitched somewhat unfairly as a psychological thriller, it’s really an intricate and very dark character study. You’ll find yourself trying to pick apart the narrator’s fantasies from her reality, searching for what she’s leaving out of her twisted, biased account. A must-read for anyone who appreciates a love-to-hate protagonist.

Honourable mentions

All the Devils Are Here (2002) by David Seabrook, an idiosyncratic essay collection, has stuck in my head for its strange, dreamy ambience (as well as having my cover of the year).

The Third Hotel (2018) by Laura van den Berg is a sublimely self-assured novel. A dreamlike noir about a woman finding her husband – killed in a hit-and-run months ago – alive and well in Cuba, it’s packed with subtext and conjures up a shimmering, fluid vision of Havana.

I loved, but didn’t like, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) by Ottessa Moshfegh. The overprivileged protagonist of her second novel is hellishly obnoxious, with little to no redeeming features. Yet it’s undeniable that Moshfegh is one of the boldest writers and most confident stylists currently working.

Experimental Film (2015) by Gemma Files may be the densest, most detailed horror novel I’ve ever read. This tale of a journalist uncovering the early films of a 19th-century spiritualist is smart, surprising and scary – and there’s not a dull page in the book.

The Other Place and Other Stories (1953) by J.B. Priestley was an unexpected treat, containing some of the best short stories I read all year (in a very good year for short stories). The best of them combine the innovative strangeness of Robert Aickman’s work with the relationship and character insights of Daphne du Maurier.

In Indecent (2018) by Corinne Sullivan, a deeply lonely and emotionally immature teaching assistant unwisely gets involved with a student, and her mental health crashes and burns. I found Imogene infuriating, yet her story got right under my skin and has proved to be unforgettable.

The Rending and the Nest (2018) by Kaethe Schwehn is the most interesting post-apocalyptic novel since Station Eleven, existing in the same space between literary and science fiction. I’m still in awe of the amount Schwehn made me feel (and I mean feel) about the bizarre setup, in which the women of a small commune start giving birth to inanimate objects.

I think Convenience Store Woman (2018) by Sayaka Murata, trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori, has been on every best-of-2018 list I’ve read, and deservedly so. It manages the incredibly difficult balancing act of being quirky but not annoying.

The Little Friend (2002) by Donna Tartt will forever remind me of the summer of 2018 and its blistering heatwave. It was the book I read when it was too hot to move or even sleep, and thinking about it brings me back to Harriet’s Mississippi neighbourhood, Tartt’s langurous, indulgent storytelling. What an experience.

Melmoth (2018) by Sarah Perry contains some of the most memorable scenes I read all year – a stunning depiction of snow-dusted Prague, the looming darkness of a tortured spectre, and one indelible sequence set mid-opera.

I stupidly read Providence (1982) by Anita Brookner with the hope of a happy ending for poor Kitty Maule. Brookner manipulates the reader so effectively that I raced through much of it with my heart in my mouth; the final third unfolds with an almost unbearable sense of high-wire tension that rivals the finest thrillers.

OK, Mr Field (2018) by Katharine Kilalea observes the title character as he moves to Cape Town and descends into a numb, obsessive loneliness. I really enjoyed this slim, idiosyncratic novel of alienation in spite of its sparse uneventfulness.

The Psychology of Time Travel (2018) by Kate Mascarenhas was pure fun and enjoyment. And very refreshing in being a woman-centric alternate history that doesn’t fall back on the trope of female oppression.

The best short stories I have read this year: ‘Four Abstracts’, ‘Maggots’ and ‘Bellony’ by Nina Allan. ‘The Finkelstein 5’ by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. ‘Where No Shadows Fall’ by Gary Budden. ‘Black Country’ by Joel Lane. ‘Hannah-Beast’ by Jennifer McMahon. ‘Guest of Honour’ by J.B. Priestley. ‘The Lure’ by Nicholas Royle. ‘Above the Wedding’ by Chris Power. ‘Room Service’ by Heidi Amsinck.

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Best books of 2017

The top 10

1. The Idiot (2017) by Elif Batuman There was never going to be any other contender for my #1 favourite. The Idiot isn't just one of the best books of the year, it's one of the best books of my life, an unforgettable, transformative novel. Only a few books make such an indelible impression that they come to feel like part of your identity, and The Idiot is one of these rare finds. The Idiot weaves an idiosyncratic and charming plot around Selin, a fish out of water in her first year at Harvard, a young woman of enormous intelligence struggling to untangle the mysterious codes of behaviour that seem to come naturally to everyone else around her. (Her deadpan observations are often utterly hilarious, and although it is also heartbreaking, I don't think any book has made me laugh this much in years.) Many of her choices are almost random, since she has little idea which path to take. Central to Selin's development throughout the book is her close, tense, peculiar friendship with Ivan, a slightly older maths student. She becomes infatuated: her decision to spend the summer teaching English in Hungary, his home country, is a result of that. I loved Selin so much that, by the time I reached the end of the book, I felt like I was being wrenched away from a real friend. She is so palpable, so true-to-life – the perfect mix of naive and sarcastic, rebel and conformist, book-smart and ignorant. The Idiot is the sort of book I want to recommend with real passion and precision; not by shouting about it to anyone who'll listen, but by seeking out those I know will appreciate it and ardently pressing it upon them. So good I could WEEP.

2. Based on a True Story (2017) by Delphine de Vigan, trans. George Miller Leave it to a French author to turn what sounds like the formula for a standard psychological thriller into a kaleidoscopic, existential meditation on writing, identity and friendship. Continually inviting speculation as to how much of it is autobiographical, Based on a True Story follows an author, Delphine, who has recently written an unexpectedly successful novel and is unsure what to do next. When she meets the glamorous L. at a party, she seems to have found the perfect confidante. But L.'s influence grows more and more toxic, and Delphine begins to lose her hold on her own identity. The story is sinister and edge-of-your-seat gripping, yet fiercely intelligent and philosophical: an utterly fascinating maze of fact, fiction and perception. 3. Devil's Day (2017) by Andrew Michael Hurley John Pentecost returns to his family home, a farm in a tiny and decidedly old-fashioned rural community, after the death of his grandfather. As Devil's Day – an eccentric village holiday linked to local legend – grows closer, old rivalries are resurrected and secrets come spilling out. Incredibly vibrant and masterfully paced, this is a bucolic tale of family and nature, death and renewal, history and folklore, and what lurks beneath the surface; it only gestures towards the macabre, and is all the more unnerving for it. It's like Robert Aickman rewrote a Thomas Hardy novel. While Hurley's debut The Loney was effective, I thought this was ten times better. 4. Harriet Said... (1972) by Beryl Bainbridge Despite the pervasiveness of coming-of-age themes in adult fiction, it's rare to come across a writer who is able to truly capture the strange contradictions of adolescence. In Harriet Said..., Beryl Bainbridge gets it exactly right and it is terrifying. This is a remarkable, nuanced character portrait of two precocious girls at the younger end of their teens: the unnamed narrator and her manipulative friend Harriet. Over the course of a claustrophobic summer, the narrator grows dangerously close to a much older man. It's a powerful and beautifully written story that drips with unease, feels horribly real, and is perhaps even more disturbing today than when it was published.

5. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2016) by Iain Reid This year I read a handful of books that resembled nightmares in both construction and imagery. This was the best, the most effective, and the most memorable. A young couple are on a long, lonely drive, with one – the narrator – wondering whether she should end the relationship (hence the title). What unfolds from there is probably best described as 'psychological horror', replete with uncanny details. It steadily ramps up the disquiet, constantly veering off-course so you're left disorientated, asking yourself what the hell you're reading (in a good way). A masterclass of suspense and restrained weirdness. 6. Children of the New World: Stories (2016) by Alexander Weinstein In these tales of our incipient future, virtual lives are ubiquitous and the real world is rapidly deteriorating. However, it's the human element that makes these stories so successful and emotionally affecting. The sharply observed details, the rich characters, the imaginative visions of a world to come: everything about it is brilliant, my list of favourite stories is practically the entire book, and there's barely a flaw to be picked at. The best short story collection I've read in years and the definition of 'all killer, no filler'. 7. Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right (2017) by Angela Nagle The best political book I have read in aeons, maybe ever. In an accessible but unpatronising study, Angela Nagle draws a line through history from the 'culture wars' of the 1960s to those of today, and undertakes a review of the many, many factions of what is often sweepingly referred to as the alt-right. She writes even-handedly and with a fair critical eye about recent iterations of disruptive political groupings on both the right and left, achieving a perfect balance between academic critique, political commentary and assured, intelligent, non-embarrassing writing about the internet and its unique subcultures. In a year of political turmoil, Nagle's voice felt not just refreshing but essential.

8. The Answers (2017) by Catherine Lacey Broke, sick and out of options, Mary replies to a mysterious ad promising an 'income-generating experience'. This turns out to be a role as one of a series of Girlfriends to an A-list celebrity who thinks he can solve the 'problem' of romantic love by deconstructing and segregating its elements. Lacey writes Mary brilliantly, teasing out unique insights, naive and profound at the same time, about love and relationships. Her observations are so clean and sharp, her voice in a class of its own. I loved absolutely everything about the way this unusual, wonderful book was written – it's magical. 9. A Natural (2017) by Ross Raisin There were other books I rated higher this year, but few have stuck with me quite as vividly as A Natural. Tom is a talented young footballer whose promised success has failed to materialise; instead, he ends up playing for a middling League Two team. Introverted and sensitive, Tom doesn't feel he fits in, and that only gets worse when he embarks on a new relationship. It's a tender, honest novel exploring sexuality, repression and self-hatred. It's painful and precise on growing up and what 'success' looks like. I see it as a feminist novel about masculinity, looking at how patriarchal norms fail men who don't conform. 10. The Furnished Room (1961) by Laura Del-Rivo Published in 1961 and a bestseller in its day, this remarkable thriller seems to have (very unfairly) slipped into relative obscurity. Like the lost halfway point between Crime and Punishment and American Psycho, it charts the mindscape of a nihilist, chauvinist clerk, Joe Beckett, through his life of numbing excess in the bedsits, offices and cafés of 1960s London. When an insalubrious acquaintance asks him to murder his ailing aunt, Joe approaches it – in typically cold fashion – as an interesting moral dilemma, but things inevitably spiral out of control.

Honourable mentions

Books published in 2017

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud The title is apt: Messud takes a tired premise – two teenage girls growing up and growing apart – and sets it ablaze with knockout writing. Incandescent, razor-sharp, breathtakingly confident.

You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann, trans. Ross Benjamin Brilliant modern take on the haunted house – like Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves if it'd been ruthlessly edited down to only its most authentic and menacing elements.

This Young Monster by Charlie Fox Sublime collection of feverish, phantasmagorical essays that pull apart the distinctions between fiction, fact and surrealism, exploring the intersections of pop culture, queerness and self-image.

The Party by Elizabeth Day An irresistible formula (unreliable outcast narrator enters into golden world of privilege) executed flawlessly. My pick of the year for sheer unadulterated enjoyment.

American War by Omar El Akkad An extraordinarily rich dystopian vision in which a future USA is riven by civil war. Absorbing, emotionally wrenching, and complete with a brilliant heroine in the shape of rebel fighter Sarat Chestnut.

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez, trans. Megan McDowell Not so much horror stories as stories about a country (Argentina) haunted and menaced by history. Powerful, memorable and wonderfully bizarre.

How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza After her abusive partner leaves, Mary becomes obsessed with a wild fox and begins to lose her grip on reality. Hands down one of the strangest, most audacious and uncomfortable stories I've read; it will leave you queasily transfixed.

Ties by Domenico Starnone, trans. Jhumpa Lahiri A portrait of a disintegrating marriage structured like a dossier of evidence, analysing the perspectives of wife, husband and daughter. Packed with emotion, yet elegant in its approach to the damage wrought by destructive behaviour.

Sweetpea by CJ Skuse If you've ever wondered what American Psycho reimagined as chick-lit would be like (and I mean, who hasn't?), this is it. Very bloody, very funny.

Books published before 2017

Call Me by Your Name (2007) by André Aciman You're probably familiar with the film; the book it's based on is more than worth your time, too. A heady evocation of first lust that brings its Mediterranean setting vividly to life, it's agonising as often as it's sexy.

This is the Ritual (2016) by Rob Doyle Lacerating short stories that approach (and rip apart) the trope of the tortured artist from a working-class perspective.

Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991) by Mary Gaitskill Chronicles the friendship between two very different – but equally idiosyncratic – women, and traces their tortured histories. Startling and insightful, with unforgettable characters.

70% Acrylic 30% Wool (2013) by Viola Di Grado, trans. Michael Reynolds An Italian girl living in England deals with terrible grief, unrequited love and the mysteries of communication. Funny and twisted and dark, furious and bittersweet and raw.

FantasticLand (2016) by Mike Bockoven An oral history of the bloody disaster that unfolded after a hurricane left a few hundred employees of a theme park cut off from civilisation. Unbelievably fun horror with great worldbuilding.

The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing (2014) by Nicholas Rombes A curious and remarkable book which somehow makes descriptions of imagined films mesmerising. Dreamlike and disquieting.

​The Babysitter at Rest (2016) by Jen George In these surreal-yet-mundane stories, George plays with her characters like they're figures in a very peculiar dolls' house. She's amazing at combining the painfully real with humour and fantasy.

Coming up in 2018

The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow by Danny Denton You're probably already familiar with how much I loved this, so I won't go on about it, except to say again that it is a breathtaking patchwork of genres, a triumph of wordplay and a total joy to read. (If it wasn't a 2018 title, it would be in my top 10.)

A few more for the road

Life and all its ugliness, glory, grief, joy and horror: The Future Won't Be Long by Jarett Kobek; Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patty Yumi Cottrell; The Animators by Kayla Rae Whittaker; All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg; Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle Dark futures, the terrifying possibilities of technology, and what comes after its collapse: UnAmerican Activities by James Miller; Broadcast by Liam Brown; No Dominion by Louise Welsh; The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy Creepy shit (need I say more): The White Road by Sarah Lotz; The Wrong Train by Jeremy de Quidt; The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell; The Lost Village by Neil Spring; The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements When you just need to get stuck in to an engrossing thriller: He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly; Bonfire by Krysten Ritter; If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio; Last Seen by Lucy Clarke

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Best books of 2016

🏆 Top 5 (published in 2016) 🏆

1. The Eleventh Letter by Tom Tomaszewski Harley Street psychotherapist Chris Katiwa is working late when a snowstorm descends and he spots a woman alone in the street outside, clad in a fur coat. He invites her in, and together, they listen to recordings of Chris's sessions with a murder suspect thirty years earlier. From there, it shifts and morphs, becoming ever-more intriguing, dreamlike and enigmatic. It's a ghost story, a murder mystery, and a love story, layering questions on top of each other, moving between truth and fiction, dreams and reality, blurring the lines of characters' identities. It plays out like a lost David Lynch film. When it was over, I was thrown into a reading slump as I wondered how on earth I could possibly follow it. If there's one book I've read this year that I want to persuade others to try, it's undoubtedly this one.

2. Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler 22-year-old Tess arrives in New York with a car and little else. She's hired as a lowly backwaiter by 'the best restaurant in the city'; what follows is an incandescent coming-of-age story about the next year of her life. Danler does incredible things with this familiar formula, making words shimmer and sing, showing how a job (any job) can be transformative, and detailing all those painful lessons you learn when you first become an actual adult. At the same time as being a compelling depiction of restaurant life behind the scenes, Sweetbitter acknowledges so many important (yet little-discussed) truths about growing up – all the messy, lonely, unglamorous, boring things that, in the end, make up most of our lives and ourselves. 3. The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel I read an ARC of McDaniel's debut in April. On one hand, the grey weather made a poor backdrop for the setting of sun-baked, neon-lit Breathed, Ohio; on the other, I don't think I've ever been so glad to have read a book early, free from any preconceptions. (Later it received some pretty savage reviews and controversially won the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize.) I was dazzled by the lush, metaphor-rich prose, more like poetry or song lyrics than regular fiction; I fell in love with the quirky characters. With its idiosyncratic tale of a boy who claims to be the devil moving in with a troubled family during a violent heatwave, Melted paints an unexpectedly heartbreaking portrait of small-town prejudice, platonic love, and the power of forgiveness. 4. The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing It's hard to pin down The Lonely City, a superb work of creative non-fiction combining memoir, art history, psychology, and sociotechnological commentary. Laing weaves the stories of four outsider artists into an account of her time living alone in New York. Her approach is both brutally honest and refreshing, drawing a clear line between loneliness and solitude, and resisting trite conclusions. Essential reading for anyone who has ever lived alone, felt lonely, or struggled with their experience of solitude – so, virtually everyone. 5. Death and the Seaside by Alison Moore Bonnie Falls is a university drop-out and would-be writer whose life is unremarkable until she is befriended by her landlady, the unusual (and fabulously named) Sylvia Slythe. Sylvia takes an interest in a story Bonnie is halfway through writing, and suggests a trip to the seaside will provide inspiration. But, of course, Sylvia is not all she seems. Moore is an absolute master of the mundane; her writing recognises the strangeness and poetry inherent in it. Ordinary on the surface, Death and the Seaside slowly reveals itself as a tightly coiled tale of manipulation and imagination that delves deep into its characters' psyches.

🏆 Top 5 (published before 2016) 🏆

1. Look At Me (1983) by Anita Brookner Frances Hinton is introspective and chronically lonely, and her existence is stark – until she is taken up by a carelessly glamorous couple, Nick and Alix Fraser. She's besotted, but the reader can see what Frances shuts out: the Frasers see her as a vaguely amusing, slightly pathetic pet. Nevertheless, when Frances meets Nick's colleague James, the love she has longed for seems to beckon... You might be able to guess where this is going, but it doesn't matter, because Frances is a masterpiece of a character: deeply, painfully moving, but maddening at the same time. She is absolutely tragic, endlessly quotable, and Brookner deconstructs her ruthlessly. Look At Me is a devastatingly incisive novel with so much to say about the human condition. It is absolutely brilliant.

2. You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (2015) by Alexandra Kleeman One of the first books I read this year has remained one of the most memorable. The characters are known only as A, B and C; they inhabit a banal yet uncanny tableau. Images of consumer culture are significant – snack brand mascot Kandy Kat is a recurring motif; there's a food-based cult – but You Too is something odder and more interesting than the social satire it's often misidentified as. It has more in common with weird fiction; there's quiet horror here, grounded in familiar cynicism. When I say this novel is genuinely unlike anything else I've read, I really mean it. It's deeply surreal, but fresh and luminous with it. (While writing this, I basically kept thinking dreamily about bits of the story and sighing. It is that good, and you have to take my word for it, because writing a short description of it is very difficult indeed.) 3. Animals (2014) by Emma Jane Unsworth Sometimes, you read a book that instantly feels so close to your heart it's as though it was written just for you – like a part of you inhabits it, or the other way round. That's how it was with Animals, Emma Jane Unsworth's raucous, profound, hilarious, sad, exasperating, magnificent novel about the lives, lusts and excesses of two women, Laura and Tyler. I'd wanted to read it for two years, but was scared to, in case it wasn't what I'd always hoped. In the end, it was even better than I'd imagined, relatable in the most intimate ways. The ending made me weep – not with happiness or sadness, but with relief at how the author had chosen to conclude Laura's story. 4. Eileen (2015) by Ottessa Moshfegh More than any other book on this list, Eileen needs little introduction from me, and its increasing ubiquity throughout the year makes a case for it as one of the defining novels of 2016. I have recited my one-sentence Twitter review of the book – 'one of the realest portraits of self-loathing I've ever read' – numerous times in the past months, but it bears repeating one more time. For me, the noir-thriller aspect of Eileen is its weakest; it shines as a character study of the titular protagonist, with all her foibles and bad habits laid horribly bare. Eileen Dunlop joins the ranks of unforgettable female characters who inspire sympathy and repulsion simultaneously. 5. High Tide (2008) by Inga Ābele, translated 2013 by Kaija Straumanis I picked up High Tide because I wanted to sample some Latvian literature before visiting Riga in March; I hadn't reckoned on it being quite so remarkable. It tells the life story of a woman named Ieva in reverse chronological order. Loaded with symbolism (the high tide is a recurring metaphor), it's a loose mystery and a backwards journey through the development of one person's essence. It's also a romance, something I would normally hate, but in Ābele's hands it's a thing of wonder; she captures the exhilarating madness of passionate love effortlessly. The translation is excellent, resulting in a winding, playful style that's as fluid as poetry, reminiscent of Ali Smith's work.

🏅 Honourable mentions 🏅

Literary fiction The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida Rachel Cusk's Outline meets The Talented Mr Ripley in the story of a nameless woman's identity-shifting odyssey through Morocco. Intriguing, taut, and infuriating in the best possible way. What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell This uncomfortable account of desire, shame and loneliness feels so intense and personal that it's often hard to believe it's fiction. It's appeared on best-of-2016 lists everywhere, and deservedly so: it has the air of an instant classic. Trencherman by Eben Venter, translated by Luke Stubbs Venter transposes Heart of Darkness to a nightmarish near-future South Africa and turns it into a dystopian fever dream. The result is horrifying but unforgettable. The Countenance Divine by Michael Hughes A multi-layered, genre-defying historical/fantasy novel with four interconnected timelines and incredibly assured voices. Recommended to fans of David Mitchell.

Ghost stories and horror The Burnaby Experiments by Stephen Gilbert This tale of a boy with unusual powers and his relationship with an eccentric mentor is both terrifying and philosophical, with an ending worthy of the horror greats. First published in 1952, it's a bit of a lost cult classic that deserves to be better known. Thin Air by Michelle Paver Another near-perfect 1930s ghost story from the author of the excellent Dark Matter, once again using a dangerous expedition in extreme conditions to play on the theme of isolation. It's scary in creative ways, atmospheric, and totally absorbing. The Lunar Cats by Lynne Truss I'm categorising it as horror because it involves evil talking cats in cahoots with the devil (just go with it), but The Lunar Cats is also the funniest book I read this year. Wonderfully silly. Hold by Kirsten Tranter Grief and desire are explored through a subtle, quiet, shimmering ghost story about a hidden room. Tranter, one of my personal favourite underrated writers, handles vagueness masterfully throughout.

Crime and thrillers The Trespasser by Tana French The sixth book in the Dublin Murder Squad series is the finest yet. Antoinette Conway is a typical French heroine – beautifully realised, with a tough yet lyrical voice – and the plot is gripping as hell. Foxlowe by Eleanor Wasserberg Life in a rural English commune is idyllic, until it isn't. The fallout is documented by a zealous acolyte named Green, who refuses to give up on 'the Family', and there are unpredictable turns galore. The Execution by Hugo Wilcken A superior unreliable-narrator novel following a man's spiral into paranoia and delusion. Both protagonist and narrative are fascinatingly odd, making for a weirdly menacing ambience. The Apartment by S.L. Grey Psychological thriller meets horror in this supremely entertaining, fast-paced ride about the holiday house-swap from hell. When She Was Bad by Tammy Cohen Dubbed 'office noir', Cohen's tremendously enjoyable thriller achieved the rare feat of actually keeping me guessing all the way to the end.

Short stories 'Near Zennor' by Elizabeth Hand, from Errantry Honestly, this tale of a man investigating his late wife's past is a work of art, about as close to perfection as a short story can get. Described by the author as her attempt to write a Robert Aickman-esque 'strange story', it not only achieves its goal, but arguably exceeds its source material. 'Alice Baker' by Susan Hill, from The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories The standout story in Hill's new collection concerns a strange new employee joining a close-knit team working in a shabby office. It's very eerie, and at the same time completely authentic. 'The Scratch' by Andrew Taylor, from Fireside Gothic Like the other two in this volume, 'The Scratch' is a cosy-creepy tale perfect for the winter months. It's as much a portrait of difficult family relationships as it is an uncanny story, making the quietly unveiled weirdness at its core all the more effective. Coming up in 2017 The Fall Guy by James Lasdun An elegant, glittering literary thriller about fabulously wealthy, fantastically awful people stabbing each other in the back. Schadenfreude at its most pleasurable.

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Best books of 2015, part 2: July to December

Books from this year

The Ecliptic by Benjamin Wood It's a tough call, but I think this just about takes the crown as my No.1 favourite book of absolutely everything I read in 2015. I still get warm fuzzy feelings when I think about it. Elspeth Conroy is a long-term resident at Portmantle, an island retreat for artists; the first part of the book shows her forming a relationship with a new member of the community, while the second tells us how she became a painter, and what happened to lead her to Portmantle. The third and fourth parts of the book then draw all the strands of these stories together in brilliant, surprising, entirely unexpected ways. A beautifully written, magical, completely engrossing novel about inspiration, imagination and the creation of art.

Book of Numbers by Joshua Cohen The first time I started reading this book, I hated it and abandoned it. I'm still not entirely sure what made me go back, but by the time I was finally through with it, I'd done the biggest about-turn ever and decided it was a genuine once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece and possibly the greatest modern novel I have read. It's about a struggling writer who's contracted to ghostwrite the autobiography of a billionaire genius, the founder of search engine/tech giant Tetration. And both of them are called Joshua Cohen. The plot barely matters, though, because what makes it good is Cohen's incredible use of language and constant ingenious, witty wordplay. Book of Numbers isn't for everyone - it's very long, tough going and offensive in parts - but if you get hooked, it's astonishing. Reading back over quotes from it makes my heart sing; practically every sentence is a work of art. 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith Yeong-hye is an elusive, inscrutable character who disrupts the quiet stability of her family life when she chooses to stop eating meat - the consequence of a series of gruesome dreams. The story is made up of three parts, each observing Yeong-hye from the point of view of a different person - her husband, her brother-in-law, her sister - as she gradually becomes anorexic and suffers delusions. Beautifully translated from the original Korean, The Vegetarian is a deft character study that shifts and transforms all the time, making it hard to pin down what it's really about - just like its protagonist. Additional shoutout to that fantastic cover.

Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum This is the story of adulterous housewife Anna Benz; on one level, a simple tale of ennui and betrayal. But there are so many layers to Anna's story, and it's so cleverly constructed, that I couldn't tear myself away from it. I was gripped all the way through, and would have enjoyed it immensely anyway, but when I reached the end and saw how perfectly every single part of the story had been pieced together - how even the smallest details have meaning and significance that doesn't necessarily become clear until later - I was even more impressed with it. Hausfrau also paints such a vivid picture of Zürich and its environs that it's (probably) the next best thing to actually going there.

Number 11 by Jonathan Coe It's rare that a late-career book turns out to be the author's best, but Number 11 is - for me at least - exactly that. It's a sort-of-sequel to What a Carve Up!, revisiting members of the odious Winshaw family, and delivering a satirical view of modern-day British society. But it's also a very moving and human story which follows two friends from childhood onwards, telling a number of connected tales about what happens to (and around) them. So riveting and real that I felt like I was going to cry when I finished it and was forced to accept that I couldn't spend any more time with these characters.

Dietland by Sarai Walker Dietland is a distinctly weird book - I loved it, but it's quite hard to explain why, perhaps because there are so many different ways to interpret its odd mish-mash of dark feminist satire, conspiracy thriller, brash comedy, and feelgood tale of body positivity. In short, it's about Plum, who is deeply unhappy and desperate for weight-loss surgery until the fateful day she notices a girl following her. This leads to her induction into the world of Calliope House - something like a women's refuge crossed with a secret society - and then in turn to her involvement with a feminist terrorist group called Jennifer. It all works because it has Plum, a warm and believable character, at its heart, which helps to ground the story when it ventures into absurd territory (and that happens quite a lot). Some will love it, some will hate it, but one thing's for sure: I've never read anything quite like this before.

The Reflection by Hugo Wilcken This noirish psychological mystery, set in 1940s New York City, is a multi-layered story that can be read either as a conspiracy thriller or a self-referential experiment (and probably in about a hundred other ways, too). Narrator David Manne is a psychiatrist who gets drawn into a web of intrigue involving a patient who insists he's not who others say he is. As Manne loses his grip on reality, the narrative reflects his mental state; repetition and motifs are used to great effect, and the reader must choose whether to believe his version of events. It's immensely entertaining, but intricate and very intelligent too.

Books from before this year

First Execution (2009) by Domenico Starnone, translated by Antony Shugaar It begins as a sort of political thriller, but like The Reflection, there's much more to this book than meets the eye. An ageing professor meets a former student who's been arrested on a charge of terrorism; this event proves the catalyst for a chain of dramatic events, but the author also inserts himself into the narrative to discuss how he's shaping the story. First Execution then becomes a metafictional exploration of the character and author's thoughts on all sorts of subjects - politics, education, writing, ageing, justice and injustice, the nature and definition of 'terrorism', pacifism vs direct action... It's packed with ideas and enormously thought-provoking.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (2014) by Alice Furse I read Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere a couple of months ago, and I'm still mad it isn't ultra-popular. The nameless narrator has a good degree but a bad job, doing data entry in a generic office. Her contemplation of life, love, fulfilment and failure rings so true it's sometimes painful; Furse does an amazing job of portraying the mundanity of office life/post-graduation aimlessness in all its dreary horror, but the book is also, somehow, very compelling. The characters and dialogue are fantastic, it's funny, it has real heart, and it feels at once very important for right now and completely timeless.

Animals (2006) by Keith Ridgway A brilliant, weird, hilarious story that defies description or explanation. Animals opens with our nameless and stubbornly mysterious narrator spotting the corpse of a mouse - an event that causes him to come close to a breakdown. That's the starting point for a hilarious existential adventure through a warped version of London filled with eccentric characters, conspiracies around every corner, and menacing creatures lurking in the shadows. It's the sort of fiction that might be described as 'challenging' or 'experimental', but it's also gripping from the first page and incredibly readable.

I Am Jonathan Scrivener (1930) by Claude Houghton A lonely man is employed as secretary to the elusive Jonathan Scrivener, and becomes acquainted with the man's diverse circle of friends; in the process he learns a great deal about himself, but frustratingly little about his employer. I Am Jonathan Scrivener is a philosophical novel, a psychological examination of character, and a mystery, all in one. It's a bit of a cult classic, a book I came across by chance, and quite invigorating to read - it's full of social commentary which makes it a fascinating portrait of London in the 1920s, but it also has a dry wit and is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

Honourable mentions

Slade House (2015) by David Mitchell Don't be put off by the fact that it's linked to The Bone Clocks -  this series of linked ghost stories, revolving around spooky Slade House, is so much better, and the characters are unforgettable. Rawblood (2015) by Catriona Ward Another ghost story - a very creative and original one about a family with a cursed bloodline. It's a bit uneven, but contains some of the most brilliant and memorable scenes I've come across in any book, ever. Purity (2015) by Jonathan Franzen It may not have anything new to say about modern life, the internet etc, but Franzen's latest generation-spanning epic has an attention-grabbing premise, colourful characters and a sympathetic heroine; I liked it better than The Corrections. Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked (2013) by James Lasdun A beautifully written, insightful account of the experience of being stalked and harassed, which manages to remain fair while also communicating with great (and painful) effectiveness the horror of being trapped in a situation like this.

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Best books of 2015, part 1: January to June

Books from this year

The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato

I have very happy memories of reading this on a beach, on an uninhabited island, in Portugal - no, wait, that isn't the recommendation. And it would have been brilliant no matter where and when I read it. The Ghost Network is about: a missing pop star named Molly Metropolis; her fans; situationism; psychogeography; and Chicago's public transport system. Part faux-academic text, part conspiracy thriller, part postmodern, ultra-meta reflection on fan culture, it was SO much fun to read, kept doing unexpected things, and had me on the edge of my seat all the way through.

Things We Have in Common by Tasha Kavanagh

Yasmin is fifteen years old, desperately unhappy and the target of school bullies; the one bit of sunshine in her life is her obsession with Alice, a popular classmate. When Yasmin spots a man staring at Alice, she quickly latches on to him and pursues a very odd sort of friendship. Yasmin's voice - thoroughly believable but insidiously sinister - is wonderfully realised, and the story, which turns out to be something of a twisted coming-of-age tale, takes some thrilling turns. I read Things We Have in Common in April (all in one day) but I can still remember Yasmin, and the story's general atmosphere, very vividly.

The Four-Dimensional Human by Laurence Scott

My favourite non-fiction book of the year. Subtitled Ways of Being in the Digital World, it's basically a study of how 'networked life', ie 24/7 connection to the internet and social media and the ability to constantly communicate across almost all physical borders, has transformed the human experience, and what that means for us. But it's a sprawling sort of book that goes in loads of different directions, rather than presenting a single argument. It's an academic thesis written like a novel; pop culture references are woven in very naturally and (unlike many books about the internet) nothing about it feels gimmicky.

Music for Wartime by Rebecca Makkai

Continuing the theme: my favourite short story collection of the year. One of them - 'The November Story', about a warring couple and a reality TV show - is PERFECT, many of the others are brilliant, and it's almost impossible to sum any of them up in a single sentence. Rebecca Makkai is amazing at creating worlds with just a few sentences, and her characters are equally deep and nuanced. With scenarios ranging from the believable but heartbreaking (after 'freezing' on stage, an actor loses the ability to act, along with his confidence), to the utterly bizarre (a woman finds Johann Sebastian Bach living in her piano), the stories cross into so many genres that the collection is constantly surprising and fresh.

The Curator by Jacques Strauss

Shifting between 1976 and 1996, The Curator follows two generations of a white South African family, represented by father and son Hendrik and Werner Deyer. Both as manipulative and obsessive as each other, Hendrik and Werner make for awful but fascinating anti-heroes. This is a book with dark themes - murder, racism and child abuse among them - yet it keeps a surprisingly light tone by centring on naive, delusional Werner, and part of what makes the story work so well is its ambivalence towards him. It's harrowing in places, but fascinatingly layered and rewarding.

In My House by Alex Hourston

Like Harriet Lane's books, Alex Hourston's debut is an elegant, thoughtful character study dressed up in the costume of a psychological thriller. It starts off as a story about a fiftysomething woman, Maggie, who is asked for help by a girl in an airport; unwittingly, she ends up saving the girl, Anja, from a trafficking operation. Then Anja insinuates herself into Maggie's life. If you think you know where this is going, you're probably wrong - it's a study of love and family and selfhood, with a mere undercurrent of tension. It's similar to many of my favourites from this year in that its main triumph is in shaping a unique, memorable protagonist.

Books from before this year

The Good Doctor (2003) by Damon Galgut

When a young and idealistic new doctor arrives at a near-deserted hospital in rural South Africa, the long-established deputy director is disconcerted. Then they're forced to share a room, and Frank (the director) finds himself more and more distrustful of the newcomer, who turns out to have a sinister streak. That old-fashioned-thriller setup combined with Galgut's spare, elegant style would be enough to make it an excellent read, but there's so much more bubbling away under the surface. If you like books with lots of subtlety and tension, this is one to note. It's gripping in a quiet way.

The Trap and A Dance in the Sun (1955-56) by Dan Jacobson

Another South African book - I've ended up with quite a few of them on this year's list. I actually bought this after reading that Jacobson's work inspired The Good Doctor, and it turns out that Galgut and Jacobson both use a similar style: simple and graceful yet complex and full of meaning, telling a hundred small stories in one. Set in the sun-bleached semi-wilderness of the veld, The Trap and A Dance in the Sun - the former a short story, the latter a spellbinding novella - weave intricate tales of entrenched racism, latent violence and family tension. Published 60 years ago, they feel timeless, and could easily have been written today.

Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler, translated by Daphne Hardy

A dramatised version of real events, an obvious simulacrum of Stalinist Russia, in which Rubashov, formerly a senior member of the Party, is suddenly arrested and imprisoned for invented crimes. Driven not by character or plot but by ideas, Darkness at Noon depicts Rubashov's state of mind and thought process as his incarceration forces him to contemplate the part he has played in building a dictatorship, and his disillusionment with the political philosophy he has imposed on others. It's perhaps an odd thing to say about a book with such sombre themes, but it felt like a relief to read something like this - it's such a powerful and intelligent novel, and it reminded me why 'classics' are worth reading.

Fermentation (1997) by Angelica Jacob

A brief description of this novel inevitably makes it sound seriously weird: set during a scorching summer, it's a novella about a pregnant woman who begins to experience uncontrollably strong cravings for cheese, which then trigger a series of erotic dreams. It's a bit of an oddity, but it's also a mesmerising and dreamlike tale in which the setting (an unnamed, stagnant French city) comes alive and the atmosphere is palpable. Out of print, but worth finding.

The Woman Upstairs (2013) by Claire Messud

I had a complete love-hate relationship with this book - and that's what made it so memorable. This year, no fictional character has stuck in my memory in quite the way Nora did. The Woman Upstairs is not so much a story as a chronicle of quiet rage and repressed anger, all revolving around Nora's increasingly dominant, all-consuming obsession with a glamorous, successful, intellectual family, the Shahids. I saw myself in Nora, and at the same time I was repulsed by her. Parts of the book seemed to have looked straight into my soul, and I couldn't stop noting down quotes. It's visceral and absolutely unflinching in its examination of Nora's psyche.

Through the Woods (2014) by Emily Carroll

Something I read a lot (creepy/spooky/uncanny short stories) in a format I hardly read at all (a graphic novel). Turns out, this is an extremely successful combination - think Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber as a comic book. There are five stories, each using slightly different storytelling methods and styles of illustration, and each is better than the last. The last two in particular are just fantastic, with all the power and magic of established classics.

Honourable mentions

The Loney (2013) by Andrew Michael Hurley A deeply creepy and atmospheric folk-horror story that makes its bleak, rain-washed setting so real, it's stuck in my memory like a childhood nightmare.

A Reunion of Ghosts (2015) by Judith Claire Mitchell Three sisters gather in their inherited New York apartment to commit suicide, but only after they've written a book containing all the secrets of their ancestors' history. Heartbreaking but also often hilarious.

Idiopathy (2013) by Sam Byers A very underrated novel that's a sort of acerbic social satire/dark relationship comedy, with one of my favourite characters of the year in the unforgettable, misanthropic antiheroine Katherine. The Tango Singer (2004) by Tomás Eloy Martínez, translated by Anne McLean A scholar visits Buenos Aires and finds himself on the trail of a near-mythical singer whose ethereal voice has never been recorded. So vividly evokes the city that you'll feel like you've been there. Don't Kiss Me (2013) by Lindsay Hunter Amazing short stories full of cheap glamour and weird darkness, varying from small-town Floridian drama to bizarro visions of the future.

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Best books of 2014

Top nine favourites

Upstairs at the Party by Linda Grant Linda Grant's virtuosic novel is the life story of its protagonist, Adele Ginsberg. Moving from her childhood through a memorable university experience and far beyond that, it is a coming-of-age story and much, much more. Themes of identity, concealment, performance and artifice run throughout, personified by Adele's androgynous friend Evie, whose fate at the party of the title forms the backbone of the plot. Endlessly expansive and evocative. After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry Sarah Perry's debut takes a number of elements I'm guaranteed to find fascinating - a grand old country house, a group of eccentric misfits, a stranger in their midst, and surreal touches - and rearranges them into something strange, original and entirely unexpected. The controlled pace allows every nuance of behaviour to gather meaning, and the book is gripping, soaked in atmosphere, and has something of the fairytale about it. It's also haunting, but not in the way you might expect. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel A vision of the future like no other. Twenty years after a pandemic wipes out most of the population, a band of travelling performers wanders a ravaged landscape; Mandel's breakout novel follows a handful of characters in close-up detail, skipping back and forth through time. Station Eleven is the perfect blend of literary and genre fiction - driven as much by character as plot, it is effortlessly elegant and addictive. The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt An absolute tour de force from one of my favourite authors. The Blazing World is an intelligent, intense and philosophical novel about identity, sexism and the art world. Told in fragments, it assembles a chorus of distinct voices to build a complex and surprising character portrait that is by turns playful and profound. Her by Harriet Lane Following her brilliant debut Alys, Always, Lane has crafted another clever, slow-burning tale about two women whose fates are closely entwined, though only one of them realises it. It's tightly plotted and suspenseful, but also subtle and quiet; a rewarding character study disguised as a psychological thriller. A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh Welsh turns her hand to dystopia with this, the first part of a trilogy. As a deadly virus sweeps London and society descends into chaos, a journalist fights an increasingly desperate battle for the truth about her lover's death. Vivid and surreal, it's an exceptionally readable book that's also full of strange, intriguing undercurrents. Glow by Ned Beauman A conspiracy thriller which reads like a cross between David Mitchell, Jonathan Coe and DBC Pierre, this is Beauman's first foray into fiction set entirely in the present day, and something of a love letter to modern London. Colourful, funny and dirty, fantastically entertaining and exuberant, it's not only a return to form for the author, but probably his best yet. Dear Thief by Samantha Harvey This painfully intimate and haunting story takes the form of a letter written to an old friend (or possibly enemy). Unnamed and of questionable reliability, the narrator spins a tale of obsession and betrayal. Dear Thief is a portrait of friendship as a love story, and it's totally hypnotic. The Three by Sarah Lotz A mesmerising blend of sci-fi, horror and realism, The Three is terrifying, mind-bending and most of all unputdownable. Ostensibly the work of an investigative journalist, the story is about the aftermath of four simultaneous plane crashes, of which the only survivors are three (very sinister) children. It uses a patchwork narrative to great effect, building near-unbearable tension. Yes, I know it's strange to have a top nine, but there were just too many books to choose between for the #10 spot, so instead I have a whole list of...

Honourable mentions

I wish How to be both by Ali Smith had won the Booker prize. Split between a present-day teenage girl and a fifteenth-century Italian artist, the book is one story and two stories at the same time, cleverly weaving together themes of love, grief, and the creation of art with playful language. I'd also have liked to see a nomination for A Bad Character by Deepti Kapoor, a vivid, memoir-esque debut about a young woman in Delhi who enters into a dangerous, doomed affair. There's another forbidden relationship in The Lemon Grove by Helen Walsh, in which fortysomething Jenn becomes unwisely involved with her stepdaughter's boyfriend. What unfolds is perhaps predictable, but also compulsive, sexy and intensely atmospheric. It was a pretty good year for books that seemed to be tailored to my tastes. The Hundred Year House by Rebecca Makkai follows several different generations of the same family living in a grand manor house - the story unfolds by going backwards in time, with copious references to ghost stories. The Amber Fury by Natalie Haynes has life imitating art as Greek tragedies are taught to a group of troubled teenagers. The Secret Place by Tana French has more teenage students, this time in the deceptively luxurious environment of a boarding school; it's an unconventional, magical murder mystery, and the strongest entry in her Dublin Murder Squad series yet. In The Lazarus Prophecy, author F.G. Cottam breaks away from his usual template with a story that's equal parts horror, mystery and thriller. Connecting the Jack the Ripper case to a series of modern-day London murders by way of a secretive order of Catholic priests in the Pyrenees, it works wonderfully well. I also really enjoyed The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris, a contemporary retelling of the rise and fall of the Norse gods that has a completely irresistible, funny and unpredictable narrative voice.

The best from before this year

The Moth Diaries (2002) by Rachel Klein A teenage vampire novel? Well, yes it is, but forget all the clichés of that genre. Intelligent, layered, woven with literary references, Klein's doom-laden first (and only) novel is the diary of a boarding school pupil who suspects her beloved roommate's new friend is hiding truly terrible secrets. Portraying female friendships and adolescent experiences with blistering accuracy, with a gorgeously gloomy gothic backdrop, it's an unforgettable masterpiece. Ice (1967) by Anna Kavan Anna Kavan's surreal odyssey across ice is a book I have now failed to adequately describe on about 10 separate occasions. Nameless characters traverse frozen dreamscapes in pursuit of each other, in a fractured and surreal narrative which can be interpreted in any number of ways. 'Unreality' is the watchword, and this is an uncategorisable but absolutely unforgettable story. The Blindfold (1992) by Siri Hustvedt It's almost impossible to believe that this was Hustvedt's debut. Extraordinarily accomplished, it's a riveting and beautifully written set of four stories with the same main character/narrator. A constant aura of something uncanny pervades protagonist Iris's life, lifting her narrative far beyond the ordinary. Bonjour Tristesse (1954) by Françoise Sagan Written when the author was just 18, this classic novella positively sparkles with deft characterisation, clever plotting, humour and romance. It's a tale of decadent 'free spirits' sunning themselves on the French Riviera, until Daddy invites an old flame along and provokes the ire of spoilt 17-year-old Cécile. It's as fresh and cooling as a glass of iced lemonade, as lightly whipped as a meringue. A Phantom Lover (1886) by Vernon Lee If you think Victorian ghost stories are all the same, read this. The narrator is an artist, summoned to magnificent Okehurst to paint portraits of a wealthy couple; but all is not quite right, and the wife of the artist's client turns out to have something of an unusual obsession. The story is so creative and downright strange that it's difficult to believe it was written in the 19th century. Carmilla (1872) by J.S. le Fanu Another horror tale that's ahead of its time - predating Dracula by 25 years, Carmilla is famous for its lesbian overtones. The story of naive Laura, whose family take in the sinister Carmilla, is indeed saturated with sexual tension, hysteria and atmosphere; it's also deliciously melodramatic and very readable. Cartwheel (2013) by Jennifer duBois A novel inspired by the Meredith Kercher/Amanda Knox case didn't initially seem like the most appealing prospect, but when I finally got round to reading duBois' debut, it turned out to be a) an exceptional character study and b) one of the most heartbreaking books I've read in years. What it's based on really doesn't matter - it is gripping and highly emotive in its own right and on its own merits.

The rest

Also in 2014, Erin Kelly delivered yet another fantastic crime thriller, The Ties That Bind; DBC Pierre added a gruesomely entertaining entry to the Hammer imprint with Breakfast with the Borgias; and Roxane Gay inspired with her essay collection, Bad Feminist, which despite the title is a diverse and wide-ranging, but very accessible, set of opinion pieces. They'll be included in loads of end-of-year lists, no doubt, but it's still worth mentioning that I was impressed by two books from big-name authors: Hilary Mantel's provocatively titled short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, and Ian McEwan's taut, elegant The Children Act. Compulsive comfort reads came from Deborah Lawrenson (The Sea Garden) and Lucy Clarke (A Single Breath). If you're looking for short, quick reads, I recommend Laura Lippman's masterful Five Fires and Susan Hill's memorable Hunger, both Kindle Singles. I made an effort to read more classics: some of those I really enjoyed were The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, For Esme—With Love and Squalor, and Other Stories by J.D. Salinger, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and two novellas by Stefan Zweig.

Brilliant books to come in 2015

I can't pass up the opportunity to mention these books, which are out in the new year, but which I was lucky enough to read early review copies of. The Well is the debut novel from Catherine Chanter, out in May. Virtually impossible to describe without outlining the entire plot, it is a unique mixture of genres as diverse as dystopian sci-fi, domestic saga and mystery/thriller, all centred on one woman and her remarkable home - a place that seems to be impervious to drought. The story is addictive from the first page, and the narrative voice is... well, it's unlike anything else. I've been recommending this to everyone and I really hope it will be one of the big debuts of 2015 - it certainly deserves to be. Jonas Karlsson is a well-known author of novels and short stories in his native Sweden, but The Room is his first book to be translated into English, and will be published in January. This sublime, Kafkaesque novella follows the hilariously self-assured Björn as he discovers a mysterious hidden office at his place of work. Yet his colleagues seem intent on keeping him away from 'the room'. Is this a psychological drama, a satire, a comment on office culture? It's all of these and more, plus it's very funny - a cult classic in the making.

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Best books of 2013

Without a doubt, my favourite book of the year was Night Film by Marisha Pessl. Exciting, intriguing, unique, dark, downright weird and brilliantly inventive in every way, with great characters and a zinging, ever-evolving plot - it was everything I could possibly want a book to be. It received mixed reviews from the press and bloggers, but I absolutely loved it, and I'd urge everyone else to at least give it a go. If you like it half as much as I did then you're in for a fantastic treat. I also loved The Engagement by Chloe Hooper. It's an incredibly compelling tale about a young woman who becomes involved in an ill-advised affair, which grows darker and stranger at every turn. As well as being one of the most frightening and disconcerting books I read this year, it was also one of the most beautifully written. I was blown away by A.M. Homes' The End of Alice, which I read in one sitting, utterly unable to put it down. I would hesitate to recommend it to everyone, because it's a difficult book to actually enjoy; it's told from the point of view of a paedophile, and the author doesn't hold back with explicit scenes depicting sexual abuse and violence. But it is an absolutely brilliant, powerful piece of work - short, sharp and horrifying, but most of all astonishing. On a similar note, Tampa by Alissa Nutting was one of the most-talked-about books of the year, and deservedly so. An unflinching portrait of a sexually voracious female teacher with a penchant for teenage boys, it's another one that's not for the squeamish, but if you can deal with the subject matter then it's a thought-provoking and (very) darkly comic read. Following her unique and intriguing debut Snake Ropes, the second novel from Jess Richards, Cooking With Bones, didn't disappoint. The only predictable thing about this book is its constant unpredictability. It's so complex and many-layered that it's impossible to define - basically, it's a sci-fi dystopian fantasy romance murder mystery coming-of-age ghost story fairytale with elements of feminist and gender theory. But it's also a great, very human story with fantastic characters. The timely and immensely readable Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach was among my favourite debuts of the year. Lauded in the press for addressing the modern obsession with social media and online communication, it's actually more interesting as a character study exploring how easily a lonely, naive person can be manipulated, even by someone they cannot see. Another book I enjoyed this year that dealt with the societal impact of the internet, albeit in a very different way, was Dave Eggers' The Circle, in which a similarly naive character starts working for an online company with a sinister no-privacy ethos. First Novel by Nicholas Royle is not, in fact, a first novel, but its protagonist is even more obsessed with debut fiction than I am. This book was one of my surprise hits of 2013 - a metafictional mystery in which the lines between reality and stories are constantly blurred. Orkney by Amy Sackville was an incredibly memorable and haunting read: an unsettling account of an academic's overbearing love/lust for his much younger wife. The pair honeymoon in Orkney, where he becomes increasingly frustrated at how unknowable she is, leading to a deliberately opaque climax. All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld had a similarly murky, folkloric feel, and created a palpably bleak atmosphere that has stayed with me long after finishing the book. I read an awful lot of brand new books this year, so a lot of my 2013 favourites were, in fact, published in 2013. But not all of them. I think I only read two books in 2013 that could be termed classics - James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - but I adored both... Which perhaps suggests I should read classics more often. I also got round to reading Ghostwritten by David Mitchell and was amazed by how, well, amazing it was. It's like Cloud Atlas but much better - I can't believe it was Mitchell's first book. It's not out until 2014, so I'm not sure whether I should mention it here or not... But Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss was a late entrant to my best-books-read-this-year list all the same. It's a hilarious, macabre adventure that should be a must-read for anyone who loves cats and humorous horror. In terms of sheer enjoyment, my policy of reading a lot of new releases meant I read a lot of books which, while not quite masterpieces of literature, were a lot of fun. One of the most addictive, unputdownable novels I encountered all year was The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell, about a social-climbing secretary in 1920s New York who proves to be the most unreliable of narrators. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles and Petite Mort by Beatrice Hitchman provided similarly delightful historical fiction with class and attitude. My favourite ghost story of the year was The Quickening by Julie Myerson, in which a young couple's dream tropical honeymoon turns out to be more of a nightmare. Honourable mentions to a few more gems: The Friday Gospels by Jenn Ashworth, The Professor of Poetry by Grace McCleen, Telling Stories by Beverley Jones, The Girl Below by Bianca Zander, The Sea Sisters by Lucy Clarke, The Burning Air by Erin Kelly, The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller... I want to mention more, but I'm making myself stop there.

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Best books of 2012

☆ BEST OF THE BEST ☆

I can't decide between three books this year... So I'm just going to go for it and say my absolute favourite has to be a tie between them.

☆ Alys, Always by Harriet Lane: I absolutely devoured this first novel about a lonely woman who latches on to a high-profile literary family after she witnesses the death of their matriarch in a car accident. Fast-paced, beguiling, and subtly sinister - an excellent debut from an author I am keen to follow in future.

☆ Signs of Life by Anna Raverat: This is one woman's account of an affair she had some years ago, which destroyed her life - but it's so, so much more than that. Wonderfully written, uniquely structured and a slow-burning delight.

☆ Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam: I was absolutely wowed by this dark, intense and unsettling debut about a man kidnapping an eleven-year-old girl. It takes the reader on a difficult journey, but has a stunning narrative style - vague, seductive, disturbing, utterly compelling.

☆ FAVOURITES ☆

☆ When Nights Were Cold by Susanna Jones: One of those unreliable-narrator stories I love so much: a tense historical tale about a group of female students with ambitions to become Antarctic explorers. I read all the author's books this year, but this was by far the best. Beautifully put together, complex, atmospheric and consistently intriguing.

☆ Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil: This lyrical and often very surreal novel (loosely) follows a group of opium addicts in 1970s Bombay. It won't appeal to everyone, but I absolutely loved the dreamlike atmosphere created by the non-linear, rambling narrative.

☆ Communion Town by Sam Thompson: As the subtitle says, this is 'a city in ten chapters': a series of interconnected short stories all set in the same unnamed city. With elements of fantasy and inexplicably strange details, I found this absolutely fascinating and the variety of narratives thrilling.

☆ Invisible by Paul Auster: Completely dazzling, compulsively readable, and effortless, this is my favourite book by Auster so far - a dark coming-of-age tale with the tone and pace of a thriller. This is what fiction should be, and I wish I could find more brilliant novels like this!

☆ Don't Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier: I loved this collection of dark, twisted short stories: the titular tale is a classic, but most of the others are of equal quality and power, and almost all feature a spellbinding, revelatory twist. Sinister and fascinating. I also read two other anthologies of du Maurier's stories - The Birds and The Breaking Point - which are also recommended.

☆ HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ☆

☆ Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: You've probably already heard about this - a huge buzz has been building around it all year and it's been mentioned in practically every 'best of 2012' list I've read. Dark, twisted and full of unpredictable revelations, it's a great mystery told by two thoroughly untrustworthy narrators. I was fascinated (mostly in a negative way) by the characters and there was so much tension I don't know how I managed to resist reading ahead.

☆ Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: A book I'd been meaning to read for a while (years, actually!), this was unsurprisingly uneven (it's a patchwork of different narratives set in different places and times, varying from the distant past to the far future) but truly brilliant in places. It was also, I think, the only book I read in 2012 that made me cry.

☆ Hawthorn & Child by Keith Ridgway: An odd, fragmented collection of what might be called short stories, or chapters of the same story told from very different perspectives. Brilliantly written and immensely intriguing, albeit a little frustrating at times - and far too short!

☆ The Girl on the Stairs by Louise Welsh: A wonderfully creepy and suspenseful thriller about a pregnant woman who, alone in an unfamiliar country, becomes convinced her neighbour is abusing his daughter. Tense, compulsive and very clever.

☆ The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton: If you're a fan of the author, this is - in my opinion anyway! - her best yet. It's a typically rich family tale with several different narrative threads set in different time periods. It's completely addictive and chock-full of brilliant twists. An absolutely fantastic guilty pleasure.

☆ Waterline by Ross Raisin: Harrowing and emotionally exhausting, Raisin's second novel is about a man wracked by grief who descends into alcoholism and poverty after the death of his wife. It's brilliant, devastating and compelling - I read it in one sitting - but a very difficult read.

☆ The Last Weekend by Blake Morrison: Disturbing and insidious, this is a classic unreliable-narrator tale. I found it unpleasant in places - the narrator is horrible - but at the same time, it was very difficult to tear myself away.

☆ Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt: An unashamedly emotional tale about love, friendship and fitting in, framed within the story of a misfit teenager whose beloved uncle is dying of AIDS. I thought this might be overtly sentimental, but it was actually very touching and I loved the characters.

☆ HONOURABLE MENTIONS ☆

Although I didn't think they were perfect, I enjoyed the following books enough that I don't want to let this post happen without giving them a mention: The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood, What They Do in the Dark by Amanda Coe, The Book of Summers by Emylia Hall, The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng, Purgatory by Tomás Eloy Martínez, Broken Harbour by Tana French, and The Possessions of Doctor Forrest by Richard T. Kelly.