Virtual Costa Book Awards Part 2: Celia Rees and guests

The second part of our Virtual Award nominations by guests past, present and future. Part  3 next week!

HELENA PIELICHATY nominates Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus for the Virtual Costa First Novel Prize:

It was Penny Dolan’s enthusiastic review on this blog that alerted me to this sublime novel, which I have no hesitation in nominating as my book of the year, not only in the debut category but as overall winner, too. Lessons in Chemistry captivated me from start to finish. In Elizabeth Zott, the book’s main character, Garmus has created a heroine, not only for the 1960s, when the book is set, but for today. Zott is every bright woman who has been told to ‘know her place’, who has had her ideas ignored or stolen by male colleagues, and has had to forge on through adversity. Garmus takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride of emotions with verve, wit and warmth. It is everything fiction should be and I applaud her for it. Read it. Read it now.

PHILIP WOMACK nominates The Young Accomplice by Benjamin Wood for the Virtual Costa Novel Prize:

Benjamin Wood's latest novel, The Young Accomplice, is a mature, reflective and immersive piece of work. Set on a farm in Surrey run by an architect with utopian ideals, the book details how the arrival of two young offenders disrupt the status quo. Exquisitely written, it marks Wood out as one of our best young writers.

CINDY JEFFERIES nominates Treacle Walker by Alan Garner for the Virtual Costa Novel Prize:

Living where I do, how could I not select Treacle Walker as the best novel in 2022? The rag and bone man no longer plies his trade here, but the scrap metal man does, his call echoing around the hilly streets as he passes. And this Christmas month a local college offered 'meditation, ritual and an appreciation of Garner's books, to find the crossing place that brings us home.'

Treacle Walker is both difficult and simple, profound and teasing. It has comics and donkey stones, magic and misunderstanding. Is it the only novel ever shortlisted for the Booker prize to be also suitable for children? (excepting the odd word certain adults might not approve of) Will my seven year old granddaughter understand it? Do I? We will travel its pages together, helping each other along the way.

I didn't go to the college's session, but the end of Treacle Walker feels very much like coming home. You don't need a scrap metal merchant's cry echoing in your ears to enjoy this book; you just need to feel the past, the present and the future in your heart.

LINDA SARGENT nominates Light Rains Sometimes Fall: A British Year Through Japan’s 72 Seasons by Lev Parikian for the Virtual Costa Biography Award (which may be stretching the category somewhat, but these are our awards and we'll distribute them as we wish!)

As a friend once wisely observed, “sometimes we forget what we’re good at”, a kind of disconnection perhaps. It could be said that in 2020 the world was given a chance to reconnect with the minutiae of our natural world. And this beautifully poetic and humorously written book is one reminder of how we might pick up those threads. Here the author follows the ancient Japanese model of the seasons, seventy-two in all. Imitating the Japanese approach with chapter headings ranging from Woodpeckers Start Drumming, Flying Ants Fill the Sky, to Leaves Lie Thick on the Grass, he covers just a few days at a time, detailing his daily walks in the local cemetery, common or his own garden, finding joy in the small things and gently guiding the reader to follow, wherever they live, during the same period. A gem of a book.

It would be nice to hear an owl.

I do not hear an owl.

But the air is damp and soft, and not as cold as I imagined, and I head back home considerably calmed by the experience.

BERLIE DOHERTY nominates The Boy Lost in the Maze by Joseph Coelho for the Virtual Costa Poetry Prize:

The Boy Lost in the Maze is a novel told in poems. It's not a verse novel. Each episode is a new complete poem, distinct in form and content. There are two narrators, Theo and`Theseus, both sixteen: one a boy from today, one the mythical future Greek king. Theo is estranged from his father and desperate to find him. He is fascinated by the story of Theseus, and his search for his own father. Both boys have been lied to about their past and are determined to unravel the lies and find the truth. Theo's journey echoes emotionally and physically, the 'labours' of Theseus. The adventures of the two youths are graphically told in a sequence of fine poems that are sometimes free-form, sometimes rap, sometimes highly structured.

This powerful, painful, and exciting poetry novel is illustrated by Kate Milner. Her artwork is dramatic and balletic, a fitting complement to an exceptional book for older teenagers and adult readers.

LINDA NEWBERY nominates The Flames by Sophie Haydock for the Virtual Costa First Novel Prize:

Who could resist a novel set in Vienna, exploring the viewpoints of four women who modelled for that most provocative of artists, Egon Schiele? Certainly not me. Sophie Haydock's assured first novel conveys the atmosphere of bohemian Vienna in the years leading up to the First World War in her depiction of the troubled relationships and rivalries, of Schiele's driving ambition and the place he established for himself alongside his better-known mentor, Gustav Klimt; and, of course, the women themselves and their often unconventional lives. You'll certainly want to see more of Schiele's work after reading this, and his depictions of these four women: see Sophie Haydock's egonschieleswomen on Instagram for images and background.

PIPPA GOODHART nominates Three Little Monkeys Ride Again, by Quentin Blake with illustrations by Emma Chichester Clark, for the Virtual Costa Children's Book Prize:

This is such a joy of book! We’ve met the three exuberantly naughty little monkeys before, and it’s very clear that Blake and Chichester Clark love playing with them and their host Hilda, and that eternally deliciously enjoyable quality of naughtiness in others. This time, extravagantly hatted Hilda Snibbs takes those three little monkeys to visit her old mother at her ‘calm and peaceful’ house. But whenever boredom hits, the spectacular, yet relatable, monkey naughtiness ensues. What chaos! What protestations that Hilda will never take on holiday again! But then all comes good. ‘Thank goodness I brought you on holiday.’ But we’re left with one last dollop of gorgeously illustrated ducks in the sink, frogs in the rice pudding, pond weed everywhere, naughtiness to show that nothing so very much has changed!

 

CELIA REES nominates Bad Actors by Mick Herron for the Virtual Costa Novel Prize:

My choice is Mick Herron's Bad Actors precisely because as a genre novel, 8th in a series and a recently aired big budget TV production it would NEVER have been nominated for the actual late lamented Costas. It is, however, MY Best Novel of 2022.

Adele Geras and I are both massive Mick Herron fans and look forward to each new Slough House book. We are never disappointed. Mick Herron is one of the few writers who can make me laugh out loud and he is the only writer I know who even attempts to examine the current British political scene, faithfully chronicling our times from terrorist attacks through Brexit to the pandemic with all the accompanying betrayals, back stabbings, political missteps, coverups, bare faced lying, Whitehall shenanigans, astounding inefficiency and corruption. I hesitated to use the word 'satire' when applied to his books because, given what has happened in the months since Bad Actors was published, even Mick Herron couldn't make it up. He is the Jonathan Swift de nos jours and I can't wait to read the book he must be working on now...

I urge anyone who hasn't already, to read the Slough House books from the beginning. You have a treat in store.

 Click here for Part 1 ...

ROSE DORAN DREAMS by Berlie Doherty: a Q&A session hosted by Adèle Geras

"I decided to rename it because Rose Doran had changed, or my understanding of her had changed."

Berlie Doherty writes novels, plays, stories, poetry and opera libretti and is translated into over twenty languages. She has written over 60 books,, mostly for children and young adults, Several of her novels have been dramatised for radio, television and the stage. She has won many awards including the Carnegie Medal twice (Dear Nobody and Granny was a Buffer Girl), and the Writers’ Guild award twice (Dear Nobody and Daughter of the Sea), received a Boston Globe-Horn Honor, and was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren award. For adults she has written many radio plays and short stories, and one other novel for adults, requiem.

The Vinegar Jar was first published by Hamish Hamilton in 1994. Berlie has now reissued it, transformed into Rose Doran Dreams. Linda Newbery, Celia Rees and I sent Berlie some questions after we'd all read her book....here they are, followed by a short review by me. Find out more from her website. 

 

Celia:  Did you feel tempted to update the novel in any way?

Berlie: No, I wanted to keep it in the period of late wartime – post war childhood.

Celia: What did you feel happy about from the original novel?

Berlie: All the ’stories’, traditional and invented. I hardly changed a word of any of those, though I did sometimes change the order to point up what was going on in Rose’s real world.

Celia: Was there anything you were itching to change?

Berlie: Gordon’s perception of Rose. I wanted to explain his sexual coldness towards her. I wanted to build up the sense that he adored her but couldn’t touch her. I found Gordon a very interesting character to develop.

And I wanted to change the ending. Interestingly, I wrote different endings for the English edition and the American edition of The Vinegar Jar - and I still wasn’t happy!

Linda: How did it feel to go back to your early work with a view to reshaping it? What made you decide to revise (and rename) rather than simply reissuing the book?

Berlie: It was a strange thing to do. I’ve never read one of my own books from beginning to end before, after the editing process. It’s so long since I wrote The Vinegar Jar that it really felt as if somebody else had written it. I was very sad when Hamish Hamilton took it out of print. It became an e-book, no cover, no publicity, and lay there like a lump of dead wood that was ready to become kindling. I’ve just thought of that and it’s quite a nice pun! Anyway, I decided to revisit it for something to do in lockdown. I felt quite a lot of it, especially in the first half, was underwritten and needed enhancing both in style and in content. Even down to the use of punctuation, it was as basic as that. A friend told me she had no idea what was going on, so I knew I had to put that right. It was a challenge.

When I re-read it I felt I liked the book but that it could be a lot better. Revising it became a major project, I loved doing it, and it really absorbed me.

I decided to rename it because Rose Doran had changed, or my understanding of her had changed. In The Vinegar Jar her stories and imaginings trap her and almost stifle her. She’s looking out on the world that she can’t escape into. In Rose Doran Dreams her stories and imaginings give her freedom and emotional release. Her imagination powers her.

Linda: I like the way you let us fully understand how Rose's longings and frustrations lead to her fantasy with Paedric, but also you allow us to see how strange her behaviour seems to Gordon and Edmund. Was this difficult to pull off?

Berlie: This was one of the things I hadn’t achieved in The Vinegar Jar. Things just happen and aren’t explained. As soon as I thought about Rose Doran being in some sort of psychological breakdown I began to understand her and could find ways of justifying her psychic relationship with Paedric. Also I was able to ask myself questions about her relationship with Gordon and Edmund, the effect on them of her alienation, and their helplessness in trying to make sense of it.

Linda: I felt that Rose was often unkind to Edmund, yet he remains devoted to her and apparently endlessly patient, despite the limitations to his own life. What do you see as his future (if you do?)

Berlie: In The Vinegar Jar he mentions a girlfriend, but the reader hears little about her, as if perhaps he’s just making her up for Rose’s benefit. But in Rose Doran Dreams she’s really there, and we meet her. Like Rose, I would want his future to be with Molly.

Adèle: Rose Doran Dreams moves from being an almost D H Lawrence-like realist story, to containing elements of fairytale and fantasy. How do you think each “strand of thought” (if I can call it that!) enhanced the other?

Berlie: I don’t think one would have worked completely without the other. Rose’s imagination is a kind of psychosis, and I hope she shocks the reader as much as she shocks Gordon with her erotic story of the shivering mountain. It’s as if she can’t help it, and she slips from reality into fantasy without being aware of it or of its effect on others. But as for the realism, although she was a child who loves stories (and who doesn’t!) I needed to show her as being rooted in earth, and not just a dreamy child with her head in the clouds.

Adèle: Some of the ‘realist’ story had such a strong feeling of being true that I wondered whether there was any autobiography in the mix. Can you tell us?

Berlie: Not to my knowledge!

Adèle: I thought parts of the novel were Angela Carteresque. Is she an influence on your work? Can you name other writers who might have had an effect on this book?

Berlie: I can’t actually, though I’m very honoured that you’ve made that connection. The fact is that I love fairy stories, and yes, magic realism, though I didn’t know that term when I wrote TVJ. I do love Angela Carter/Isabel Allende/ Neil Gaiman, Salman Rushdie/Joanne Harris …

But also D H Lawrence (that reference interested me, Adele! Barry Hines/Arthur Miller/ Shelagh Delaney … It’s strange isn’t it, you don’t know when you’re writing something how much, or if at all, you’re affected by your reading.

Adèle: Can you see RDD as a film or play? If so, where would you film it?

Berlie: Yes, a film. It is visual. Or a radio play, for the same reason. And if a film, Edale (where I live). It’s not Edale, many of the geographic features don’t apply to Edale but the railway runs through it (and is an important character in the book) and the caverns and hills of Castleton (the Mam Tor story) lie just beyond it.

Short review:

Berlie is an enormously prolific and successful writer whose prose has two distinct qualities which are blended together perfectly in this latest book. On the one hand, she's a sharp, clear realist writer, bringing historical periods to life in a plain and direct way that speaks straight to the reader. Then there's the lyrical, poetic style which comes to the fore quite often in Rose Doran Dreams. The fairy tale atmosphere of this novel provides an excellent background for what are literally flights of fancy. The writer Angela Carter would have enjoyed reading this book.

Anyone who's read reviews by me knows that I don't like giving away the plot of a novel, and in this case the narrative moves through different iterations of love, and obsession. It centres on children, and our eponymous heroine experiences young love, then an unusual marriage and then a relationship which stretches her emotions (and those of the reader) to the limit. You will end up in a glorious tangle of true and imagined and it's part of the pleasure of the story that you'll be going over it in your head long after you've finished reading it, sorting out what you think has happened or is happening. It's a very visual book...I think it would make a terrific movie.

Awards Season! Part 1.

Something different for our end-of-year round-ups -we've invited our reviewers to give a virtual award to a book of their choice. Whether it's a book that's surprised them, a book they didn't expect to enjoy, a book that made them laugh or cry - here's what they've chosen in the first of three posts. Come back next week for more.

As always, we're immensely grateful to our contributors for giving their time, energy and insights to Writers Review. It wouldn't happen without them!

Tamsin Rosewell of Kenilworth Books: The Sheepish Bookseller Award for the Book I Didn't Think I'd Like But I Totally Adored, And Now Can't Stop Talking About It.

And I'd like to award it to Cecily by Annie Garthwaite.

When I read the first reviews, they compared it to Hilary Mantel. Like many booksellers I greeted this with an eye roll and a sinking feeling. I was expecting something perhaps over-indulgent; an.. er.. insufficiently edited draught-excluder of a book. But I should have ignored that reviewer, Mantel isn't a patch on Annie Garthwaite. I loved every word of Cecily, and thought it was one of the most astonishing books I've read in a decade. I was rooting for Cecily (and marvelling at Annie's ability as a writer) every moment. Far from being indulgent, it was beautifully, intelligently written - and the reader never forgotten. Annie Garthwaite's knowledge of history is deep, and her passion for her characters is infectious. She wears her love for Cecily like a crown of flowers. Off that throne Hilary!

Jonty Driver: I have two profound reasons to regard Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon as important in my life. I read it when I was 17 and still at school in South Africa, by then profoundly bored by much of the teaching provided. I had never been a racist but was beginning to be politically aware. so, when I went to the University of Cape Town the next year, because of the novel I was intellectually armed against attempts to divert me from my instinctive liberalism to hard-line Marxism (the South African Communist Party, though it was totally illegal and underground, Stalinist in demeanour, still worked hard to recruit students). Secondly, when I was detained by the security police, five years later, in solitary confinement under the "Ninety Day Detention" regulations, knowing what happened to Rubashov (the central character in Darkness at Noon) in solitary helped me cope better than I might otherwise have done. In particular, the "knocking code", described in that novel, enabled a friend detained in the same police station to give me the name of the person who had told the police I was involved in the African Resistance Movement, the ostensible reason for my detention; I wasn't in the ARM and actually thought it mistaken in its actions, although some of my closest friends were involved. In fact, the real reason for my detention was the work I had done as President of the non-racial and anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students.

Rachel Ward's Award for the Book I Wish I'd Written goes to We Begin at the End  by Chris Whitaker. I took a while to get into this book but then I was hooked. It’s a masterpiece in characterisation and plotting, and also how to break a reader’s heart into a million tiny pieces. I wish I’d written it, but - that being impossible - it has spurred me on to be a better writer.

Pippa Goodhart: I present the Goodhart Award for the most good-hearted book of 2021 to …drum-roll... A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson.

This gloriously quiet, beautiful, elegant story takes three deeply troubled and alone characters in a small town in Canada, marooned in winter coldness, and brings warmth. The seven year old child, the middle aged man, the old woman, are all trapped by mistakes made by themselves and others. But this kind book lets them come unexpectedly to each other’s aid, enabling them each to move on. Truly a story that does good to the heart and soul of the reader! Happy Christmas!

Linda Sargent awards Sargent's Sash to Old Age: A Journey into Simplicity by Helen M. Luke.

I was recently recalled this collection of essays when I recommended it to a younger friend who remarked that they were finding the ageing process trickier than they had anticipated. I first read it over twenty years ago when it was recommended to me by an older friend. I was middle aged then and found it inspiring and optimistic; a book about growth and creativity and, not, as some might imagine, decay and involuntarily loss. I returned to it often. In five chapters this wise Jungian writer insightfully references The Odyssey, King Lear, The Tempest and Little Gidding, with a final chapter on Suffering, revealing how ageing can, if we allow it, be an act of letting go of the familiar and of gaining through this process; learning that there are new things to explore and new levels of understanding to aspire to both in ourselves and in others.

Julia Jarman's Best Book You May Never Have Heard of Prize:  I first read this novel in hardback, called Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook. I loved it from intriguing first page to satisfying last, mostly because I loved the heroic, cookery-teacher turned spy, Miss Graham herself, and her fellow spies, brave women all, and the thrilling plot. It took me to painful places – the worst of Nazi evils – but these characters, based on real-life people who fought for justice lifted my spirits, and not just mine. There are 630 positive reviews on Amazon. My book group loved it, but why they asked, was this brilliant author not on the airwaves talking about this book like the famous author with a spy story out that month. Why weren’t there adverts all over the place as there were for the famous author? Because publishers don’t advertise your books till they don’t need advertising, I explained, but they didn’t get it. Nor do I.

Berlie Doherty: I award the Berlie Bouquet to Katherine Towers for her poetry pamphlet The Violin Forest, (2019 Happenstance Press).

The twenty short poems of The Violin Forest sing with lyrical imagery and musical grace. Her collection introduced me to W.S Graham – after reading his Imagine a Forest I returned to her poem Good Words Take from a river any thought of endlessness/or death to find it’s only water in its way.

I listened to Sibelius before re-reading Silence of Jarvenpaa, and wondered about his wife and daughters in the house where more than enough time did he spend looking up at the sky. To La Gaviota by Rodriguez …’the tenor’s airy triplets/ made me picture ghosts. To Schumann’s beautiful Gesaenge der Fruehe … you’ll hear dawn break/like the bones in a hand.

The poems are not all esoteric. One of the most accessible, Sparrows, contains my favourite image our old wisteria is a billowing palace/ of many green and lilac rooms..

The Book That Confirms Something Important Prize is awarded by Cynthia Jefferies to Alive Alive Oh! And Other Things That Matter by Diana Athill

 Diana Athill wrote more than one book about getting, or being, old. The other I love is Somewhere Towards the End, which turned out not to have been so very near the end because after winning the Costa for it she went on for another 11 years, publishing four more before she died in 2019 at the age of 101.

 These books are straight and honest, often amusing and also gracefully profound, These are not books of advice, but they are books of truth, and about how she lived her life. Somehow, in reading her I realise how many thoughts and feelings I share with her. Perhaps it is something to do with getting old that makes memories that float out of the past (to use her phrase) so very pleasurable to recall. 

I defy you not to be amused, moved and instructed, simply by reading the introduction. Yes, I recognise her thoughts about men, and think of Venice, and now remember, because she says it so certainly, and I hope you will remember it too, that looking at things is never time wasted. 

More virtual awards will be announced next Monday!

Guest review by Berlie Doherty: A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES by Kate Grenville

"Grenville is a terrific storyteller and has an unerring sense of descriptive language..."

Berlie Doherty writes novels, plays, stories and poetry for all ages, and is translated into over twenty languages. She has written over 60 books, including her best-selling Street Child and much-loved Blue John, several of which have been dramatised for radio, television and the stage. She has won many awards including the Carnegie Medal twice (Dear Nobody and Granny was a Buffer Girl, both of which were set in Sheffield). Her subjects cover many different genres, from folk and fairy tales, ghost stories and love stories, fantasy and historical fiction to enduring contemporary family novels. She lived in Sheffield for many years and now lives in Edale.

You can visit her website at www.berliedoherty.com  

I only recently came across the Australian author Kate Grenville, through her wonderful book The Secret River, which must be one of the most powerful novels I’ve read in the last few years. Since then I’ve been catching up with her many other novels, and I was really pleased to know that she has recently published a new book, A Room Made of Leaves.

I was a little disconcerted at first when I understood from her preface that Kate Grenville hadn’t in fact written this book, but curated and edited it from an eighteenth century manuscript written by the wife of the infamous John Macarthur, a British soldier serving in a pioneer settlement in New South Wales. Kate Grenville read through the manuscript with some difficulty, as the handwriting was faded in parts and crosshatched to save paper. She says, I have not altered the manuscript in any way …

I was deluded for a short time.

In fact, the whole novel is about truth and deception, pretence and forbearance.

The focus of the novel is the relationship between the real life Elizabeth Macarthur and John Macarthur, known as the pioneer of the wool industry in Australia. He was by all accounts an unpleasant man who had the reputation of being quarrelsome to the point of being vindictive, and was highly ambitious.

As the novel begins, Elizabeth, the daughter of a Cornish clergyman, is clever, wilful, and sexually aware. A moment spent behind the hedge with a young John Macarthur shapes the rest of her life. She is pregnant, and is forced into the deceit of a loveless marriage from which there can be no escape. There is no more seduction, no more romantic love. Before the year is out the Macarthurs travel to Sydney. During the long, dreadful journey on the convict ship Elizabeth gives birth to her baby, who dies. On board the ship, her husband is arrogant, bullying, hateful and uncaring. All this is historically documented.

In a series of letters sent to her cousin and friends in England, the real Elizabeth related the course of the relationship, and the rise to power of her husband. In the novel, her letters are deceits, heavily disguising the emotional truth. Her husband disgusts her in every way, but because he reads her letters, she can only write the opposite.

The heroine is determined to make the most of her new life in the strange, hostile environment she has been brought to. The landscape is scrubby and harsh, with thick clumps of grass like sharp blades. Their crude dwelling is close to where the marines and convicts are placed:

There were times when the screams could be heard all over the settlement …. Hunger and desperation, anger and fear, loss and yearning for home, brought out all that was worst in everyone. It was a place of sniping and slander and barbed rumours ..

Later in the book Elizabeth has a secret sexual relationship with William Dawes, an astronomer and botanist who keeps himself apart from the marines and soldiers. His hideway is the room full of leaves, a place of calm and natural beauty, and here she finds relief from the sterility of her marriage and the loneliness of her situation. In her encounters with him she observes but never comes close to the First Nation women and children who are his frequent visitors.

A Room Full of Leaves is familiar territory to Grenville and her readers. We have visited the settlements before in The Secret River and The Lieutenant – and met some of the characters. Grenville is a terrific storyteller and has an unerring sense of descriptive language. Macarthur’s character is powerfully drawn; he is morally brutal, yet infantile. He has no understanding of his wife, yet she understands him completely. In her quiet way, she controls him.

However, I was disappointed. I didn’t have any real sense of the presence of the First Nations, mostly simply figures who stroll through the settlement and appear and disappear at will. In the same way, the convicts are merely there, as a backdrop, and even Mrs Brown, a convict maid who becomes a companion, tells us little about the unbearable situation that these settlers find themselves in. I also find it hard to believe in Elizabeth’s relationship with Dawes as a love relationship rather than as a sexual one.

Elizabeth herself is resilient and resourceful. In England at that time she could have graced the living-rooms of Jane Austen’s novels. But what does she do every day? What on earth must it be like to adjust to the demands of daily life in that alien landscape? She survives, she’s strong, she makes the most of her life and the farm that she has created. She loves it, in the end. But I don’t feel I know her. The novel has left me in awe of a superb writer, but still hungry.


You can read my review of Hilary McKay’s The Skylarks’ War and Lilo Beil’s Shadow Time Stories in my blog https://berliedoherty.com/category/blog/

A Room Made of Leaves is published by Canongate.

It also features in a recent independent bookseller round-up, Her Story not His Story, by Madeleine Smith of P G Wells in Winchester.

 

CHRISTMAS ROUND-UP Part 2: Books of the Year chosen by our contributors and ourselves

Happy Christmas! Here are plenty of recommendations to see you into the New Year, and another chance to thank our excellent contributors for making this blog so full and varied. Do tell us in the comments what you've most enjoyed this year.

BERLIE DOHERTY: 

I'd like to recommend Riverkeep by Martin Stewart. It's innovative,
evocative and thrilling, full of strange, interesting ideas and characters, a coming-of-age quest fantasy novel that kept me reading all night long.

Another recommendation would be To The Bright Edge of the World  by Eowin Ivey, also a river quest. The title has a double meaning - the story is set in Alaska, and is about exploration and photography, as well as about human endurance and love. Written in several voices as logs, letters and diary entries, it is completely involving.

CATHERINE JOHNSON:

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge. Thank God for young people! For many of us, light skinned enough to pass, and/or brought up in a time when we had to be grateful for everything and not shout too loud and also remember to work three times as hard as anyone else (you're not white, you're a woman x2) Eddo-Lodge's book is a breath of fresh air. Read it and understand better how structural racism impacts on all of us.

The Girls by Emma Cline is a not entirely perfect first novel, but a great read which I loved for that absolutely pitch-perfect portrayal of what being 14 feels like. On the edge of a world you don't understand but want to rush headlong into, without understanding anything. That intensity of feeling and that impatience to be someone else. It's so worth your time.

ANTHONY McGOWAN:

Keeping On Keeping On, the latest volume of Alan Bennett’s diaries and other prose. I find Bennett endlessly funny and moving. The book is enormous, but I read it in a couple of days, constantly struck by the perfection of the writing. In some ways The Art of Failing is my attempt to ‘do’ Alan Bennett.

Richard Beard’s The Day That Went Missing, tells an impossibly sad, indeed tragic, story of family loss, in prose of restrained elegance.

It took me almost a year to finish Peter Frankopan’s magisterial The Silk Roads, but now my head is crammed with unforgettable facts, and I’ll never again think of Western Europe as being the centre of the world. To read the book is to look East, with wonder and admiration.

MIRIAM MOSS:

My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal. Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel prize, this is a powerful, authentic story about a boy desperate to reunite his broken family.

Cove by Cynan Jones (Catapult) is a minimalist story (just 100 pages) of an injured man adrift at sea. Lyrical, visceral and intense.

YVONNE COPPARD:

City of the Mind by Penelope Lively. Architect Matthew Holland is involved in the major reconstruction of the London Docklands. The blend of past and present his work evokes is reflected in his own emotional landscape as he journeys away from loss and loneliness towards a more hopeful future.I read this again for the umpteenth time this year and am still enchanted by the poetic quality of Penelope Lively’s writing and the seamless, circular nature of nature of Time that it evokes.

SUE PURKISS:

On holiday in Norfolk earlier this year I fell in love with the coastline and seascape, and came across a series of books that captures all that and also introduces you to a lovely band of friends. They’re by Elly Griffiths: the first is called At the Crossing Places and they are sort-of detective stories - but the people and place are far more important than the crimes. Wonderful.

MICHELLE LOVRIC:

Amanda Craig’s brilliant The Lie of the Land and Max Porter’s dazzling Grief Is the Thing with Feathers; then there's Lincoln in the Bardo, which I’ve just finished, but I fear that to define this novel for others might well be to corrupt the unusual experience of reading it.

The same goes for The Underground Railway (Colson Whitehead) one of my most admired books of this year and Sandra Newman’s The Country of Ice Cream Star, one of my most admired books of any year.

JANE HARRIS: 

The Bone Readers by Jacob Ross is a piece of crime fiction set on the Caribbean island of Camaho - a fictionalised version of Grenada. A beautifully-written, suspenseful tale.

The Wife, by Meg Wolitzer, is a clever and witty novel about a woman who helps her writer husband build a successful career, while neglecting her own ambitions.

CINDY JEFFERIES:

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. Wow! What a great winter novel! Frozen lakes, all kinds of snow, and a beautifully told story from several points of view. Moving, tense and with some very diverse characters drawn along the same, masterfully created plot. No wonder if was the 2006 Costa book of the year. Best read curled up in front of a warm fire with the wind howling outside and a glass of something delicious to hand.

GRAEME FIFE:

Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis is a delicious satire of surpassing invention, dotty literalism, dry comedy. Portis has the understated shifts of a cunning artist of deft insult. The effect of his comedy is like a slap on the pate with a fish slice, a gliding insertion of the narrow blade, a raised eyebrow before the incredulous sigh.

In her startling book Riot Days, Maria Alyokhina, of Pussy Riot, writes of her brutal time in prison: ‘I would like to live my life in such a way that whatever I leave behind has something to do with freedom and truth and not with the emptiness that these words become as I speak them.’ Reading such a testament of courage and self-knowledge, of withering examination of the cruder instincts of humanity, oppressed by cold, hunger, a brutal regime, absurd regulation, makes me feel inadequate.

CELIA REES:

The Lost Words… I’m simply lost for words, superlatives, anyway. Outstanding book of this year, or any year. Beautiful and profound - everyone should experience it.

My other book would be The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects by Deborah Lutz, which is a must for all fans of the Yorkshire siblings. From Emily’s writing desk to Branwell’s walking stick, Deborah Lutz manages to bring fresh, new perspectives to the much trammelled world of the Brontës by viewing their lives through their possessions.

LINDA NEWBERY:

Like Alan Hollinghurst's previous novel, The Stranger's Child, The Sparsholt Affair spans  several generations, from Oxford in the Blitz, through the London art world in the seventies and eighties, to the present. It teases us with the affair of the title, which occurs off-page and is never fully explained, though significant to several of the characters. There's an elegant sense of place, period detail and the nuances of behaviour, as you'd expect from Booker-winner Hollinghurst, and a pervading sense of the difficulty of knowing other people.

I also loved Dan Pearson's Natural Selection, (reviewed here on publication in May) - a bringing together of pieces he wrote for the Observer as its weekly garden columnist. Pearson is both an influential garden designer and an accomplished writer, sensitive to place, season, weather and shifts of light. Since hearing him speak at the Oxford Festival this spring I've been enjoying the Saturday treat of his weekly blog, Dig Delve.

ADĒLE GERAS:

Two books I'd like to find under the Christmas tree are -

Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively. Although I'm not a gardener, I love visiting gardens and also reading and writing about them. I've been a fan of Penelope Lively's work for both adults and children since the seventies, so this is a perfect book: a beautiful, velvet-to-the-touch hardback full of Lively's characteristic good sense and imagination.

Devil's Day by Andrew Michael Hurley. I loved Hurley's first novel, The Loney, and I think that this is even better. I've named this genre SOGGY RURAL NOIR and this is a prime example. No other book has made me more grateful for my suburban comforts! It has a touch of spookiness about it and is wonderfully involving throughout.