Fantastic Metropolis

Looking back through the list of books I read last year, I was surprised by how many were truly outstanding. My “best of” list was quickly out of hand. Was it really such a great year? Well… for me it was, because, for the first time in several years, I was not reading as a judge for an award, nor was I reviewing or otherwise reading for hire, so all my reading was done for pleasure, or following a personal interest. Anyway, here are a few of my top of the tops:

To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era, Mary Lowenthal Felstiner

(University of California Press, 1997)

I’ve never heard of Charlotte Salomon until I came across an article in an arts magazine a few years ago, and was immediately fascinated. Before she was murdered by the Nazis, this young artist spent the final year of her life painting her life, creating a series of over seven hundred painted scenes which, along with a certain amount of dialogue, written descriptions and notes for background music, made up an autobiography which she titled “Life? Or Theatre??” For anyone interested in the art of graphic novels—well, this should be absolutely irresistible. Eventually I discovered there was a book about her—not only moving and gripping because of its subject matter, but an original and inventive take on biography. A splendid book. (And now I’ve managed to find a copy of Charlotte, the massive, expensive reproduction of all the paintings which make up Salomon’s life-work.)

The Separation, Christopher Priest

(Scribner, 2002)

Another excursion into the territory of memory, fiction, personality, madness, fantasy and obsession that this author has been exploring so brilliantly since at least The Dream of Wessex (aka The Perfect Lover), but in this new novel the sometimes narrow focus of Priestian metafiction (can the narrator be trusted? does the narrator even exist?) has broadened out to address global issues: war, peace, pacifism, individual moral responsibility. Although I’ll always have a special fondness for The Affirmation, I think The Separation is Chris Priest’s greatest book so far—the most ambitious and the most accomplished. It’s a wonderful, rich, absorbing read; also intellectually demanding, even mind-boggling.(I felt like my head was about to explode when I got to the final pages.) And, if you’ve read Ian McEwan’s much more publicised and talked about Atonement, The Separation makes a fascinating counterpoint… it really deserves more attention. It would be interesting to see these two novels reviewed together.

My Father’s Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances, Suzy McKee Charnas

(Tarcher/Putnam, 2002)

I am not much drawn to the myriad memoirs and “how I survived my dysfunctional family” testaments that have thronged the shelves in recent years, but I had a feeling that anything written by Suzy McKee Charnas would be worth reading—I was right, and also deeply impressed, as this book about her relationship with her difficult father moved and gripped and intrigued me in unexpected ways. It is as haunting as the best novels, thought-provoking on a number of subjects (from the practicalities of being old and frail in America today, to ideas as about the life of The Artist, and how success might be measured), bracingly unsentimental, and full of surprises.

Other books also read and very much enjoyed this year

• Unless, by Carol Shields
• Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters
• The Courage Consort, by Michel Faber
• The Deadly Space Between, by Patricia Duncker
• The Cutting Room, by Louise Welsh
• Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
• Eugene Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin (translated by Charles Johnston)