10 Favorite Novels I read in 2021
Returning for my (and my wife’s) annual list of favorite novels I read in the last year!
Lila, Marilynne Robinson (2014)
After I wrote about Lila, I convinced several people to read the novel. It was interesting, everyone else came away with a much sadder impression than I did. And Lila is a sad book. It’s full of pain, knotty relationships, and broken relationships. All the suffering Lila has experienced certainly has an impact on her and her ability to trust and live. But what I came away with then and what I still remember now, is Lila’s capability for wonder. Despite all the evil and ruin, even despite herself, Lila sees the ordinary world with light, generosity, and awe.
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro (2021)
Klara and the Sun was another book that I wrote about and convinced a lot of people to read who all thought it was sadder than I did. Ishiguro’s books are full of characters with audacious hopes that are inevitably dashed by the world. At the time, I was thrilled in Klara and the Sun that Klara’s hopes were miraculously(?) fulfilled instead of smashed to pieces. I still think that moment is the central aspect of the novel, but in conversation I think it’s asking different questions than some of Ishiguro's other novels. Instead of looking at delusional hopes suddenly confronted with the truth, I think Klara and the Sun wonder what happens if wild hopes are fulfilled. If a miracle happened would we be able to hold on to it, or would it just slip through our fingers.
Jack, Marilynne Robinson (2020)
Jack is Marilynne Robinson’s follow up to Lila, this time telling the story of Jack, the ‘prodigal son’ of the series. But away from the town of Gilead, Jack has the opportunity to open up as sweet, loving, and generous and we follow his doomed love story with Della, in a time and place where such interracial relationships are illegal. Predestination hangs bittersweetly over love which is able to transcend, yet futile to overcome, the evils that keep people divided.
A Thousand Ships, Natalie Haynes (2019)
Out of the many retellings of the Odyssey and Iliad that I read this year A Thousand Ships is my favorite. Haynes weaves together the lives of the Greek and Trojan women as a series of vignettes surrounding the fall of Troy. While the Iliad complicates its war by focusing on the ruptures left behind by those killed in battle and it’s sympathy for the primary antagonists, Hector and Priam, the polyphonic perspective of A Thousand Ships widens the scope even further, making us dwell on damages of war even after the spears are stilled.
In Calabria, Peter S. Beagle (2017)
The author of the Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle continues to work magic with in Calabria. Where the Last Unicorn is mythic in scope, in Calabria is intimate. A Unicorn, transcendence incarnate, comes to a lowly and undeserving farmer, and his love for the Unicorn makes him courageous, and tender, and strong in ways he could never have imagined.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Unknown (1300s)
A strange, ambiguous tale which picks up questions of hubris, holiness, honor, and grace and turns them over in its grip, unsure of what to do with them, but, at the same time, unable to put them down. It’s completely carried by the singular image of the Green Knight, riding out of King Arthur’s hall holding his own severed, cackling head.
Til We have Faces, C.S. Lewis (1956)
Susanna Clarke (who dominated this list last year) told me in an interview that Til We have Faces is the most underrated book. She’s right. As my own faith has changed over the last couple of years, I’ve thought of Lewis as too punishingly logical. Like the Professor who when a magical land shows up in his wardrobe works out the logic of the thing, Lewis’s writing often focuses narrowly on logic or a specific point he’s driving at. I want to stand in awe as the snow falls around me. Who needs logic when you have Narnia? Fortunately, Lewis is dynamic and the later years of his life and marriage changed him. The product is Til We have Faces. It give the main character, Orual, an education in Greek logic and then shows it’s limitations in the presence of gods and God. The prose sings, the deep mysteries of existence lurk in and soar off of the pages, and C.S. Lewis has never been better.
Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis (1938)
Til We have Faces sparked an Inkling renaissance for me. Out of the Silent Planet is much more typical of Lewis’s earlier style than Til We have Faces. He comes to the novel with an axe to grind, but that’s alright because sometimes you need an axe. Lewis is shockingly anticolonial and strongly warns against the inhumane impulses lying behind interplanetary settlement, exploitation of resources, and living without contentment. It would have been nice if everyone paid attention in 1938, but all the more reason to pay attention now when Out of the Silent Planet is becoming our reality. Billionaires are going to space and bringing their restless discontent and cutthroat competition with them.
Perelandra, C.S. Lewis (1943)
The second of his Space Trilogy, Perelandra sees Lewis starting to push the boundaries of his fiction. The parts where Lewis tries to convey transcendence are better executed in Til We have Faces, but Perelandra is weirder and more ambitious than Out of the Silent Planet while aimed at destroying spirit-body dualism once and for all.
All Hallows’ Eve, Charles Williams (1945)
Speaking of weird, All Hallows’ Eve doesn’t push boundaries so much as it dissolves them. Paintings become distillations of reality in ways that characters see and don’t see. Characters connect in uncanny and mystical ways. Even the divide between living and dead is permeable. It is a novel dominated by setting more than character or plot. The City is what weaves through and dissolves the boundaries of the ordinary world. And as Williams tries to relate the Acts of the City, he creates something even stranger yet somehow still more piercing than the wildest works I’ve read before.
