This is traditionally the time when I look back over my year’s reading and post a list of the books that most impressed me, resonated with me or stayed with me through the previous twelve months. I find myself resisting the traditional format this year, firstly because the number of books I read is somewhat lower than usual – this is mainly down to the fact that the first half of 2022 was dominated by our house move – and secondly because it has been such a weird year in general.
A lot of my headspace has been overtaken by the war in Ukraine, an outrage and a tragedy I cannot come to terms with and am still finding difficult to articulate. The eruption of this horrific, destructive and totally unnecessary war has made writing difficult at times – not the accustomed activity, but the moral sense. As with all the major events that have altered and shaken our world these past number of years, the effect for a writer, for anyone who makes or thinks or creates art, is to provoke the most searching questions about what kind of an artist you are, what kind of an artist you want to be, and the inevitable gap in between. This holds equally true for reading: which books are most urgent, most inspiring, most constructive? It goes without saying that the answers will be different for everyone, and for differing reasons.
In terms of my own work, once the house move was out of the way, I quickly re-immersed myself in the writing of my next novel, a project I began in the summer of 2021 and that has proved the most challenging assignment I have set myself to date. I felt exactly the same after finishing Conquest – now frighteningly close to publication in May of next year – and so I count this sense of difficulty as a good thing, an indication that I am pushing my ideas and my capacity to express them as far as they will go.
I am happy to report that I completed a first draft of that novel at the end of October. I am pleased with what has been accomplished, and looking forward to beginning work on the second draft in January. As with Conquest, the book I have in front of me is fascinatingly different from the book I set out to write. This tendency for works to evolve beyond their original remit has always been a part of my process, something I have come to accept as inevitable. In the case of these two most recent novels, the shift in identity has been even more radical. Once again, I think this is a good thing, a direct response to changing circumstance and the anxiety surrounding that.
What pleases me most about Conquest and its successor is how connected they feel. Not in terms of subject matter so much as intention. Conquest was decisively shaped by the lockdowns and by their impact on society; this new book is unquestionably a product of these past twelve months in particular.
Writing nurtures and protects and supports me. I struggle constantly with the need to be better, to be clearer about my direction and intent, to match the reach of my ambition with quality on the page. There is no contradiction in those two statements – indeed I believe and hope they are one and the same.
My book of the year is Red Comet, Heather Clark’s monumental and masterful biography of Sylvia Plath. I have read a lot on Plath – she is very important to me – but Red Comet is something else, something special, the biography Plath has always deserved. Finally we have a work that considers Plath on her own terms – as a poet first and foremost – and that while it never seeks to sideline the life, never underplays or undervalues the work, either. A superlative effort, a book for the ages.
Hot on its heels comes Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise, a novel that enthralled and excited me through every one of its 800 or so pages, delighted me with its structural complexity and satisfied me completely in terms of the ways in which it explored and articulated some of the more dangerous and destabilising elements of our current times. What I love and appreciate most in Yanaighara – aside from her marvellous storytelling ability – is her independent-mindedness, her disregard for fashionable rhetoric and her steely curiosity about the world and people as they actually present themselves. She is that rare thing, a novelist who is brave enough to experiment, and with each of her three books to date, she has set out to achieve something new. Where she’ll take us next, I have no idea.
One of my most gratifying reading experiences of 2022 has been my re-reading of JG Ballard’s first three novels, for an essay on Ballard’s approach to science fiction that is scheduled for publication as part of a new anthology in 2023. The Drowned World, The Drought and The Crystal World formed my own first encounters with Ballard’s work, which is why I decided to concentrate my attention upon them in particular. In terms of both their language and their approach, their uniqueness and brilliance remains undimmed. Coming into contact with Ballard’s work always leaves me on a high, with the sense that no other writer is as inspirational or as provocative. Writing about him, thinking about him is both a challenge and a privilege, the only danger being that it’s difficult to move on again afterwards.
Other books that have proved important to me this year include Speak, Silence by Carole Angier, Souvenir by Michael Bracewell, The Paper Lantern by Will Burns, Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza, Stalking the Atomic City by Markiyan Kamysh, Red Pill by Hari Kunzru, The Instant by Amy Liptrot, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel, The Men by Sandra Newman and Delphi by Clare Pollard.
I am still thinking about my reading aims, hopes and aspirations for 2023 – I’ll hopefully have a little more to say about them next week.
In the meantime, a huge thank you to everyone who stops by here, and wishing you happiness, peace and good fortune in the year to come.