abc book reviews 2022

The best books of 2022 for your summer reading list

Topic: Arts, Culture and Entertainment

This is not how we recommend treating your books. ( ABC Arts: Michelle Pereira )

Congratulations — you made it to the (almost) end of yet another stranger-than-fiction year. You probably want to escape to a different reality; reconvene your sense of hope; feel inspired? This list of 2022 favourites from ABC's book experts — ranging from hot new Australian fiction to Booker Prize nominees, lesser-known gems and snackable morsels — has got you covered for summer (and may even help with gift inspiration).

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 

Picador (Pan Macmillan)

A TV adaptation of one of Mandel's previous novels — Station Eleven — was released this year to acclaim. ( Supplied: Pan Macmillan )

Canadian Emily St. John Mandel is one of the most exciting authors writing today. Her books are ambitious, complicated, and a little bit weird, and this novel, with its timeshifting storyline, might just be her most accomplished yet.

It opens in 1912, with a young British aristocrat, Edwin St. John St. Andrew, "hauling the weight of his double-sainted name across the Atlantic". He eventually finds himself on Vancouver Island in Canada, where something unexplainable happens: He's standing beneath the branches of a maple tree when there is a sudden flash of darkness; he hears violin music, a strange whoosh, and feels as if he's in two places at once.

In 2020, a composer in New York City is showing a home-video to an audience, where something similar happens: A woman is walking underneath a maple tree when suddenly the video goes black, there's some violin music, and another whoosh.

The story travels on, to an ill-fated book tour in 2203, and even to a moon colony in the year 2401. If you're feeling lost – never fear. By the end of the novel, Mandel has everything click into place, leaving the reader with the satisfied feeling of a completed jigsaw puzzle.

This is speculative fiction of the highest literary standard. Read it – you won't regret it. CN

The Strangers by Katherena Vermette

University of Queensland Press

Vermette won the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry for her first book, North End Love Songs (2012). ( Supplied: UQP )

Katherena Vermette is a poet and novelist of Métis (Michif) heritage (one of the three recognised Indigenous groups in Canada). Her writing is tough, beautiful, confronting and designed to take your breath away.

In The Strangers, she takes us into the lives of four generations of women from the Stranger family.

When the book opens, Phoenix is incarcerated in a cruel juvenile detention system; she is chained while giving birth. This is a character almost bursting out of her skin with anger and despair, roiling with the repercussions of the terrible crime she committed. She names her baby boy Sparrow, for a sister who died in foster care.

From Phoenix's story we move out and into the lives of the other women: her mother Elsie, moving from one drug fix to the other, mourning her lost children and trying to get by; her sister Cedar-Sage, studying hard, always alone; her grandmother Margaret, whose resentment is epic; and great-grandmère Annie, who keeps the family together, in her big brown house in Winnipeg, as much as she can.

The story moves back and forward in time, solidifying the branches of a family tree that has grown from both mythology and a harsh realpolitik, becoming stronger all the while. This is a fictional family to believe in — and one I have not been able to forget. KE

This is an edited version of the original review from June.

The Trees by Percival Everett 

"Gallows humour is nothing new. It's how people have got through the worst of times," Everett told ABC RN's The Book Show. ( Supplied: Text Publishing )

Comedy and lynching are very unusual bedfellows, but prolific American author Percival Everett (Erasure; I Am Not Sidney Poitier) combines them brilliantly in this powerful novel, shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize .

Set in Money, Mississippi, The Trees follows two droll Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI), who are called in when two white men are found brutally murdered, each in the company of a dead Black man.

As the body count of dead white people mounts, and a similar dead Black man continues to appear at the crime scenes, clues point to Money's notorious history as the site of the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Black boy Emmett Till by two white men (who were acquitted by an all-white jury).

Everett pillories racist white people and highlights the injustices and repercussions of lynchings. In a powerful interlude, he lists the names of people known to be victims of lynching; horrifyingly, the list goes to almost 10 pages.

This book reckons with a brutal history, and the gallows humour guarantees you won't look away. SL

An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life by Paul Dalla Rosa

Allen & Unwin

Paul Dalla Rosa's stories have appeared in publications including Granta, The Paris Review, McSweeney's and Meanjin, but this is his debut collection. ( Supplied: Allen & Unwin )

Paul Dalla Rosa's stories are hilarious – and even funnier if you hear them read (lucky you!) by the author. Each line of dialogue is given its due – a laconic treatment in which Rosa enunciates each word and sentence in a drawl thick enough to strip paint.

Each story in An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life is predictably unpredictable: You can predict Bad Things will happen, but exactly what kind of Bad Thing often remains gratifyingly difficult to envisage.

Yet, for all the trouble he puts his characters through in his scalpel-sharp set-ups, there is never any doubt that it is the frail, the misguided, and the innocents who are Rosa's people: The story Short Stack convincingly portrays the inner world of a loser who genuinely enjoys working a dead-end job at a pancake parlour; Charlie in High Definition features the most adorably malevolent feline this side of Lucio Fulci's 1981 horror film The Black Cat.

I Feel It offers the most convincing humiliation via fried food since Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke filmed a character being repeatedly slapped in 2002's Unknown Pleasures.

It takes great skill to do what Rosa does: the fiendish way he wields his adverbs; the devastatingly sardonic dialogue; the not-quite non-sequitur repetitions; the glazed re-emphases. He makes it look easy. Good authors often do. But you can't levy a vein of humour this deep without intelligence, wit, and heart. DF

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart 

Stuart began Young Mungo in 2016, while still working on his Booker Prize-winning debut Shuggie Bain. ( Supplied: Pan Macmillan )

Scottish author Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize in 2020 for his debut novel, Shuggie Bain. His follow-up is even better.

Set in the housing estates of 90s Glasgow, this is a story about forbidden love, between two teenage boys, Mungo and James. The boys' love is pure and joyful – think passionate kisses and sausage rolls in the bath – but the world around them is violent and dangerous.

Be warned: There are scenes in this novel that are breathtakingly painful to read; somehow, however, Stuart makes it work. None of the darkness feels unearned or voyeuristic. And amongst the brutality, Stuart finds moments of transcendence. A scene where Mungo and his sister make a celebration cake out of slices of bread and jam is the most moving thing I've read this year.

Of all of the books engulfing my desk at the ABC, this is the one I have recommended to colleagues again and again. I'll leave you with this review, scrawled on a yellow sticky note, left for me by one such reader: "Claire, this book devastated me. If it weren't for that tiny crumb of hope at the end, I might have thrown it at you today. I LOVED it, it broke my heart." CN

Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor

McGregor is also a renowned performance artist. ( Supplied: Pan Macmillan )

Iris Webber is not averse to a bit of tea-leafing and is familiar with the cockatoos and sly groggers on the streets of 1930s Sydney, but is unsure how much she identifies as a "tootsie doll". And if these and other slang terms from the underworld aren't familiar to you, fear not, because her world and her language will quickly make sense.

To translate: Iris is a thief, who finds her way into the queer demimonde, falling in love with Maisie (who might just break her heart) and doing her very best to survive.

As the story opens, in 1937, a 31-year-old Iris has been charged with murder – and the rest of the novel tries to make sense of what's happened, tracing her life from childhood in Glen Innes to the mean streets of Surry Hills.

Sydney author Fiona Kelly McGregor based the titular character on the real Iris Webber, gleaning details from court records and charge sheets, mugshots, and the occasional newspaper story. (Other real-world figures who pop up in the novel include crime queens Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, gangster John "Chow" Hayes, and police officer Lillian Armfield).

This year, we've been well-served by Australian historical fiction: Fiona McFarlane's The Sun Walks Down , a mystery about a missing child in the late-19th century; Gail Jones's Salonika Burning , inspired by four real-life World War I workers in the Greek port city; and Robbie Arnott's Limberlost (recommended elsewhere in this guide). KE

The Settlement by Jock Serong 

Serong is the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. ( Supplied: Text )

The Settlement is a book everyone should read — because it unfolds during a dark and terrible time in the colonial history of Van Diemen's Land, and because it's very, very good.

This is the final novel in Victorian writer Jock Serong's historical fiction trilogy set in the Furneaux Islands, off the coast of Tasmania. In The Settlement, Serong takes the reader to the Wybalenna Aboriginal Settlement on Flinders Island in the Bass Strait. This is where the First Nations people of lutruwita/Tasmania were coerced to live by the "protector of Aboriginals", George Augustus Robinson.

The aim of the settlement was to provide a sanctuary away from the genocidal violence on the mainland, although the end result was the same: Wybalenna was a place of misery, disease and death.

While the white characters in the novel are nameless (referred to only as the Catechist, the Man, the Commandant, the Storekeeper), Indigenous characters are referred to by their names. It's a clever way to up-end the historical narrative that has rendered Indigenous people invisible in colonial art and writing.

Serong's obvious deep historical research combined with his talents as a novelist make this an important if uneasy read. SL

Kin: Thinking with Deborah Bird Rose

Duke University Press

Anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose wrote in Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction: "The power of love is awesome, as everyone who has loved will know. But, equally, love is complex and full of problems as well as possibilities." ( Supplied: Duke University Press )

This is the year the more-than-human broke through. As writers across genres and forms grappled with questions of kinship, more-than-human futures, ecological justice, interdependence and care, there was no escaping the question of what responsibilities we have to the world around us — a world that teems with human and non-human lives, all of whom face oblivion wrought by colonisation, capitalism and ecocide.

American-born anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose's decades-long career saw her work with Yarralin and Lingara Aboriginal communities in northern Australia as her friends and mentors. Their collaboration led her to poke and prod at the limits of the European humanities and sciences.

As editors Thom van Dooren and Matthew Chrulew note in their introduction to the collection, Kin, "[Bird's] great art and skill was to bring diverse stories, ideas, and concepts into generative conversation, not to create harmony or synergy but rather to stretch them beyond their comfort zones."

Kin sees multiple contributors – including the Bawaka Collective, an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, more-than-human research collective – take up the spirit of Rose's work in pieces of writing that consider the art of living on a damaged planet; of thinking with rather than simply thinking with reference to; of being with more-than-human worlds.

Four years after Rose's passing in 2018, this collection is a reminder of how relevant the questions she asked are for our times. DF

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott 

"Limberlost is powerful, lyrical and packs a hell of an emotional punch," Claire Nichols wrote for ABC Arts. ( Supplied: Text )

Is there such a thing as a perfect book? Australian author Robbie Arnott comes very close with his stunning third novel, about a 15-year-old boy living in 1940s Tasmania, and the summer that changes his life.

Ned lives on his family orchard with his father and sister. His two older brothers are fighting in World War II, and their absence hangs heavily over the family, whose grief and fear is unspoken but ever-present. Ned's secret dream is to own a small boat, and he spends his days hunting rabbits, hoping to sell the pelts in town.

One day, while out hunting, Ned accidentally captures a quoll. It's injured, and he should probably kill it, but there's something about the wild strength and beauty of this creature, its teeth "needling the air", that captivates the teenager.

At 226 pages, this is a short book. But what Arnott manages to achieve in this slim volume is extraordinary – there is pain, grief, love and kindness, an exploration of violence and masculinity, a celebration of the natural world, and a reckoning with Australia's colonial history.

Limberlost features some of the most beautiful prose I've read this year — and if the ending doesn't make you cry, you're made of tougher stuff than me. CN

This is an edited version of the original review from October.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

Kennedy's debut novel has made a number of this year's best book lists including The Observer's 10 best debut novelists of 2022. ( Supplied: Bloomsbury )

Is there any bad Irish fiction? I mean, really, what a year for it. It's hard to settle on one example, given the inventive pulse of violence and island life in Audrey Magee's The Colony (one of my favourite books of the year); the recognition of wrongness and responsibility in Claire Keegan's Booker Prize nominee Small Things Like These; and the burning drive of religious zealotry in the seventh century in Emma Donoghue's Haven .

But for the purposes of this guide, I've decided to settle on Louise Kennedy's powerful debut, Trespasses, partly because of the shared concerns with the books mentioned above: ordinary lives, disrupted by sectarian violence; tragic, harsh lives, described with exactitude and poetry.

Set on the edges of Belfast in 1975, Trespasses is about Cushla, a Catholic schoolteacher living and working in a Protestant area of the city, where even her name gives her away. She's a woman who cares, shows compassion, helps the boy in her class whose clothes always smell damp because his mam dare not put washing out on the line, because it will get dog-shit hurled at it. The small acts of violence only herald large acts, which the reader, fearful, can foresee.

Amidst this day-to-day tension, Cushla also finds pleasure in the woman she becomes with her older, married, Protestant lover. But we suspect this relationship is doomed, and wonder what will become of both her and her country.

Trespasses is an exquisite, painful portrayal of one ordinary life that makes it feel huge and extraordinary, and emblematic of Ireland at the time. KE

Mothertongues by Ceridwen Dovey and Eliza Bell

Hamish Hamilton (Penguin)

Eliza Bell told Sarah L'Estrange on The Book Show: "We're interested in the idea of motherhood as performance." ( Supplied: Penguin Books Australia )

How do you write about the messiness and absurdity of motherhood in a way that's true to the experience in all its multifaceted ways?

Ceridwen Dovey, a South African and Australian social anthropologist and author, and Eliza Bell, a US-born Australia-based writer and actor, don't even try in this collaboration: They embrace the chaos. They write that motherhood is "a narrative that is comfortable being, at times, incoherent" — and they unashamedly embody this incoherence by drawing inspiration from Bertolt Brecht and the Theatre of the Absurd (while exposing its patriarchal roots).

There's no single thread in this genre-defying book: Instead, you'll encounter "Odysseia", an everywoman undergoing the epic and mundane journey of motherhood; a text message exchange between the AI helpers Siri and Alexa, who share their experiences of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood; lists of the contents of mothers' handbags; a breastfeeding diary; and to-do lists that capture the mental load of motherhood.

While you're reading Mothertongues, you can also listen to the accompanying soundtrack by musician Keppie Coutts.

This book is wild and untamed, and so is motherhood. On a similar theme, I'd recommend We've Got This: Stories by Disabled Parents, edited by Eliza Hull. These books aren't just for parents but for everyone, as we all come from somewhere! SL

Solo Dance by Li Kotomi

World Editions

Li's follow-up to Solo Dance, An Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom, won a 2021 Akutagawa Prize (one of Japan's most prestigious literary awards). ( Supplied: World Editions )

I first read Li Kotomi's debut, Solo Dance, when it was released in Japan in 2018, and was arrested by its opening: "Death. Dying."

Born in Taiwan, Kotomi began writing in Japanese as an adult, producing work that explores linguistic, sexual and cultural identity.

Solo Dance, which won Japan's Gunzo New Writers' Prize, concerns the shy and bookish Yingmei Zhao, who in the fourth grade falls in love with her classmate, Shi Danchen. Unable to live freely in Taiwan as a queer woman, Zhao decides to move to Japan, adopting a new name to fit in: Chō Norie. Dating online, she adopts further pseudonyms, reflecting both her Chinese and Japanese selves.

Japan may be a "queer desert," but its literature – particularly Dazai Osamu, author of the cult classic No Longer Human, and Haruki Murakami – provides a point of connection; Zhao longs to read them in their original language.

When violent events from her past return to upset her life in Japan, Zhao begins to travel, finding solace in the people she meets – a lesbian in San Francisco, a mysterious woman in Beijing (which she travels to via Xi'an).

In Sydney, she is surprised to find the whole city "dyed in a rainbow hue" during Mardi Gras, and to meet a gay couple who identify her as Taiwanese after spotting the book she is reading: Chen Xue's Book of Evil Women .

Poignant, aching, Kotomi's novel of selfhood and queer longing evinces a deep sense of pathos. It is endearing, beautiful, and beguiling. DF

Tune in to ABC RN at 10am Mondays for  The Book Show  and 10am Saturdays for  The Bookshelf .

'The View' co-hosts share their favorite books of summer 2022

The co-hosts flip through the books that they're dipping into this summer!

Summer is the best time to unwind and get lost in a good book, or a few!

All week, the "The View" co-hosts will share their summer reading list in a series called "The Ladies Get Lit," showcasing their favorite books to read, as well as some audiobooks. Read on for the co-hosts' favorite books to kick back and relax with, and get lost in a story that will take you anywhere you want to go. This sweepstakes has ended.

ANA NAVARRO’S SUMMER READS

”Olga Dies Dreaming” by Xochitl Gonzalez

Olga and her brother, Pedro, are New York City hot shots. Pedro is a popular congressman representing their Brooklyn neighborhood while Olga plans the weddings of Manhattan's power players. Their public lives seem charmed but behind closed doors things are less rosy.

While Olga struggles to find a love of her own, their estranged mother comes barreling back into their lives. Set against the backdrop of New York City and the months leading up to Hurricane Maria, this story examines political corruption, family strife and the American dream.

The book is being turned into a TV series.

”Violeta” by Isabel Allende

Written in the form of a letter, this book takes you through the life of Violeta, the first girl in a family of five boys. She takes the reader through the great depression, the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants and two pandemics.

This coming of age story recounts heartbreak, passionate affairs, poverty, terrible loss and immense joy.

JOY BEHAR'S SUMMER READS

"Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli" by Mark Seal

"Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli" by author Mark Seal is a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of the making of the iconic film, "The Godfather." The author conducted interviews with director Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, the late James Caan and even a few anonymous sources.

The creators of the film had to contend with the real-life mob members who were subjects of the movie, and they didn't always agree with the content. The studio also didn't want Marlon Brando or Pacino to star in the film, but Coppola "went to the mattresses" for them.

For anyone interested in filmmaking, Hollywood history and even the story of organized crime in America, it's a fascinating read.

"Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" by Lori Gottlieb

Nearly 30 million Americans take a seat on a therapist's couch, and some of these patients are therapists themselves. Author Lori Gottlieb -- who is also a successful psycho-therapist -- wrote the memoir "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone" to explain why people do self-destructive things and how to stop them.

When she experiences a personal crisis, the tables are turned and she enters therapy herself. As she delves deeper into the lives of her patients -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a 20-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong men -- she discovers that the questions they're struggling with are the very ones she's now presenting to her own therapist.

SARA HAINES' SUMMER READS

"Interrupting Chicken" by David Ezra Stein

Sara's son, Caleb, loves to be read the book, "Interrupting Chicken," by David Ezra Stein. The story is about a chicken who can't stop interrupting his papa while being read some of his favorite bedtime stories like "Hansel and Gretel" and "Little Red Riding Hood."

But what happens when it's this little chicken's turn to read a story to his papa? Will the tables turn? Will he learn a lesson other than those of the storybooks he's reading? You'll have to find out for yourself!

"It Ends With Us" by Colleen Hoover

In Colleen Hoover's novel "It Ends With Us," Lily moves to Boston after graduating college to start her own business and falls for Ryle, a gorgeous neurosurgeon.

Everything seems too good to be true, even if Lily finds herself to be the exception to Ryle's "no dating" rule. As she questions this new relationship, she can't help but think about her first love, Atlas.

Read the book as soon as you can because the much anticipated sequel, "It Starts With Us," comes out in October.

SUNNY HOSTIN'S SUMMER READS

"A Frog Named Earl: A Tale of Adventure, Courage, Friendship and Acceptance" by Earl Trewin

Earl Trewin wanted to write a children's book about overcoming physical challenges and accepting one's differences. So he wrote "A Frog Named Earl," a story of determination, hope, acceptance and friendship.

The main character is Earl, a frog who does not jump like other frogs. When he goes on a quest to find a wise owl who helps all creatures with challenges, he makes new friends who are unique just like him.

"Invisible Storm: A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD" by Jason Kander

In 2017, former intelligence officer, Jason Kander, was preparing a run for president. When he entered his bid for mayor of Kansas City, he was headed for a landslide victory.

After 11 years battling PTSD from his service in Afghanistan, Jason was seized by depression and suicidal thoughts. He dropped out of the mayor's race, out of public life, and finally sought help.

In this memoir, readers learn of Jason's struggle with the most painful moments of his PTSD. Through his eyes, readers learn of impact this undiagnosed illness has on his family as they see him go through treatment and gives hope to many.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG'S SUMMER READS

"Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence" by Ken Auletta

Ken Auletta wrote a New Yorker profile on a man who was at the height of his powers 20 years ago: Harvey Weinstein. The profile exposed his volatile and violent behavior toward some of his employees and collaborators.

Back then, there were rumors that Weinstein was a sexual predator, but he denied claims when confronted. Years later, Auletta shared his reporting notes with Ronan Farrow and finally revealed the truth about Weinstein.

For this book, film stars, Miramax employees and board members, old friends and family -- including Weinstein's brother -- spoke to Auletta at length. Even Weinstein himself responded to his questions from prison.

"Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel" by Shelby Van Pelt

Following her husband's death, Tova Sullivan worked the night shift at the local aquarium. Keeping busy always helped her cope, which she's done since her 18-year-old son mysteriously vanished on a boat more than 30 years ago.

For Tova, talking to the aquarium's sea creatures was easier than talking to humans. When she became acquainted with a giant octopus living at the aquarium, she realized it knew more than anyone, and it helps her find out what happened to her son.

"Charlotte Sophia: Myth, Madness and the Moor" by Tina Andrews

Prior to her father's death, Princess Charlotte is told a family secret in Germany: She was of African descent. In order to marry well, she's forced to hide her ethnic coloring under makeup for years.

Charlotte has the opportunity to be the potential wife for the newly crowned King George III, but what happens when the king is in love with someone else who he is forbidden to marry, or when Charlotte is forced to give up her one true love to marry the king?

The book is filled with lust, betrayal, politics, murder and madness.

"The View"'s original podcast series "Behind the Table" is available for free on major listening platforms, including Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Amazon Music , Google Podcasts , iHeartRadio , Stitcher , TuneIn , Audacy and the ABC News app .

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Book reviews

Dom Casmurro

Machado de Assis

Bento Santiago is madly in love with his neighbour, Capitu. He even breaks a promise his devout mother made to God that he become a priest in order to marry her. But, once wed, Bento becomes increasingly convinced that Capitu is having a torrid affair, that his son is not his own, and that his best friend has cuckolded him.

What follows is a rich and sardonic narrative, as Bento attempts to discern his sons paternity. Are his suspicions actually based in reality or have his obsessive ruminations given way to deceptive illusions?

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

Satoshi Yagisawa

The Japanese bestseller: a tale of love, new beginnings, and the comfort that can be found between the pages of a good book.

When twenty-five-year-old Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle Satoru's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above his shop. Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, the Morisaki Bookshop is a booklover's paradise.

On a quiet corner in an old wooden building, the shop is filled with hundreds of second-hand books. It is Satoru's pride and joy, and he has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife left him five years earlier. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the shop.

Interior Chinatown

Willis Wu doesn't perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he's merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy--the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

The Safekeep

Yael van der Wouden

An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.

It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season . . .

To Be Taught, If Fortunate

Becky Chambers

At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. They can produce antifreeze in sub-zero temperatures, absorb radiation and convert it for food, and conveniently adjust to the pull of different gravitational forces. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to explore neighbouring exoplanets long suspected to harbour life.

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover

Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent.

When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

A Deadly Education

Naomi Novik

Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered.

There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic, and the odds of survival are never equal. Once you're inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate, or you die.

El Higgins is uniquely prepared for the schools many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions -- never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school.

Except, she might accidentally kill all the other students too. So El is trying her hardest not to use it . . . that is, unless she has no other choice.

The Gay Best Friend

Nicolas DiDomizio

As a people-pleasing gay man, thirty-year-old music lawyer Domenic Marino is an expert at code-switching between the hypermasculine and ultrafeminine worlds of his two soon-to-be-wed best friends: handsome sports attorney Patrick Cooper and glamorous beauty editor Kate Wallace. But this summer—reeling from his own failed engagement and tasked with attending both their bachelor and bachelorette parties at the Cooper family’s idyllic shoreline estate in Mystic, Connecticut—Dom is anxious about having to play both sides.

Viscount in Love

Eloisa James

Two eccentric orphans bring together a grumpy viscount and the free-spirited heroine who steals his heart in the first novel in Eloisa James’s new Accidental Brides series, in which haughty aristocrats find themselves married to the wrong women.

He wants a nanny, not a bride…

She wants to marry for love…

When the arrogant viscount finds that his viscountess has stolen his heart, he’ll have to give all he has to win her love.

What I’d Rather Not Think About

Jente Posthuma

What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them?

This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About.

The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely.

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Maureen Corrigan's favorite books of the year: 10 disparate reads for a hectic 2022

Maureen Corrigan

Some years, my best books list falls into a pattern: like a year that's dominated by dystopian fiction or stand-out memoirs. But, as perhaps befits this hectic year, the best books I read in 2022 sprawl all over the place in subject and form. Here are 10 superb titles from 2022:

Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun

Also a Poet is a moving account of Ada Calhoun's attempt to connect with her elusive father, art critic Peter Schjeldahl , by trying to complete his abandoned biography of the beloved New York poet, Frank O'Hara. Calhoun recalls how, one day, in the basement of the East Village apartment house where her parents lived for decades, she stumbled upon a treasure trove of cassette tapes from the 1970s; interviews that her father conducted with O'Hara's painter friends and fellow poets. Ultimately, the book Calhoun writes isn't an O'Hara biography either: It's a genre-defying memoir and work of criticism, as well as a love letter to O'Hara's poetry and to the city that inspired it.

Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

Renowned critic Margo Jefferson's book, Constructing a Nervous System, is also a virtuoso fusion of different forms: memoir, quick riffs and cultural criticism. As one of the few prominent African American female critics of her generation, Jefferson tells us she was "always calculating — not always well — how to achieve; succeed as a symbol, and a self." The pieces collected here range from a sharp consideration of the significance of Ella Fitzgerald's sweat during her television performances to the challenges Jefferson herself faced in teaching Willa Cather's work — along with its racist passages — to her majority white college students. Jefferson writes: "I wanted them to feel chagrined ... And I wanted them to be disappointed ... " That last response is one I'm certain Jefferson's own readers will not experience.

Interview: Margo Jefferson's new memoir is like a kaleidoscope into someone's life

The Facemaker by Lindsey Fitzharris

The Facemaker, by medical historian Lindsey Fitzharris, tells the story of British surgeon Harold Gillies' pioneering work in reconstructing the faces of some of the estimated 280,000 men who suffered facial trauma during World War I. Those soldiers' faces were shattered and burned by the new technologies that that war ushered in: machine guns, chemical weapons, flamethrowers, shells and hot chunks of shrapnel from explosives. To cite the poetic words of one battlefield nurse, before Gillies came along, "the science of healing stood baffled before the science of destroying."

Interview: With no textbooks or antibiotics, this WWI surgeon pioneered facial reconstruction

Review: 'The Facemaker' profiles the British surgeon who treated WWI's disfigured soldiers

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacey Schiff

Stacy Schiff's biography of Samuel Adams is a thrilling, timely account of how the American Revolution happened: how the colonists were radicalized and came to think of themselves, not as Bostonians or Virginians, but as "Americans." It also tells the story of how Samuel Adams, the so-called "forgotten Founder," played an essential role in that transformation through countless conversations, clandestine meetings and newspaper essays written under 30-some pseudonyms.

Review: Author reminds Americans that Samuel Adams was a revolutionary before he was a beer

Signal Fires: A Novel by Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro's profound new novel jumps around in time to piece together the story of three teenagers, a car accident, two families and what persists even after neighborhoods change, people grow old, relationships fray and collective memories fade. The "signal fires" of Shapiro's title are the stars in the ancient night sky as seen through a lonely boy's computerized astronomy device. The boy shares his device with our protagonist, an elderly doctor, who's strangely comforted by the vastness: "The stars, rather than appearing distant and implacable, seemed to be signal fires in the dark, mysterious fellow travelers lighting a path ... "

Interview: Dani Shapiro on her new novel 'Signal Fires'

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

Jonathan Escoffery's debut collection of eight interconnected short stories overwhelmed me with its originality, heart, wit and sweeping social vision. Escoffery's aspiring, mostly Jamaican-born immigrant characters keep getting knocked down: by racism, the 2008 recession and, most literally, by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which reduces their house to its "skeletal frame." But, in its largest sense, the "You" his characters are trying to survive is America itself.

Review: 'If I Survive You' is a sweeping portrait of a family's fight to make it in America

Interview: Acclaimed short-story collection 'If I Survive You' explores Jamaican-American immigrant experience

Foster by Claire Keegan

Survival, of sorts, is also the subject of Claire Keegan's matchless novella, Foster , in which a young girl in the Ireland of the early 1980s is palmed off by her parents for a summer with relatives she doesn't know. None of the adults explains much: the girl's father takes his leave of her by curtly saying, "try not to fall into the fire, you." Keegan, who's a writer who revels in emotional tension, has a sharp ear for mundane meanness; but she has an even keener appreciation for the complications of kindness.

Review: With 'Foster,' Claire Keegan asks that readers look outward

Review: Small in scope, Claire Keegan's 'Foster' packs an emotional wallop

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Young Mungo is a disquieting work of fiction about the dangers of being different. In working class Glasgow, Scotland in the 1990s, a 15-year-old Protestant boy named Mungo falls in love with a Catholic boy. We readers know none of this will end well, but it's a testament to Stuart's unsparing powers as a storyteller that we can't possibly anticipate how very badly — and baroquely — things will turn out. Young Mungo is a suspense story wrapped around a novel of acute psychological observation.

Review: Brace yourself for 'Young Mungo,' a nuanced heartbreaker of a novel

Interview: 'Young Mungo' tells the love story of 2 boys — one Protestant, the other Catholic

Trust by Hernan Diaz

Trust is an ingeniously constructed historical novel with a postmodern point: namely, that readers can't wholly "trust" any of the slippery stories we read here, especially the opening one about the rise of a Wall Street tycoon much like Charles Schwab or J.P. Morgan. Throughout, Hernan Diaz makes dazzling connections between the realms of finance and fiction. As one character, an anarchist, says: "Money is a fantastic commodity. You can't eat or wear money, but it represents all the food and clothes in the world. This is why it's a fiction. ... Stocks, shares, bonds. ... That's what all these criminals trade in: fictions."

Review: You can't 'Trust' this novel. And that's a very good thing

Interview: Hernan Diaz's anticipated novel 'Trust' probes the illusion of money — and the truth

Lucy by the Sea: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout

I was reluctant to put Elizabeth Strout's latest novel Lucy by the Sea on this best of the year list. After all, her novel Oh William! was on last year's list . But it's no use to hold out against Strout, she's too good. Lucy by the Sea transports Strout's familiar heroine, Lucy Barton, out of New York City and into a ramshackle house in Maine with her ex-husband, William. The two shelter in place there during the worst months of pandemic, months Lucy recalls as having about them "a feeling of diffuse grief" and "mutedness." Strout's spare sentences and her simple pacing constitute her own idiosyncratic take on Hemingway's famous "iceberg theory," in which a depth of meaning and emotion lurks beneath the surface of the words on the page.

Review: 'Lucy By The Sea' succeeds at capturing disruptions, anxieties of pandemic

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