Have you heard the expression “better late than never?” No, that doesn’t cut it for you? Well how about this rationale: “There’s no way to know what books are truly underrated until we’re already five months into the next year.” Anything? No? Well, I tried..but here it is “I should have written this months ago, but I just didn’t. Still, most people don’t read books anymore so I doubt anyone was waiting with baited breath for this.” I’m calling it an “underrated” books list instead of “best of” books list just to make it seem a little less dated, but it’s really the same thing.
And now, on with the show…[If I inspire even one person to read one book off this list, sniff, sniff, I’ll be proud.]
Honorable Mention: Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich…In the very near future, a man gets paid to prognosticate disasters and must decide whether or not to profit off an impending climate-change disaster. Perhaps the first climate-crisis thriller I’ve ever read that works as literary fiction too. The only reason it’s not higher is because I’m only halfway finished with it, if not for that technicality it probably would be.
10. Tampa by Alissa Nutting…One of the most controversial—-but little known—-books of last year. First person narrative puts us right inside the mind of an unrepentant sex offender determined to seduce her students. I’ll admit that I’ve always looked at those “hot teacher, horny 14 year old boy” scandals as pretty awesome for the boy, but this book plays off that conception knowingly by putting us so convincingly inside the skin of a single-minded monster.
9. The Maid’s Version by Daniel Woodrell…A slower paced novella that is less than 200 pages but expertly crafted to read more like a short story collection than anything. It deals with a mysterious 1929 dance hall explosion that kills 42 people. Whodunit and why is less compelling than the fully fleshed-out lives Woodrell is able to create with expertly slim descriptions. [Warning: some of the perhaps-overly ornate language may be a bit confusing to casual readers.]
8. We Live in Water by Jess Walter…The best short story collection I read last year.
7. The Dark Road by Ma Jian…A poor couple in rural China who already have a girl, conceive another child (despite the one child policy) and decide to flee down the Yangtze River rather than face a crackdown from the government. It’s an odyssey through the part of China often overlooked in the gushing stories about their economic “miracle.” If it were set in America, it would earn the elusive Great American Novel label, so I’ll call it the Great Chinese Novel, even if people there aren’t allowed to buy it.
6. The Night Guest by Fiona McFarland…A must-read Mother’s Day book for adult children to read. It follows a lonely, fragile Australian widow living by herself with only occasional phone calls from her children to look forward to. Until the day a younger female “state worker” comes to live with her. Who exactly is this ambiguous young woman and what are her motives? Even if you figure it out long before the last page, the ending will still pack a gut punch. One of the best books I’ve ever read at capturing the vulnerability and isolation of old age.
5. Child of Vengeance by David Kirk…It’s been eons since the last great samurai novel, I think this comes pretty close.
3. [Tie] Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink AND The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber…Two great true stories about dastardly deeds done by medical professionals, and the cover-up by mega-hospitals that now feel more like individual corporations. “Five Days at Memorial” (which features one disgustingly self-righteous doctor) is better known, but “The Good Nurse” is an infuriating and revelatory must-read about how one spookily monstrous serial-killing nurse was allowed to murder dozens (perhaps hundreds) of people by a hospital system that was more interested in covering it up than justice. Read it, get mad, and then question the hell out of any injections being given to your loved one’s during their next serious hospital visit.
2. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo…Forget the overrated “Americanah” book that came out around the same time, this is the African immigrant story to read. Ten-year-old Darling goes from playing in Robert Mugabe’s barely-functional Zimbabwe to hiding out from the cold in freezing “Destroyed” (Detroit) Michigan, and gets her expectations upended every step of the way. A lean, funny breakthrough.
1. The Son by Philipp Meyer…This Great American Novel (yep, it earns the distinction) follows three generations of the same Texas family: the legendary Old West “Colonel” who was kidnapped by Native Americans and raised as one until he was nearly an adult, his ambivalent son who feels horrified at the Mexican land seizures white Texans are committing, and his granddaughter who becomes a skilled oil woman in a men’s-only environment. “The Son” pulls off something remarkable for a historical novel: it fully immerses you in history (when a somewhat-surviving Native American tribe is unraveling from the inside, you feel like you’re truly there) without ever losing narrative steam or a knowing wit that makes everything feel contemporary. A masterwork that never truly got the credit it deserved. That’s typical for a cliche-busting Western novel, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the best one in a very long time.