historical fiction

The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

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I recently toured Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Many folks might recognise it as the location used for the film of The Cider House Rules. I was intrigued because the house was built in 1893 for George and Sarah Morgan, Sarah being the sister of J.P. Morgan, and I happened to be in the middle of reading this story of J.P.’s librarian.

The tour was fascinating, with much detailed information and background. I was drawn to a display about the book and its protagonist Belle da Costa Greene, hired in 1905 as Morgan’s personal librarian to build and curate his library, and the first director of the Morgan Library and Museum after his death.

Belle, as we know now, was a woman of color passing as White. Even as a White woman, her being awarded this position shocked the male-dominated world of the early twentieth century. She went on to become fabulously successful. Intelligent, witty and well educated, she outmaneuvered others to acquire rare and valuable books for the library.

The authors have filled out the few records of Belle’s life to create a stirring portrait of this complicated woman. Her father Richard Greener was the first Black graduate of Harvard, a lawyer and professor who worked for civil rights causes all his life. However, her mother Genevieve decided that the only way for her children to succeed in a prejudiced world was to pass for White. To that end, she moved with the children to New York City and changed their name to da Costa Greene to bolster her claim of Portuguese heritage.

The accounts of Belle’s complicated relationship with Morgan, the enmity of his daughter Anne, and Belle’s adventures in the world of rare books keep the story moving. The real driver of the story, though, is her inner life as she wrestles with her identity and preserving her role, including leaving behind her birth name Marion.

Of course, we don’t know how the real Belle felt about any of it. This is historical fiction. However, its consistency and psychological acumen make it thoroughly believable. I have some qualms about books like this one that interpret the life of a real person, someone who isn’t here to correct mistakes. However, without such books, few of us would know about someone like Belle, long forgotten by history.

While the second half of the book dragged a bit as she goes from success to success, it is still an enjoyable read, and a good complement to Anderson Cooper’s Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, which I read recently. In Stockbridge, I learned a bit about its other Gilded Age “cottages” which, like the New York mansions in Vanderbilt, competed to outdo each other in size and excessive expenditure. And all, including Ventfort, were quickly disposed of by succeeding generations due to bankruptcy or lack of interest. Ozymandias indeed.

How do you feel about historical fiction based on real people?

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk, by Kelli Estes

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Inara Erickson faces a difficult return to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands. A childhood of wonderful summers visiting her Aunt Dahlia ended when her mother was killed in a car accident on Orcas. When Aunt Dahlia dies and leaves the large house and estate to her, Inara has to overcome her reluctance and get the property ready to sell. Then she can take up the corporate job her father has arranged for her, and make use of her new business degree.

 

However, she begins to fall under the island’s spell again and, while working in the house, finds a beautifully embroidered silk sleeve. She wonders who could have done this spectacular work, why it had been cut from a robe, and how it came to be hidden here.

 

In an alternate story line, a second generation immigrant in Seattle named Mei Lien lives with her father and grandmother above their dry goods shop until a violent mob ousts them. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, reflecting the anti-immigrant emotions common once the Chinese were no longer needed to build the railroads, results in the mob bent on ethnic cleansing. They force hundreds of Chinese residents onto a ship captained by Duncan Cameron, supposedly to be sent to San Francisco and then to China.

 

This debut novel has a lot to recommend it. Based on true events, the descriptions of Mei Lien’s life are particularly rich. Everyone in my book club found things they enjoyed, such as the setting on Orcas Island, the detailed description of the embroidery, the deep dive into Chinese spirituality, and the historical information about the plight of the Chinese residents—so relevant to today.

 

At the same time, we were put off by the multitude of coincidences powering the plot, as well as some plot points that were just too unrealistic. Also, while we were captivated by the first part, our interest waned as the story began to concentrate on the two young women’s rather predictable romances. Most of us felt that, instead of a dual timeline, a novel about Mei Lien alone would have been something really special.  

 

Still, our curiosity about the sleeve and our fondness for Inara and Mei Lien carried us through, and we all concluded that we enjoyed the book and were glad we read it. I, for one, look forward to the author’s future novels, as her skills—already great—grow even more.

 

Do you like dual timeline stories? Can you recommend a good one you’ve read?

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, by Hazel Gaynor

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I first heard of Hazel Gaynor through her partnership with Heather Webb. They are co-authors of a number of delightful novels, including Meet Me in Monaco about Grace Kelly’s wedding. Here, Gaynor again gives us historical fiction based on real events. In one of two braided stories, twenty-two-year-old Grace Darling helps her father operate the Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands in Northeast England. The family lives there, as well as being responsible for the light itself.

My sister Thomasin used to say she imagined the stairwell was a long vein running from the heart of the lighthouse. In one way or another, we have all attached human qualities to these old stone walls so that it has become another member of the family, not just a building to house us.

When a terrible storm erupts in 1838, Grace and her parents are the only ones home, her brothers elsewhere. When the paddle steamer Forfarshire is wrecked on the rocks, she insists that she and her father should try to rescue the survivors despite the raging sea and high winds. That feat made her famous, to her dismay, bringing reporters, tourists, and portrait painters to their previously lonely outpost.

One hundred years later, nineteen-year-old Matilda finds herself banished to another lighthouse in Newport, Rhode Island, to spare her parents back in England the shame of her unwed pregnancy. The lighthouse is run by a distant relative, a grim, reclusive woman.

As Matilda tries to find a way to connect to Harriet, she becomes intrigued by the lighthouse itself and soon begins to learn about its history and operation. In a trove of family artifacts she learns about her ancestor, Grace Darling. She’s also curious about Harriet’s mysteries and secrets.

The 1938 New England Hurricane, one of the deadliest and most destructive ever to hit the United States, requires both women to summon reserves of courage and love if they and the lighthouse are to survive.

In spite of the hurricanes and other tragedies, this novel was the absorbing comfort read I was looking for. I couldn’t help but cheer on these women who worked so hard and set themselves such high standards. The relationships within the families and with those in the wider world were presented with nuance and depth.

I might have liked a little more development of some of the secondary characters, but that’s a minor quibble. There were a few anachronisms in each of the time periods, which gave me a chuckle.

Still, I treasured the insights about what it takes to operate a lighthouse in each time period, and the attendant duties, such as rescuing shipwrecked people. I had no idea that women had been lighthouse keepers, though—of course—why not?

Like Gatsby and Woolf’s Mrs. Ramsey, I used to live with a distant light, a lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay that lit my bedroom and dreams for years. I once tried to swim to it. It seemed so close! But it was not; it was beyond my power to reach.

So Gaynor had me at “lighthouse.” Then came the bonus of just the sort of story I was looking for: one that held my attention, gave me a break from the anxieties of current events, and even taught me some things I didn’t know.

Have you read a novel or a nonfiction book about a lighthouse and/or its keeper?

The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’Farrell

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In my book club’s choice for this month, Lucrezia de’ Medici, third daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici, and the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso d’Este, step out of Robert Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” and are brought to life by the author of Hamnet.  When her older sister dies suddenly, Lucrezia is forced to take her place in the politically important marriage with Alfonso. Only 16, she is married to him and carried off to Ferrara in 1560. A year later she is dead, rumored to have been poisoned by her husband.

That much is true, though today historians think she died of tuberculosis. O’Farrell expands the story, creating a rich tapestry of the time and a deep dive into a sensitive young woman’s experience. The narrative alternates between the last few months of Lucrezia’s life when Alfonso has removed her from the castello to a remote fortezza, and the fuller story of her life leading up to this ending.

During her childhood in Florence, Lucrezia leads a limited life, confined to the nursery area where she feels different from her many siblings, older and younger. Imaginative and artistic, she has a rich inner life. And she’s a fierce child, pushing against restrictions and yearning to see the tiger her father has had imported for his personal zoo in the lower reaches of the palazzo.

Since we know from the historical note at the beginning that she will die, the suspense that powers the novel—jacked up every time we return to the threatening fortezza—comes from wondering why it must come to that and whether she is able to resist in any way. Even in the other sections, there are hints and warnings, such as her learning about the Trojan War and how Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter Iphigenia after pretending she is to marry Achilles.

O’Farrell’s luscious writing pulled me in. I felt the prick of hairpins in Lucrezia’s hair, the stiff material of her gown. The “sweet, cloying smell” of lilies in her chamber came to me as did the “waterfall of noise” that “crashes down on her” when “[t]he gates creak open” and the glare in her eyes as she steps out of the palazzo where a carriage waits to take her to her wedding.

After the wedding, she and her maid are carried off to a villa in rural Tuscany. “They travel along a wide road, on either side of which are rows and rows of fruit trees—Lucrezia could, for a while, make out branches heavy with the round curves of peaches and perhaps the tear shape of lemons. But now it is too dark to see anything at all.” Meanwhile, Alfonso has been called back to Ferrara to deal with an emergency: his mother and oldest sister refusing to give up the new, forbidden Protestantism.

Some people in my book club considered the portrayal of a noble woman such as Lucrezia objecting to a political marriage to be an anachronism. Marriage at that time was considered a transaction, especially for rulers. Women such as these were raised knowing that marriages would be arranged for them based on political and/or economic benefits. Instead, this story projects modern-day women’s expectations of personal agency and a loving marriage on both Lucrezia and Alfonso’s sister Elisabetta, who is dallying with one of the guards.

Since I’m also reading Phillipa Gregory’s magnificent nonfiction book Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History, I’ve learned that some women did rebel against being subjugated and treated as property, even during this period. Therefore, I didn’t find it hard to believe that, out of all the women in the book who made no complaint about their arranged marriages, there could be a child such as Lucrezia, raised in  isolation and temperamentally different from her siblings, who would find it a terrifying prospect. Nor that Elisabetta, with all the dissension and rebellion within her own family, might give in to the attractions of a handsome guardsman.

I do agree, though, that many—most?—historical novels feature women and sometimes men whose modern sensibilities are at odds with their time period. I assume this is a necessary adjustment to attract the attention of modern readers.

One drawback of being exclusively in Lucrezia’s point of view is that her interest in and understanding of the other characters is limited. Thus, we don’t get to know them very well. I did find Alfonso interesting, with his combination of ruthlessness—necessary for anyone trying to rule in such embattled times—and aesthetic awe of the castrati’s music, not to mention his rare whimsy. I would have liked to know more about Lucrezia’s maid Emilia, too.

The way O’Farrell orchestrates verb tenses captured my attention. Most chapters are in present tense, some, such as the one about the tiger, in past. And there’s even at least two sections in future tense. Usually, as is normal, the past tense is used for memories and flashbacks in present-tense sections, but now and then it is the past perfect. These are not errors, I believe, but a subtle way of capturing the multiple currents of time that swirl around us.

My book club discussed the ending at length. Some found it ambiguous and, indeed, came up with a few different interpretations. I won’t go into that, of course, but would love to hear what you thought of it, if you read the book.

Do you enjoy historical fiction based on the lives of real people? Why or why not?

The American Queen, by Vanessa Miller

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I’m always thrilled to stumble across an inspiring story based on real events, a story that’s been lost to history. In 1865, the Civil War is over, but freedom has only worsened the lives of former slaves. On the Montgomery Plantation, twenty-four-year-old Louella Bobo carries the trauma of her years as a slave: her mother being sold away, her father lynched, and beatings that have scarred her back and soul.

She hates, with all her being, and cannot find room in her heart for love, even for William, the older preacher who loves her. Still, she knows he is a good man and agrees to marry him. She knows what she wants: to make real her vision of a Happy Land where people can live freely and be treated with respect. She envisions a cooperative community, where everything is shared so that all can prosper.

When events make it impossible to stay on the plantation, Louella and William lead a group of former slaves to find a place to settle and build their community. They travel for months, encountering dangers and surprising succor in the post-Civil War South, eventually settling in the Carolinas. Louella and William are appointed Queen and King of Happy Land. It thrives, growing to 500 families, but internal friction develops and threatens all they’ve built.  

Miller’s fictionalised version of this true story captures the drama of Louella’s terrible journey from hate to love. The injustice and outright abuse can be hard to read about, but will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with slavery and Reconstruction. Another aspect that can be off-putting but not unexpected for someone of the time is Louella’s devout Christianity. While no doubt historically accurate, Louella constantly excusing injustice by saying that God has His ways or hoping God would hear her need seemed to take all the air out of the story.

Luckily she often speaks her mind and finds creative ways to accomplish her goals. Such parts kept the story moving. By having Louella take the lead and speak her mind, Miller shows us a complex character. Each of the characters—and there are a lot—is fully depicted as an individual.

Given the egalitarian nature of Happy Land, I was uncomfortable with the titles of king and queen, especially since they were used as day-to-day nomenclature, i.e., referring to King William or the King and Louella likewise. Of course, this is one of the dangers of using real events for a novel. The author shouldn’t go against the actual historical record.

Having just read Erasure, a novel of how the public and the publishing industry only want and will only accept one view of The Black Experience, I appreciated this portrait of a harmonious and loving marriage as well as that of a thriving community.

The part I enjoyed most was the building of the Happy Land: how Louella managed to negotiate what they needed, the ways they found to make the money they needed, and the success of their communal sharing of all resources.

The book’s language is fairly simple; in fact, I wondered if it wasn’t a Middle Grade or Young Adult novel, though the traumatic violence rules out Middle Grade. However, it’s an easy read and an immensely valuable addition to our understanding of the time and also of what one woman can accomplish. She had a dream, and she made it come true.

What novel have you read that was based on real events?

Fortune Favors the Dead, by Stephen Spotswood

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Fortune Favors the Dead

This witty, fast-paced mystery starts in New York City in 1945, with Willowjean “Will” Parker and her boss, famous detective Lillian Pentecost, investigating the murder of society matron Abigail Collins. Will has been Pentecost’s assistant and protégé for three years, the two having met when Will saved the older woman’s life with her knife-throwing skills.

Knife-throwing? Yes, at the time Will had been working as a roustabout in a traveling circus for five years, gaining some unusual skills. She’s the one telling this story, and her sassy, smart voice makes this a thoroughly enjoyable ride.

Pentecost, too, is unusual, and not just because she is a female detective at a time when women who stepped up during WWII are being forced into domestic roles while jobs are given to the returning men. She has multiple sclerosis, a progressively degenerative disease which at this point affects her stamina and gait but not her brilliant mind.

I loved both these characters before even getting to the story. Casting someone with a chronic disease as a major character is a rare and brilliant stroke. Plus, Will undermines all the stereotypes for women, not to mention circus workers, of the time. The duo quickly put me in mind of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, reimagined as women, but I love that Will is still a young woman, still finding her way in the world, unlike Archie.

On to the story! Abigail Collins is found in the locked study of her home during a big Halloween party at her mansion. She’s been beaten to death with a crystal ball, used in the séance held there, while seated in the chair where her husband killed himself a year before. Rumor holds that the ghost of her husband appeared during the séance, so many believe he is the murderer.

There are plenty of other, more corporeal, suspects. The psychic Ariel Belestrade has been on Ms. Pentecost’s radar for some time. Skeptical anthropology professor Olivia Waterhouse has also been investigating Belestrade for fraudulent practices and written her up in her most recent book. The psychic’s seductive power is brilliantly portrayed in some of the book’s most chilling scenes.

Even more complications ensue when Rebecca Collins, daughter of the murdered woman and a continuing frustration to her straight-laced brother, starts putting moves on Will, and Will finds herself responding to them.

Spotswood does a great job of bringing the period to life with details small and large, whether about circus life, nightclubs, or the mean streets of NYC. As a side note, the cover art boldly announces both its classic noir roots and Will’s unusual character. An intriguing cover will always make me look twice at a book.

For a fun read, you can’t go wrong with this cosy mystery with a bite to it. Will’s voice and personality alone are worth the price of admission. I’m looking forward to reading the other books in the Pentecost and Parker series.

Have you read a novel recently where you’ve been utterly charmed by the characters?

Trust, by Hernan Diaz

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Andrew Bevel and his wife Mildred are bigwigs in early 20th century Manhattan. He’s a financier, a cold stick of a man who’s a genius when it comes to money—according to some anyway. She’s involved in various charitable endeavors, particularly when it comes to music. An otherwise reclusive couple, they become richer and richer; some say Bevel’s tinkering led to the Great Depression.

The premise of my book club’s choice for this month is an interesting one: tell the story of the Bevels from four different points of view. The first part of the book is a novel entitled Bonds, supposedly based on the couple, renamed Benjamin and Helen Rask. It is written in the narrative-heavy style of the early 20th century, no dialogue or dramatic scenes. I found most of it lackluster, though part of it was horrific and disturbing.

The second part contains Andrew’s notes toward an autobiography, intended to refute the story told in the novel, especially when it comes to his wife. The dry and often fragmentary notes magnify Andrew’s genius, and insist that his motives were less about making money, which he doesn’t care about, and more about doing good in the world. Much of it concentrates on portraying Mildred as a brainless little woman who didn’t understand what he did, and supported innocuous classical music.

The third part is a memoir written much later by Andrew’s secretary who had written up the autobiography from Bevel’s notes, giving us parts of it with her comments, among other things. It’s written in a modern style, with the astute characterisation, dialogue and dramatic scenes that make for more interesting reading. The final part is a diary giving yet another point of view.

It’s a fun premise: four parts, four points of view. I first ran across it in the 1970s when I read Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, which entranced me and opened up a whole world of possibilities in fiction. Some reviews call Diaz’s book experimental fiction. I guess that’s true, though it’s been done so many times before that is seems a rather tame experiment. Many historical fiction novels also interweave two or more stories, often one in the present and one in the past.

My book club split pretty evenly between those who enjoyed it a lot and those who found it boring and predictable. Many of us confessed to skipping chunks of the tedious second part. I think we all shook our heads at the constant put-downs of women.

I came down on the boring and predictable side, among those surprised that it won a Pulitzer Prize. However, I will say that the book reflects our country at this moment in time: awash with false news and outright lies, making it hard to identify a trusted source. Even when you find one, you have to separate out the AI fakes from the real person.

The other relevant side of the book is the way its characters, even in that time period, are eager to present an image of themselves that may or may not be true, and defend that image if challenged. So much of today’s social media contains presentations of ourselves that have been carefully crafted to project a certain persona.

One discovery that interested me was that everyone in the group, including me, tended to believe each new section over the previous one, though of course there’s no way to actually tell. I guess it’s human nature to believe the last thing you’re told, especially if it’s something that fits best into your worldview: yet another way the novel speaks to today’s public discourse.

I also appreciate the way the author adapted the style for each part to reflect the writing of the time. So I liked the premise for the story and applaud the author to trying something grand, even if, in my view, it fell short in the execution.

Are you in a book club? What are you reading now?

A Study in Scarlet Women, by Sherry Thomas

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There have been so many takeoffs on the Sherlock Holmes stories that I was wary of one more. However, this series puts a new twist on them by giving the detective’s character—sharp, analytical, unemotional—to a woman.

With such characteristics, Charlotte Holmes does not fit Victorian England’s definition of a proper upper class woman. Her parents are eager to marry her off, which is the last thing she wants. She comes up with a plan to craft a life where she can exercise her remarkable mind without the constraints society puts on women.

However, when that falls through, her backup plan leaves her disowned by her family and a social outcast, until a chance meeting with the remarkable Mrs. Watson opens another possibility. As her family’s social world is rocked by three unlikely deaths, and her father and sister become suspects, it becomes up to Charlotte to find a way to clear them and find the real murderer.

I delighted in the skillful way Thomas has worked in elements of the original canon while staying true to the time period. A woman cannot be a detective, forcing Charlotte and Mrs. Watson to craft a truly inventive workaround. Plus, the characters spring to life—each one unlike what you’d expect, full of flaws and fun and surprising gifts. The mystery itself is engrossing as well.

Usually I avoid novels that use real people or other author’s characters. The former feels invasive and the latter lazy. However, I’m glad I made an exception here. These stories are truly original and a lot of fun. I’ve now read seven in the series and look forward to reading the others.

While I enjoy all the characters and plots, Charlotte herself is what keeps me reading these books. She is a most unusual woman, as you would expect from someone with Sherlock’s personality and gifts. She stands out even more in this time period—the first book takes place in 1886—when women’s roles were much more constrained than now. I enjoy seeing how she handles ever more difficult situations.

If you’re looking for a new mystery series to entertain you while the cold weather keeps you inside, give this book a try.

What mystery series are you enjoying these days?

The Romantic, by William Boyd

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An unusual novel, my book club’s pick for this month covers the life of Cashel Greville Ross from his time as a young child in Ireland, through 451 pages of adventures, to his death. Born in December, 1799, Cashel’s 82 years covers most of the 19th century, and his adventures hit most of the touchstones of that period.

For example, when he gets disillusioned as a teenager, drops out of school, and joins the army, he ends up in the Battle of Waterloo. When he travels to Italy, he becomes friends with Byron and the Shelley ménage. This is a picaresque novel, like Don Quixote, where each chapter is almost a stand-alone story, with a new challenge for the protagonist and a new setting.

It’s great fun, seeing where a new chapter will take Cashel as he travels the world in pursuit of his next great scheme for living. Should he be a lover, an explorer, a writer, a farmer? This question of how to live your best life is far older than Oprah or Mary Oliver. Montaigne’s Essays are primarily multiple attempts to answer it.

The change of scene and story in each chapter becomes a huge challenge for a writer, which Boyd rises to brilliantly. He must have done a tremendous amount of research in order to create a new world in each chapter, full of a stunning amount of period detail. Also, since Cashel’s adventures are often tied to real events and people, each one had to be meticulously studied.

What ties it together, besides the dazzling writing and Cashel himself, is the theme named in the title. The question at the heart of the Romantic Movement in the 19th century is whether we should value our feelings over our rational thoughts. Which should prevail as we make large and small decisions? The Romantics plumped for the former, in reaction to the previous century’s Enlightenment, which prized science, facts, and logic above emotions. Thus, Cashel often allows his emotions to dictate his actions, with mixed consequences.

This theme of feelings versus logic is of interest to me. Of course, nothing could be more relevant to our society’s current discord between those who believe a statement is true because they feel like it is and those who look for facts and proof and logic to support it. Over the course of my own long life, I’ve also considered this theme, and questioned how much one or the other influenced my own decisions.

While I did enjoy—and admire!—the story, I have to admit that I eventually tired of the identical pattern for each chapter—Cashel succeeds brilliantly, then crashes for some reason or other, at which point another opportunity presents itself, which becomes the adventure of the next chapter. The idea that one person could be so amazingly proficient in every sphere is unlikely, which undermined what’s been called the dream of the story, pulling me out of it.

So why did I listen to this lengthy novel, not once, but twice? Because I was entranced by the narrator Kobna Holbrook-Smith. His voice is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard, and I’d be happy to listen to him read anything, however boring the content. Here, though, his dramatic talents are on display, bringing the story and each character to life. I might be happy to listen to this story many more times, until I can find something else he’s narrated.

By listening to this book, I apparently missed out on some of the ancillary materials: footnotes, maps, etc. In this case, it was a trade-off I was happy to make. It’s not the first time this has happened with an audiobook. Since I love maps, perhaps in the future, I’ll look to see what’s included with a book before choosing the audio version.

What “whole-life” novel have you read?

Best Books I Read in 2023

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As a writer, I learn something from every book I read. In no particular order, these are the ten best books I read in 2023. Please check the links to the blog archive for a fuller discussion of those I’ve reviewed.

1. Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan
This short novel at first seems, as the title indicates, quiet and unassuming. Set in an Irish town in 1985, it follows Bill Furlow who has earned a modest but sufficient position in life as a purveyor of wood and coal. Set apart from the town is an orphanage and laundry run by the Magdalen order of nuns. There are many things in today’s world—and in the past as well—that make me despair of humanity. Then comes a book like this that reminds me of the courage and goodness that can be found.

2. Purgatory Road, by Charles Coe
Coe’s superpower in these poems is his generous heart. Small things that strike his attention, such as a truck that won’t start in a grocery store parking lot or a woman talking to herself on a traffic island, lead us to understand what it is like to inhabit someone else’s life. Channeling Forster’s call to “only connect,” Coe’s poems from 2020’s lockdown trace what we’ve lost and our attempts to communicate across the void.

3. The Years, by Annie Ernaux
Ernaux’s genre-bending experiment adds a new dimension to the field of life writing. She goes beyond memoir—a subjective view of events in the author’s personal life—and autofiction—a reexamination and fictionalisation of those events—to create a new form that melds both of these with sociology and history. She has captured the sweep of the lifetime simultaneously with that of a person and a generation.

4. Horse, by Geraldine Brooks
This novel succeeds on so many levels. Brooks weaves together multiple storylines, with different narrators and time periods, ensuring that the story reveals itself smoothly. Yes, this is a story about a horse, beautifully written, with leisurely scenes full of luscious period details. It is also the story of the United States, from the antebellum world to the present. Inevitably it is about what Wendell Berry called the U.S.’s hidden wound. It is the story of us, what we strive for, and the price involved. There’s much to think about here.

5. Wild Girls, by Shirley J. Brewer
There were no maps for those of us who came of age at the beginning of the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement. Or rather, we threw them away and created our own path, our own definition of what it could mean to be a woman. My friend Shirley (full disclosure) discarded her Catholic schoolgirl veil and took on the world in sequins and a feather boa. Breezy and brave, with a heart as big as the Chesapeake, she sends us these letters from her world. A chameleon, she revels in the brightest colors and slips into one woman’s heart after another. She pulls off her magic through humor and compassion and turns that surprise us. She awakens the wild, original, and authentic selves that we know ourselves to be.

6. A Charmed Circle, by Anna Kavan
I’ve long been a fan of Kavan’s work. This, her first novel, is the story of an English family whose life has become so enclosed as to become toxic. A modern town, loud with trams and lorries and motorcycles, has grown up around their walled home, an old vicarage. What is a refuge for the parents has become a prison for the three children, who are now young adults. It’s hard not to care about these characters as they try to assert the freedom to be themselves.

7. Disappearing Earth, by Julia Phillips
In the intense first chapter of this book, sisters Alyona and Sophia, ages 11 and 8, playing alone on a public beach in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city on Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, encounter a stranger and accept a ride home with him. This is not your typical mystery that describes the investigation into the girls’ disappearance. Instead, it is a set of interlocking short stories about various girls and women in the city and surrounding communities, and how they are affected by the girls’ disappearance. We also learn much about the pressures on indigenous and Caucasian women in this distant corner of Putin’s Russia.

8. Sisters of Night and Fog, by Erika Robuck
This absorbing historical novel follows two real women, Violette Szabo and Virginia d’Albert-Lake, who became French Resistance fighters during World War II. Why read yet another book about World War II? One: because this is a story of real people based on Roebuck’s extensive research. Two: because many people don’t realise the role that women played in the war effort, particularly in the Resistance. Three: because it is important to remember the actual horrors of Hitler’s fascist state and the weakness of those who supported and contributed to it.

9. Paradise, by Abdulrazak Gurnah
In this second novel from Gurnah, who was born in Zanzibar—now part of Tanzania—and won the Nobel Prize, we find that important perspective so missing in Western literature. Yusuf, a rural Muslim boy who leaves his home at twelve is given away in payment for his father’s debts. Paradise is set just before the World War I and provides an unforgettable portrait of precolonial East African society.

10. The Bay of Angels, by Anita Brookner
When Zoë is sixteen, her widowed mother unexpectedly marries again and moves to Nice. Zoë decides to stay in their old London flat and enjoy her new-found freedom from her drab life alone with her mother. As with all of Brookner’s work, this is an iceberg of a novel: brief and quiet on the surface, with a huge mass of emotions and ideas and insights hidden below. Narrated by Zoë, the story is built on scenes that bring to life both the quiet London dusk and the blazing sun of Nice. With her usual penetrating psychological insights, Brookner provides fascinating portraits of Zoë and the people with whom she interacts.

What were the best books you read in 2023?