Books & Fiction

By now, most “Best Books of the Year” lists have already appeared, with many of the same titles recurring from one “best of” list to another. What follows here is a more idiosyncratic selection of best books published this year, celebrating three novels, a short story collection, and memoir all deserving of more notice.

The crucial and groundbreaking Gemini missions came after the swaggering heroics of the Mercury flights, immortalized in book and film by The Right Stuff and many other titles, and before the world-changing Apollo program, which of course landed the first men on the moon (and not insignificantly led to another legendary movie, Apollo 13).

A collection of her short fiction, 'At the Turn of the Century,' was published posthumously in 2018, and now there’s 'Disinheritance: The Rediscovered Stories,' which should be the final word on this author’s distinguished career. Many of these elegant and understated stories first appeared in The New Yorker and are a welcome addition to her collected works.

America faded away into the distance. Her last speck of land reached out until our new home gave way to the open sea. I turned around and got a glimpse of distant luxury: a transatlantic liner turned troopship. I wondered what she looked like before the years of war had beaten her down.

Each chapter of the book focuses on a different bird species. In this way, we learn how birds build nests, mark their territories, contend with rivals, hunt for food, and communicate through song or other sounds. Studying these birds as they scrabble about, soar and flock together brings the author great happiness.

In 'Angel Down,' his new novel set in France and Belgium during the First World War, a band of infantry misfits led by Private First Class Cyril Bagger emerges from the trenches and encounters a blinding celestial presence ensnared in barbed wire. Somehow, this ill-fated group frees the angel from entanglement and spirits her back to Allied HQ .

“I promise we will keep looking for him. Since it seems to have been a dispute between them, as was shared by some with them that evening, I assure you that I will let you know when we find him, Mrs. McSwain.” After laying the coffin on our porch, the men left.

On one of these archipelagoes, a literary scholar named Thomas Metcalf searches through historical archives for a copy of a legendary poem, composed by a 20th-century poet, Francis Blundy, honoring his wife, Vivien. For reasons never made entirely clear, the poem—a 15-sonnet sequence—becomes a wildly popular staple of early 21st-century culture.