Top 10 Books Of The Year 2023 – Part Two- The Top 5

philshanklin

Jan 1

Here we go then with my five favourite books I read in 2023:

5. The Story Of The Night - Colm Toibin (Picador 1996)

Read and reviewed in December

The second of the Irish writers in my Top 10. I have not read any Colm Toibin before and I now know what I have been missing out on. His third novel is a haunting, quiet work set in Argentina in the 1980s with a gay man trying to find personal and professional connections at a time of war with England and with the shadow of AIDS hovering. This year Picador re-published this as part of its Picador Collection, a set of contemporary classics celebrating 50 years of the publishing house. Still not sure of the significance of the title though.

4. Forever Amber- Kathleen Winsor (Penguin 1944)

Read and reviewed in November

November seemed just the time for a big chunky paperback I could really lose myself in and forget about the advance of winter. This is what many people did at the time this appeared as this supreme slab of escapism was reputedly the biggest selling novel of the 1940s. At 972 pages it is half the length of the version this first- time author submitted to publishers. I can't imagine what was cut as this is a total bodice-ripper of Restoration excess powered by the machinations of main character Amber St. Clare amidst real-life depictions of Charles II and his mistresses the Countess of Castlemaine and Nell Gwynn. It's written with so much energy it completely won me over. I loved the combination of the serious well-researched historical novel approach and the tacky sensationalism.

3. Trespasses - Louise Kennedy (Bloomsbury 2022)

(Read in April, reviewed in May)

Irish writer number 3 and I knew I had to read this when it won Novel Of The Year at the 2022 An Post Irish Book Awards beating Donal Ryan's "The Queen Of Dirt Island" which made it into my Top 10 last year. The critical appreciation kept coming- It joined "Fire Rush" onto the Women's Fiction Prize shortlist in 2023, having already made the Waterstones Debut shortlist in 2022 and topped The Times bestsellers chart. Set in Northern Ireland in 1974 this is a tale of a Catholic Primary school teacher who works part-time in her family's pub who falls for one of the customers, an older Protestant barrister. I said "with a lot of attention to domestic detail the author humanises a world which seemed so alien to those of us who were around then watching the horrors of daily news bulletins in the UK at the height of The Troubles." It is all done magnificently.

2. The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton (Picador 2014)

(Read and reviewed in September)

It was one of the reading year surprises for me that this book which had sat on my bookshelves unread for a few years could give me so much pleasure. I really do not know why I was so late getting round to it. At the time it won Waterstones Book Of The Year and a Specsavers National Book Award so it's not as if I wasn't aware of it. An absolute gem of a historical novel set in seventeenth century Amsterdam featuring fish-out-of- water Nella finding her place amongst a group of other fish-out-of waters. Her new, often absent husband buys her a doll's house to help pass the time and to allow her to take control of a less intimidating environment than the one she finds herself living in. Nella enlists the help of a miniaturist to furnish the house and things get somewhat strange. It's an example of excellent story-telling, characters you really care about and a great sense of location. There's an edginess which provides a much darker experience than I had expected and which I loved. I've not read Jessie Burton before but on the strength of this debut I will be exploring more of her work in 2024.

1. The Bee Sting - Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton 2023)

Read and reviewed in November

I had a very strong suspicion I was going to love this. I can't remember the last time I went into a bookshop and bought a hardback copy at full price. I just couldn't wait any longer. Paul Murray the 4th Irish author in my Top 10 had just missed out on being my Book Of The Year with his previous novel "The Mark And The Void" eight years earlier. This not only won Novel Of The Year at the Irish Book Awards (as "Trespasses" did the previous year) it also got the overall Book Of The Year title and I for one was very surprised when it missed out on the Booker Prize, especially as it seemed to be the most favoured book on the shortlist (especially on Instagram). This is all over the Books Of The Year lists in Ireland, over here and in the US. Lit Hub breaks down the number of mentions in American publications and it appeared in 14 out of 62 lists (Top of the list was James McBride's "The Heaven And Earth Grocery Store" which made it onto 20, which suggests that this is a title I should seek out in 2024). It was recognised by, amongst many others The Sunday Times, The Observer, Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, Daily Mail, The Independent, The Times, The Oldie and The Economist suggesting a broad appeal. Over 600+ pages we meet the dysfuntional Barnes family and examine where it all started to go wrong for them. It's so rich and rounded and yet, it's not perfect. There were some stylistic choices the author made which seemed a little questionable but it still managed to eclipse everything else I read this year and with fifteen five star books that is some achievement. Irish writing just seems to be great at the moment. This is the first time since 2017 that I've put them at the very top but there were another four books (three in the Top 10 and one special mention) that also demonstrated the quality of what has been coming out of Ireland the last 25 years or so.

Just for some context here are my other top titles for the last fifteen years

2023- The Bee Sting - Paul Murray (2023) (Ireland)

2022- Young Mungo – Douglas Stuart (2022) (UK)

2021- Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart (2020) (UK)

2020 – The Great Believers – Rebecca Makkai (2018) (USA)

2019 – Swan Song – Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott (2018) (USA)

2018- The Count Of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas (1845) (France)

2017 – The Heart's Invisible Furies – John Boyne (2017) (Ireland)

2016- Joe Speedboat – Tommy Wieringa (2016) (Netherlands)

2015- Alone In Berlin- Hans Fallada (2009 translation of a 1947 novel) (Germany)

2014- The Wanderers – Richard Price (1974) (USA)

2013- The Secrets Of The Chess Machine – Robert Lohr (2007) (Germany)