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In: A Graphic Novel

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A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam (Hogarth) – The shadow of the Sri Lankan civil war stretches over this bluntly moving character study of half a dozen different kinds of displacement, but there’s also a deeply felt love story here.

Beautiful, bittersweet portrait of modern life . . . his tragicomedy will also make the heart swell.' Guardian Starts as a charming romantic comedy and turns into something tender and affecting about our need for connection. I loved this one. ' David Nicholls Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone by John Edgar Wideman (stories) (Scribner) – The last of our short story collections this year (and the last laughably hideous American cover on our list, thank Crom and Mitra) is also the best, the latest work from the great John Edgar Wideman, whose prose has never been wiser or more searing. The Trees by Percival Everett (Graywolf Press) – Underneath its unprepossessing exterior (Graywolf avoided giving it a hideous cover by giving it not cover at all, just the book’s title on a piece of blank paper, like a manufacturer’s label stamped on a crate of pomegranates), this is a weirdly wry novel about race and perception that took me a couple of reads to appreciate - which is much appreciated in this era of tweets-as-manuscripts. This is a daunting bar for an interviewer, so I am quietly relieved when McPhail is not only so approachable as to be wearing pyjamas at 3.30pm, but seems to respond to my sweeping questions – about relationships under capitalism, the dehumanising effect of tech; the impediments to intimacy in (as In’s blurb puts it) “our isolated times” – with good-natured alarm.A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies (Houghton Mifflin) – The joys and unexpected traumas of family life (as well as, one suspects, heaping helpings of autofiction) (and an idiotic title, hardly a rarity on this list - see #s 9, 7, & 2)(capped off with a truly eye-scratchingly hideous cover design) fill this touching and eloquent novel. Starts as a charming romantic comedy and turns into something tender and affecting about our need to connect. I loved this one. * David Nicholls * A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.

He hadn’t. “I knew exactly where it was, the whole time,” says McPhail now, from his Edinburgh flat. “I just wanted to join in. And then I said,” he winces: “‘That’d be 10 quid these days!’ These days! Like I know anything about coffee prices through the ages!” I’ve always been fascinated by how combinations of letters and words can change the mechanics of a conversation, and turn it from one completely different thing into another. When that’s happened to me, on the rare occasions, and I’ve been transported into this other person’s world … the book was an attempt to describe that feeling.” The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (Viking) – This big, completely captivating novel by Ruth Ozeki features a boy who hears a vast, wild symphony of voices from the world around him and seeks only to make sense of it all; at first it seems whimsical, but it carries more heft and wonder than anything this author has ever written. Beautiful, bittersweet portrait of modern life . . . his tragicomedy will also make the heart swell.’ GuardianUncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus (Liveright) – The second short story collection on our list (continuing the time-honored publishing tradition of using a product description as a book title) amply showcases the genius and sharp humor of this author. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (Harper) – If readers are willing to overlook yet another hideous American cover, they’ll find in Louise Erdrich’s latest novel - set in and around a small bookstore as it goes through the cursed year 2020 - as eloquent and at times stunningly accurate an example of so-called “COVID fiction” as they’re ever likely to read.

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