Don’t for a minute assume that this is a list of the best books of 2023. I’m not nearly so well read as to attempt that, and this year I only read about 33 books anyway (plus lots of online longreads, as well as research for various projects). That’s well down on previous years and I promise that I’m now trying to lift my reading game! In looking back at the books I’ve read this year, I realise what a tosser I’ve become. If I don’t love a book right away, I’m usually not prepared to persevere. That’s probably something else I should work on.
This, therefore, is merely a partisan and imperfect overview of the books I enjoyed the most in 2023.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Fiction, Irish, astonishingly exquisite. And mercifully short (it could accurately be described as novella).
The writing is so good that it seems simple, when in fact it took my breath away. Like those gymnasts at the Olympics, who make flying look easy.
In 2022, this book won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Booker Prize.
As an aside, earlier this year I heard Keegan speak at the excellent Bendigo Writers Festival. She was prickly and funny and as sharp as a knife.
Desire: A Reckoning by Jessie Cole
This is Cole’s second memoir and I liked it even better than her first, Staying, which I enjoyed very much.
She’s an Australian writer, based in northern NSW but, in this memoir, she’s also a regular visitor to Melbourne.
Ostensibly about a love affair, but actually a real-time exploration of the lunacy, wonder and irrationality of what drives us.
As I said on Twittter (no, I can’t bring myself to call it X) this was one of those books that constantly caused me to pause in my reading, stare into space and think Yes, that’s exactly right but I’ve never thought of it that way!
Shy by Max Porter
This is Porter’s fourth novel and it is astounding. I’ve read two others of his – Grief is The Thing With Feathers and Lanny – and they are just as good, if not even better.
His prose is freewheeling, intense, poetic and gobsmackingly beautiful, and his books – all set in England – are insightful and thoughtful.
I truly think he’s one of the best writers I know. Shame he’s not an Aussie!
To Serve Them All My Days by RL Delderfield
This was recommended by one of my absolute favourite podcasts, called Backlisted, and the edition pictured is what I found in the local second-hand book shop.
Set in an England between WW1 and WW2, written in the 1970s, I simply couldn’t put it down.
Ostensibly about a teacher in a remote English boarding school, it’s really about love and life and education and what we should value. It’s marvellous, very readable and terribly moving.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
A fairytale brilliantly retold.
Perhaps you think the whole fairytale thing has been done to death but I’m here to tell you you’re wrong. Novik uses the template to explore desire, anti-semitism, family dynamics, violence and the nuances of negotiation.
Beautiful and thoughtful and yet still an absolute page-turner. It’s possible I’m a teensy bit in love with the Winter King… In a similar vein, I also highly recommend Novik’s 2015 novel Uprooted.
Making Australian History by Anna Clark
Probably the perfect book about Australian history.
Clark’s approach is fascinating – in exploring how Australia’s history has been ‘written’, she exposes and interrogates the myths, biases and intentions of this country’s many histories.
Readable, insightful and one I’ll be returning to again and again.
I’ve also read some books about writing (The Novel Project was illuminating) and some terrific books in preparation for the writing projects I currently have on the go – more about those projects soon.
To my lovely readers, grateful thanks for making it all the way down to here. I wish you a very Happy New Year!
An interesting list. But don’t feel so bad about not finishing a book – life’s too short to persevere with something you aren’t enjoying. I’ve encountered some readers who have a formidable quantity of books per year as their reading objective. Too daunting for me. To Serve Them All My Days was a TV series back last century (1981 in fact). I remember it well. Before your time, I’m sure. And I’ll be looking out for a couple of books in your list although Santa probably expects to read what he delivered before I go looking elsewhere.
Thanks Judith, I agree that nominating a number of books to aim to read each year is daunting – and kind of pointless? And like you my To Be Read pile is enormous. But it’s still SO nice to add new books to it!
I not only watched that TV series avidly in the 1980s, but have it on DVD and have re-watched it recently. Fascinating to watch it with an American friend who knew absolutely nothing about the English public school system and class consciousness in Britain. I’d recommend A Horseman Riding By (1966-68) as well. Just as TSTAMYD is about a returned soldier finding his way in a changed Britain, so is AHRB. TSTAMYD wasn’t written till 1972, well after events.
As a side note, I’m flipping through Nathan Hobby’s bio of Katharine Susannah Prichard for background for a review, and in reading about how KSP didn’t depict WW2 directly in her fiction of the 1920s and 30s. Harry Heseltine says that the same was true about ‘a whole generation of writers [who] by tacit agreement declined to incorporate the Great War into their imaginative fiction.’ I think this is a fascinating observation…
I’m definitely keen to read A Horseman Riding By now, I’ll keep an eye out for it my local second hand bookshop (I love going in there with a purpose!) And that really is interesting about WW1 being left out – was it somehow too big to include in fiction that wasn’t directly about the war?
I don’t know, I possibly have the same reference book as Nathan and will look it up.
I don’t know about the Brits, and would be interested to see if the US and French etc were the same. I think that maybe the scale of the loss and grief might have meant that publishers felt it was ano go area for fiction? Surely there must be some academic somewhere who has researched it.
I shouldn’t read ‘best books’, I have more than enough to read already. Clark’s book, though, sounds right up my alley. On top of The Australian Legend I read two other books years ago for my degree, Richard White’s Inventing Australia and Whitlock, G & Carter, D (ed.s), Images of Australia, which dissected how what we select to write about ourselves forms our national self image.
I really do think you’d enjoy Clark’s book. And although the chapters are sequential, they’re more or less self-contained so you could dip in and out.