My Books of 2021

As usual, here are the best books I read this year which were published for the first time in hardback or paperback, with a smattering of older books. Many of them are on my review page, and rather than individual links, have a look there for pieces on them.

Go straight to: Fiction | Non-Fiction | Poetry | Education.

And here’s the annual round-up of other people’s choices.

Fiction

An easy choice as Book of the Year: 11 years after Foster Claire Keegan gives us another stunning piece of fiction, a mere 110 pages long. Small Things Like These is moving, profound, beautifully-crafted. What a writer she is.

I'm sorry to admit I knew little of Abdulrazak Gurnah until he won the Nobel: Afterlives shows it was a fine decision; it gallops to an emotional climax. Another very different Africa: a tough read, The Promise deservedly won Damon Galgut the Booker (he has been such a fine and under-celebrated author for years). Caleb Azumah Nelson's début, Open Water, was vivid, sensual, sensitive. Scholastique Mukasonga's Our Lady of the Nile approached a subject I have an abiding interest in, the Rwandan genocide, from a unique angle (a girls’ boarding school). Ali Smith's Summer completed her extraordinary Seasons achievement (problem: they'll need re-reading in the light of each other).

Older books: Rereading J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country was a summer delight yet again: it's just a perfect very short novel. Nella Larsen's 1929 Passing is about the same length: the new film has brought this fascinating story to contemporary light for many more readers. Just look at what those two authors do in such a small space (joining Claire Keegan).

Non-Fiction

Musa Okwonga has had some year, and I read two of his books in close succession: One of Them: an Eton College Memoir, an account of his time as on of the few Black students at the famous school, and In the End, It Was All About Love (should it be in the Fiction section?), set more recently in his life, with Berlin and Uganda framing the story: terrific. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short book Notes on Grief was utterly raw, and compelling. Sara Baume's handiwork confirmed she is one of our most interesting, careful and least showy writers. Brian Dillon's Suppose a Sentence cast an intense light on less familiar individual sentences. Nicholas Royle's White Spines: confessions of a book collector was just the thing for someone who started on Picadors years ago, and has by Royle's standards a modest collection. The Lost Café Schindler by Meriel Schindler was a fascinating investigation into the cultural and political history of a city I know well, Innsbruck. Deborah Levy's Real Estate was a triumphant conclusion of her 'living autobiography', after Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living: what a wonderful companion she has been. Back in January, I got a lot of pleasure out of Jonathan Smith's extremely personal Being Betjeman(n), which made the case for the sometimes-sneered-at poet, and also pleasure out of a subsequent connection with the author.

Older book: Tim Winton's Island Home confirmed what a fabulous essay-writer he is, in marvellous pieces about Western Australia, a place I have never been but feel I have now.

Poetry

Posthumously comes a reminder of the consistent greatness of Eavan Boland's career in her collection The Historians; it really feels we have lost one of the adults in the room. Maria Dahvana Headley's Beowulf is a fresh re-voicing of that Angl0-Saxon epic, with a brilliant introductory essay. William Wall's Smugglers in the Hug Trade: a journal in the plague year managed to draw me in to read about a subject I want to avoid in literature. And late in the year came a true delight: James Harpur's The Examined Life, a sparkling, funny and moving poetic account of boarding school life in the 1970s.

Older book: Patience Agbabi in Telling Tales gives a raucous, raunchy and hilarious contemporary twist to The Canterbury Tales: she has an amazing facility for voices.

Education and Teaching

George Saunders gave us a treat with A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, allowing us to read the Russian masters alongside a brilliant writer and teacher (and it has informed my own teaching of narrative). I read lots on Othello, to refresh my teaching of that tricky, complex text: Othello's Secret: the Cyprus Problem by R.M. Christofides opened up a new - and very personal - angle on the play.

Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli's second Walkthrus volume is, like the first one, just what I would have loved as a young teacher: clarity, good sense, confident guidance for the classroom. David Didau's Making Meaning in English was a thoughtful, informed and tightly-reasoned analysis. Doug Lemov’s Teaching in the Online Classroom was a sadly well-timed but helpful and reassuring read in January 2021.