It’s New Year’s Eve. Forget the parties and the champagne. At Chez Reading Matters, it’s all about celebrating the books! And what a reading year it has been. I read more books than usual this year, cracking the 100-mark...
It’s New Year’s Eve. Forget the parties and the champagne. At Chez Reading Matters, it’s all about celebrating the books!
And what a reading year it has been. I read more books than usual this year, cracking the 100-mark for the first time since 2010. These were mainly books I bought myself, with less than 10 per cent of the titles I read being supplied by publishers.
Reading adventures
My consistent focus throughout the year was delving into the backlist of the late Irish writer William Trevor as part of a project — “A Year with William Trevor” — which I co-hosted with Cathy from 746 books. It was enormously rewarding to read his work in chronological order (one per month) and to notice his development as a writer over time. I’ll be sure to write a more in-depth post about what I learned in the weeks to come.
I also went through a bit of an Italian literature phase, exploring a burgeoning fascination with Italy’s Fascist history by reading novels, memoirs and diaries set in this era. I am sure this exploration will continue into 2024 and beyond.
I also read several books from the 2023 Stella Prize longlist and the full shortlist for the 2023 Kerry Group Novel of the Year.
I participated in many blogger “events” including Annabel’s Nordic Finds, Bill’s Gen 5 Week, Lizzie and Karen’s Reading Independent Publishers Month, Cathy’s Reading Ireland Month, Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer, Women in Translation Month, Karen and Simon’s 1962 Club, and Cathy and Rebecca’s Novellas in November.
Phew.
Book highlights
Now onto my favourite reads of the year!
So what makes the cut? Stories I remember. Part of this blog’s purpose is to act as an aide-mémoire, but if I look through my reading log and can’t recall the detail of a story then it’s fair to say it hasn’t made much of an impression.
Fortunately, this year many of them have “stuck”.
I’ve read so many wonderful novels, novellas, short stories, memoirs and more in 2023 that it has proved more challenging than usual to edit it down to 10 favourite reads. Instead, I’ve broken it down into a dozen fiction, six non-fiction and — with enormous difficulty — managed to choose my favourite William Trevor from the year!
Anyway, without further ado, here are my favourite reads of 2023. Note, they’re not necessarily books published in 2023, they’re just the ones I managed to read in the past 12 months.
They are arranged in alphabetical order by author’s surname and, as ever, hyperlinks will take you to my full review.
12 FAVOURITE NOVELS
‘Against the Loveless World’ by Susan Abulhawa (Palestinian, 2020)
A Palestinian woman, imprisoned in a small nine-metre square cell, writes her remarkable life story on the cinder-block walls. This narrative, which is urgent, compelling and full of verve, vigour and a slow, seething anger, gave me a new perspective on the current situation in Gaza and I found it made an excellent back-to-back companion with Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail, another Palestinian novel I highly recommend.
‘The Anniversary’ by Stephanie Bishop (Australian, 2023)
This book is a hoot! It’s about a couple celebrating their 14th wedding anniversary on board a cruise ship but a terrible tragedy midway through their trip puts their relationship under intense scrutiny. Carefully plotted, suspenseful and full of unexpected ah-ha moments, the novel is a masterclass in wrong-footing the reader at every turn.
‘The Terrible Event’ by David Cohen (Australian, 2023)
I loved this comic collection of surreal and absurdist stories heavily inspired by British author Magnus Mills. I’m still thinking about the final story in which a transport engineer sets out to discover what impact a fake white cross will have on passing motorists — and then has to invent a whole back story when people actually stop and begin paying their respects!
‘Paradise Estate’ by Max Easton (Australian, 2023)
An exhilarating chronicle of communal living set in Sydney’s inner-west in 2022, this one has important things to say about the current state of the nation. It’s especially good on the housing crisis, the precarious job market and the climate catastrophe but never comes across as being heavy-handed.
‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey (British, 2023)
A beautiful, thought-provoking love letter to our planet, this one really shouldn’t work. There’s next to no plot, there’s not a huge amount of character development and it’s set on the international space station orbiting the earth, but the writing is so sublime and the issues explored so well thought through it really made an impression on me.
‘Soldier Sailor’ by Claire Kilroy (Irish, 2023)
I’ve followed Claire Kilroy since 2008, so I was expecting great things from this book — her first in more than a decade — and it didn’t disappoint. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, it’s a gripping account of motherhood’s darker side and highlights the inequality between men and women when it comes to parenthood. But it’s the unique and distinctive voice that really makes this story shine.
‘The Colony’ by Audrey Magee (Irish, 2021)
A compelling satire about the impacts of colonisation on a small island off the west coast of Ireland, this Booker long-listed novel reads like a simple fable but there’s so much more going on beneath. It feels like an anthropological study reminiscent, say, of J.M. Synge’s The Aran Islands, and I loved the nods to Magnus Mills’ absurdist stories, too.
‘Sundays in August’ by Patrick Modiano (French, 1986)
I read a handful of books by Modiano this year, but this one, distinctively different to his others, was my favourite. It’s essentially a jewel heist set in Nice, on the French Riviera, and is a perfectly paced and plotted noirish crime novella, one that demands a second reading just so you can figure out the clues you missed the first time round.
‘Grand Days’ by Frank Moorhouse (Australian, 1993)
The first in a trilogy, this Australian classic charts the early days of Edith Campbell Berry’s career at the League of Nations in the 1920s. I loved how modern and inclusive it felt in terms of themes (a transvestite and a woman battling sexism and misogyny in the workplace) and I’m excited to read the two follow-ups in 2024.
‘August is a Wicked Month’ by Edna O’Brien (Irish, 1965)
Here’s another favourite read from 2023 with August in the title, which is also set on the French Riviera. This relatively bleak tale is about a woman, separated from her husband, who goes on a spur-of-the-moment holiday that does not go according to plan. The bit that sticks in my mind is a singular event which acts like a major key change, transforming what should have been a hopeful tale into a tragedy.
‘The House on the Hill’ by Cesare Pevase (Italian, 1948)
What does it take to be a hero? And why are some people unable to live up to our best ideals? This is the central nub of this exceptional novella about an Italian school teacher who falls in with a group of anti-fascists during the Second World War. Even though he admires the righteousness of their actions, he can’t commit to their cause because, rightly or wrongly, he prefers a quiet life.
‘Return to Valetto’ by Dominic Smith (Australian, 2023)
Past and present collide in this intricately woven novel set in a near-abandoned Italian village perched on a rocky outcrop in Umbria. It’s a brilliantly entertaining read, full of interesting, quirky characters. It’s also the book that set me off on a course to find out more about Italy’s fascist past and its role in the Second World War, something I’d never really considered before.
6 FAVOURITE NON-FICTION BOOKS
‘We Come with This Place’ by Debra Dank (Australian/First Nations, 2023)
This book won all the awards — and rightly so. It is an evocative memoir about place, culture, history, family and the special connection First Nations people have with Country. I especially love the unique way in which Dank uses time to tell her story. Every Australian should read this.
‘The Queen is Dead’ by Stan Grant (Australian/First Nations, 2023)
Following in the wake of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, this is a powerful, profound and deeply personal book about the Crown’s negative legacy on Australia’s First Nations people. This one also made me realise how Black and White are just social constructs, rather than biological realities because we are all human and there’s no such thing as race.
‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’ by Carlo Levi (Italian, 1945)
Easily the best book I read all year, this is a sublime first-hand account of Levi’s experience as a political exile banished to one of the poorest regions in Italy for anti-fascist activities under Mussolini. It’s essentially an anthropological study but is embued with much compassion and humanity. It’s heartfelt without being sentimental, and insightful without being judgemental.
‘Aphrodite’s Breath’ by Susan Johnson (Australian, 2023)
This is the kind of book you read in one sitting. It’s about a mother-daughter relationship that is tested to the limits when the pair move from Australia to live on the Greek island of Kythera. Frank and funny, it’s as much about the island’s culture, landscape, history and people as it is about Susan’s relationship with her 85-year-old mother and the tensions that threaten to unravel it.
‘A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940’ and ‘War in Val d’Orcia: An Italian War Diary 1943-1944’ by Iris Origo (Italian, 2018 and 1947)
I’m cheating a bit here because these are two separate volumes, but I read them one after the other and the experience was intensely unforgettable. The first is a chilling account of how Italy stumbled into conflict in 1940, while the second recounts the author’s time at her family’s 2,800-hectare estate, La Foce, where she put her own life on the line by hiding escaped Allied prisoners of war. Both books, but especially the latter, are powerful testimonies of doing good in the world when it would be so much easier to bury your head in the sand.
‘Trust: A fractured fable’ by Jeanne Ryckmans (Australian, 2023)
If you made this story up people would say it was too unbelievable to be true. It’s a revealing tale about an Irish conman who charmed everyone, including his lover who wrote this book, into handing over cash to fund his lavish lifestyle. I raced through this book in one sitting; it’s a proper page-turner.
A FAVOURITE WILLIAM TREVOR BOOK
‘The Silence in the Garden’ (Ireland, 1988)
All the William Trevor books I read this year (12 in total) were wonderful, so trying to choose one is akin to choosing your favourite child. However, the story that seems to have stuck in my memory the most, and which I still occasionally think about, is this one. Funnily enough, when I first read it I wasn’t initially convinced by it. It’s slow-moving and deeply contemplative but it got its hooks into me the more I read, and I now recall it with great fondness. Through the prism of a wealthy Anglo-Irish family living on their own secluded island at risk of being opened up to the broader population — thanks to the construction of a new bridge — it explores Ireland’s changing political circumstances, and as such represents a turning point in Trevor’s career.
I hope you have discovered some wonderful books and writers this year. Have you read any from this list? Or has it encouraged you to try one or two? What were your favourite reads of 2023?
Please note that you can see my favourite books of all the years between 2006 and 2023 by visiting my Books of the Year page.