10 Top Reads of 2021
A display of colourful books at The Martinborough Bookshop
Well, rather like 2020, 2021 was another year where books provided shelter and escapism from the outside world, especially during the rolling lockdowns of the pandemic. I read very little non-fiction and instead fled into the pages of Middle grade and YA fantasy adventures or much loved gentle classics. Whittling down 153 books to a top 10 is never easy, but here are my are current favourites in no particular order (ask me again in a month and you might get an updated answer!)
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
First published in 1958, this coming-of-age story follows the Grey children as they spend the summer in a gently fading French hotel whilst their mother recovers from an infected horse-fly bite in a nearby hospital. Left to their own devices, the children are taken under the wing of an Englishman called Eliot. As the greengages rot on the trees of the hotel orchard, Joss and Cecil, the two older Grey girls, become disillusioned about adulthood and the adults around them. Read this if you’re longing for a European holiday and the shabby chic of a French town at the height of summer takes your fancy.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
A perfect novel to start a new year, this is a love letter from an older father, the Reverend John Ames, to his young son that he knows he will never live to see grow up. Although it sounds sad, Gilead is full of love, wisdom and grace. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, it’s testament to Robinson’s writing that a novel with little in the way of structure or plot makes for such compelling reading.
Assembly by Natasha Brown
This slim little novel at just on 100 pages was one of the most powerful books I read last year. Squeezed into its pages is the entire arc of the narrator’s life from school to university to a successful career in banking. Despite her inexorable rise, once she reaches the top, as a Black British woman, she discovers that there’s just more of the same. That nothing that she has achieved is enough to stop the racism and misogyny that she experiences, so much so that there’s s strange and awful comfort in knowing that there might be a way out
Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
Admittedly I think that my enjoyment of this memoir was accentuated by Stanley’s reading of it in audiobook form, but if you’re a lover of food, of Stanley or of both, then this is a must-read. There are recipes for Italian dishes and cocktails scattered throughout as well as stories about the seminal moments of Tucci’s life all seen through the lens of food; its preparation, cooking, sharing and enjoyment. This is one of those rare occasions where I bought the physical book having listened to the audio.
The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper
Set in Pompeii’s infamous brothel, The Lupanar, in AD74, this is the story of a group of women sold into slavery from across the Roman Empire. The central character, Amara, was the daughter of a doctor who was sold first into domestic servitude and then into prostitution and like every other woman in the brothel, she’s desperate for a way out. The thing that I enjoyed most about this novel was how it brought Pompeii to life. Each chapter starts with a contemporary quote or piece of graffiti from Pompeii’s walls and then there are the descriptions of the streets, bath houses, homes and fashions. For a novel set in the ancient world, it feels fresh and relevant and there’s another two books to come!
The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
Reminiscent of Beloved in places for the unwavering gaze it places on slavery and plantation life, this novel is brutal and brilliant in equal measure. Frannie was born a slave on a plantation in Jamaica. Educated for a bet and then transported to London, she is gifted to George and Marguerite Benham as a means of currying favour for Langton the plantation owner. The story opens with Frannie in the dock, accused of the murders of both Mr. and Mrs. Benham and over the course of the novel, the night of their death is gradually picked apart. This one comes with trigger warnings of rape, sexual and physical violence.
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
A charming collection of vignettes rather than a true novel, Cranford deals with the foibles, fripperies and gentle economies of the ladies living in a rural village of the same name. There is a pragmatism and gentle humour to the writing that I loved. How can you not be taken with a novel where a cat is dosed with laxatives having swallowed someone’s best lace collar or where a cow is dressed in grey flannel because it fell in the lime pit. A pure comfort read.
The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff
A book of gentle pleasures and quiet disappointments first published in 1931. Each year the Stevens family take a fortnight’s holiday by the sea in Bognor Regis. This is the high point of their year, their reward for a life of hard work and making do. Nominated by Kazuo Ishiguro as a book to “inspire, uplift and escape” during the global pandemic, this novel places the reader heart of the Stevens family, a heart that is true and unwavering.
A Month in the Country by JL Carr
Thomas Birkin survives the trenches of Passchendaele in WW1 but returns to England a broken man, plagued by nightmares and traumatised with a facial twitch. This is not the story of his trauma, but of his healing. Thomas travels up to Yorkshire to take on the job of restoring a church mural hidden by layers of whitewash. As the mural emerges piece by piece in its riot of colour, Thomas finds himself restored by the quiet community of the village and the gentle passing of time turning the frothy hedgerows of summer to the mellowness of autumn. Again this is a short book of barely 100 pages, but I’ve found myself thinking of it again and again over the last few months.
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
All the more pleasurable for being unexpected, this book comes with a ringing endorsement from Maggie O’Farrell as her favourite novel of all time. Unusually we meet 16 year old Janet for the first time lying dead at the bottom of the staircase of her beloved ancestral home in the highlands of Scotland. The rest of the novel deals with how Janet got there as an outsider who struggled to fit in at school and at home. Hence the title named for the Walter Scott poem
“Oh Caledonia, Stern and Wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child”
Do we share any favourites here or which was your favourite read from 2021?