Critics’ choice: the books they chose for their Christmas lists

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James by Percival Everett
This radical reworking of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn topped everyone’s book list this year. Everett retells the American classic from the perspective of Jim, the slave who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, making him a more cunning, resourceful and powerful character than in the original. Long under-appreciated, Everett is finally getting the respect he deserves, says the FT. “This is the work of an American master at the peak of his powers.”
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Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
Voted novel of the year by The Times and The Sunday Times, Our Evenings follows the life of Dave Win, an English-Burmese actor struggling to navigate confusing relationships, his emerging sexuality, racism and class, against the backdrop of postwar England’s changing political climate. The New Yorker praises its “extraordinary beauty”; The Guardian describes it as “tender, elegiac and gorgeously attentive to detail”.
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Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Rooney’s latest novel centres on two brothers – a one-time chess prodigy in his early twenties and a lawyer in his thirties – who are mourning the death of their father and trying to make sense of who they are. It’s the Irish novelist’s “most mature and moving book to date”, says The Times; the FT says the Irish author explores “the near-constant tension between our private and public selves with piercing brilliance”.
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Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
This unconventional espionage story is narrated by Sadie Smith, a hard-drinking agent with fake breasts and a fake name, who is hired by a shadowy employer to disrupt a group of eco-activists in rural France. The Guardian calls it a “breathtaking spy caper”, while The Atlantic says it’s a “raw, surprising reminder that cool isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be”.
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Long Island by Colm Tóibín
The long-awaited sequel to the 2009 bestseller Brooklyn reunites readers with Irish protagonist Eilis Lacey 20 years on, in the 1970s. The girl from Wexford is now a middle-aged woman living in Long Island with her children and husband, when a man turns up at her door with an earth-shattering secret that sets her on a path back home. The Economist describes it as “riveting from the first page”; The Times says Tóibín “dramatises secrecy and its consequences better than almost any other contemporary novelist”.
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All Fours by Miranda July
This wildly popular novel featured on almost all the American end-of-year round-ups. It’s narrated by a 45-year-old woman who leaves her family in Los Angeles and embarks on a solo cross-country road trip that unexpectedly results in a passionate, complicated affair with a younger man. It’s “gaspingly graphic” but laced with “loopy humour”, says The New York Times; The New Yorker describes it as simultaneously “buoyant about the possibilities of starting over and clear-eyed about its costs”.
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Orbital by Samantha Harvey
This year’s Booker Prize winner follows one day in the life of four astronauts and two cosmonauts on the International Space Station as they circle the Earth, sharing observations on the world below and all the little things they miss. The Times praises Harvey’s “impeccably poetic prose”, humour and tenderness, while the FT calls it “a short novel of cosmic proportions”.
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Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan
Set in present-day north London, this sprawling drama centres on a celebrity art historian whose relationship with a student sets in motion an epic fall from grace. Other characters include drill rappers, bitcoin traders, shady Russians and corrupt peers. The Guardian calls it a “rambunctious state-of-the-nation burlesque”; The Independent says the way O’Hagan jumps between high society and the criminal underworld has a “Dickensian quality”.
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A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown
Through a patchwork of diary entries, letters, second-hand anecdotes and even dreams, satirist and writer Craig Brown paints a simultaneously familiar and surprising portrait of Queen Elizabeth II through the eyes of her subjects. The Daily Telegraph says the result is a “witty and wise reflection on the psyche of the nation”, while even the normally reliably republican folks at The Guardian praise it as “wonderfully irreverent”.
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Kingmaker by Sonia Purnell
The subject of this raucous biography is Pamela Churchill, Winston’s daughter-in-law, who became known as “the most powerful courtesan in history”. Purnell portrays the previously elusive aristocrat as a canny diplomat who exerted remarkable influence on mid 20th-century politics through her numerous affairs with powerful men, including a prince, a shipping magnate and a celebrated US broadcaster. The Economist describes it as a “romp”.
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For those who can’t bear to lug a hardback around, The Times has put together a list of the 50 best paperbacks published this year. They include Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, which follows the tragic unravelling of a troubled Irish family and turns it into comedy; Mick Herron’s The Secret Hours, the origin story for his Slough House thrillers; Yellowface by RF Kuang, a satire skewering racial politics and the publishing industry; Toxic: Women, Fame and the Noughties, Sarah Ditum’s piercing study of 2000s culture and female celebrity; and Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor, which charts the all-consuming trials and tribulations of a new mother. See the full list here.