Amid a plethora of end-of-the-year best books lists, some noteworthy titles inevitably fall under the radar. The following is an attempt to broaden the range of 2024 highlights in the book world.
The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts by Louis Bayard
Louis Bayard’s enthralling novel, The Wildes, recasts the tragic fall of Oscar Wilde, the great English playwright of the late 19th century. Through “five acts,” the novel moves from the English countryside to the trenches of World War I and the turbulent postwar era—years that witness Wilde’s spectacular fall from grace, leading to imprisonment and exile in Paris.
True to its title, The Wildes comes filtered through the lens of different family members, particularly his wife Constance. Her slow realization of her famous husband’s gender preferences is heartbreaking. At the same time, any novel about Oscar Wilde should be at least as witty as the genius himself. The Wildes is all that, and not infrequently laugh-out-loud funny—for me, among the most entertaining novels of 2024.
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
How do you imagine the unimaginable? That’s the challenge journalist Annie Jacobsen sets for herself in Nuclear War: A Scenario, her hypothetical account of the outbreak of nuclear war and its cataclysmic effects on the planet.
Fair warning: Jacobsen doesn’t flinch from detailing the horrors and devastation of thermonuclear Armageddon. It takes a strong stomach to work your way through her account, but readers will come away with a keener sense of why nightmarish events like this can never be allowed to happen.
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
For Kevin Barry completists such as myself, it’s no longer surprising when the characters in his novels and stories leap off the page at you. In Barry’s enchanting and streamlined, comma-less prose, the actors in his dramas all have a pulse, and not a page goes by without some readerly delight.
Set in the American West in 1891, The Heart in Winter expands upon his range, far beyond contemporary life in Ireland. Star-crossed lovers Tom and Polly seek to escape a stifling life in Butte, Montana. Violence and calamity ensue. The author hasn’t lost a step in conveying the pathos and humor, love and doom, that haunt all his work. The Heart in Winter is compulsively readable and a fine addition to this writer’s tragicomic oeuvre.
Highway Thirteen by Fiona McFarlane
In this collection of linked stories, Fiona McFarlane follows the crimes of a fictional serial killer named Paul Biga—crimes that torment the populace of Australia many years after the fact. Flitting elegantly in and out of a specific timeframe (1990-2011), the stories focus less on the murderer himself and more on the women and men at some distance removed, who are nonetheless affected by his monstrous felonies.
Highway Thirteen, following soon after McFarlane’s remarkable novel, The Sun Walks Down, amply displays her skills at plot and character development, setting and pace. The captivating prose and flair for originality make Highway Thirteen a worthy successor.
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett
Colin Barrett’s debut novel comes after publication of two hugely entertaining short story collections, Young Skins and Homesickness. The plot of Wild Houses is vintage Barrett, and a beguiling extension of his skills with short fiction. The scale is small—various locales in and around County Mayo, Ireland—and at times, the novel evokes the rhythms and imagery of his short fiction. His signature talent for physical description and the pervasive ennui among young people (often engaged in criminal activities) remains firmly intact.
Wild Houses is powerful to read, and a great introduction to Barrett’s work. We end up caring a great deal for his hapless characters, including the bloodthirsty Ferdia brothers, depicted here with a tinge of common humanity. Barrett succeeds again.
Author Bio:
Lee Polevoi, Highbrow Magazine’s chief book critic, is the author of The Confessions of Gabriel Ash, a novel.
For Highbrow Magazine