As we approach the end of 2024, we’re looking back at the things that have brought us immense comfort during the year.
For the team at Northern Soul, books were once again a source of great joy, and we spent an awful lot of time with our noses buried in brilliant books. So, we asked our writers and lots of lovely literary folk for their Best Reads of 2024. Some of these books were new publications, some were titles waiting patiently on our shelves, and some were old favourites. It’s an eclectic list and one that we hope will inspire you.
Helen Nugent, Editor of Northern Soul
I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent much of the recent Alan Bennett documentary in tears. In the BBC’s 90 Years On, the author and playwright offered characteristically frank and unvarnished opinions, mostly on old age but also on his career as a whole. Cramming such an extraordinary output into an hour’s TV amounted to a tsunami of emotion, offering indisputable proof that no one writes about the passage of time like Bennett. From Thora Hird’s heartbreaking performance in A Cream Cracker under the Settee to the sublime Richard Griffiths in The History Boys, as well as many triumphs in between, Bennett is a master.
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that his latest book is called Killing Time. A slim volume (and gorgeous at that – this is Faber & Faber after all), its 103 pages contain a cast of staff and residents at a council home for the elderly. This being Bennett, it’s a melting pot of exquisitely drawn characters, pithy put-downs, and sexually questionable behaviour. Read it, read it now.
While there’s always an anxious wait for a new piece of Bennett’s writing, sometimes the literary gods smile down, revealing an author previously unknown to you, who, happily, has a comprehensive back catalogue. And so it was with Tess Gerritsen, an international bestselling author primarily known for her Rizzoli & Isles crime series. Until I interviewed Gerritsen for an event at Trafford Libraries, I’d never read her. I soon put that right, hoovering up the 13 Rizzoli & Isles books, as well as the standalone thriller that launched her crime-writing career, Harvest. If you’ve seen the TV adaptation of Rizzoli & Isles, put that aside. It bears no relation to the source material. Pick up the books and immerse yourself in character-driven, meticulously plotted novels dripping with tension, a fair amount of gore, and bloody good storytelling.
When it comes to globally bestselling authors, few can beat Paula Hawkins. In 2024, the author of The Girl on the Train released The Blue Hour, a chilling story set on an isolated Scottish island with an (infamous) artist at its heart. Reviews were awash with words such as ‘ambition’, ‘power’ and ‘betrayal’ as well as ‘unsettling’ and ‘sinister’. While all true, I was more interested in Hawkins’ exploration of the artistic temperament, the driving force behind artistic intent, and her reflections on art itself. Add in a twisty-turny narrative and I was hooked.
Robert Hamilton, Northern Soul’s Opera Correspondent
Wow, that went quickly. It seems only yesterday that I was penning Best Reads 2023. Last year I was in sombre, existential mood with Sartre and Camus. This year I have turned apocalyptic. The election of Trump and turning 70 did it. My two favourite books of the year turned out to be tales of alien invasion and the near destruction of humanity: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. Both deal with external bodies invading the world to near extinction. In my ageing mind, they have become metaphors for the entropy I see every where. Trump is, after all, the last horseman of the apocalypse. 
But I do look for rays of hope in the written word. Currently, I am wading through Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan. It’s a hefty tome full of witty insights and the foibles of modern London. It is also heavy enough to give me some light exercise before drifting off. Closer to home is an intriguing book called Drift by Simon Barker and Jason Wood, published by Manchester’s The Modernist. It is a speculative screenplay for a film unlikely to be made – a road movie through the ruins of England full of arresting used images and enigmatic dialogue. A cineaste’s delight.
Finally, I must mention a book that clears the fog of our time’s most polluted political debate: immigration. It has become a football used by left and right to scare the bejesus out of a largely ignorant public, supported by an acquiescing media. Hein de Haas’s How Migration Really Works lifts the lid on the real processes of migration in a clear and intelligent way. It should be required reading for every anti-migrant nut job.
Amy Stone, author and Northern Soul writer
After a miserable hiatus from reading which meant I didn’t contribute to last year’s Best Reads, this year I’ve read some absolute belters. I was lucky enough to stumble across The Finery by Rachel Grosvenor early in 2024, and I’ve never been happier to take a punt on something so different to my usual book choice. I don’t tend to read fantasy, but the pitch for this book sold it to me: a grouchy 100-year-old professor prepares to lead an underground rebellion against the dictator, with her sentient wolf. Feminist Fantasy. Ooof. You can read my review of The Finery here. All these months later, I think what has stayed with me about the book is that it made me feel excited about reading and writing again. Even if you’re writing about something dark and dangerous, you can be funny and warm, and that unlocks a new universe of possibilities. Thank you, Rachel Grosvenor.
My second highlight of 2024 was the fabulous Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova. ‘Fabulous’ seems like an odd way of describing a book about a grieving mother who hacks open her son’s corpse to remove a piece of his lung to keep in a jar, but hear me out. The lung lives, grows and becomes a capable creature with a hunger for human flesh. But he’s also a lot of fun. I wanted to hang out with Monstrilio. This book is bold, beautiful and outrageous. Batshit crazy, of course, and brilliant for it.
Finally, a special place is reserved for Burnt Ice Cream by Candi Martin. This collection of poetry gave me, as the youth would say, all the feels. I loved this book so much. In short, it’s a rage against the shitshow we are living through. But it’s also a celebration of everything that makes it worth living through, and keeps your faith that there is hope on the horizon. Please read my full review to find out why you absolutely have to read it.
Adam Farrer, author of Cold Fish Soup and Broken Biscuits and Other Male Failures
Given this is Northern Soul, I thought I’d focus on three books I loved this year which were produced by northern writers, originally from Stockport, Batley and Manchester respectively.
Wyl Menmuir’s The Heart of the Woods, the follow-up to his captivating debut non-fiction work The Draw of the Sea, is a tender and moving examination of the enduring human bond with woodland. Covering a rough Celtic year, it delves into myth, folklore, craft and family, presenting us with a range of fascinating characters who, in one way or another, all shape their lives around trees. Few writers explore our relationship with the natural world, and what we might be losing, with the kind of warmth and obvious love that Menmuir delivers. 
Jennie Godfrey’s The List of Suspicious Things has had a hell of a year by anyone’s standards, claiming two months on the Sunday Times’ bestseller list and window space in bookshops all across the country, with this decidedly northern tale. Set in 1970s Leeds, on the surface it presents as a book about two pre-teens attempting to uncover the identity of the Yorkshire Ripper. However, it soon reveals itself to be a rich coming-of-age tale addressing racial tension, domestic violence and the acute pain and confusion of evolving friendships. It feels like only a matter of time before there’s a TV adaption, but do read the book first.
Tawseef’s Khan’s Determination, set in Manchester at the height of Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ policy, follows the story of Jamila Shah, a young lawyer who has inherited her father’s immigration law firm. It deals with her struggles as she copes with the pressures of her job while attempting to carve out a space for herself in the world. But it’s so much broader than that, offering up an expanded universe that unpacks the lives of Shah’s clients in vignette chapters that could almost be short stories in their own right. A bold, self-assured and expertly crafted debut novel.
Desmond Bullen, Chief Arts Correspondent at Northern Soul
Typically, the books which stay with me across the year are not necessarily the ‘best’ but the most distinctive. Moreover, they are frequently those which have sought me out, rather than vice versa, lying in wait in Blackpool’s ramshackle Topping Street second-hand book emporium or Sale‘s estimable Free Book Shop.
The best example of the fruits of the former is Eileen J. Garrett’s gloriously singular Many Voices: The Autobiography of A Medium. Cut from a very different cloth than the likes of former footballer Derek Acorah and his ‘Indian’ guide, Sam, Garrett was, in many respects, the Stewart Lee of mediumship; deconstructing and distrusting her talents (she wondered if her ‘controls’ or spirit guides were actually splinters of her own fractured personality) even as she demonstrated them. Her autobiography reads like a secret history of the 20th century as she moves in the esoteric circles of the time, meeting everyone from the poet William Butler Yeats to the self-styled Great Beast 666, occultist Aleister Crowley.
Having been reminded of my mid-20s penchant for Angela Carter by seeing the Carter-inspired Wise Children’s production of Blue Beard earlier in the year, I had half an eye open for her second-hand second life in my trawls through the Free Book Shop, and was rewarded by coming across a copy of her extravagantly widescreen Nights At The Circus, a novel with a trapeze artist’s confidence in her own skill about a winged aerialist at the hatching of the 20th century. Lipstick traces of its kiss can be found in so much of what has come after it, in both realist fiction and its magical counterpart, but, like the best of Carter’s work, it remains admirably sui generis. 
Unlike Garrett, who I had come across in the pages of the 1970s partwork of Fortean phenomena The Unexplained, and Carter, who I first knew through the film adaptation of The Company Of Wolves, the name of Rita Mae Brown was an entirely new one to me. Nonetheless, I judged Rubyfruit Jungle by its elegant cover, and was won over almost at once by Brown’s charismatic autobiographical other, Molly Bolt, in what turned out to be a lesbian coming-of-age novel. Very much of its times, having first been published in 1973, it’s as flawed and assured as its heroine, a song by Dolly Parton in paperback form.
Simon Buckley, artist and creative director of Not Quite Light
My time spent reading mimics an unhealthy pulse rate. Some weeks I will race through several books, and then I slow right down, reading very little apart from the odd, haphazard flirtation with a book I’m vaguely interested in. And so I’ve chosen two books which invaded my time, but were thoroughly deserving of my attention.
The first is A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck. I only began reading his work a few years ago, but have since gone through 15 of his books, loving all of them. I bought a used copy online of this reportage book, perhaps inspired to learn of his perspective on a country which, at the time, included Ukraine and Georgia – countries now fighting to stay independent of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Steinbeck travels through the old Soviet Union with the famed photographer Robert Capa, a huge personality and one of the founders of Magnum after the Second World War. It was fascinating to read Steinbeck’s account of these two great artists rambling through their journey, particularly when detailing the fears and anxieties of Capa as he agonises over the quality of his photographs, something I can easily relate to.
As is the way with Steinbeck, he writes with gentle humanity, making simple but beautiful observations, allowing the people he meets to take centre stage, puncturing much of the hysteria abroad in the USA at the time, allowing us to understand that, behind the propaganda, people everywhere can be kind, generous, funny and wise. A wonderful book.
Last Christmas my mum unexpectedly gave me a book called Natural Light by Julian Bell, I suspect because of my love of twilight in my own work for my Not Quite Light project. The book is a biography of a German artist I’d never heard of, Adam Elsheimer, who died in poverty at the young age of 32 in 1610 while living in Rome. 
Not only does the book explore his paintings on small copper plates, often depicting scenes in the half light of dusk or dawn or in candlelit rooms, it also demonstrates that very little has changed in the art world, setting out a grim story of unrecognised talent and exploitation. Despite being venerated by such greats as Peter Paul Reubens, Elsheimer’s genius failed to attract enough patrons, and the only person who made any real money from his work was a man named Goudt who produced engravings and prints of Elsheimer’s paintings, the profits of which never reached the originator.
Since reading this wonderfully prepared book, I’ve often found myself thinking of Elsheimer’s work and life, and I feel that’s the mark of a good read. Thanks mum.
Rob Martin, journalist, author and Northern Soul writer
If, like me, you’re a film fan, then Chris Nashawaty’s The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982 is a tremendously entertaining examination of an extraordinary two-month period in film history. Eight of the most influential films of the fantasy genre were released, and, in many ways, the success or otherwise of them would go on to define studio investments, marketing campaigns, release strategies and more for decades to come.
In that momentous summer of cinema, audiences had the choice of seeing E.T., Tron, Blade Runner, The Thing, Mad Max 2, Star Trek 2, Conan the Barbarian, and Poltergeist, all of which were released within weeks of each other. It’s easy to forget that, at the time, most of these films (now considered classics) flopped and achieved a string of negative reviews, with the likes of The Thing and Blade Runner tanking under the popularity of a stranded extraterrestrial.
Nashawaty spends the first chapters outlining each of the films, their production, expectations for them, and how they did, but brings it all together as a forensic examination of the machinations of Hollywood and the final, unpredictable nature of that strange beast, the general public. It’s great fun. Damon Fairclough, Freelance Writer
A few years ago, I jokingly cursed my apparent inability to extend my literary horizons much beyond my immediate surroundings. Year after year, my best reads turn out to be books that delve in some detail into the places where I’ve lived – mostly Sheffield (the city I bestrode as a child, teen and 20-something), and Liverpool (where I now lay my hat).
This year is no different. Beginning with the city of my youth, Catherine Taylor’s memoir The Stirrings pulls the Sheffield I remember into sharp focus. Her early years track my own so closely – temporally and geographically that is, rather than in the details of her family life – that it’s hard to imagine we didn’t wander past each other on West Street or Glossop Road numerous times. 
I remember, for instance, the bookshop her family owned, which was a cosy paper-lined retreat in Broomhill, one of the city’s most picturesque suburbs – beloved by Betjeman no less. I remember too the shadow the so-called ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ cast over the north of England during the 1970s, though as a lad tumbling about the schoolyard in my scuffed Clarks Commandos, I rarely remember thinking of this character as much more than a cartoonish bogeyman. As a girl and a young woman, Taylor’s recollection of his malign influence pulled me up sharp and turned my nostalgic reverie into something guiltier, even tainted. Therein lies much of this evocative book’s haunting power.
As for Liverpool, which in February will have been my home for three decades, I now feel I’ve lived here far longer thanks to the Baudelairean evocations of Paul Simpson’s superb Revolutionary Spirit – not just a memoir, but a ‘post-punk exorcism’ according to the cover. Simpson was a co-founder of The Teardrop Explodes, sidekick of the Bunnymen, flatmate of Courtney Love (see Dave Haslam’s Searching for Love for more on that story), buddy of Bill Drummond and so on, all characters who come alive in this book. It may not have escaped your notice, however, that all these people found true fame and fortune at various points in their careers – some even had so much cash, all they could think to do was set it on fire – whereas Simpson has been less troubled by what we might think of as ‘traditional’ pop success.
But in a book that takes self-deprecation to hilarious heights while simultaneously portraying a man who spent much of the 1970s and 80s immersed in poverty-stricken self-mythologisation, it becomes clear that, for some, the pursuit of a pure artistic vision demands the detonation of conventional ‘success’ just as it’s about to arrive. It may not be done on purpose, but it’s an inescapable theme of this book.
Fortunately, while there may not have been a torrent of money waiting at the end of Simpson’s artistic rainbow, there is genuine pop gold – seek out his decades-long music project, The Wild Swans, for proof – and there is this magnificent book. If I’ve made it sound like a relentless tale of artistic struggle and financial woe, I’m sorry. Believe me, it’s also very f*cking funny. For instance, Simpson’s story about playing the Royal Festival Hall organ for Julian Cope is comic writing at its best. As almost always, he ends up kind of coming a cropper – but in so many ways, he’s an utter hero too.
And finally…40 years after I read its first few pages during a fit of sixth-form pretension, 2024 was the year I properly devoured Ulysses. Back in the early 80s, it was obvious I didn’t have time between necking Thunderbird, and, well, actual necking, to finish the thing. But middle-age is different, and this year I had both the time and the literary inclination. It wasn’t the breeziest of experiences, that’s for sure, but I promise it was well worth the wait. Not least because although it was definitely a ‘best read’, I can now also relax in the knowledge that I really don’t have to read it again.
Eileen Jones, journalist, author and Northern Soul writer 
I’m not normally seduced by award-winners, but here I am presenting three of them. And while it may be pushing the boundaries of credibility to choose as a ‘best read’ a book in which I’m only up to page 31, I’ve been bowled over, swept away and dozens of other literary clichés by Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos, the International Booker Prize winner. There’s a fascination with this part of our relatively recent history – the end of the German Democratic Republic. It was the brink of a new era for which we all had such high hopes.
It’s against this backdrop that a love story is told, and within the first few pages is a divine sense of being there, an invisible witness as a young student and an older married man fall for one another in the most softly inevitable way. Erpenbeck’s writing is intensely emotional and yet she allows the passion to develop slowly, in subtle and rich layers. I’m rationing myself to a few pages at a time because it’s almost too rich to consume, much like heavy, heady red wine.
My other choices are also by women, both featured in this year’s Hunter Davies-sponsored Lakeland Book of the Year awards, and coincidentally both published by Dave Fenton’s elite Inspired by Lakeland stable. Runner-up Danielle Ledbury is both writer and photographer for the insightful Why we run, tales of fell and trail running in the Lake District, which is a series of interviews with famous names and those less well known. They talk about their connection with the landscape and the enormous challenges involved, including the ultra-distance winner Katie Kaars Sijpesteijn who ran all through her pregnancy, and black trail runner Zukie Tandathu who wants to break down the barriers that prevent other people of colour from accessing the outdoors. Several runners also discuss the healing power of running through wild country. Poignantly, the book came out just before the death of the fell-running legend Joss Naylor who, of course, is featured here. Ledbury clearly has a subtle way of persuading her subjects to speak frankly and reveal their souls.
The Latitude Press Prize for Illustration and Presentation went to Sketching A Year in Lakeland by artist Liz Wakelin. And while this is an exquisite collection of watercolours depicting life on the hills, by the lakes, and in Cumbria’s towns and villages, Wakelin is also a beautifully lyrical writer. What’s more, every word is handwritten, in the manner of the Wainwright guides, with no typesetting. She describes cafés, hardware shops, cycle-repairers and hairdressers with the same affectionate tone and excellent eye for detail with which she graces the woodland paths, the high summits, and the flowers of the wayside. As a recent exile from my beloved Lake District, this has become by bedside bible, a nightly reminder of a piece of heaven on earth.
Sarah-Clare Conlon, freelance writer, editor and poet
It’s all about the whaup and the peewit this year – or the curlew inhabiting Kathleen Jamie’s latest book of short pieces, Cairn, and the Lapwing of Hannah Copley’s poetry collection of that name. 
Copley’s publication was a Poetry Book Society Summer 2024 recommendation and went on to pick up second place in the Poet Laureate’s prestigious Laurel Prize for best collections of nature and environmental poetry. Not only does it present perfect snapshots of the great outdoors, transporting the tram-trapped commuter to the morning-misted meadows and winnowing wheatfields, it also pulls no punches painting the picture that the countryside isn’t always just boundless bucolic beauty. The characters in Lapwing, including our feathered friend Peet, face daily difficulties, even death and destruction, and Copley navigates this landscape to eke out real empathy. Her language is equally nimble, with tongue-twistery assonance and wordplay almost a song on the wind.
My own next book includes a sequence of poems about British birds on the red (endangered) list, so encountering other angles on the fragile beauty around us is enlightening and enlivening, and former Makar (the Scottish Poet Laureate) Jamie offers up her take in various different forms. Cairn encompasses haikus and prose poems, micro-essays and mini memories, all looking both backwards and forwards, and serving up ling and larksong, named storms and summer’s end swifts, whale-watching and existential worries. Not all hit the mark, but those that do end up rattling around in your thoughts for a while. There’s a blur where city living and the moors, glens and seashores collide, those liminal spaces we all craved during lockdown, and it’s good to be reminded, quietly, of where we were and where we are now.
(Wanderland by Sarah-Clare Conlon is out with Red Ceilings Press in the new year)
Bernard Ginns, former newspaper editor and author of Outcast: Cook Versus The City
When do the things we once did for fun become sad, desperate and dangerous? When do the bars, pubs and clubs that once set us free end up imprisoning us? What separates success of sorts from unambiguous failure? Thin margins, dear boy, thin margins. This narrow gauge is explored in fine, unflinching style by John Niven in O Brother, a laugh-out-loud funny and devastatingly sad memoir of siblings growing up in Irvine, Scotland. From the same beginnings, two brothers learn together, play together and party together but later fall apart, ending up on tragically different paths – one becoming a music industry executive and the other a bombed-out drug dealer. For all the joyful abandon of all-night raves and fashionably laddish excess, the 1990s came with a heavy cost for many men. O Brother serves as both a celebration of life and a warning of its dangers.
Nancy Collantine, artist and Northern Soul writer
In What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama, Mrs Komachi is a larger-than-life librarian with ‘super pale skin, her hair is twisted into a small bun right on top of her head and she has a cool kanazashi hairpin spiked through her bun with three white flower tassels hanging from it’.
Six characters encounter Mrs Komachi in the Hatori Community House, a place to which they are sent or drawn to at a critical point in their lives, a point at which they might be stuck or feel lost. What you are looking for is in the library draws together pragmatism and magic that only storytelling can achieve; it’s about opening a door into imagination, into a creative call and response. It might even be a guide to how to realise your dreams. 
I loved this book because it reminds us that there is magic to be found in every interaction – if only we are in the presence of mind to see it. It also extols the virtues of a library, which must be one of the most transformative places to go and find out who you are.
Susan Ferguson, Northern Soul writer
Regrettably, my ‘to read’ book pile continues to grow and my genius idea for reducing this pile by borrowing books from the library has only served to exacerbate the problem. So, how to pick just three from the books I’ve read this year?
I have already written on Northern Soul about the joy of discovering a writer when, in fact, they already have a terrific and extensive back catalogue. Here, I will add another to that list: Richard Powers. His latest book, Playground, is his fourteenth. A remarkable book about love, friendship, colonialism, neo-colonialism, deep sea diving, the ocean, education, loneliness and unimaginable wealth, the story strands interweave and culminate in an amazing reveal which made me want to dive straight back in.
Second on my list is Glitter Balls by debut novelist Michele Howarth. It is a stonking page-turner of a story about a sleazy 80s northern pop star and his relationship (or lack of) with his wife, daughter, sister, manager, his manager’s PA, drugs, alcohol, his middle-aged dumpy fans, and any young woman who crosses his path. After years of getting away with it, his world begins to unravel. I don’t think I’ve ever cheered and punched the air on finishing a book before.
And finally Brian by Jeremy Cooper, published by the magnificent Fitzcarraldo Editions. Brian works for Camden Council and lives a beyond-ordinary life of mundane routine. The novel tells the story of him finding some sort of purpose and friendship at the BFI cinema in London. Throughout the story we learn snippets of his childhood and upbringing which have almost certainly contributed to his solitary existence. As his film obsession grows, so does the reader’s. Brian joins the group of regular filmgoers at the BFI, noting that each person has a ‘speciality’. He decides his is post-war Japanese cinema. Apparently, Cooper used the notes that the BFI hands out to create Brian’s obsessive knowledge. His fellow film devotees – almost friends to this solitary character – talk about their own favourites. Ultimately, this is a book about how art and culture serve to complete our lives.
Danny Moran, journalist and Northern Soul writer
Alan Garner enjoys legendary status as the author of children’s books steeped in the folklore of his native Cheshire, but it was his Manchester-set Elidor which tripped my interest in Mancunian literature. It led me to The Stone Book Quartet, a sequence of novellas relating to a day in the life of four generations of one rural family between 1860 and 1940. That this is Garner’s own family, and the stories drawn from fact, is perhaps something we don’t need to know, so richly imagined are they, so finely assembled from the description of skilled labour (stonemason, blacksmith, farmhand). The music of Cheshire dialect, the effect of time on human destiny, and the sense of compression speak clearly in the language of great literature.
They’re a bit like reading Thomas Hardy – great devotion to the traditions of place – without the correlative other-worlds which make The Owl Service and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen so breathless. In The Stone Book, young Mary brings her father his lunch as he labours to construct the steeple on a new church; she yearns to read and implores him to teach her. Instead, he fashions a book from the local stone through which their ancestors have come to understand their world. 
We follow the fates of Mary’s family across successive generations. In Granny Reardun, her bastard son Joseph, raised in shame by her parents, turns his back on the family business to take indenture with a smith, while, in The Aimer Gate, the son she raised helps to reap the harvest while on leave from military duty before winding up as an entry on the town square memorial. And in Tom Fobble’s Day, Joseph makes a sledge for his grandson with which the youngster skims the same fields in the midst of the Manchester blitz, drawing us deeper into the defining significance of landscape.
Asked for his favourite among his own works, Kalooki Nights is Howard Jacobson’s pick. The Holocaust stalks every sentence in this novel where, in another mid-century Manchester (not dissimilar to the more celebrated The Mighty Walzer), we encounter a trio of teens growing up in the shadow of history, as collected in the memory of satirical cartoonist Maxie Glickman. They play concentration camps as other kids might cowboys and indians, and trade details of the Nazis’ most infamous monsters as though they were cigarette cards. But when one of them murders his parents, Jewish trauma is turned inside out.
Jacobson may not be the most fashionable author right now in light of his commentary on the situation in the Middle East, but Kalooki Nights is a reminder of his capacity to realise the moral potential of the novel in a manner worthy of his teacher and mentor, F.R. Leavis.
Kevin Bourke, journalist and Northern Soul writer
As I admitted at this time last year, I was late to acknowledge the brilliance of Amor Towles, but his Table For Two is proof once more of his jaw-dropping facility with language and storytelling. It’s a collection of six short stories, collectively titled as (and set in) New York, along with the novella Eve in Hollywood, set in Los Angeles and continuing the adventures of the indomitable and mysterious Evelyn Rose, last seen heading off heedlessly to the City of Angels in Towles’ debut novel, Rules of Civility. Stylish, sophisticated and witty, it’s a jewel of a book.
Decades in the writing, Joe Boyd’s And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain is an exhaustive and illuminating journey through global music, an unexpectedly gripping page-turner (and there are lots of pages to turn) full of improbable anecdotes and outlandish personalities. To quote the man himself at this year’s Manchester Literature Festival, who knew that promoter Bill Graham was a champion mambo dancer or that Charles Dickens wrote a scathing review of a Zulu choir’s performance in London in 1853? That Frank Sinatra owed his career to a tango singer from Buenos Aires? That Desi Arnaz’s father banned his son’s future meal-ticket, the conga drum, when he was mayor of Santiago de Cuba? That George Harrison fell for Indian music while lying in Zsa Zsa Gabor’s bathtub? There’s a whole lot more like that, and even music bores like me won’t have heard half the fantastic tales or dreamt of the musical connections. More importantly, it makes you yearn to listen to the music itself, whether for the first or umpteenth time.
This year I discovered the Spanish writer Juan Gómez-Jurado and his dark and devious thrillers Red Queen and Black Wolf, thankfully before I’d seen the relatively-leaden Amazon Prime adaptation. With genuinely unusual characters and an engrossingly twisty plot, it’s easy to see why the series (a third book is due in translation next year) has proved such a huge hit in Spain.
