The books that got me through 2020
When we read Kate Weinberg’s debut novel (and New York Times Book of the Year, amongst many other titles) The Truants in my book club, it instantly fuelled countless conversations.I loved it and am proud to call Kate a dear friend. As one of the biggest book worms I know, I asked Kate if she would share her favourite three books of 2020, as I trust her taste implicitly when it comes to recommendations.
Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had have sprung from the same, simple question: “Which one book has helped you most in your life?” 2020 was not a good year for meeting new people. Instead, I made a limited series podcast, Shelf Help, asking exactly that question to six of my favourite writers. Each time the answer took us straight to a key time in their lives, often when they were most vulnerable, but also – in funny and touching ways – most open to change and inspiration. So, rather than tell you how my 2020 was, let me tell you everything by way of the three books that helped me through it.
‘After You’d Gone’, Maggie O’FarrellAs a fully paid-up Maggie O’Farrell fan, I’d read all her books, including her most recent “Hamnet”, which won this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. For some reason, I’d never got round to her debut, “After You’d Gone”. At its heart it’s a love story, but told as a kind of reverse detective novel, through the semi-conscious of a woman in a coma, whose life story emerges in scattered sections. I picked it up during the first lockdown. I read it twice; first in that breathless, intoxicated way that you do when you need to know what’s going to happen next. And then again, with a slow-dawning awe, realising how much its lightness of touch, wit, compulsive storytelling, incredible powers of description and beautifully drawn characters were everything that I needed to inspire me with my second novel.
"Such a Fun Age", Kiley ReidFull disclosure – the author of this novel is a friend, who I met just before her astonishing debut was released at the beginning of this year. But my battered proof copy is testament to just how much I loved this book – a runaway hit of 2020 which was longlisted for the Booker prize and in my opinion is easily the most enjoyable book on that list. It follows the story of Emira, a black babysitter working for a “well-meaning” privileged white liberal family. It is squirm fiction, hilarious, cutting-edge political as well as being a curiously old-fashioned comedy of manners. It is every bit as much about class, self-image and parenting as it is about race. And for 2020, a year of sickness in so many ways, it is great medicine – not just for white privileged women with nannies, but for any person who has been victim or prey to the power dynamics, virtue-signalling and fetishes of every day human relationships.
“Rooftoppers", Katherine RundellIn the second lockdown, I got Covid and ended up in bed (well actually, I’m still here and writing this in my pyjamas.) In the many long, brain-fogged days I have spent under my duvet, by far my favourite hours were spent reading this exquisite book with my daughter. The story is about Sophie, abandoned as a baby in a cello case, and now trying to track down the identity of a mother she never knew. The story is told with such beautiful leaps of language and images that I found myself reading the next chapters even after my daughter had gone to bed. I finished it late one night alone, with tears streaming down my face, and then had to pretend the following evening that I hadn’t. My guess is that “Rooftoppers” will light up the minds of many thousands of children who perhaps, like me, will find books helped them so much they’ll want to write them, too.
Kate Weinberg’s literary mystery, “The Truants” was a New York Times, Observer and I paper Book of the Year, an Irish Times Debut of the Year and Waterstones Book of the Month.It has recently been optioned by Netflix.