I recently posted my nonfiction reads for 2019. Here’s the fiction list.
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Fiction:
Classics:
Louisa May Alcott, A Long Fatal Love Chase
Charlotte Bronte, Villette
Katharine Burdakin, The End of This Day’s Business
Colette, Chance Acquaintances
Colette, Julie de Carneilhan
Zora Neale Hurston, The Complete Stories
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
A Long Fatal Love Chase is Alcott like you’ve never seen her before. It’s a thriller, and surprisingly accurate and unsentimental around the dynamics of domestic violence.
Burdakin and Huxley are both best known for dystopian classics, and the books I read this year were, sadly, their second-best. The End of This Day’s Business is a sort of utopian feminist mirror to the brutal Swastika Night, which may be why the stakes seem so low in TEOTDB. And while Huxley’s Brave New World was groundbreaking, Crome Yellow is filled with well-worn tropes.
Villette is very long, but I appreciate that Bronte once again gave us a heroine who successfully fends for herself. And once again, a guy who seems like a jerk, but has other layers. Although i still think he wasn’t worthy of the heroine.
Colette’s writing is gorgeous, but I’m not sure I truly got the heart of her stories. I’m told she’s very difficult to translate.
Hurston’s stories have the dialogue in heavy dialect, to the point where I sometimes had to read aloud. She has original, engrossing takes on everything from Moses to Salome, to an affecting story a guy who finds that he can forgive his wife’s infidelity.
Mysteries:
Sarah Caudwell, The Sirens Sang of Murder
Janet Evanovich, Look Alive 25
“Robert Galbraith” (J. K. Rowling), The Cuckoo’s Calling
Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
My taste in mysteries runs toward humor. I love Caudwell’s deadpan absurdity and lawyer jokes. And I’m addicted to Evanovich’s weirdly unlucky Stephanie Plum and the colorful cast of characters. I hope the love triangle never gets resolved.
The Girl on the Train and The Cuckoo’s Calling are more traditional mystery/thrillers, each an intriguing puzzle. I’m reminded once again how Rowling can take an enormous number of puzzle pieces and have them all fit together seamlessly.
Science Fiction/Fantasy:
CJ Cherryh, Cyteen 1: The Betrayal
CJ Cherryh, Cyteen 2: The Rebirth
CJ Cherryh, Cyteen 3: The Vindication
N. K. Jemisin, The Kingdom of Gods
Sarah Kuhn, Heroine Worship
Sarah Kuhn, Heroine’s Journey
Victor LaValle & John Joseph Adams, Eds., A People’s Future of the United States
Ann Leckie, Provenance
Ana Mardoll, No Man of Woman Born
Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
Catherynne M. Valente, The Refrigerator Monologues
Monstrous Regiment may be Pratchett’s greatest Discworld book (though there’s plenty of competition). A woman disguises herself as a man to join the army, and finds that everyone else there has a secret or two. Through a powerful story, Pratchett has a lot to say about war, sexism, and “monsters.”
Provenance is set in the same universe as Leckie’s Ancillary series, but a different culture. Great world-building, but the plot and main character are less compelling than the Ancillary series, which was brilliant.
Some interesting takes on superhero stories from Kuhn and Valente. Kuhn’s Heroine series has kickass Asian superheroines, unlikely demon-possessed items (from cupcakes to wedding gowns), and sex scenes that incorporate both explicit consent and condoms without losing any sexiness. What’s not to love? (Start with book 1, Heroine Complex.)
The Refrigerator Monologues is a brief series of monologues from the POV of women in comics: the girl who had to die because she was “getting too powerful,” the girlfriend who inadvertently gave her boyfriend superpowers, and inevitably, the girlfriend in the refrigerator. “You go through life thinking you’re the protagonist, and it turns out you’re just the backstory.”
Mardoll’s book is a series of transgender- and nonbinary-themed fairy tales. Each story is well done, but as a collection they’re kind of similar, as they’re all variations on the prophecy about No Man of Woman Born.
The Kingdom of Gods is the third book in Jemisin’s Inheritance trilogy. While the first two books were narrated by mortals, this one’s told by one of the gods who spent an eternity in captivity. Jemisin has a lighter take in her contribution to A People’s Future of the United States, where oppressors use dragons to control the population and keep POC down — until the people fight back by teaching dragons to love soul food. (Hot sauce saves the day!) Lots of other good stories in there, by Catherynne Valente, Seanan McGuire, Tanananrive Due, and others.
Cyteen is hard to summarize. Cherryh often writes gender-reversed tropes, and a major part of the story is a female-on-male rape that is traumatic and not at all sexy. Cherryh explores the ethics of having an entire class of people “programmed” for desired traits (and programmed to want that role), cloning, mortality, and the dirty business of politics. While it’s a terrible cliche to have the villain spell out exactly what they did and why, I kind of needed that when I reached the ending of this one.
Misc Fiction:
Sandra Cisneros, Woman Hollering Creek
Judith Cook, The Slicing Edge of Death
Rachel Lynn Solomon, You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone
Rebecca Yelland, Dancing at Midnight
Woman Hollering Creek is a collection of short stories, set around the Texas/Mexico border, with well-drawn characters.
The Slicing Edge of Death is a historical novel dealing with the murky circumstances of the murder of Christopher Marlowe. (I still like the “faked his own death” theory, but that’s not the way this one goes.)
You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone is a YA novel about 18-year-old twins who learn that one of them has the gene for Huntington’s Disease. It has some affecting parts. But can we please stop having stories that gloss over a teacher/student “relationship” because she’s technically an adult and she initiated it? Still creepy.
And Dancing at Midnight suffers from Titanic-itis: she spent 30+ years married to a man who was there through thick & thin, but spent the whole time pining for the guy who died when she was 20.
On to Top Comments!
Highlighted by Limelite:
In today’s Cheers and Jeers, JustMike described the benefits of galactic real estate, and IRSpaysthebills had a chip-worthy response.
Highlighted by 2thanks:
Nailbender gives an awesome excerpt from a speech by Elizabeth Warren, about what we’re fighting for.
From your humble (if antisocial) diarist:
In Meteor Blades’ diary Study shows new voting machines to be widely used in 2020 are vulnerable to hacking, ShamballaJones links to two xkcd cartoons. They’re both good, but the second one had me howling at a truly memorable metaphor.
Top mojo, courtesy of mik:
Picture quilt, courtesy of jotter: