My Favorite Reads from 2020
I read a LOT this year, including a number of non-fiction books that enlightened and informed me about the world crashing around us. But I vastly preferred escaping the current situation in fiction and memoirs that transported me through time and space. These are the books, some new, some old, that resonated most with me.
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins published January 2020.
I was intrigued when I heard a review of this book on NPR. It hit the market with hyper advance publicity, one reviewer comparing it to the Grapes of Wrath. Then heard I that the author had received death threats. Critics accused the author of misappropriating the plight of migrants, exploiting their suffering. I had to get the book to find out what the noise was about. It was an entertaining read, more of a suspense/thriller than an exposé of immigration horrors. After a drug cartel slaughters their family, a Mexican woman and her young son must flee for their lives and seek refuge in the USA. The plot was suspenseful and twisty and kept me engaged.
Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam, published May 2020.
A writer and his family take a vacation from the city in a posh rental-by-owner estate in a remote part of Long Island. All seems ominously perfect until the owners of the house knock at the door in the dead of night, seeking refuge from a massive power failure in the city. To say that the book received mixed reviews would be a gross understatement. People either love or hate this suspenseful and head-hopping exploration of race and class. I happened to like this book very much. The exploration of the effects of isolation on behavior was eerily relevant during this pandemic.
The End of October by Lawrence Wright, Published in April 2020
Wright is a Pulitzer Prize winning author of non-fiction books. He completed this prescient novel about a global pandemic months before the outbreak of the COVID-19. Like Dan Browne, or Michael Crichton, Wright blends science and history, packing his story with details of the decimation wrought by prior outbreaks. It was disturbing to read this during the current pandemic, but I kept telling myself, see? It could be worse. Which in the end left me feeling even more terrified.
Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens 2018
This novel is part mystery, part paean to nature, and a variant of a love story. The core concept is a bit far-fetched: a six-year-old girl grows up on her own in a shack out in the marshlands. But the details of how the child ended up in this circumstance, and the means of her resourceful adaptation make the story conceivable. The descriptions of life in the marsh are vivid. For me, the central message was the power of written language to build a rich life, even in isolation from the rest of the world.
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, Published May 2011
An American pharmaceutical researcher learns that her collaborator has died in a remote part of Brazil, where he had been sent to monitor the progress in development of a revolutionary drug. She is dispatched to Amazon forest, not so much as to learn what happened to her colleague as to find out the progress of the research. In Brazil, she is quite literally stripped of any vestige of her modern life. Patchett combines adventure with science fiction that borders on fantasy. Her account of a jungle tribe put me in the mind of Rousseau’s armchair depictions of Tahiti. This is not a fast-paced suspense-filled psychothriller. The story moves at a sufficiently languid pace for the reader to savor shimmering prose that is packed with quotable sentences suitable for framing. Ann Patchett is one of my favorite writers. I especially loved Bel Canto. Her 2019 novel, The Dutch House, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah, published in 2007.
Rebel groups in Africa are increasingly using children as armed fighters in the civil wars that ravage large areas of the continent. This is the true, raw story of Ishmael Beah, who had a happy life in Sierra Leone until the age of 12, when rebels destroyed his village and killed his family. His transformation from an innocent adolescent to a cocaine-fueled killer is horrific, but his return to normalcy under the care of dedicated aid workers is immensely inspiring.
Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker, Published in 2005
I began reading this book to learn more about FGM but finished it because of the exquisite writing. Reading it was a challenge, and not just because of its sensitive topic. The story unfolds through inner thoughts of multiple characters, not always related in temporal sequence. At times, following the plot felt like solving a puzzle, which was appealing to me. Proceeds from sales of this book support efforts to eliminate FGM.
Radio Okapi Kindu: The Station that Helped Bring Peace to the Congo, by Jennifer Bakody, Published June 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir of a Canadian radio producer working for the UN in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a fascinating story that demonstrates the impact that responsible and independent journalism can have in a war-torn country. Bakody vividly describes the beauty and discomforts of life in tropical Africa. The Congolese reporters she supervises are passionate and committed despite political pressure, torture, and death threats. The DRC is a vast country, poor despite its abundance of resources because its wealth has been syphoned off by centuries of tyranny. Hope for the future of the country is in the hands of the brave and resilient people like those working with Radio Okapi.
A Bend in the River, by V. S. Naipaul, published in 1979.
This is another book choice that was fueled by my fascination with Sub Saharan Africa. Naipaul is a Nobel laureate, and A Bend in the River was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1979. Although the setting of the story is unnamed, it is undoubtedly Kisangani, a city on the Congo River in a country then known as Zaire. The story is narrated by Salim, an Arab African of Indian descent, a recently arrived transplant from “the coast,” another region where the colonial era is sputtering to an end. Salim is neither a hero nor a villain. He merely bobs with the waves and tides of the chaotic economy under the control of “the Big Man (clearly Mbuto). It is not an uplifting story, it shows the devastating effects of a colonial system that ransacked and pillaged the Congo, and then abandoned it to collapse.
Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner, Published in 1948
I first read this novel for my freshman English class in College and decided to revisit it during the Black Lives Matter movement. I grew up in a highly segregated South, in a small town not unlike the fictional home of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. When I read Intruder in the Dust in 1968, the story of a black man falsely blamed for the murder of a white man was not at all shocking to me. I was quite familiar with tales of lynchings and young men shot in the back when they allegedly tried to run away from the sheriff. My strongest recollection of the book was my sympathetic exhaustion from reading the escapades of a caffeine-fueled young man in his non-stop quest to exonerate a man who had shown him some kindness in the past. Re-reading the book, I realize the extent to which my sense of fatigue resulted from Faulkner’s intense stream of consciousness writing style. I feel profound sadness at how much further our country needs to go to achieve racial parity and justice.
