Simon Baker
Brooklyn (Viking, £17.99), by Colm Tóibín, the story of a young woman’s journey from Ireland to America and her discovery of the compromises one must make in adulthood, is my novel of the year. Tóibín brings his characters startlingly to life, within a plot which, without being forcedly dramatic, is continually surprising. The Movement Reconsidered (Oxford, £18.99), edited by Zachary Leader, is an interesting collection of essays about a puzzling group; depending on your view, they were either a welcome dose of unpretentiousness and poetic purity or a gaggle of Little Englanders whose interests and literary ambitions were dismayingly narrow. It leans heavily on Larkin, the Movement’s one true genius, and has a couple of duff essays, but it should be read.
Two volumes of verse stood out. Ian Hamilton’s Collected Poems (Faber, £14.99) is testimony to the importance of quality over quantity: collected here are the 60-odd poems published in Hamilton’s lifetime, plus a handful of others: a tiny oeuvre, certainly, but a fine one. A Sleepwalk on the Severn (Faber, £7), by Alice Oswald, is a thin volume containing a single, longish poem by one of our most lyrically arresting poets.
Allan Massie
How the Booker judges came to overlook William Trevor’s Love and Summer (Penguin/Viking, £18.99) baffles me; it’s as near to being a perfect short novel as is possible. Among other novels I have enjoyed and admired Philippe Claudel’s Brodeck’s Report (Maclehose Press/ Quercus, £18.99), a fine study of war’s inhumanity and its consequences set in an unnamed frontier zone between France and Germany. Lustrum (Hutchinson, £18.99), the second part of Robert Harris’s trilogy based on the life of Cicero, is brilliant, better even than its predecessor, Imperium. All the same, my novel of the year is the concluding volume of Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow, entitled Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Chatto, £18.99). Marías is not an easy writer till you accustom yourself to his tumbling style, but once you surrender, you are hooked. His wit, intelligence and understanding of how we think, speak and act are astonishing.
Among non-fiction books nothing pleased and fascinated me more than Americans in Paris (Harper Press, £20) by Charles Glass. I should declare an interest, since Charlie is a friend, but this study of life and death in German-occupied France is riveting. He explores with fine sympathy the complexities, ambiguities and moral dilemmas that were inescapable in these dark years of French history.
It is rare at my age to come on a new poet who pleases, for my taste crystallised early, but Owen Sheers seems very good to me. I bought Skirrid Hill (Seren, £7.99) almost by chance at a book festival and have been reading a poem a day, delighting in the spare, exact language.
The most overrated book of the year was The Infinities (Picador, £14.99) by John Banville: lush writing and tiresome whimsy.
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