Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

74%

07.01.21

This multi-textured modern fairytale/mystery/philosophical musing could have been pretentious and awkward. It mostly - miraculously - wasn't. I loved it as much as I did Strange and Norrell. I'd be surprised if I read anything else as good this year.
 

The Queen of the Tambourine - Jane Gardam

74%
31.08.07

This is rather strange, but also rather wonderful. Like Anne Tyler, Gardam illuminates suburban life, but her world is more unsettling and disconcerting. It's also beautifully written and characterised - much better than her more famous novel 'Old Filth', though oddly similar in some ways.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke

19.03.06
74%




Huge in every sense, but most of all hugely enjoyable: clever and deep and dense. Perhaps a little more editorial intervention would have been a benefit, but otherwise it is a richly imagined fantasy novel, backed up with convincing context - and humour - as it should be.

The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler

74%
02.02.04




In contrast to Iris Murdoch, Tyler moves the emphasis from the intellect to the heart. This is what a novel should be - ordinary people, ordinary lives that really aren't so ordinary at all. In her quiet, wise, warm way, Anne Tyler is one of the best novelists around.

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

74%
05.09.03




Recently filmed, this is now regarded as a seminal book. Odd, perhaps for a romantic drama in the Jane Austen tradition, but it has a sly cleverness and careful development of character that gives it a satisfying complexity. It's a rites of passage story told with more care and philosophy than most, and with the perfect, moving ending.