Best fiction books of 2020 you’d like to read
Umm, what? 2020? Ctrl + Z please.
Isn’t that what flashes in your mind when you think about it? A year of difficult times.
Yes, you couldn’t meet your friends but you realized who were the true ones. You couldn’t eat delicious treats but you finally got to know whether you could cook one. You couldn’t go to the spa but you could sleep for hours. You couldn’t go for an adventure to that place you planned for, but you had books.
We all agree, how 2020 changed and challenged us all to gain a new perspective, to adapt in some situations and to recreate ourselves from the start. In between all of this, we made some new friends and lost some; got to finally understand the reality and de-clutter some toxicity. Like Yin Yang, we all could find some positivity in negativity or vice versa. NO, this isn’t a ‘spiritual tour to the teachings of 2020’ article. But if you’ve read till here then you’d definitely benefit from reading it further. So, where were we? Yes! Yin Yang. From the teachings of Yin Yang, one of the positivity I found in negativity was, well, my boss telling me to….
Okay, well shh, leave that for now.
2020 sucked, but the books absolutely did not!
Here are 10 beautiful aspects you would have never thought 2020 would bring.
1. Deacon King Kong by James McBride
“God was forever generous with His gifts: hope, love, truth, and the belief in the indestructibility of the good in all people”.
Two words. Humour and compassion. That’s what Mcbride takes you away with his another should-be national book award winner: Deacon King Kong. It’s basically a love letter to the New Yorkers, with its humongous crazy diversity, filling his 370 pages gripping novel from Italians to Irish folks, all of them having crazy “what you’d find normal in NY” roles.
The story is caught in the year 1969, Sportcoat aka Deacon Cuffy is struck by his wife’s death and is more of like a dead soul walking who’s (rewarded?) back with being the only person who can still talk to her merciless, sharp tongue ghost. He is engrossed over the missing Christmas Club money his wife kept somewhere she didn’t whisper to anyone before dying.
No, it’s not over yet. One fine evening, the usual drunk and angry Sportcoat, on his first guest sermon, shoots, yes! shoots at Deems, the project’s chief drug dealer, ripping his ear off, landing him in the hospital. What happens next is ……
What? It’s up to you to find out!
NPR reviews :
“ McBride’s prose is shimmering and moving, a living thing that has its own rhythm, pulls you in from the first page and never lets go”.
Available now at Amazon | Google Play
2. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
“Shug had seen it before, those with least to give always gave the most.”
It’s in 1989. Glasgow is poverty-stricken and Agnes, Shuggie’s mother watches her high hopes of living a decent life disappear as she finds solace in alcohol to drain away from her unhappiness she is further struck by. In between all of this, she still maintains her pride by holding onto her image compared to Elizabeth Taylor.
This debut novel is about her youngest son of the three: Shuggie, who sticks out the longest in taking care of his alcoholic mother and struggles to hold in the hopes of desperately being a normal boy while everyone thinks that he is “no right”, a reality known to everyone but him.
Agnes’ love does support her children but her alcoholic addiction overpowers it enough to push them away from her, including her beloved Shuggie.
Shuggie Bain takes you to this raw story which entails the undying love that only a child could have for their wrecked parents. It’s a story crucial to be brought out to the world.
The Guardian reviews:
“Shuggie Bain comes from a deep understanding of the relationship between a child and a substance-abusing parent, showing a world rarely portrayed in literary fiction, and to that extent it’s admirable and important.”
Available now at Amazon | Google Play
3. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
“That’s the point of a promise, he thinks. It wouldn’t have any value, if you could see what it would cost you when you made it.”
The Mirror and the Light is the final closure of the trilogy Hilary began with, starting from Wolf Hall (2009) followed by Bring Up the Bodies (2012). It is the final chapter in the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540 when he was beheaded on orders of the king (not a spoiler).
In this historical fiction, Hilary depicts Thomas Cromwell’s swift and delightful wittiness which let him rise as an epic hero in the first two novels, as his own downfall. It entails the tragic end of Cromwell, how a young son of a blacksmith and brewer from the hamlet of Putney, how an outsider in the Royal world who rises into power almost equal to being the most powerful man in England besides the King himself, brings about his own doom. What drives him to do this? Does he consciously know about it? What is the role of power of authority in all of this?
Judith Shulevitz from The Atlantic reviews:
“Mantel’s job is to make the inevitable suspenseful, which she does by turning her protagonist into a tragic hero.”
Find out more on this: Amazon | Google Play
4. The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
“It’s possible to both know and not know something.”
This mystery novel is a huge Ponzi scheme revelation of a New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis and the disappearance of Vincent, a bartender at the Hotel Caiette and Jonathan’s wife. It all begins with a strange graffiti on the hotel’s lobby wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass.
Emily takes you out on a roller coaster ride of fragments of some beginnings and ends, crime, tragedy, guilt, love and a lot of suspense and surprises which all come together in the end, leaving you with great satisfaction.
Just like how Ruth Franklin from The Atlantic reviews:
“The structure of ‘The Glass Hotel’ is virtuosic, as the fragments of the story coalesce by the end of the narrative into a richly satisfying shape.”
Available now at Amazon | Google Play
5. A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
“It is not learning we need at all. Individuals need learning but the culture needs something else, the pulse of light on the sea, the warm urge of huddling together to keep out the cold. We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.”
No, no it’s not what you think. It’s not a Bible and it’s not at all religious and spiritual fiction. Not that it’s wrong to read one but this story definitely matters to be put out!
A Children’s Bible will take you on a ride of how the current generation of adolescents feel or reflect on things, according to this fascinating narrator, Evie who’s on a summer vacay with her and some other families and gives you this perfect vibe of a teenage adolescent, constantly bored and annoyed by the way her wealthy parents are all in their drunken embarrassing forms. She is extremely cautious over her beloved little brother, to keep him safe from harm physically and mentally which also shows her side of a mature young lady. Some serious reality truth breaks out to Evie and the “adults” when a tremendous hurricane hits their summer estate.
This novel has a lot of biblical metaphors through modern-day parables which leaves you (especially the older generation) out with a lot to think, understand and talk about climate change and the unfortunate generational gap misunderstandings.
The Washington Post reviews:
“Millet addresses the crisis of climate change with a technical understanding of the science and a humane understanding of the heart.”
Available now at Amazon
6. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
“I need it to be a love story. I need it to be that.”
This fiction is basically “Lolita” with a different perspective. Or as the Entertainment Weekly hails “Lolita for the #MeToo era”. Yes, the author has herself mentioned it. She has written this book with ‘her perspective’ on “Lolita” but with a twist.
Vanessa Wye a fifteen-year-old teen finds herself in a misunderstood affair with her forty-two-year-old English teacher, Strane which she understands as her first love story. She comes to hear about him again after seven years. But this time, not as a lover. Amid the rising wave of public revelations of sexual abuse, Vanessa finds herself in denial when a former student lets out that she was sexually abused by the same teacher.
This gut-wrenching story narrates how Vanessa still terms her time with her teacher as “romance” or a “relationship” while Russell lets out the painful trauma the readers know that she has suffered.
The Guardian reviews:
“My Dark Vanessa’s greatest achievement is its clear-sighted exploration of the ambiguities inherent in abusive relationships. Love is never the justification for harm.”
Available now at Amazon | Google Play
7. Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
“As always, the interpretation has more to do with the one interpreting than the one being interpreted”
Akhtar (author) depicts the American racist culture, which started in the 9/11 period, who couldn’t understand the identity crisis Muslim-American families were going through. The story is about Ayad Akhtar (narrator), the son of Pakistani doctors, who tries to hammer out his identity in this chaos.
Homeland Elegies captures a struggling country in debt, rising ethnocentrism of the Trump era and the increase in fear around both, the citizens and immigrants, for very different reasons.
It’s a fiction novel. I repeat it’s FICTION. 😉
The Guardian reviews:
“Exploiting his skills as playwright and essayist as well as novelist, Akhtar depicts an immigrant family’s experience of the American dream through a son’s relationship with his father, and dissects the erosion of truth, decency and hope in a nation shaped by debt and money.”
Available now at Amazon
8. A Burning by Megha Majumdar
“Whenever I am calling god, her line is busy.”
The name of the book justifies it so beautifully. Just like a fire has 3 colours, red, yellow, and, orange, this story is also intertwined with 3 prime characters: Jivan, Lovely and PT sir.
Majumdar writes her debut novel A Burning, a story about 3 people in contemporary India with its ongoing present spice.
Jivan, a young sales clerk finds herself in turmoil when she is accused of executing a terrorist attack because of a misunderstood comment she posts on Facebook.
Lovely, a jovial and funny character, belongs to the Hijra community and takes English lessons from Jivan in the hopes of one day being a movie star.
PT sir, a physical education teacher who becomes a helping hand to a right-wing politician and finds his corrupt political ladder rise into Jivan’s downfall.
Find out more when you read it. I get it, it’s interesting!
Ron Charles from The Washington Post reviews:
“Building on their perfectly natural weaknesses, the short, intense chapters of “A Burning” present a society riven with influence peddling and abuses of power but still wholly devoted to the appearance of propriety.”
Available now at Amazon
9. Hamnet by Maggie O’ Farrell
“Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
Maggie’s long time literary obsession over Shakespeare brings you Hamnet which portrays the worst nightmare of parenthood: the loss of a child.
The 1580s. Agnes, a mother of three settles down with her husband in Stratford when her 11-year-old boy Hamnet dies in the year 1596. Four years after his death, her husband writes a play called Hamlet which Agnes finds difficult to accept.
This story depicts a mother’s grief for her son, how a historical perspective was absent all this time, and most importantly how people understand it all the way to the end of the book.
NPR reviews:
“ ‘Hamnet’ vividly captures the life-changing intensity of maternity in its myriad stages — from the pain of childbirth to the unassuagable grief of loss.”
Available now at Amazon
10. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
“She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.”
The most popular book in 2020!
The Vanishing Half gives you two light-skinned black twins, Desiree and Stella, “who would never be white but refused to be treated like Negroes”. Raised in Mallard, a fictional town in Louisiana, “where nobody married dark”, the two sisters still witness a traumatic lynching of their father by a gang of white men. In the hopelessness of not being able to live a stable life in Mallard, the two sisters run away; one becomes white and the other marries the darkest man she could find. Still, the sisters’ destinies intertwine.
Divyangi from Merrative says:
The Vanishing Half — an insight into the America of 1900s: have things changed much?
Apart from the issues of race, this mesmerizing story will leave a person thinking about their need for exploration, decisions and the will to find a “home”.
NPR reviews:
“This novel keeps you turning pages not just to find out what happens — or how it happened — but to find out more about who these people are. Bennett is interested in the unanticipated consequences of life-changing decisions, the insidious tolls of racial bigotry and passing, the frustration of inscrutable mothers, the differences between acting and lying.”
Available now at Amazon
