2022 Book Highlights.
By popular demand, here are my favorite reads of the publishing year. Once again, female authors steal the show.
“Whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change—and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what YOU will change. And then get started.”
Best Of The Best.
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus
I had no idea how badly I needed this book. And, I promise, all of you (men!) need it too. This was my favorite of the year.
Elizabeth Zott is tirelessly working to be a respected chemist in the 1960s when her entire life comes crashing down due to forces outside of her control. Given the opportunity to pivot, she begins pouring her energy and expertise into a daytime cooking show that ends up debunking the devastating misconception that women are capable of nothing more than childrearing and homemaking.
The brilliantly whimsical and humorous storytelling from Bonnie Garmus perfectly balances the dark undertone of Elizabeth’s infuriating reality. Even further, her journey pays tribute to all of the real life women who both successfully and unsuccessfully stood up to societal norms in the past, and also to those of us who are still relentlessly fighting for opportunities and equality today.
Hollywood is finally starting to figure out that the best stories out there are written by and feature women. Apple quickly picked up the rights to this one and it will star the one and only Brie Larson.
Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin
Gabrielle Zevin seems to have done the impossible with her tenth book, which is to create a quasi-platonic male-female relationship full of love, passion, romance, jealousy and betrayal surrounded by the world of gaming.
Young Sadie meets Sam in the hospital while he’s recovering from a terrible accident. They instantly connect about video games and become entangled for decades as best friends and creative partners in the gaming industry. Their entire world changes after publishing blockbuster hit, Ichigo, and no one can predict the ensuing domino effect. They quickly learn that no amount of success, money and fame can protect them from life’s tragedies and that real world pain can’t stay hidden behind a screen forever.
Gaming is nowhere near my wheelhouse, but Zevin beautifully draws parallels between the desires of those who game and those who don’t. I suppose we all want the same thing, don’t we? A chance to start over and create our own identity.
All My Rage
by Sabaa Tahir
I want to be entirely transparent about my initial feelings toward this book in case anyone else out there is feeling the same. I almost didn’t read it because, 1. the title really annoyed me, and, 2. it’s designated as “young adult”. Thankfully, I gave it a shot late in 2022 after it won the National Book Award because, I swear to you, it was one of my favorites of the year.
Misbah and her arranged husband live in Lahore, Pakistan, and are quickly ravaged by tragedy after marrying. Dreaming of a brighter future, they make it to the United States where they open Cloud’s Rest Inn Motel.
Sal, Misbah’s son, and Noor are young Pakistani outcasts living in the desolate California desert. They are best friends, family and eventually adversaries. When Misbah’s health takes a hard turn, Sal is left to take care of the Inn and settle outstanding debts. Becoming increasingly desperate to get out ahead of the problem, Sal devises a dangerous plan that goes sideways fast. Noor is then faced with an excruciating choice: compromise her own future to help her friend when he needs it most, or walk away from the greatest love she’s ever known.
Sabaa Tahir wrote a near masterpiece in All My Rage. The story is rich and the language and lyricism are off the charts. If you love beautiful writing and unforgettable characters, this is a must-read.
Black Cake
by Charmaine Wilkerson
Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a doozy. It rightfully has the attention of literary critics and book lovers everywhere for its rich take on the identities we’ve been born into and the identities we choose to create.
Eleanor Bennett has lived many complicated lives but her estranged children only know about one of them. This changes when Eleanor passes and leaves them with the whole story of her life and all of its details, start to black cake finish.
The journey of discovery that Byron and Benny, her children, go on doesn’t just bring light to their mother’s long history, it also helps them uncover their own hidden, painful truths. The fact is, we are all on nonlinear paths and what we choose to share and withhold has the power to shape our existence and legacy. The problem is, our choices ripple and rarely are the feelings of others spared.
Get on this one soon. Oprah Winfrey is among the producers adapting this story into a Hulu original series.
The Return of Faraz Ali
by Aamina Ahmad
Born in the Mohalla—Lahore’s red-light district where mothers notoriously pass down the art of sex work to their daughters—Faraz Ali is abruptly sent away by his secret, high ranking father to have a better chance at an honorable life. Decades later and now a police officer, Faraz is called back to his birthplace on his father’s orders to cover up the gruesome death of an 11-year-old prostitute.
Set against the raging war in Pakistan in the late 1960s, Faraz is fighting a different kind of battle as memories from his past come jolting to the surface. As he continues to seek justice for a common crime in a marginalized community, he also becomes determined to find answers to the buried questions of his youth.
Aamina Ahmad impressively managed to make her debut both a layered multigenerational saga and a thrilling noir filled with existential questions people all over the world grapple with: Who am I, and to whom am I loyal to?
Vladimir
by Julia May Jonas
Many (too many?) authors try to write about sex and power dynamics but very few successfully say something fresh that is equally provocative and thought-provoking.
The unnamed female narrator we follow is a beloved 50-something English professor at a small New England liberal arts school. Her husband—with whom she has an open relationship of sorts—also teaches at the school, only he is under investigation for having a slew of salacious affairs with young students. Further complicating the story is Vladimir, a new-to-campus novelist who catches the intense gaze of our narrator in ways that slowly derail her uniquely edgy yet incisive view on moral boundaries. What ensues is an elegantly written train wreck and it’s impossible to look away.
Julia May Jonas’ high level of writing alone would’ve landed her on my list, but her debut also managed to cut above the extreme noise around these themes and conjure similar feelings to other juicy works like Lolita and Notes on a Scandal. A wildly impressive feat for someone publishing their first book, no doubt. Keep this author on your radar.
Little Foxes Took Up Matches
by Katya Kazbek
With her magical debut, Katya Kazbek has joined the shortlist of writers who have the ability to marry modern prose and ancient folklore to tell a contemporary story about love breaking through the upheavals of life. I haven’t been this excited about a coming-of-age book since Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe back in 2018.
Set against the collapse of the Soviet Union—and a retelling of Russian fairytale, Koschei the Deathless—the most pressing revolution happening is inside of eleven year old Mitya Fyodorovich. Born a boy but feeling more and more certain he should be a girl, Mitya sets out across the underbelly of Moscow to avenge the death of a homeless man who fondly saw him for who he truly was inside.
On his often dark and tumultuous journey, Mitya finds levity and solace where there would otherwise be none thanks to a fast and fierce friendship with local girl, Marina. Filled with loads of empathy and humor, Mitya’s reality never reads like a tragedy even though it easily could have; instead, his transformation is a reminder that there will always be people who will support you on your journey.
When Women Were Dragons
by Kelly Barnhill
“Even imperfect things can be precious, after all. The choice itself is precious. The smallness and the largeness of an individual life does not change the fundamental honor and value of every manifestation of our personhood.”
Minneapolis-based author, Kelly Barnhill, is proving me right with her debut adult novel about women inexplicably changing into dragons. In my 2019 Book Highlights post, I made the bold proclamation that Minnesota-set books and Minnesota-born writers are some of the best out there, and now you can add this name and title to the growing list of evidence that supports my claim.
Alex Green is an ordinary girl growing up in Wisconsin in the 1950s until one day hundreds of thousands of women—her beloved aunt included—turn into dragons and flip her entire world upside down. Reeling from the Mass Dragoning event and being forced into silence, life continues to plummet for Alex: her mother dies of cancer, her father abandons her and she has no choice but to raise her young cousin on her own while trying to remain in school.
While the overarching metaphor of the dragoning event is not hard to recognize, there are many subtle messages throughout the story directed at all people everywhere about standing up to unsustainable confinements and harmful ideals that force us to live small. By the end, so much hope and solace had built up that I felt like I had grown my own set of wings. Cheesy, but true.
Hello, Molly!
by Molly Shannon
Molly Shannon is an absolute delight, but she was at a steep disadvantage publishing her book. Celebrity memoirs are (unfortunately) everywhere these days, and most fail to get out beyond Hollywood dirt and into a place of deep honesty about the complicated human condition. Molly seems to avoid this trap with ease—she tells her story so candidly and beautifully that by the midway mark, you don’t even assign “celebrity” to her name. Instead, she’s just a real person doing her best to march forward with truth and resiliency.
Many know Molly from Saturday Night Live and the Mary Katherine Gallagher spinoff movie Superstar, but the person behind all of the characters she plays is uniquely effervescent and well-adjusted, especially after experiencing unbelievable tragedy at a young age. At four years old, she and her older sister survived a car accident that took the lives of her mother, younger sister and cousin. Her father was drunk and fell asleep behind the wheel.
While it easily could’ve been, the real takeaway from Molly’s story is not about loss and hardship. It’s a lesson in owning your power and living from your heart no matter what, which is something we all can do more of regardless of our circumstances.
If you want to get a taste of Molly’s magic prior to picking up her book, I highly recommend listening to her podcast interviews on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and Armchair Expert. Her humor, introspection and wild ingenuity should not be missed. She will make you laugh and cry.
Honorable Mention.
How High We Go In The Dark
by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Trigger warning: This is a pandemic novel about death and loss. Silver lining: Sequoia Nagamatsu packed a lot of humanity and touching themes into these 300 pages.
The book begins in 2030 following a grieving archeologist as he arrives at the Batagaika crater in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter. It’s here that advanced ice melt both uncovers an ancient virus and launches it in a new form into the ether for generations to grapple with.
We meet a lot of interconnected people and beings along the way, and while the stories might seem like an involuntary rollercoaster ride, at the end you will understand and (hopefully) appreciate that every peak and valley had its purpose; that every death also carried some kind of rebirth. Feels familiar, doesn’t it?
Fun fact: Nagamatsu has been working on this collection since 2011. Covid-19 clearly heightens its poignancy.
Book Lovers
by Emily Henry
It’s likely both fitting and a little irritating that a self-proclaimed book lover would include Emily Henry’s Book Lovers on their lineup of annual highlights, but I promise I’m not making this recommendation frivolously.
Nora Stephens loves books and is a hardcore literary agent prone to putting her own needs on the back burner in the service of others. Charlie Lastra is an equally cutthroat book editor caught between the life he wants and the life his family needs him to lead. When Nora and Charlie cross paths in the small town setting of a recent book she’s representing, sparks fly in all directions.
In a time when the news and media at large is filled with heartache and turmoil, it can do wonders to escape to the land of meet-cutes and happy endings. If you need an easy, heartwarming book with fun, witty dialogue, this is it. I read it in a single, giddy sitting.
Notable.
Notes on an Execution
by Danya Kukafka
Ansel Packer is a serial killer on death row awaiting execution in twelve hours. He doesn’t deny what he has done but doesn’t believe he should die for his crimes either.
The women in Ansel’s orbit tell most of the ill-fated story. Lavender, his mother, is too young and compromised to care for him; Hazel, his former sister-in-law, is entangled in but helpless against her sister’s relationship; and, Saffy, a homicide detective, is tirelessly invested in bringing justice down on Ansel and men like him with a penchant for killing women.
Kukafka struggled to fully execute her vision but it’s worth giving her credit for taking a different approach to the common serial killer tale. She also manages to create suspense and intrigue throughout the book even when we all know the outcome, and she takes a stance against the growing cultural obsession* around finding meaning in the warped pathologies of violent men.
*In one year, the average true crime consumer plows through approximately 84 episodes of true crime television, 44 chapters of true crime books, 34 episodes of true crime podcasts, and 20 true crime movies.
Let me know if you pick up one of these books and please send me any titles on your to-read list for 2023; they might show up on next year’s highlights! You can also follow my reading journey on Goodreads and check out previous year’s highlights here. Happy reading, y’all.
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Metta,
Drewsome.
