My Favorite Reads of 2024
A collection of books that helped me dissociate as needed this past year
It’s the “holiday season,” which means—for many of us—time to dissociate! And I don’t know a better way to do that than getting lost in a good story. According to Goodreads,1 I read 54 books and 17,244 pages over the last year. Here are some of my faves. Most of them were published this year. Some are older. I hope you find something here to enjoy. NB: According to my stats on The StoryGraph, I like books that are dark, long, and kinda slow. Also I read a lot of queer books.
Some Strange Music Draws Me In by Griffin Hansbury
You may recall this book from the Sheela Na Gig issue of Croning or the extended interview with the author I published on Substack. Griff is one of my oldest and best friends, so… Yeah, I’m biased. But I am not alone in thinking that his new novel is just terrific—and, dare I say, important. Some Strange Music Draws Me In was one of Literary Hub’s favorite books of 2024, and here is what contributing editor Drew Broussard had to say about it:
One of the best works of literary fiction I’ve read not just this year but in the last several, and it sucks that this didn’t get the critical appreciation or commercial attention it deserved—but so begin the lives of all burgeoning cult-classics.... Hansbury, also the author of Feral City and Vanishing New York, has a gift for powerful and gentle observation and he puts it to exceptional use here. His depiction of a high school summer is note-perfect, sticky and sweet and thrillingly full of potential—but the true gem in the novel is his careful and complicated consideration of not just transition but the way that the conversation about queerness and gender identity has both radically changed and stayed tragically the same over the last several decades.
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
My StoryGraph review of this book began with, “So, so good.” It was longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, so I’m not alone in finding it exceptional. The rest of my review was, “And that’s all I want to say about it.” To be honest, I hardly knew what to say about it, but also I didn’t want to spoil the experience of letting this novel unfurl for anyone. I guess I can give you some keywords without ruining it: secret agent, ecoterrorism, Neanderthals.
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
This is an extraordinary novel. Hardcore mystery/thriller fans might get impatient with the pace at which the narrative unfolds, but I was rapt until the end. Every character is whole and believable—a particular feat since the characters include everyone from tween campers to elderly patriarchs, from New York’s elite to the people who serve them. By the end, whatever you might think about indvidual characters, it’s very hard to divide them into good guys and bad guys. As for the central mysteries, Moore kept me in suspense for a long, long time and—importantly—I didn’t feel cheated or misled at the end. And, just in terms of craft, Moore choreographs her large cast and shifting timelines artfully.
Maybe the best review of this novel I can offer is that, when I finished, I thought, “Oh, I should give this to my mom.” My mom has been dead for 10 years.
Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg
This novel is very difficult to categorize, and that’s a compliment. Eisenberg encompasses a lot—the 2016 election, Covid, great artists who are bad people, what it’s like to share a house with recent Swarthmore grads—but this novel is, at its heart, about Bernie and Leah, the main characters who navigate their way through it. Both are complicated. I loved spending time with them.
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Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash
The first thing to know about this novel is that you should ignore the marketing copy that plays up the Satanic Panic of the late 1900s. For sure that mass hysteria plays a role in the life of protagonist Lacey Bond, but if that’s the hook that pulls you in, you are likely to be disappointed. There is so much other stuff going on in this novel. There is, in fact, so much stuff that it should be too much stuff. Family drama, courtroom drama, hardscrabble queer coming-of-age tale and extremely complicated queer love story, a third act that hinges on whether or not Canada will harbor murder suspects wanted in the United States… It’s a lot. A lot a lot. But Maggie Thrash holds it all together by crafting mesmerizing characters—beginning with but not limited to Lacey; her older sister, Éclair, for whom I cannot find the right adjectives; and the lawyer who becomes their ultimately shitty but weirdly loving surrogate parent. Please note that I say “mesmerizing,” not likable or relatable. (Honestly, if you need nice characters—and it’s perfectly fine if you do—you probably won’t like many of the books that I like.)
Hum by Helen Phillips
I’ve been thinking about a genre I’m calling “domestic science fiction” since I read this book. These are books that have all the requirements of sci-fi but take place in the home and explore how technology changes relationships and redefines family. Hum is weird and destabilizing and it shook me.
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
I first read this book over two-nights in a one-person tent while at a music festival in September. It was the perfect environment in which to read it, and I skipped a couple of acts I had been planning to see so that I could keep reading. Thinking about deep space fucks me up, because that involves thinking about infinity, and thinking about infinity fucks me up—it fucks me up so much that just typing this sentence is kind of making my hair stand on end. Thinking about the deepest parts of the ocean fucks me up, too, if in a slightly different way. I don’t know much about what might exist in outer space, but I know some things about what definitely exists in the depths of the sea and everything I know is scary. Imagining what might be there has just enough shape to be terrifying in a way that the unknown is not.
Anyhow, enough about me. Miri is stuck at home in London while her wife, Leah, is trapped on a submarine that has lost contact with the daylit world. While trapped in this tiny vessel with two other researchers, Leah keeps a diary without knowing that anyone will ever see it. When Leah suddenly resurfaces, readers know more about what she experienced in the hadal zone than Miri does. We don’t know everything. We won’t know everything. But who knows everything about anybody, including the people we know the best and love the most?
A couple of weeks ago I started reading this year’s Booker Prizer winner, Orbital2 by Samantha Harvey, which is set on a space station. It reminded me of Our Wives Under the Sea and I didn’t get very far before I realized that what I really wanted was to read Our Wives Under the Sea again. So that’s what I did.3
Night Waking by Sarah Moss
This is another reread. I’m kind of a Sarah Moss superfan—I’ve read Cold Earth at least three times and Ghost Wall twice. In some ways, it feels like Moss has been writing the same novel over and over again, but I don’t mind because it’s a novel I like. This one has the distinction of being… Conversational is maybe the word I’m looking for? The prose in her newest works is cut down to the bone, whereas here it’s slightly overstuffed. Imagine if I Don’t Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson and A.S. Byatt’s Possession had a baby—and then Possession realized that maybe she didn’t want to be a mother after all. This is a devastatingly honest book, but it’s also deeply tender and even funny.
The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley
So, imagine if Lottie Matthews was Gwyneth Paltrow.
One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware
I picked this book up from my (virtual) pile when I wanted something easy and entertaining. This was a terrific choice. Turning a reality TV contest into a very real fight for survival is a clever idea, but many a clever idea falls apart when an author can’t quite make it to the finish. Ware delivers.
The Wedding People by Alison Espach
This book wasn’t what I expected, but I don’t know why I expected what I expected—like I maybe read a review of something else and got confused? Anyway, once I realized that I had thrown myself into the midst of a screwball comedy, I enjoyed myself very much. It’s the story of a woman who checks herself into a fancy resort to kill herself and then becomes part of a posh wedding party instead. There were times when the pace slowed down a bit too much for my likely, but I kept reading because Espach has created some truly remarkable characters here. Her protagonist is great, but spoiled bride Lila steals the show. If you enjoy watching unhinged rich people do their thing, this is for you, but I will add that Espach treats all her characters with empathy and doesn’t just offer caricatures.
The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir
I started reading this at about 10pm and finished it close to 1am, which might be the perfect time to read this weird little novel. It’s an indictment of the way doctors—and others—respond to women’s suffering, but it’s also a ghost story and a murder mystery and ultimately difficult to classify. I didn’t know how to feel about the ending, but this book is so beautifully written that I figured that was a me problem, not a narrative problem. And shout out to the translator. I read a lot of works in translation, and I appreciate how hard it must be to turn another writer’s work into artful prose. The language here felt incredibly natural.
My Favorite Reads of 2024 - Bookshop.org
As part of my debezosification program, I am moving from Goodreads to The StoryGraph, which was created and is owned by a Black woman. So far, I really like it! Worth knowing? You can download all your Goodreads info and port it over to The StoryGraph, so you’re not losing books or reviews. ↩
When I returned to Orbital I found that I could not keep reading when I realized that there wasn’t going to be any actual story. Gorgeous sentences. I just didn’t care. But it won the Booker so what do I know? ↩
I do this a lot with music, too. Like, I’m listening to something that reminds me of Mary Timony and I think to myself, “This isn’t bad, but I could be listening to Mary Timony.”
Actually, this only happens with Mary Timony. And now I’m listening to Mary Timony. ↩