Auraist's best-written books of 2024
As chosen by our contributors and the best literary Substackers
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IN TODAY’S ISSUE
—The best-written literary fiction, speculative fiction, and nonfiction of 2024, as featured on Auraist, and as chosen by many of our favourite Substackers. (A few of these were released last year - our post on the best-written books of 2023 is here).
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THE BEST-WRITTEN LITERARY FICTION OF THE YEAR
WRITERS’ AND SUBSTACKERS’ PICKS
Rob Doyle
Bonding by Mariel Franklin
Doyle’s masterclass on prose style is here.
Becca Rothfeld
Small Rain by Garth Greenwell
We chose Rothfeld’s All Things Are Too Small as a best-written nonfiction release.
Bridget Hourican
Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong
We chose Hourican’s Finding Mangan as a best-written nonfiction release.
Eleanor Anstruther
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright
We chose Anstruther’s A Memoir in 65 Postcards as a best-written nonfiction release.
Nina Schuyler
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Music, all kinds of music, plays in the pages of Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, because Harvey knows how to write with the ear. If you’re a lover of language, her sentences propel you through sixteen orbits around the earth. So does the story, which is equally compelling, defying the conventional with its character changes and arcs. Rather, as the reader stares out the spacecraft’s window as the “earth reels away in a mass of moonglow,” and “that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light,” it’s the reader who is transformed, gratefully, happily because now you’ve seen the preciousness and breathtaking beauty of this planet, an experience that won’t be forgotten.
Sam Kahn
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
Cally Fiedorek
I really enjoyed the style of Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter. His prose drips with life, one of the foremost stylists working today. Also Richard Price's Lazarus Man. The style is pretty unobstrusive—it sounds like Price, which is to say, lived-in, unaffected, and humane.
We chose Fiedorek’s Atta Boy as a best-written fiction release.
AURAIST PICKS
Each link leads to an extract from the chosen book.
I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore
The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer, translated by James Young (New Directions)
Out of Earth by Sheyla Smanioto, translated by Laura Garmeson & Sophie Lewis
Cuddy by Benjamin Myers
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright
Held by Anne Michaels
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
The Visitors by Jessi Jezewska Stevens
I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall
Change by Édouard Louis, trans. John Lambert
Atta Boy by Cally Fiedorek
The Most Secret Memory of Men Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, trans. Lara Vergnaud
The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes
Ava Anna Ada by Ali Millar
The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh by Ingrid Persaud
Settlers Landing by Travis Jeppesen
Henry Henry by Allen Bratton
American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas
My First Book by Honor Levy
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
Bright Objects by Ruby Todd
Concerning the Future of Souls Joy Williams
State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg
Munichs by David Peace
Yr Dead by Sam Sax
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
Overstaying by Ariane Koch, trans. Damion Searls
A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson
The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Entitlement by Rumaan Alam
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurt
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
NONFICTION
WRITERS’ AND SUBSTACKERS’ PICKS
Bridget Hourican
The Letters of Seamus Heaney
Joseph Mayall
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Especially this year, it's vitally important for Americans to learn the behind-the-scenes aspect of what goes into our newspapers and media. But to do so, it requires a skilled writer who can interweave personal anecdotes, historical facts, and analysis of his industry in a way that comes off as genuine and not self-aggrandizing. In The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates pulls back the curtain to criticize his profession and himself by inspecting how narratives are seldom "balanced and impartial" but the product of human emotions, connections, and world views. A badly written book would have come off as lecturing. But through the skillful hands of Mr. Coates, The Message is an inspiring and uplifting account.
Sam Kahn
Morning After The Revolution by Nellie Bowles
Honorable mention: When The Clock Broke by John Ganz
Cally Fiedorek
This technically came out last year, but I loved Jacob Mikanowski's Goodbye, Eastern Europe. A masterclass in accessible historical writing, whose style captures something of the severity and verve of the region it describes.
AURAIST PICKS
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century by Nicholas Dames
A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen
A Memoir in 65 Postcards by Eleanor Anstruther
Now You Are a Missing Person by Susan Hayden
How We Break by Vincent Deary
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
Futuromania by Simon Reynolds
All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld
Still As Bright by Christopher Cokinos
Like Love by Maggie Nelson
Finding Mangan: The many lives and afterlives of James Clarence Mangan by Bridget Hourican
Anima by Kapka Kassabova
I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel J. Levitin
The Many Lives of James Lovelock by Jonathan Watts
Hope I Get Old Before I Die by David Hepworth
Health and Safety by Emily Witt
Third Ear by Elizabeth Rosner
SPECULATIVE FICTION
AURAIST PICKS
Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bentino
Ours by Phillip B. Williams
The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need by Adam Marek
Curandera by Irenosen Okojie
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My favorite present, from the moment I learned to read: a gift certificate for books. I recall endless hours spent, from the time I was six, sitting cross-legged before the relevant shelves at the B. Dalton's at the local mall, deciding how best to allocate the ten or twenty dollars I had to spend (this was in the 70s, when that would buy a *lot* of books). Once, I am told, when I got stuck staring at the spines, and could not choose among all the amazing possibilities, I announced, "I am paralyzed by indecision." I was, I am told, about eight. I feel the same way looking at this compendium of 2024's best. Some things never change, and sometimes that is a very good thing. This is one of those times.
Really delighted to see Kevin Barry on this list - partly because I didn't know he had a new book out. Many thanks for alerting me to that!