Auraist's best-written books of the century to date
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 the century to date, as featured so far on Auraist, and as chosen by many of our favourite writers and Substackers. Our feature on the best-written books of 2024 is here.
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THE BEST-WRITTEN LITERARY FICTION OF THE CENTURY
WRITERS’ AND SUBSTACKERS’ PICKS
Paul Lynch
Septology by Jon Fosse
Few writers can break through a stone wall and open a door to a room that was not there before. Jon Fosse is one such writer. Septology will endure as one of the great modern novels for its hypnotic banality, a roman fleuve in unadorned, slow prose that might best be defined as spiritual realism for how Fosse seizes hold of reality while simultaneously laying bare the ineffable wonder.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
Hurricane Season reimagines the Southern Gothic in the fallen world that is modern Mexico with writing that sees into souls: the warped psyche beaten out of shape, the psyche devoured by shadow. She is a dangerous writer with enormous ferociousness and integrity. In other words, she is the real thing.
Lynch discusses the style of his Booker-winning novel Prophet Song with Peter Murphy here.
Rob Doyle
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell and 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.
Doyle’s discussion of style is here.
Becca Rothfeld
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
Mortals by Norman Rush
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
We chose Rothfeld’s All Things Are Too Small as a best-written nonfiction release.
Eskor David Johnson
Outline by Rachel Cusk.
One of the books I believe will be indicative of the era when history's dust settles.
Johnson’s discussion of style is here.
Ruby Todd
Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
One of the most compelling aspects of this novel is the voice of its eccentric, mystically-inclined narrator-protagonist, Janina, who plays the part of both philosopher and unofficial detective in her Polish village, in the midst of a series of unsolved murders. Through Janina, Tokarczuk creates a voice that melds dark humour, conspiratorial vigilance, and pronouncements about the workings of life that register as variously strident and true. Adding to this unique and charged narrative style is Janina’s idiosyncratic habit (possibly related to her practice of translating Blake) of presenting various phenomena as proper nouns (from ’Night’ to ‘Deer’), lending these phenomena an aura of global significance they would otherwise lack. At the same time, Janina refers continually to the movements of the planets through the skies as a means of both prophecy and explanation for the absurdity around her, furthering the effect for the reader of being transported into a deeply personal symbolic universe. Through these effects and others, in addition to Janina’s descriptions of the wild events taking place around her and her deeply felt connection to the animal world, Tokarczuk creates a magnetic and highly atmospheric prose style that maximises the story’s thematic and emotional contrasts between humor and tragedy, wonder and despair, and the spiritual and mundane.
Todd’s discussion of style is here.
Cally Fiedorek
Prodigals by Greg Jackson.
High-minded, maximalist prose that's perfectly shy of purple.
We chose Fiedorek’s Atta Boy as a best-written fiction release.
Samuél Lopez-Barrantes
The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
Eleanor Anstruther
Love by Hanne Ørstavik
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
I know I know, but I finally read it recently and was blown away by its literary dark arts. Mantel would have been burnt at the stake for sure.
Milkman by Anna Burns
We chose Anstruther’s A Memoir in 65 Postcards as a best-written nonfiction release.
Sam Kahn
The Sea by John Banville
Honorable mentions: Edward St Aubyn’s Bad News, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, Andrew Sean Greer’s Less Is Lost, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation.
AURAIST PICKS
Each link leads to an extract from the chosen book.
There There by Tommy Orange
Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking by Han Smith
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
The Man Who Walks by Alan Warner
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
H(A)PPY by Nicola Barker
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter by Kia Corthron
Kieron Smith, Boy by James Kelman
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
Hellgoing by Lynn Coady
Europe Central by William T. Vollmann
The Words That Remain by Stênio Gardel (tr. Bruna Dantas Lobato)
RECOMMENDED
NONFICTION
WRITERS’ AND SUBSTACKERS’ PICKS
Eskor David Johnson
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace.
As I am maximalist in taste, this suits the bill. And it blew me away the first time I read it many years ago. Other contenders are Bluets by Maggie Nelson and A Brief History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
Samuél Lopez-Barrantes
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Ruby Todd
Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a new world view by Richard Tarnas
A rich, probing, and intricately researched consideration of the synchronous patterns and archetypal symbology that connect the movements of the planets and the cycles of human life and history. Tarnas’s prose, always lucid, is frequently sweeping and magisterial, with some long multi-clause sentences that seem to swell in correspondence with the scope of their subject. Much like the book’s own thematic and conceptual movement between the cosmic and the earthly, the macrocosm and the microcosm, Tarnas’s writing grounds its lofty subject with vivid cross-references to an infinite range of historical specifics—from the names of key figures, to epoch-defining concepts and events throughout the last few hundred years of civilisation—which supplement his prose with their own kind of concrete poetry.
Cally Fiedorek
Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein
Joseph Mayall
The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin.
Popular history is one of the most difficult subjects to write. Authors must entertain, inspire, and inform while staying true to the historical record. It's a difficult job that fails more often than it succeeds. Among other aspects, such books need poetic writing to carry these elements. The End of the Myth does this better than any other nonfiction book written this century. Before reading this, I thought of the border as a "thing" — a fixture no different than the capitol building or the White House. But Grandin illustrates that the border has been anything but. The frontier was both a fear and an outlet for America, a place where we could send disaffected young men who would bring back stories about the need for militarism, both home and abroad. This book changed my understanding of the frontier and everything it represents. That is a result of superb analysis, research, and writing.
Sam Kahn
Rimbaud by Graham Robb
Honorable mention: Nine Lives by William Dalrymple,
AURAIST PICKS
Half a Life by Darin Strauss
Everything That Rises by Lawrence Weschler
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Leviathan or, The Whale by Philip Hoare
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon
The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman
SPECULATIVE FICTION
SUBSTACKER’S PICK
Joseph Mayall
Leviathan Falls. The conclusion of James S.A. Corey's The Expanse series is so much more than an epic finale. Throughout the nine books, and the spinoffs, Corey has extrapolated humanity's current problems into the not-too-distant future. Racism, nationalism, and resource extraction are not problems that have been solved with Star Trek-esque replicators. They are very real, very prominent issues that, as humanity travels to the stars and confronts our extradimensional newcomers, we will be forced to confront. It's very clear the authors are offering a political (but not partisan) warning throughout The Expanse, which comes to a concluding point in the series finale. Poorly written books deliver such messages in a fashion that leaves the audience exhausted and unwilling to continue. Then there's Leviathan Falls, which expertly embeds its warning in a page-turning thriller I couldn't put down.
AURAIST PICK
The Fisherman by John Langan
I read There There over two years ago and *still* think about it regularly.