Railsea by China Mieville

I am comfortable admitting that I haven't read Moby Dick (there are too many great books out there to be embarrassed over missing a few). And I'm glad I didn't know Railsea is something of a re-do of Moby Dick before I started because I probably wouldn't have picked it up. I would have missed a great book.
This story takes place far into the future when the oceans are gone and the seabeds are lined with railroad tracks. Hunters make their livelihoods by riding trains in search of giant moles that live below the surface of the soil. Yes, there is a mammoth white mole that eludes the captain of the train our hero, Sham ap Soorap, rides, but this is Sham's story, not the captain's. Sham embarks on adventure to solve some of the greatest mysteries of the railsea - where do the tracks end? who made them? what are the great machines (called angels) that tend to them? and what does the obsessive pursuit of one white mole do to a person's soul?
I love Mieville's writing and the strange (sometimes very, very strange) worlds that he creates. I highly recommend this book (appropriate for roughly 13 and up due to complicated language and some violence). At the end of reading this I had two requests to make of the media universe: please, China, write a sequel and please, please Miyazaki make this into a movie.

Trapeze by Simon Mawer

I’m a sucker for atmospheric suspense novels set during World War II. I’m also a sucker for girl spies and great writing. Trapeze has all three of these things so, of course, I loved it.
Marian Sutro is just out of school and doing her part for the War Effort. She is offered a new job with the vaguely named Special Operations Executive. She’s a native French speaker and capable student. Sooner than she expects it becomes clear that the distant idea that she might go to occupied France is actually a very near reality. She’ll test her new skills, her relationships, and her mental strength behind enemy lines.
This is more a novel about one woman than a novel about World War II or spies or even the French Resistance. It’s the strength of Marian as a fascinating young woman, combined with that great writing, which makes this one of my favorite books so far this year. If you loved Restless by William Boyd or any of the Alan Furst novels, then you really should consider Trapeze.

A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle

Sometimes I find a book that I love, but I know it’s going to be a little difficult to recommend. For these books I just have to cross my fingers and hope hope hope that they will be discovered by the right readers and appreciated. A Greyhound of a Girl is one of these great books. The problem (for lack of a better word) is that it’s sad. It’s also funny and touching and well-written and life-affirming.
Mary's beloved Granny is ill and probably won’t live much longer. One day, Mary meets a mysterious woman on the way home from school who seems to know a little too much about her. She discovers that Granny, the mysterious woman, her mother, and she are all connected in a way she never could have imagined. This sets them all on a road trip that teaches Mary about love and mothers and death and life. It’s aimed at roughly 9 to 12 year-olds, but I recommend it for everyone open to a book like this.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

I was utterly swept away by this story of a couple trying to eke out an existence in the beautifully described wilds of 1920s Alaska. Their homesteaders’ life is intricately drawn and touchingly real. Jack spends his days trying to clear stumps from their meager fields while Mabel bakes pies to sell and tries to keep house. They have passed the age of being able to have children, and that childlessness haunts Mabel. As a crushing winter descends, the reality of their life forces them even further apart. And then one evening they are caught by the beauty of a new snowfall. In a moment of whimsy, they make a snow girl and dress her in a scarf and gloves. The next morning the scarf and gloves are gone, but a child’s footprints are left in the snow. This begins the thread of an old Russian fairy tale that Mabel remembers from childhood. She knows the ending of the tale isn't happy, but she decides that maybe this time things will turn out differently. Jack knows that the child is real, not a fairy. As the seasons march on, the snow child, Faina, brings them closer to each other, their neighbors, and nature itself.
This is a lovely book that I couldn't put down. It perfectly dances between a real, grounded story of homesteaders and an ethereal, almost-fairy tale. It would make a great book club discussion book.

Among the Wonderful by Stacy Carlson

In 1842 New York City, P.T. Barnum opened his American Museum. It was part zoo, part freak show, part natural history museum, part theater, part restaurant, part… you get the picture. Among the Wonderful imagines the lives of two of its employees – Ana Swift, Giantess, and Emile Guillaudeu, Taxidermist. They are very different people, holding very different places in the Museum, but both are searching for their place in the world. I was impressed that that search never becomes a cliché and that the Museum never turns into a catalog of freaks.
I loved this book. I was completely captivated by the two main characters, the Museum, and all the strange and wonderful people involved in it. The only thing I wished for at the end was a companion book full of the real details about the Museum so that I would have known right away how well-researched the story was. Not surprisingly, the truth is even stranger than this great historical fiction.

The Call by Yannick Murphy

I loved Yannick Murphy’s novel, Signed Mata Hari, so much that I picked up The Call without any idea what it was about. It’s very different, but equally wonderful. The “narrator” is a rural veterinarian going through life’s trials with his wife and three kids. He ponders life, his son is injured, his own health is questionable, his wife is a little frustrated, and there are lights in the sky above his house. But his story is not told in traditional paragraphs, rather as a sort of list of prompts and answers (alternate title could have been An Ode to the Colon). Here’s the opening as an example:
     “Call: A cow with her dead calf half-born.
     Action: Put on boots and pulled dead calf out while standing in a field of mud.”
Call, Action, What the Wife Made for Dinner, and What the Children Say, are repeated often, but there’s also What the Spaceman Said and What the House Says at Night, among many others. Murphy is a strange and different writer in the best possible way. It’s amazing that she manages to tell such a complete and fascinating story in this strange style. I loved this book. It will be on my top ten for the year. Take a risk – it’s in softcover!

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Normally I don’t read books with kid main characters (unless it’s a kids’ book), but I read a glowing review of Pigeon English that said it’s for anyone who loved Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha. OK, that’s me. So I started it on my lunch break and immediately couldn’t put it down. Like Paddy Clark, this is a novel told so closely from the point of view of the main character that I absolutely felt like I was seeing the world through his eyes, living inside his thoughts.
Twelve-year-old Harrison Opuku has recently moved from Ghana to a large housing estate (that’s British for the projects) in London and he’s trying to understand his new world and his place in it. His narration is a funny, endearing, wonderfully confusing mixture of British and Ghanaian slang. I’m still not 100% sure what hutious means. When a boy in Harri’s class is killed, possibly by the menacing Dell Farm Crew, Harri and a friend decide to use their detective skills to find out what happened. This isn’t really a mystery though. This is Harri’s story. He is so in love with the world and so fascinated with his surroundings that he could have become ridiculous at any moment, but Kelman manages to keep him filled with joy and real at the same time. This would make a fantastic book club selection – was Harri real for you, what do you think about the ending, what about the sections from the point of view of Harri’s pigeon? It’s on the short list for the Booker Prize and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it wins.

The City & the City by China Miéville

Good Science Fiction uses an altered reality to reveal something about the real world that couldn’t be revealed without that altered setting. Great Science Fiction does this and entertains as well. China Miéville’s The City and the City is really great Scifi. It begins feeling like a dark, well-written, noir-style mystery – a body has been found in the city of Beszel, detective Borlu has been assigned to investigate – but the story quickly takes a sci-fi turn. Beszel exists, somehow, in the same place as the completely separate, foreign city of Ul Qomo. The book is both about the murder and about how these two cities exist intermingled the way they are. Yes, it is sometimes a little confusing, but I trusted Miéville to make it clear as I went along and I was not disappointed. This is the best book I’ve read this year. If you’re up to it, it would make a fantastic book club selection.

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt

Near the beginning of The Children’s Book there is a magical dinner party and the feeling evoked at that party is the feeling of the entire book. The party takes place in the English countryside where there is a sprawling cottage nestled amidst a garden with a wild wood surrounding it. The light seems to hover at the point of dusk, casting an orange glow through ancient orchard trees. There are children playing in and out of the party, always children running around on adventures. The hostess, the main character, writes faerie stories for children and I had the feeling that faeries, and other creatures of her imagination, might appear at any moment. The guests are intellectuals and artists, political activists and refugees. As the evening continues - the lanterns are lit in the trees, the champagne is poured – some of the guests turn out to be fools and philanderers, some have had too much too drink and are making bad decisions, but the story flits from group to group following the conversations and intrigues, never staying too long or leaving too soon. And when I had to close the pages of The Children’s Book, like the characters when the night is over and they had to go home, I was so sad to see it end.
This is one of my favorite books of the year.

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

A brother looking for his missing twin, a teacher and student who decide to take their romance on the road, and a young man coming to terms with secrets about his past – these are the main characters of Dan Chaon’s fascinating new novel. Their stories all take place separately from each other, but they are joined by loneliness, isolation, and a search (a desperate search at times) for their identities. Chaon manages to turn that almost clichéd pursuit (aren't most novels about identity in some way or another?) into something unique and very contemporary. You’ll probably want to check your credit report before you even finish the book.
The world of Await Your Reply, like the one of Chaon’s wonderful first novel, You Remind Me of Me, might have seemed overly dark, if it hadn't seemed so real. Yes, someone has lost a hand on page one. There are Russian mobsters and a dusty, depressing old magic shop, too. But there are also moments when the clarity of Chaon’s writing gave me the chills.
As the threads of the different characters began to come together, I was completely unable to put it down. I can’t say more, just read it, and then tell me what you think.

Signed, Mata Hari by Yannick Murphy

This is not a Christmas book. It may be red and it may be a new release in December, but it’s not for most casual gift giving. It is a fictional account of the life of Mata Hari (born Margaretha Zelle), the infamous World War I spy and exotic dancer. It is beautifully told both by Margaretha and a third person narrator. It follows her from losing her parents to moving to Java with her abusive husband, to raising her children and then returning to Europe to become a dancer and professional mistress. The descriptions are vivid and the characters so believable, it all feels true even though I know it can’t all be true. I looked up information about Mata Hari (I won’t give too much away here), but I still felt complete sympathy for her as she awaits her fate in prison.
Any book about Mata Hari would also have to be sexy and this book does that so well. Sex in novels, I think, is absolutely the most difficult thing to pull off. So often the descriptions become overly mechanical or pornographic, trying for too much accuracy or titillation, but the author here really manages to make the few sex scenes telling and interesting and just plain sexy.
So, I recommend this book if you need a little escape from sweet holiday stories, from cloying diamond commercials, from insincere well-wishes, if you’re in the mood for just great literary story-telling, and I suppose if there is someone on your list who needs a little sexy…