Books of 2021: Fiction

Each year at this time, a good friend (whom I will not out here) and I share our complete reading lists from the year before.  We like and read many kinds of books that overlap and many that don't, which makes the list-sharing exercise fertile and interesting.  She reads a fair amount of romance novels and always notes on the list or in her cover letter (which might be the best part of the exercise, a hand-written letter!) "no judgment!"  

I beg the same of you, dear reader: much of the fiction I read in this escape-worthy year falls into the cop, spy, and noir genres.  To be fair (to me), the cop novels are set in Oxford, England, the spy novels are about MI5 rejects, and the noir is by an emerging author.  Although I will not call them my best of the year, readers who want to escape like I do may be interested in Colin Dexter's "Inspector Morse" novels, Mick Herron's Slough House/slow horses books, and the noir of S.A. Cosby.

The novel typically rules my reading roost, but this year, I have to give my top fiction props to a short story collection.  Among everything I read, no writing was better than Steve Wiegenstein's exquisite gem of a collection.

Best of the Year: Short Stories 

Scattered Lights, Steve Wiegenstein, 2020, PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist 2021

We learned about Steve Wiegenstein's (i before e except after t) collection of short stories,Scattered Lights, when we watched online the ceremony presenting the PEN/Faulkner Award to our neighbor and acquaintance Deesha Philyaw for Secret Lives of Church Ladies.  Each of the finalists read excerpts from their books, and Wiegenstein intrigued me the most among the runners-up.  This slim volume of short stories set in the rural south (Wiegenstein is an Ozarks native) stands up well against The Secret Lives.  It's clear why it would also be a finalist.  With efficient descriptions of characters and setting and plots that marry high stakes with day-to-day action, the stories are highly readable, cinematic, and memorable.  As is my practice with collections of stories and essays, I used Scattered Lights as a palate cleanser between other books, savoring each story on its own.  My only hesitation in recommending this book to others is the obscurity of the little press that put it out.  Fortunately, my neighborhood indie bookstore was able to order it.

Best of the Year: Novel

Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead, 2021

The concept of a Colson Whitehead novel unburdened by his "heavier" themes intrigued me.  Whitehead has written important literary novels with an urgency to show the injustice baked into America.  What might he do with a heist book?  In Harlem Shuffle, we meet Ray Carney, a guy with a foot in the "straight" world and another in the "crooked" world, trying to make a go of it as a Black businessman in 1950/60s Harlem.  As I read this, I thought back to August Wilson's plays, one theme of which is how hard it is to live the American dream as a Black man and how offerings of a crooked path might appeal to a Black man that would seem crazy to someone with different advantages.  Harlem Shuffle is an intricate yarn masterfully set in its period and place.  In an interview I heard before reading the book, Whitehead described walking around present-day Harlem and looking mostly above street level to see the remains of earlier eras.  First floors of commercial or mixed-use buildings get tweaked and updated far more than even the second floor.  Seeing ghost signs on the sides of buildings or in windows above the street provided the author with a sense of what had gone before. On the one hand, Whitehead's vivid descriptions of characters and Harlem made me think this book would be ripe for development as a TV series.  On the other hand, the plot is intricate enough that I wonder if people could follow it.  Particularly in the latter half of the book, the layers of power structures show themselves multiplying the deeper one looks.  A great read; I think I understood the ending.

Runners-up: 

Goodbye, Vitamin, Rachel Khong, 2017

Tomorrow Will Be Better, Betty Smith, 1948