Books of 2023: Literary Fiction

After a few days of books to romp through that I either liked or disliked, I present serious literary fiction.  Organically, the three books I'll recommend here share a major attribute: female protagonists.  They depict childhood, adolescence, and old age, each deeply poignantly.

If you're only going to read one, read Foster. It's the shortest anyway.

Books of the Year: Literary Fiction

Foster, Claire Keegan, 2009 

Claire Keegan's novella, published in the US for the first time in 2022, got all the buzz of a new book, despite being published in the 2010 in the UK.  The New Yorker ran an abridged version before the UK book version.  Foster deserves every ounce of praise it gets, including a cover pull quote from David Mitchell ranking it up there with Chekhov.  In spare prose, Keegan introduces us to a young girl sent to live with relatives while her mother is pregnant with her fifth child. In being away from home, the girl finds a serenity with the childless couple that she has not known.  To say more is to give away what is a very short tale indeed.  One could definitely finish it in one long sitting, and were one to be so privileged, it might be a wonderful way to spend a winter (or summer) evening.  This touchingly simple story conveys just enough about all involved while leaving some mysteries inscrutable.  A distinctly Irish heart-warming meditation on non-demonstrative (but incontrovertible) love.

Oh William!, Elizabeth Strout, 2021

In Oh William!, Elizabeth Strout gives voice to a character who would be overlooked in real life.  Lucy Barton narrates this tale in the first person as she and her ex-husband cross over from middle age into their elder years.  That Lucy writes novels comes across as slightly ironic here because her narration contains more than a little repetitiveness and throat clearing.  One has to take on faith that her books must have all of her "and so, there was that, also" noise edited out.  She's still in touch with her ex; they have now-adult children together.  When he gets a bit of family news, he calls Lucy for support.  Strout unfolds a small story into one with a wider scope geographically and chronologically.  Through the action, characters dive deeper into the interiors of several generations of family.  Strout has shown herself capable in Olive Kitteridge and other books of the kind of keen observation of human faults and worries that she demonstrates here.  Her characters think and behave in realistic ways that induce empathy rather than cringing.  This reader was happy that Strout cut in that direction; in lesser hands, the story could easily have been cast in a gloomier, more hopeless fashion. 

We Run the Tides, Vendela Vida, 2021

Maureen Corrigan recommended this on her 2021 best books list on Fresh Air. Having not found Vida's 2015 The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty as enchanting as many reviewers did, I was still willing to give We Run the Tides a chance because MoCo doesn't often steer me wrong. I'm glad I did. Vida captures extremely well the consciousness of her eighth grade San Francisco 80s protagonist. The novel's first person perspective enhances the impression of authentically being in Eulabee's head as she navigates peer and classmate relationships as well as ties to family and interactions with her parents and other adults. She and her friends are privileged teens before San Francisco became as heightened as it is now. The story takes attention as its theme as these young adolescent girls begin to understand the rewards and perils of other people's attention. Vida recreates with perfect pitch the fuzzy awareness unique to late middle school. These characters often recognize only too late their own motives for their actions and what drives their peers and elders to do what they do. Menace lurks right behind the veneer of glamor and innocence. I didn't want to put this book down, and I was sad when it ended.

Honorable Mention

Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford, 2021