Best Reads of 2015: Fiction

This is part 2 of my Best Reads of 2015.  (Non-fiction was last week.)


1.  Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim.  For some reason I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did.  Good telling of the absurd and funny trials and life of a young post-war English lecturer.  Though it's been around for some 60 years, I'd never read it before.

2.  Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See.  People in bookstores were talking about this book; bookstore owners kept saying it won't be in paperback for some time so that the publisher can keep raking in hard-cover profits.  Generally, I don't choose that sort of book, but the library had a copy, so I borrowed it.  It centers on a young blind French girl and a Hitler Youth who is an expert on building and repairing radios and radio transmissions ... with a backdrop centered around the horrors that the children and youth of that day had to experience as they became involved in the war, especially those cadets in one of the Nazi Napola schools.  A gripping tale, often suspenseful, often unpleasant.  Tight plot centered around a cursed blue diamond.  Extraordinarily well detailed.  Some lyrical writing. With historical events shaping the plot.

3.  E. M. Forster.  A Passage to India.  A master writes a masterful work centered during the days of the Raj and the Indian independence movement. One of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.  Particularly good on the tensions between the English and the people of India as exemplified in four main characters.  I admit this was a re-read, but, a substantive book, it had been a long time since I'd first read it and thoroughly enjoyed becoming re-acquainted.  Published in 1924.

4.  Takashi Hiraido, The Guest Cat.  I kept thinking of this as a memoir, but it is a straight-forward piece of fiction about a Japanese couple's relationship with a neighbor's cat.  Poetry in the form of prose.  A small gem.

5.  Ian McEwan, Black Dogs.  Written as a memoir of a fictional post-war English couple--she who follows spiritual insights, he who follows rational thought--and their love for each other but inability to live together, especially after her epiphany concerning goodness and evil when encountering two dogs on a hike in France.  Well written but dark.

6.  Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping.  A novel about two abandoned girls and their quirky aunt in Idaho. Lots of symbolism and metaphors using water and light. She's a fine writer but I found the book a bit of a downer.

7.  Nevil Shute, A Town Like Alice.  A splendid piece published in 1950 with a very strong plot, sympathetic characters, interesting historical details, and an absolutely wonderful and enterprising heroine.  The first part is set during the Second World War in Malaya where a group of women and children find themselves prisoners of the Japanese.  The second part is set in the Australian outback on a cattle spread.  It's a surprisingly romantic book.

8.  Colm Toibin, Nora Webster.  Set in Ireland in the late '60s and early '70s during The Troubles, this is about a woman just widowed with four children and how a new life begins to enter her experience.