Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2004

Great year! I can't not vote 2666, which absolutely knocked me on my ass in a singular way. But Plot Against America and Cloud Atlas are both as good as books I voted for other years, and based on other books I've read by the authors and reputation, I'd guess Gilead and Jonathan Strange are great too.

I think The Plot Against America and the even better American Pastoral are the two really great late-period Roth books; fundamentally, his writing about fucking is not as interesting as his writing about America, even though he, personally, was clearly more interested in fucking. (Roth probably thought of The Human Stain as being about America but it is really more about fucking in the end)

I've carried on about Gilead and the others in that cycle on several WAYR, also 2666 on its own thread: impossible to make a real simworld choice, but in poll simworld, will go w former---hopefully they'll make a one-two punch at the top of this thing (no disrespect to the others, which I haven't read).

I believe I've carried on about Gilead elsewhere too, I think I've read it three times, The Line of Beauty is wonderful but I've yet to re-read it. Jonathan Strange & Mr.Norrell is very good sui generis fantasy, Cloud Atlas is exactly as fun and inconsequential as the film, The Alegebraist is by Iain M. Banks.

I've only read the Roth and Hollinghurst books. Both excellent.

The Line Of Beauty. A book whose greatness is obvious throughout

(I will finish 2666 one day)

(what I've managed so far is brilliant)

I'll go for Gilead I think. I've convinced myself I can't (won't) read 500 page novels anymore so I don't know when I'm going to get to Bolano.

It actually stung a bit to have to choose Bolaño over Hollinghurst for this one. A close call.

The Line Of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

often makes you wonder if it was worth writing any new sentences in english after its publication

The Line Of Beauty , alas. I reread it in 2018 terrified I'd overrated it.

The Plot Against America has aged well. Gilead tainted only slightly by the superiority of the sequel. The Finishing School is startling for revealing how Spark showed no waning of her powers.

I’ve read two of these, and went with the one written by an author I quickly soured on that was made into a film.

Oh fuck I just realized that I’ve read three of them

If I’d been more observant I’d have seen “Seeing” and voted for it

I haven’t reread it in a while, but purchased a used copy recently.

Blindness got made into a movie and seemed to be the one most readers went mad for but it was … I don’t know, it left me cold.

Seeing was more of a slow burn delayed slap in the face, those last few pages stay with me and come to mind surprisingly often.

My actual vote was for Cloud Atlas, which was gimmicky and icky and the far future section narration creeps me the hell out just to think about, but ….

There are moments that hit very, very emotionally for me, particularly when the heroes of one section are scared for or inspired by characters in other sections.

I’ve tried to read other books by the author and just couldn’t get into those, though.

I’ve posted too much in this thread, but one more: this seems to have been the era when I started engaging with contemporary fiction, in part because people were paying me to review books (see “After Dark,” which I adore and would’ve voted for it the other two weren’t on the list). Up til then most of my time was spent reading magazines and newspapers.

2666

The fourth and fifth sections of this book are as good as anything I've read, especially the depiction of the desolate Eastern Front. Feels like you are standing over a bomb that just went off and you are somehow still alive.

2666. Almost nothing ever published prepares you for part four of this book and I doubt I will get quite that feeling again from a book.

Read Senselessness and it's too much like a copy of Thomas Bernhard to me.

Otherwise interested in Lianke and his whole project.

2666 was a difficult book for me to read because it is so bleak in so many ways, but it is a true masterpiece and, as I remember it, its artifice never descends into falsity.

The noir elements of Part 3 and Part 4 (the investigator) are terrifying. Such dark paranoia.

I love 2666 too. I can imagine the burden of writing those crime reports.

I worked at a first-hand bookshop for the only time for most of 2004. My only recollection is selling a lot of the Da Vinci Code (which was still only available in hardback), Small Island, Lemony Snicket and Ian Rankin books. ZZ Packer's book had a lovely paperback cover that we kept shelved, but no one bought. I remember Rose Tremain's new book came in, and the bookstore owner looked at me and said "I can guarantee that not a single person will buy this book."

Oh and Carol Shields. A LOT of Carol Shields. It was a bookstore for old people in Toronto, so QED.

Hey I remember liking Carol Shields!

Of these... Johnathan Strange is here somewhere and I must have read it but don't have a clear memory of it. I am pretty sure I got through the Updike but didn't find anything noteworthy in it.

I think I'm the only person on ILB who just despises Marilynne Robinson.

Line of Beauty over 2666, if only because the story felt closer to mine own.

Jonathan Strange is one of those magicke olde England books that I can't stand. e.g. Harry Potter

I think I'm the only person on ILB who just despises Marilynne Robinson.

I neither love Marilynne Robinson nor despise her. I looked back at my ILB comments after reading Housekeeping and found:

Mainly it speaks about absence and transcience in a strange otherworldy tone that I've never seen matched elsewhere. I can't say I always agreed with the many ex cathedra statements about how the world works, but the book carries such conviction and consistency of view that it is hard to get mad about the perfect, unblemished certainty of these pronouncements.

fwiw, I found Gilead to be just dreary and colorless and didn't finish it.

It probably won't get a vote, but The Finishing School is easily the best of Sparks's final half dozen novels. She's in top form.

table, I mentioned Robinson's essays a couple weeks ago: she's an austere, often beautiful essayist. Her natural form, I think.

really liked piranesi, struggled with jonathan strange and quit. it did at least seem memorable in how much i wanted to quit it

ZZ Packer's book had a lovely paperback cover that we kept shelved, but no one bought. I would have! To give to a friend: the hardback edition is one of my favorite short story collections ever, and has a good cover---what does the paperback look like?
What essays did you read by her, Alfred? I only know the Gilead series (no prob w the first one's xtian poetic prairie reveries, and I'm a stone cold Southern Gothic atheist, or close to it).

i voted for Gilead. as some of you may know, i am a former Christian and sometimes get a little angry about it. Gilead's characters remind me of what I saw in it in the first place

Yeah, and also an improvement on what I saw in it! Not being the most sensitive candidate.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I am one of those awful fundamentalist atheists and I have less than zero interest in Robinson's Calvinist project but thought Gilead was a wonderful demonstration of the comfort and efficacy of prayer - obviously not as a way of having a deity fix things for you, but as a way of meditating on difficult questions.

I love 2666 too. I can imagine the burden of writing those crime reports.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 26, 2021 11:56 PM (two days ago)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 2005