Friday Five: Favourite Books I Read in 2020

I have been checking my spreadsheet of what I read in 2020 (yes, these things need to be taken seriously) and I see that I read 60 books and 24 plays last year. I rate everything that I read out of five, and these are the highest-ranked books that I read last year. Yes, I know there are more than five, but the post fits the profile. I can't claim that they are of last year because I only read one book actually published in 2020 and that didn't make the list (The Insider by Christopher Pyne, since you ask, rated a 3.5). 

My Favourite Books I read in 2020

1. The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood (2005) - a retelling of the myth of Odysseus as narrated by the 'faithful wife' left behind while her husband travels the world having adventures. It's sharp and witty and short. 4.9/5
2. A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles (2016) - When people use words like charming and delightful, I tend to shy away, but this book is everything it promised to be. Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to live out the rest of his life in house arrest in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. He befriends the guests and the staff and manages to spin an epic tale in a confined environment. Published before hotel quarantine was a thing we all recognised, expect this to be made into a film. 4.8/5
3. Ducks, Newburyport - Lucy Ellmann (2019) - I wasn't sure I ever would, because I borrowed it from the library twice (having to return it because it was reserved), but I finally finished it. And wow! Just wow! It's one hell of a challenge (what with being over a thousand pages long and nearly all one continuous sentence), but so rewarding. I am so glad I persevered with this book. It's so complex and insightful and devastating and affirming, and I'm going to miss it. 4.8/5
4. Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo (2019) - The joint winner of last year's Booker Prize, this exploration into the lives of twelve black British women is absolutely life-affirming. Each narrative is individual yet they weave together, with some of the stories overlapping to create a tumultuous landscape of love, loss, sorrow and joy, while touching on timeless issues of race and feminism. This might sound worthy and intense: it is, but in the very best way.  4.8/5
5. Becoming - Michelle Obama (2018) - Michelle Obama relates the experience of what it's like to be a black woman in a white man's world. She explains how it feels to sacrifice her own career to support that of her partner; to balance the needs of the country with those of her family while being under intense pressure and scrutiny; and how to remain true to her values in a job with no position description but an overwhelming weight of expectations. And she does it all with grace and style. 4.7/5
6. The Warlow Experiment - Alix Nathan (2019) 4.5/5 - This novel is based on the true story of an eccentric Victorian gentleman, Herbert Powyss, who conducted an experiment; he placed an advert in a newspaper asking for a man to volunteer to be placed in isolation in his cellar for seven years with ‘every convenience desired’ but ‘without seeing a human face’. John Warlow was the only person who answered the advert, ‘a semi-literate labourer with a wife and six children to provide for’. Alix Nathan imagines how this experiment might have worked, or not, and she has created a rich novel of mental manipulation. She imagines that Powyss wants to see how a mind would cope without social contact and write up his findings to present to the Royal Society.



7. The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places - Neil Oliver (2018) - Neil Oliver's story of the British Isles is very personal to him as he shares the places that he thinks are important to the story of who we are. It's fascinating to read his explanations, to remember landmarks or consider them in new ways. It also makes one consider which places one would include in an individual account (For the record, that would be Pendle Hill, Anfield, Manchester Free Trade Hall, Teddington Lock and Marlow Bridge for me.) 4.5/5
8. Finding Baba Yaga - Jane Yolen (2018) - This contemporary retelling of an iconic myth is written entirely in blank verse. It is reminiscent of the artful design of a Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls, as elements of Slavic myth, Russian folklore and fairy tales cleverly fit among the contours of American realism. It also explores a number of themes including the nature and power of language, the journey from childhood to adulthood, the relationship between religion and language, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ words, the unique dynamic of female friendships and the mother/daughter relationship. It is familiar; it is unique; it is brilliant.4.4/5
9. Dream Angus - Alexander McCall Smith (2006) - Part of the Canongate Myth Series, this novella adapts the Celtic myth of the Celtic God of Dreams. It's concisely and charmingly written and introduces vignettes of characters who drift through the story with all the strange combination of directness and magic that I expect from the writer of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency and 44 Scotland Street series. 4.3/5
10. The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai - (2006) Winner of the Booker Prize 2006, and the reason I read fiction. It is an atmospheric elegy to a bygone era, taking the political (national divides; crumbling international alliances; religious and cultural diaspora) and making it personal (family relationships; love and tolerance; self-identity). Set in the Himalayas and the USA it has a wide scale and detailed language. 4.3/5
11. Hollywood Wants to Kill You: The Peculiar Science of Death in the Movies - Rick Edwards and Dr Michael Brooks (2019) - According to the authors, “It may not sound great, but it is. Partly, because it’s an excuse to explore science. Much of scientific endeavour is really about finding ways to avoid death.” It is also an excuse to revisit disaster movies and question whether they really were as crap as you thought. Apparently, despite the fact that all trainee managers at NASA are shown Armageddon to see how many of the 168 factual errors they can spot, drilling a hole into the centre of an asteroid and blowing it up from within is still the best way of dealing with this potential threat. 4.3/5
12. The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Ardern (2017) - A historical fantasy set in Medieval Russia that incorporates elements of Russian folklore? Yes please. A blend of mythical creatures and Orthodox Christianity? Yes again. Finding out that this is the first part of a trilogy that promises more evocative prose and atmospheric settings? Thrice yes!4.2/5
13. The Wall - John Lanchester (2019) - Described as the new 1984, this is sharp and bleak dystopian fiction that isn't so far removed from the present. The younger generation have to patrol the wall and protect what is theirs from the Others who want to come and take it. If anyone gets over the wall, the same number of people (and those who failed to defend it) are put out to sea. It's very powerful and very grim. The first line is, 'It's cold on the wall' and I literally shivered all the way through this (short-ish 270 pages) novel. 4.2/5

You'll do girl, you'll do: Finding Baba Yaga

Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen

Tom Doherty Associates

Pp. 131

This contemporary retelling of an iconic myth is written entirely in blank verse. It is reminiscent of the artful design of a Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls, as elements of Slavic myth, Russian folklore and fairy tales cleverly fit among the contours of American realism. It also explores a number of themes including the nature and power of language, the journey from childhood to adulthood, the relationship between religion and language, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ words, the unique dynamic of female friendships and the mother/daughter relationship. Yolen begins her tale, “You think you know this story. / You do not.”

Teenaged Natasha lives with her parents, and knows she must get away from them and their constant fighting. Ever since her father has discovered religion, it has become worse as he monitors her language and behaviour. She runs away into the forest but, although the woods, stones and water are a recurring fairy tale image or reference, this is not the one familiar from storybooks and the settings are slightly skewed; “The forest opens like a yawn,/ as if it knew I was coming,/ has seen me before,/ can’t be bothered to resist.” We recognise the motifs of the lost child in the woods, but Yolen suggests there is more to the story if we look, listen, and abandon our preconceptions. At the end of Chapter Two, The Runaway, in This Is Not a Fairy Tale she writes, “Expect no princes./ Expect no magic rings./ Expect no glass slippers./ Expect no fairy godmothers. / Expect no singing dwarfs. / Expect no talking dragons. / Expect only/ seven deadlies delivered:/ exhaustion,/ boredom,/ regret,/ hunger,/ anger,/ danger,/ death./ All part of God’s taketh away.”

And then she encounters Baba Yaga, with all of her traditional traits. She lives in a house which turns about on its chicken legs: “It is like living on a house boat:/ the swell of the waves, the turn of the tides,/ a moment of emotion, with the ‘e’ removed.” She is a tough old woman with an iron nose, and the contemporary references to strong women are apparent; “She’s tougher than Clinton or Thatcher ever were.” This clash of realism and magical imagery continues as she explains how Baba Yaga flies through the sky in her mortar, guided by her pestle, but no one see her “unless you count bad dreams”. She flies “across tundra, taiga, major highways,/ avoiding traffic jams, roundabouts,/ only bothering the occasional helicopter/ or low-flying private planes.”

Natasha learns to tell her story, and that “A story is, not always means.” It may be grim – “I think I know now/ there are no happy evers./ Only happy moments.” – but she grows as a narrator, examining the meanings of words and exploring postmodernism through form and structure, drawing attention to the artifice of the narrative. “I am becoming a poet./ I am thinking in metaphors./ I am walking through a poem.”

As Natasha rewrites the myth with herself as the hero of her own story, she discovers that “Stories retold are stories remade.” After all, if we believe critical analysis, there are only seven stories anyway, so we need to refresh them every now and then. In searching for (and finding) Baba Yaga, Natasha is really on a quest to discover her own inner vice, strength and truth. By the end of the book she states, “So, this is a tale/ both old and new,/ borrowed, narrowed,/ broadened, deepened,/ rethreaded, rewoven,/ stitches uneven,/ re-plastered, re-harled, rehearsed, reworked/ until it’s my own.” It is familiar and unique. It is brilliant.