Author: Andres Kabel

Alice Bell, a British writer and climate activist, has honored many of our ignored heroes in “Our Biggest Experiment: A History of the Climate Crisis.” From the early foundations of the industrial world, through the early scientific pioneers pointing out the hothouse implications of fossil fuel burning, through the halcyon decades of the fossil fuel industry during the last century, through the dedicated scientists alertly spying the early signs, through the brave scientists fronting vested interests in the 90s and into the 00s and 10s, emerging finally into today’s fraught crisis, the author is relentless, compendious, summative, and readable. Cutting through jargon, talking directly to the reader, Alice Bell has summed up what I thought could not be corralled. Our Biggest Experiment is a fine book and well worth reading.

Frank Kennedy’s spiraling space operas set in the world of the implacable Collectorate have blossomed in the way that the best baggy science-fiction series do. A fresh series, Beyond the Impossible, is his most ambitious yet, and now we are blessed with the third instalment, “The Midnight Shower.” I greatly enjoyed the earlier two in the series (reviews here and here). The Midnight Shower is a consolidation phase, stitching together two mysterious strands that hovered at the edge of the earlier volumes. On the roiling world of Hokkaido, Ya-Li Taron, a young nobleman who emerged from an obscure role as reluctant husband of heroine Kara Syung, is revealed as a brilliant manipulator and possessing strange attributes, while super-assassin Ryllen Jee, who reappeared mysteriously in the previous book, is undergoing an horrific purgatory. The author seems to be able to vary the timbre of his books at will, and whereas the earlier instalments invoked mystery, planetary crisis, or space travel drama, The Midnight Shower is intricate space opera politics. Another smooth read, one that prepares us for grander adventures.

Jonathan Franzen is one of my heroes. The Corrections was magnificent, Freedom excited, and Purity intrigued. Franzen’s birdwatching-oriented nature and climate change essays have changed my life. Now we have ”Crossroads,” a first blockbuster in a projected trilogy, set in the dissatisfied lives on one family, the Hildebrandts of New Prospect, Illinois in the early 70s, smack at the crossroads of traditional America and the flower power and protest era. And more: patriarch Russ Hildebrandt is a pastor of the First Reformed church and at the heart of the novel is the church’s youth group called Crossroads. One way or another, the entire Hildebrandt family explores morality and unease within Crossroads. Russ is a moralist with philandering in mind; wife Marion is an angelic “pastor’s wife” with dark secrets; eldest son Clem questions it all; daughter Becky is popular but unsure of her role in the world; and whizkid Perry is spinning out of control. The 600 pages of Crossroads unspools with Franzen’s typical mastery of scenic description and internal monologue and situational evocation, and the novel’s central preoccupation with morality should inspire a riveting plot, but, at least for this reader, the reading experience was interesting without becoming arresting. Of all the characters, only the two young males clawed a way into my heart, and the nimble prose never approaches the modernistic lyricism that the author displayed in The Corrections. In humble summation, then, Crossroads shows Franzen in fine mastery of the novel, but without invigorating purpose.

What a spectacular year of reading! I rated 66 books as 8/10 (a real standard of excellence) or higher. Two books impressed me beyond belief, with perfect 10/10 scores. The Top 10, comprising those two and eight 9/10 triumphs, amount to an eclectic banquet. Last year half of the Top 10 were nonfiction books, this year there are only two (which doesn’t mean I didn’t read many outstanding nonfiction books). Of the eight novels, four are literary fiction or general fiction, and four are genre novels (two science fiction, one spy thriller, one mystery). (The links below take you to my review.)

Bewilderment (10/10) by genius novelist Richard Powers—a haunting tale of a father and his troubled son,

Michael Lewis’s The Premonition (10/10)—a riveting, illuminating tale of a group of analytical American officials and analysts who understand Covid-19 as soon as it hits their shores.

Garry Disher’s The Way It Is Now—the crown of top Australian crime fiction author rests on Disher’s head and this deeply satisfying standalone mystery, featuring a young cop on the Mornington Peninsula pursuing his mother’s disappearance long ago, follows hot on the heels of the propulsive and haunting Consolation.

Mick Herron’s Slough House—buckle up for a brilliant ride with the seventh in the Jackson Lamb spy thriller series.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins—a moving epic about a mother and her son fleeing Mexico to Los Estados Unidos.

Amor Towles’s The Lincoln Highway—as stunning as A Gentleman in Moscow (one of my favorite novels of the last half decade), a grand tale of two brothers’ quest to drive on the Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco in 1954.

Joanna Glen’s All My Mothers—a brilliantly written saga of a woman finding her place. Reader, I wept.

Peter Stott’s Hot Air—the most revealing and compelling insider story of climate science heroics that I have read.

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer—a glorious, deep thriller set in a near future of species’ extinction.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future—hard science fiction addressing near-term climate change. Stellar story-making to boot. You won’t forget the first chapter.

Who can forget the word-of-mouth bestseller A Gentleman in Moscow with its brilliant story and sparkling prose? Amor Towles’s debut, Rules of Civility, also pulsed with life. We have panted half a decade for Towles’s third novel, “The Lincoln Highway,” and the wait has been well worthwhile. A long, baggy story follows eighteen-year-old Emmet Watson, released in mid 1954 from a juvenile work farm. His mother long gone, his father recently released, Emmet sets out to drive himself and his eight-year-old brother Billy, in Emmet’s blue Studebaker, from their failed Nebraska farm to a fresh life in California. But two of his fellow inmates, the irrepressible Duchess and the oblique Wooly, escape and join him, and on the adjacent farm lives Sally. These five young souls, all different (and unforgettably voiced by the author), end up zooming west instead, to New York City, and the resulting plot careens wildly, although always under Towles’s flawless narrative grip. The novel is at once a life journey, a travelogue through the America of the fifties, a character study, and a morality fable. The author’s proses sparkles with jaunty, rhythmic authority and the dialogue is a constant delight. Surely one of the most unforgettable novels of 2021, The Lincoln Highway thrillingly captivates.