Perhaps it is a commentary on how difficult and chaotic real life felt during the year that I found myself turning to fiction more often in 2016. Of the 25 books I ended up reading, 16 were works of fiction. But far from representing an escape route from everyday strife, they often seemed to echo the racial, social and political tensions reverberating across the U.S. and beyond.
My favorite book of the year was “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead, a riveting and often horrifying depiction of a slave’s route to freedom from the Deep South. The book is noteworthy for Whitehead’s choice to re-imagine the 19th Century network of safe houses to free slaves as a literal rail line with tracks and locomotives. It’s magical imagery that contrasts masterfully with Whitehead’s depiction of the brutal violence and oppression of slavery, which comes across as all too realistic, even as the author collapses and re-arranges history in surprisingly compelling ways.
It’s hard to read “The Underground Railroad” and not think about the contemporary legacies of slavery, at a time when police shootings of unarmed black men, violence against police and the rise of white nationalist movements in the U.S. have become national news stories. Other novels I read touched on authoritarianism (“The Orphan Master’s Son), radicalism (“The Good Lord Bird”), immigration and Islam (“Submission”), and the risks of political influence (“Reputations”).
But any novel that spends too much time harping on the social or political risks becoming boring or pedantic. Human beings read fiction to experience a story through someone else’s eyes. And much of the best fiction I’ve been reading doesn’t limit itself to one perspective. They tell the similar events from multiple, if not many perspectives.
My second favorite book of the year was a powerful example of that dynamic. “Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff tells the story of a marriage, first from the husband’s viewpoint, then the wife’s perspective. It serves as an apt reminder to not allow our own narratives to blind us to the experiences of others. It’s only through the ability to stand in many other people’s shoes that we gain the power to more fully comprehend what reality truly might be.
That’s why I come to believe that reading fiction (at least some of the time) is a crucial activity for living a meaningful life. It’s a diversion, sure, a chance to escape the confines of your own experience. But it’s also where we’re escaping that matters, too. The very act of reading fiction transports us into the minds of other (albeit made-up) people, where we live out their hopes, dreams, fears, mistakes and sorrows. Much like characters in a book, everyone we meet throughout the day is crafting the story of their own lives, complete with a rich inner-experience we can often only guess at. The ability to imagine those hidden workings — to piece together the roughest of sketches from the bits and fragments we become privy too — helps us shed our blinders and gives us pathways to connect in meaningful ways.
In a year defined so often defined by fracture, I am grateful for the power that books give us to connect beyond the narrowness of our own little worlds.
Here’s my list:
“All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr
“The Orphan Master’s Son” by Adam Johnson
“The Good Lord Bird” by James McBride
“Submission” by Michel Houellebecq
“Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff
“Welcome to Braggsville” by T. Geronimo Johnson
Granta No. 134: “No Man’s Land”
“The Turner House” by Angela Flournoy
“The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft” by Ulrich Boser
“Blackass” by A. Igoni Barrett
Granta No. 135: “New Irish Writing”
“City on Fire” by Garth Risk Hallberg
Granta No. 136: “Legacies of Love”
“Arab Jazz” by Karim Miské
“The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Freeman’s “Arrival,” edited by John Freeman
“The Story of My Teeth” by Valeria Luiselli (Translated by Christina MacSweeney)
“Reputations” by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
“Radio On” by Sarah Vowell
“The Girls” by Emma Cline
“The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead
Freeman’s “The Best New Writing on Family,” edited by John Freeman
“The King of Kings County” by Whitney Terrell
“Wicked Problems, Workable Solutions: Lessons from a Public Life” by Daniel Yankelovich
“The Last Train to Zona Verde” by Paul Theroux