Reviewed by Robert Goodman.
2020 has been a crazy year but the one thing many of us had to keep us sane in lock-down and beyond was plenty of time to read. And luckily for us, despite shifting release dates, cancellation of writers’ festivals and having to drink alone through book club zoom meetings, there was still plenty of great fiction this year. So here are some of my favourites, as always loosely organised by genre.
Crime Fiction
For those looking for new voices in Australian crime fiction, there were some great debuts this year. Kyle Perry delivered a cross between Picnic at Hanging Rock and Mean Girls set in the wilds of Tasmania in The Bluffs; Greg Woodland used a story from his own past as the basis for the 1960’s small town procedural The Night Whistler; and Katherine Firkin dealt with a range of hot button issues in inner city Melbourne in Sticks and Stones.
Meanwhile Australian crime writing stalwarts continued to deliver. Dervla McTiernan returned to Cormac O’Reilly and his crew in The Good Turn, Jane Harper went to coastal Tasmania for another great thriller in The Survivors, JP Pomare explored the story of The Family in In the Clearing and Megan Goldin looked at the issues around sexual assault in The Night Swim. Two time gold dagger winner Michael Robotham (When She Was Good) and Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement holder Garry Disher (Consolation) both delivered cracking additions to their ongoing series.
On the international front, SA Cosby’s debut Blacktop Wasteland took up the story of a retired getaway driver and Ryan Gatiss put United States justice processes under the microscope in The System. Stuart Turton followed up his mind-bending debut with a historical crime tale with hints of Sherlock Holmes in The Devil and the Dark Water. Korean thriller writer You-Jeong Jeong had another of her compulsive and twisted books reach Australia in translation in Seven Years of Darkness. And Norwegian crime superstar Jo Nesbo delivered a rural noir standalone in which the ends always seem to justify the means in The Kingdom.
Science Fiction
Science fiction books that explore social issues top the recommended list this year. The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson used a dystopian future and the idea of multiple realities to explore issues of class, nature and sexuality. And in Why Visit America, Matthew Baker presented a range of alternative Americas to highlight and riff on current issues. On the more action oriented side of the genre Australian author Corey J White’s Repo Virtual gave readers a near-future cyberpunk Korea, Megan O’Keefe continued her action-packed space opera series with Chaos Vector and veteran John Scalzi brought his climate-change analogy Interdependency series to an end with The Last Emperox. Max Brooks returned after World War Z, with a found narrative survival horror tale , this time involving Sasquatch in Devolution. And Star Wars fans should not go past From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back, 40 short stories that star only minor characters and creatures from the original film.
Fantasy
Some ground breaking fantasy this year starting with Susannah Clarke’s first novel in fifteen years, the beguiling and beautiful Piranesi. Multi-award winning science fiction author NK Jemison started a new Lovecraftian but very urban fantasy series with The City We Became. Australian author Sam Hawke continued her excellent Poison War series with the complex yet page-turning Hollow Empire. And another Australian, Luke Arnold, burst onto the fantasy scene with the first two in his noir detective meets post-apocalyptic urban fantasy series starring ‘Man for Hire’ Fetch Phillips – The Last Smile in Sunder City and Dead Man in a Ditch. Alix E Harrow considered the power of the womens’ movement in the historical and magical The Once and Future Witches. And in Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia drew on classic British gothic horror tropes and transplanted them to Mexico.
Historical Fiction
Three Australian books top the historical novel recommended list for 2020. Kate Grenville continued to explore the early days of the Australian colony, this time through the eyes of Elizabeth Macarthur, in A Room Made of Leaves. Nardi Simpson’s debut novel Song of the Crocodile tracked the tribulations and triumphs of four generations of an Aboriginal family living on the edge of a town in Northwest NSW. And 30 years after the events of Preservation, Jock Serong returned his ageing characters to the islands of Bass Strait in The Burning Island.
On the international front three books stood out. Israeli author Yaniv Iczkovits delivered a tragi-comic fantasy based on classic Yiddish tales in The Slaughterman’s Daughter. Michael Christie’s Greenwood starts in the future but its main concern is Canadian history, and in particular man’s relationship with tress and timber. And C Pam Zhang’s blistering debut How Much of These Hills is Gold reimagines the American gold rush from the perspective of the two teenage daughters of a Chinese prospector.
Literary Fiction
And now for those books that do not sit neatly into a genre bucket. Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind is a social commentary that could be considered a proto-apocalyptic tale as it takes a tough but compassionate look at a group of people dealing with a potential catastrophe. Sarah Moss’ Summerwater exposed the attitudes and ideals of present-day England through the eyes of the people stuck in a Scottish holiday camp on one rainy day. Similarly, Nicola Maye Goldberg uses a range of different voices to examine the enduring impact of the murder of a young woman by her boyfriend in Nothing Can Hurt You. On the Australian front, Richard Anderson’s Small Mercies, about a rural couple trying to come to terms with their lives, was both timely and essential reading, and Victoria Hannan’s award winning debut Kokomo was a confronting look at family, secrets and relationships. And finally Frances Cha’s If I had Your Face focussed on the power of the beauty industry over a group of young women in modern South Korea and Zalaika Reid-Benta followed a young Jamaican woman growing up in Canada through a series of poignant short stories in Frying Plantain.
As always, there are plenty of great books from this year that did not get a mention and more good stuff to come in 2021.
