The Five Best Books I Read This Year*

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahisi Coates
A thrilling extended essay on being black in America and the fallacy of whiteness—the best book I've read in years. The sentences are so beautiful as to be lessons in themselves. Coates's compassionate voice combined with not giving a fig who's made uncomfortable hit me with the same force that Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place did more than 25 years ago. 



Odd Girl Out by Elizabeth Jane Howard
My pal at the Total Femme turned me on to Howard's brilliant Cazalet Chronicles quintet a few years ago, and I've since moved on to several of her other novels about domestic life, class, and sexual dynamics in Britain. This is the best of the non-Cazalets I've read—a gripping, at times shocking story about a selfish young woman crippled by lack of love and about the damage incurred by her and on her after a married couple takes her in. Perfectly, devastatingly calibrated.


Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Not the first writer to interweave alternate paths a life might have taken, but the most accomplished I've seen at attending as much to the subtle psychological shifts as to the differing physical and circumstantial outcomes. A wily, moving tale of that infinitely fertile chemistry: England, war, and the 20th century. 




What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell
The somber unspooling of a men's-room hookup between an American teacher in Bulgaria and a manipulative younger Bulgarian. Greenwell nails the pulse-driven momentum of a relationship that begins with sex and that develops into a stumbling two-step of neediness and unknowing. 



In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi

Coming to terms with her anger at her late-in-life trans father over his violence and abandonment when she was a kid is as big a task than accepting her as a woman, though it's often hard to separate Faludi's feelings about each—which ultimately seems to be the story she's telling: of dualities haltingly resolving into something close to wholeness. 


*Note: not all published this year (unlike many best-of lists). Also, I actually listened to all of these on audiobook, my preferred delivery method these days.

Just Books

Several years ago, I started a book group. This is remarkable because for years I'd resisted the idea of book groups, scoffed at them even: I'm done with English class. Why would I want to discuss the books I read? I want to read them. And everyone says no one really talks about the books in those clubs, it's just a social hour; if I were to join a book group, I'd at least want to talk about the books! (Wait . . . )

Then I found myself both not getting through as many books as I used to and wanting a little more sociability in my life, so I got, as I like to say when something like this happens, a bee in my bonnet. (I need a cool-looking alarm clock, so I get obsessed with alarm-clock shopping. Or it turns 95 degrees and I suddenly need linen shirts—so within 24 hours I have three linen shirts in my closet. My most recent bee: flannel sheets! I ordered them last night.)

I got the idea of hand-picking the members of the book group: a half dozen or so friends who are gay men, and we'd read gay books. Within a few weeks, we were having a potluck planning meeting at my place.

This turned into a very short-lived group. Here's what I remember reading: Faith for Beginners by Aaron Hamburger (about an American family with a gay son visiting Israel, which I think I liked well enough but don't recall very much about six years later); The Story of the Night by Colm Tóibín (about political intrigue and closetedness in Argentina of the early '80s, which I enjoyed more); The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard (about Edgar Allan Poe; I'd read a couple others of his, including the far superior Mr. Timothy, about Dickens's Tiny Tim as an adult); and the tediously sitcommy My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan (who happens to have been a sitcom writer, on Frasier).

By that time, my enthusiasm was already starting to dissipate. The discussion wasn't of a very high level or even long-lived, and frankly I realized that I wanted to pick all the books, which wasn't fair (I'd chosen only one of the above officially, but I think I exerted more influence, including veto power, than others, who were much more go-with-the-flow-and-pass-the-lasagna). I used the excuse of my parents' seriously failing health as a reason to put the group "on hold," and as excuses go, it was a pretty legitimate one. But I think I realized I'd been right about book groups all along, at least as they pertain to me. They're just not my thing.

I do kind of miss getting together with those guys, though. And I really miss reading as much as I used to, long before the group existed. I don't seem to have the time I once had, and I'm ashamed to admit I don't have the concentration. I lose patience with books quicker than before; now I often don't finish if I'm not into them. (I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, but I rarely gave up on books when I was younger, so it's definitely a change in sense of responsibility.) I don't do Facebook or Twitter and spend very little of my downtime online, so I can't fully explain the shorter attention span. Perhaps it just pervades the culture and even I'm not immune.

A couple weeks ago, I had brunch with my friend C., an avid reader who I think has always considered me an avid reader (we know each other from an erstwhile gay writing group from the early to mid-'90s) because he's always asking me for book recommendations, and I do "present" like an avid reader, even now. Anyway, when I told him what I consider to be the paltry number of books I finished last year, he said, "Yeah, that's pretty bad." Which wasn't what I wanted to hear.

Part of the problem—and this has been going on since I came out of the closet almost 25 years ago (yay, finally this late bloomer can say a big number like "almost 25 years ago"!)—is that, with occasional exceptions, I have little patience with books that don't at least acknowledge that gay people exist. (That pretty much takes care of catching up with landmarks of world literature that I missed over the years, eh?) They just bore me, particularly of course contemporary literature. This stance of mine has holes all over it, I know—some stories simply have nothing to do with gay life through no deliberate avoidance on the author's part—but that doesn't change how I respond in the moment.

Would I have liked, for instance, Mentor: A Memoir (one of the books I forced myself to finish last year because my boss had lent it to me) better if the self-absorbed Frank Conroy suck-up who wrote it had mentioned a gay fellow writing student at Iowa or something? Probably not. (One thing that kept me reading was my memory of being a Frank Conroy admirer myself back in the day; I even met him and had him sign Stop-Time at a reading. Mentor made me thoroughly loathe him—which is actually fine, as I moved on from him years ago.)

Right about here, I was planning to list the books I finished and liked last year and the ones I didn't finish. (Of the latter group, I'll mention only the most surprising, the award-and-praise-laden Just Kids by Patti Smith, who made life in the East Village with Robert Mapplethorpe in the late '60s and early '70s sound positively Victorian; I became very skeptical very quickly.) But I've already gotten bored with that idea.

I did read a few really good books. Maybe that's all that matters.

All in the Eyes

D. gave me the book The World of Downton Abbey for my birthday in September—which might be funny (see how the literarily mighty have fallen!) if it weren't for the fact that I've never been anywhere near as "literary" as people seem to think I am. (Example: At lunch the other day, a former colleague was telling me about her book group and how much she loved Democracy, the 1880 Washington novel by Henry Adams. "Have you read it?" No. "Oh, I really think you'd love it." Hmm, maybe. But what evidence have I given you that makes you think so? I'm not really drawn to Washington or political fiction, and I read mostly contemporary literature, albeit sometimes set in the past. By the way, did I like the much-lauded movie Lincoln? No, I thought it an endless, wonkish bore, as did D. Perhaps the subject of the future, contrarian post.)

Back to The World of Downton Abbey. The fact that I've read it might also be funny if it weren't such an interesting, gorgeously designed, and skillfully researched and written book (by Jessica Fellowes, niece of the show's creator, Julian Fellowes), about the history and sociology of the era and class divisions as much as about the show itself. Oh, and a book that happens to be about a TV series I'm so addicted to that I've seen most episodes at least three times.

For Christmas I received the book's sequel, The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, which is mostly tied into the third season (the first book covered the first two). It looks equally yummy, but I haven't explored much beyond the photos yet because I'm nervous that it might give too much away. (I already inadvertently heard two spoilers when I was in London in November, where the season had finished its run.)

One of the first book's insights pertains to one of my favorite characters, O'Brien—the lady's maid who is as loathsome as a badly overripe and discolored cheese, yet (in the third season) an increasingly, and strangely, sympathetic character, even as she plots revenge against her former ally, the footman-turned-valet Thomas. We're seeing more of her fear now as well as her sadness. She's becoming, for the first time within her downstairs world, a victim.

Siobhan Finneran and Rob James-Collier ( Carnival Film & Television Limited 2011 for Masterpiece)

"O'Brien moves almost seamlessly between floors; she is very good at her job, proud to be so, and her ease amongst both servants and family is a measure of this. Of all the servants, O'Brien is probably the best actor, showing only the face she wants her colleagues or her employer to see. Lady Grantham, after all, believes they are friends."

As for the actress who plays O'Brien, Siobhan Finneran, I agree with a comment in the same book by Rob James-Collier, who plays Thomas: "Siobhan is a fantastic actress to work with—you really learn from her. She's very measured and it's all in the eyes. In rehearsal you think there's nothing going on and then you see it on screen and you think 'wow—everything's happening.' "

A similar thing occurs when you watch an episode for the first time . . . and then for the third.

Laughter and Silence

Judy Dench as Ophelia, 1957 (Jimmy Sime/Getty Images)

If there's one path not taken that I'd choose if I had the chance, it would be to be involved in theater. I participated in a small way when I was a kid (and very briefly in college), and these days I've been lucky to see a few notable plays a year, but I think I would have enjoyed a career working in theater in some capacity. It seems to have a real sense of community that I sometimes find myself envious of.

This feeling arose again as I read Judi Dench's And Furthermore, which I finished tonight. It's not an autobiography (a point she underscores herself), more a collection of reminiscences and anecdote from her life as an actress. In fact, I read in the New York Times that it was assembled from transcripts of conversations with a friend and biographer, and that's exactly what it seems like: Judi Dench chatting, just talking. If you've heard her interviewed, she sounds exactly, but exactly, that way in this book. It's not great "writing," but it's worth the price just to have the amazing Judi Dench's voice residing in your head for however many days or weeks it takes you to read it.

If you lived in Britain from 1957 to more or less the present day, you could see Judi Dench onstage at least once or twice a year—that's how busy an actress she has been. It's of course partly a function of the difference between English and American theater, but I can't think of a single living American actor you could say that about.

As for the book, here's one passage I liked:

"On a film you have to sit and answer questions about what you think of the part, why you wanted to play the part, and I think that's none of the public's business. Why should you know the ins and outs of everything? You don't say to a dress designer like Betty Jackson, 'Why have you made a dress like that? Why did you cut the dress like that?' Why should the public know everything? The joy of the theatre is not really going and knowing that somebody had terrible difficulty playing this part, or why they did it; it is to go and be told a story, the author's story, through the best means possible. In any case, I never know why I've done something, it's for lots of reasons. I want to keep a quiet portion inside that is my own business and not anybody else's."

And these, the final words, at the end of the last chapter, "What Every Young Actor Needs to Know: Answers to Questions I've Been Asked Over the Years." For some reason, despite their simplicity and directness, they haunt me a little:

"What is the greatest reward of being an actor?

"Laughter if it's a comedy, silence if it's a tragedy."

Perfectly Good

I just finished A Perfectly Good Man, a novel by the gay British writer Patrick Gale, whom I discovered on one of my visits to London.

I’d previously read his book Rough Music, which I liked a lot. That one is a family story involving an adult gay son having an affair with his sister’s husband (revealed pretty early on, so this is only a semi-spoiler); his mother, who has early-stage dementia; a long-ago childhood vacation that became an incubator for parental adultery; a present-day return to the same spot, leading to a sweet and sexy love story between the gay son and a mysterious artist guy; and regular shifts in time.

A Perfectly Good Man moves back and forth even more—not only in time but also among quite a few characters. It’s another family drama, this time hinging in part on questions of faith and loss of faith, and is centered on the life of a minister, a married father of two, on the Cornwall coast, where Gale lives and most of his work seems to be set. It’s not as gay as Rough Music, but a peripheral character is a gay man, and the minister’s daughter, whose sexuality is kind of indeterminate throughout the story, ends up marrying a woman, which is nice and in fact one of the book’s pivotal events.

Gale’s strength is his mastery of structure, time, and perspective. A Perfectly Good Man (his most recent book) felt ever so slightly less compelling to get through than Rough Music, but darned if I didn’t close it pretty amazed at what he’d built and where he’d taken it. He even manages to make a unicorn reference work! (On that note, if you ask me what I thought of Richard Blanco’s inaugural poem, I’ll tell you I found it a moving invocation on a momentous occasion, but I could have done without the rainbows.)

Turning the Page

I’m going to try something to get myself unstuck—a condition that has various reasons but one result: no posts for a very long time. For a while anyway, I’m exclusively going to post comments on something I’ve read—a book, an article, some kind of story. (Maybe I’ll allow a movie or a play; they’re “read,” too, after all.)

I need the focus and (loose) strictures. If I end up veering off track and writing about my life or my family or my travels, so be it. As long as I can get myself back to putting sentences together for their own sake and mine, with no audience or expectations in mind—the original goal of this blog back in 2005—I’ll be satisfied.